Conspiracy Theories Abound

As suggested by this clever meme, American society is awash completely with untenable beliefs.

Worse, this terrifying phenomenon is not limited to the uneducated; of the five best friends I had growing up, two of them, one a medical doctor and the other holding a master’s degree in mathematics, grasp onto ideas that are no more substantiated than the Flat Earth theory.

I’m reading the popular book Hamnet, set in the 1580s, and I find it interesting to note that a key feature of life back then was it was distinctly pre-science.  Because there were no better ideas, people believed in witches and demons, good luck charms, using cloth dipped in ashes to deal with warts on the skin, and dozens of other things that were abandoned as soon as the scientific method emerged, only a few decades later.

But what good is science if it is rejected by policy-makers and the citizens of the day?