When people say “believe the science” they are displaying a complete lack of understanding of what science is. Science isn’t a religion, it’s a process. Science is a process—specifically, a systematic method for acquiring knowledge about the natural world through observation, hypothesis formation, experimentation, measurement, data analysis, peer review, and iterative refinement. Its core features include:
- Falsifiability: Theories must be testable and potentially disprovable (a key idea from Karl Popper).
- Empiricism: Reliance on evidence from the real world, not authority or revelation.
- Provisionality: Conclusions are always tentative and subject to revision with better data or new experiments. Newton’s laws were refined by Einstein; this is a feature, not a bug.
- Reproducibility and skepticism: Results should be independently verifiable, and claims face ongoing scrutiny.
This contrasts sharply with religion, which typically centers on faith, revealed truths, sacred texts or traditions, rituals, and beliefs about purpose, morality, the supernatural, or the unobservable. Religions often involve dogma (core tenets accepted on authority) and are not required to make falsifiable predictions in the same empirical sense.
A person observes something happen, and when it happens consistently, it becomes a law. The law of gravity says that, if a let go of this pen in my hand, it will fall to the floor. Another example of scientific law includes Boyle’s Law, which describes what happens to the pressure and volume of a gas at constant temperature, but leaves out the why.
People have an idea as to why, and they design an experiment to prove or disprove that idea. If the idea is strong enough, it becomes a theory. The theory of gravity explains that the pen fell because all objects with mass have an attraction to each other that is the product of the mass of the two objects, and the inverse of the square between them. Newton proved that.
Scientific law describes WHAT happens, theory describes WHY.
Important nuances
Scientism (treating science as an infallible worldview or source of ultimate meaning) can resemble religious behavior in some people or movements. That’s a human failing in applying science, not science itself. True science remains humble about its limits—it doesn’t address “why” questions of purpose, ethics, or metaphysics directly.
Science operates within philosophical assumptions (e.g., the uniformity of nature, reliability of logic and evidence), but it doesn’t claim those as revealed truth; they’re pragmatic working assumptions tested by results.
Overlaps exist historically (many early scientists were religious and saw science as revealing divine order), and individuals can hold both scientific and religious views without contradiction, as they address different domains (e.g., “how the universe works” vs. “what it means”).
The statement is a useful shorthand for defending the integrity of the scientific method against dogmatic thinking or politicization. It doesn’t mean science has no cultural or social dimensions—scientists are human and institutions can err—but the process itself is designed to minimize those errors over time through evidence and criticism.
A scientific law or theory is only valid until some other set of facts proves it to be incorrect in some or all situations, then the law or theory has to be modified, or perhaps even scrapped altogether. Scientific laws and theories are never considered absolute, eternal truths. They are the best current explanations/models that fit the available evidence, and they remain open to revision or replacement when new, contradictory evidence emerges.
The year is 1949, and the Nobel Prize in Medicine has just gone to the man who invented the lobotomy. Your doctor suggests one for your sister, who has not been herself since the baby came. It is the most celebrated advance in psychiatry of the age, and he is simply current. By the time the prize curdles into an embarrassment, close to twenty thousand Americans have had the operation.
The year is 1956. Lay the baby down on his front, the doctor says. So does the most trusted childcare book ever written, the one on every new mother’s shelf. On his back he might choke, the reasoning goes. Millions obey. The advice holds for nearly thirty years, long after the evidence has quietly turned, and a generation of cot deaths is counted before anyone thinks to roll the babies over.
The year is 1966. A bestselling book informs your wife that menopause is a disease, that she is, in the author’s word, a castrate, and that a small daily pill will keep her youthful and tolerable to live with. Her doctor agrees. The drug becomes one of the most prescribed in the country. Nobody mentions that the author sat on the payroll of the company that made it. That detail surfaces decades later, in the same year the landmark trial is halted early for raising rates of breast cancer, stroke and clots.
The year is 1979. Your ulcer is caused by stress and sharp food, the doctor explains. Calm down, drink milk, take the antacid that happens to be the best-selling medicine on earth. Two Australians are about to prove that most ulcers are caused by a bacterium and cured by a fortnight of antibiotics. The profession laughs. One of them eventually drinks a beaker of the stuff to settle the matter. The establishment takes the better part of twenty years to stop laughing. The Nobel lands in 2005.
The year is 1985. Butter is dangerous, the doctor says. Switch to margarine, it is modern, it is heart-healthy, the experts are united. The spread he nudges you toward is loaded with trans fats, which the next decade will identify as the genuinely dangerous one, and which will eventually be banned outright. The butter goes quietly back in the fridge. No correction is ever printed at the volume of the original warning.
The year is 1992. There is a pyramid on the surgery wall, and the very same one in your grandchild’s classroom. Bread, cereal, rice and pasta form the broad virtuous base, up to eleven servings a day. Fat is exiled to the tiny tip. The chart was reportedly held back a year while the relevant industries had their say. It is wrong at the bottom and wrong at the top.
In short, I trust in science as a process. I don’t trust in science the religion. Your doctor has new guidelines, new studies, a fresh consensus, delivered with precisely the steady confidence of every guideline above. He believes it, and he has good reason to. None of them were villains. Each was sincere, most were kind, and all were certain, reading from a map that somebody else had drawn and handed them. That is the part worth considering: If the scientific community tells your medical provider that X therapy is going to do Y, they aren’t going to question it because the scientific community already (supposedly) has.
Thalidomide was developed in the mid-1950s by the German pharmaceutical company Chemie Grünenthal. It was introduced in 1957 and aggressively marketed as a “safe” sedative-hypnotic, and treatment for morning sickness in pregnant women. It was praised for being non-toxic in overdose (unlike barbiturates) and was sold over-the-counter in some places. Thalidomide was taken by pregnant women, primarily between 1958 and 1961. When taken during a critical window of early pregnancy, it caused severe developmental abnormalities in the fetus. Thousands of children were born without arms.
The drug was never properly tested, because people believed in the science without question. The same is true with the COVID vaccine. It was rushed to market without proper testing, and we still don’t understand all of the effects.
Don’t get too smug, however. I see people every day who are doing the same with hydroxychloroquine. There are people coming to the ED that have been taking HCQ for everything from headaches to constipation. It’s a good drug, but it isn’t a panacea.
The left is doing the same with transgenderism. They claim “the science is settled” because the new editions of the DSM no longer list gender dysphoria as a mental health problem.
Science isn’t a religion, it’s a process. Many times, we throw our faith into science the religion instead of science the process. In those cases, the process becomes a weapon of a public propaganda campaign that is designed to sell you something like a political position, or to sell a pharmaceutical. The process becomes a tool to sell you a bill of goods.
Question everything, even your own assumptions. Don’t be afraid to admit you were wrong. Being able to admit that you were wrong, or even misled, is the sign of a mature and scientific mind.
