Many personal, political, economic, and social problems happen — and grow worse over time instead of better — when we decide that the consequences of someone knowing the truth will be FAR worse than hiding the truth. Lies are always at the root of evil, and therefore accountability and transparency slow the effects of evil. This is fractal; the benefits of being truthful and the problems of hiding the truth affect us as individuals, in families, in communities and tribes, in nation states.
[Sidebar before someone brings up Santa Claus or vulnerable people: I’m talking about functioning adults. I don’t have a problem with shielding young children from the whole truth when they can’t handle it, or an elderly person with dementia.]
Students of power have long observed that retaining power is most likely when you “deny till you die.” Never admit. If you can’t deny any longer, switch to “that’s old news.” Keep enough dirt on everyone so that you can smear it on anyone who challenges you with truth. If you can’t find dirt, make it up, and project on them what they accuse you of doing. Point out hypocrisy. Distract, distort, downplay. Rely on the “I have no recollection” card. History is replete with examples of people doing this “successfully.”
I say “successfully” because it’s only successful from a limited perspective. There is nothing wholesome or fulsome about it, however much it “works.” Individuals are scarred and hardened. Trust is eroded. Cynicism is fueled. Anger is kindled. The positive dimensions of justice and liberty are pushed further out of reach. Plus, there are all the missed positive examples of someone courageously telling the truth.
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Science requires that there be objective, attainable truth. Scientists are in pursuit of the yet-unknown truth – that’s the mission of the whole enterprise. Every answered question leads to more questions to explore, more unknowns. (The rate of new unknowns is higher than the rate of new learning. The gap between what we know and what we don’t yet know will always get bigger!)
Our problem is with the institutions that create and protect The Science™, not with scientific inquiry as a practice. The Science™ begins with the right answer, which is anathema to inquiry. The clue is that force, or at least the threat of force, is required to sustain The Science™.
We have multiple instances in recent years which illustrate the problems created when people vested in a certain way of thinking about a scientific question are more fearful of consequences than the truth. Queries about the covid-19 virus (origins, effectiveness of masking and lockdowns, treatment options) were actively suppressed – I highly recommend Jay Bhattacharya’s commentary here. There are amyloid plaques in the brains of people who died with Alzheimer’s, but we now know that some of key papers that launched a multibillion-dollar enterprise in drug treatment were fabricated. You probably didn’t hear much about that. Analysis in 2009 documented fraudulently cloned embryos. Baker and Penny published a Nature paper in 2016 documenting that more than 70% of medical papers could not be reproduced. I can share much more.
I’m not anti-science. But we’ve come to a point where people rightfully begin to distrust the institution and the broad swath of ‘experts.’ A portion of this is simply that we make errors in measurements and even more in interpretation. That portion can be resolved by genuine inquiry and challenge. A generous helping is that people “with a lot to lose if the truth comes out” aren’t telling the truth. They’re spending energy to squelch any challenge. As Richard Feynman said, “I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.”
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One can go on to other institutions: Education. Contemporary HR departments. Departments of the Intelligence. Military branches. Unions. Church denominations. The Financial Advisory Industry. Large media companies. Practically any sizable bureaucracy. Pick-your-favorite-big-corporation. This problem is endemic, which should tell us about the perfectibility of human nature. By some measures, general trust in institutions is extremely low.
We need to demand the truth from leaders and institutions which have broad influence and impact. Pointing fingers at politicians, corrupted institutions, and organization leaders is practically a sport. People have long noticed that everyone wants to change the world, and few want to change themselves. It’s much more fun than reflecting on your own situation where you prefer lies to the truth because the consequences are hard and scary.
Which we often do. We hide things we’re not proud of. We shape our stories.
The way to strengthen institutions as truth tellers is for a critical number of influential individuals in those institutions to believe that truth matters more than consequences. “Fixing” institutions goes back to individuals making courageous choices.
