Francis Collins: Facts do not care whether you accept them or not

I am a little late out of the starting blocks, but last Sunday Francis Collins published an opinion article titled Take It From a Scientist. Facts Matter, and They Don’t Care How You Feel in the opinion section of The New York Times. In case there are any readers who do not know it, Francis Collins is the former director of the Human Genome Project and more recently director of the National Institutes of Health. He presided over NIH in the early part of the pandemic and during the development of vaccines for Covid.

In the article, he outlines the development of the vaccines and rightly bemoans the number of Americans who refused to get vaccinated, even when vaccination was free. He notes that white evangelical Christians, of whom he is one, were the most highly resistant to getting vaccinated. He says,

Public distrust, driven by social media, cable news and even some politicians, reflected a host of concerns: whether Covid-19 was real, whether it was really all that serious, whether the vaccines were rushed, whether there were common and serious side effects that had been hidden, whether the mRNA would alter the recipient’s DNA and whether companies had skirted the rules about safety. More outlandish conspiracies also circulated on social media: that the vaccines contained microchips or cells from recently aborted fetuses, for example. People of faith were particularly hard hit by misinformation.

Dr. Collins avers,

We are in serious trouble when some believe that their faith requires them to distrust science or when others believe that political allegiances are a better source of wisdom than truth, faith or science.… In many aspects of our daily lives, the anchor to objective truth seems to have been lost.

Addressing not only his coreligionists, Dr. Collins asks rhetorically, “What do we mean by truth anyway? [Emphasis in original].” He asks us to imagine a set of concentric circles, sort of like a target, I guess. The central area, the bull’s-eye, encompasses what he calls “necessary truth,” such as 2 + 2 = 4, or A = πr². The next circle out (a ring or annulus, in reality) subsumes conclusions that are so overwhelmingly supported by theory and experiment that they truly ought to be considered facts: the inverse-square law of gravity and the facts that

DNA is the hereditary material for humans. The average temperature of planet Earth is rapidly increasing — yes, it really is. And Covid vaccines were tested in rigorous trials in 2020 and found to be safe and effective. These statements are all established scientific facts.

The next ring out includes claims that may be true, “but the evidence is currently insufficient to move them into the circle of firmly established facts.” For example, did mask mandates reduce Covid transmission?

And finally, opinions, such as “Dogs make better pets than cats.”

Dr. Collins stresses the importance of knowing which annular area pertains: Are you sure that everything you consider factual is well-established? Are you sure that claims you consider mere opinion are not facts? Equally, he argues that we must have serious conversations with people with whom we disagree. I was reminded of a recent comment by a pen-pal of mine, who decried calling Mr. Trump’s, um, prevarications about the election “lies.” He would prefer, and I agree, calling them “unsubstantiated claims,” so as not to immediately antagonize listeners who may be sympathetic to Mr. Trump.

There is more to the article, much of it, I thought, bordering on pabulum of the “we need to build consensus” variety. I sincerely hope, though, that Dr. Collins can convince some of his fellow evangelicals to accept facts and adjust some of their opinions accordingly, rather than succumb to mis- or disinformation, such as rumors about the Covid vaccines.

As Dr. Collins says, “The consequences of vaccine misinformation have been utterly tragic.” You can say the same about misinformation about climate change, which he mentions but does not discuss.