A 2021 conspiracy theory, promoted by Sen. Rand Paul, vilifies Dr. Fauci and attempts to tie him to the notion that the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 was engineered in and leaked from the Wuhan Institute for Virology. The scientific evidence says otherwise on all counts. (Credit: Susan Walsh-Pool/Getty Images)

America’s big mistake about science literacy came back to haunt us in 2021

Developing an awareness of and an appreciation for science is what we all truly need, not what we’ve been doing.

In this day and age, it’s virtually impossible to have sufficient expertise to figure out what the complete, comprehensive, scientifically validated truth surrounding any issue is. Unless you yourself have spent many years studying, researching, and actively participating in furthering the scientific endeavor in a particular field, you can be certain — with an incredibly high degree of confidence — that your non-expertise will fundamentally limit the depth and breadth of your understanding. Put simply, your inexperience, relative to that of bona fide professionals, gives you too many blind spots that you yourself will be unaware of, to be able to distinguish what’s valid and conclusive from what’s not.

We have this persistent myth that’s been a part of a society for a very long time: that if you just do your own “research,” figuring out what you’re capable of learning from reading and listening to other sources, you’ll be just as capable of the experts at distinguishing truths from falsehoods. That if you just learn enough of the relevant facts and apply your logic, intuition, and critical reasoning skills to…