Truth and truthful religion

Some researchers believe they hold absolute truth, while obscuring questions that disturb them. This dominating posture reveals a form of “veridist religion,” which denies the complexity of reality.

The manufacture of consensus and the erasure of controversies

Consider for example the discourse of certain researchers, particularly concerning Covid-19, who claim, even today, to hold the truth, while carefully avoiding certain crucial questions: why not question the quasi-mandatory vaccination of everyone when this vaccine did not protect against transmission and only constituted protection in case of serious illness but was not prevention? Why remain silent about the fact that it was only useful for very elderly people and/or those with comorbidities? Why never talk about its record development time, which meant it was distributed massively while still in its experimental phase? Is it reasonable to trust a vaccine developed in 6 months when the average time is 10 to 20 years? What does the new use of mRNA technology really imply, for which there is no long-term feedback? Why are the side effects of these vaccines, which are well documented, minimized? Why is the anxiety-inducing treatment of information about this epidemic by the media not questioned? Why is the ban that doctors had, under penalty of being struck off, from prescribing anything other than acetaminophen for this disease not questioned? Why is the progressive change in criteria for judging dangerousness not questioned either: infected people, then people with positive tests, then “contact cases,” and other variations? Why has the reliability of testing technology never been questioned either? Were lockdowns the best solution, when we see that other countries treated without confining, without there being more deaths? Why are the successive lies and false promises of the French government not questioned? Why are victims of side effects from these vaccines made invisible? And so many other questions... And above all, why would the simple act of asking these types of questions constitute a “betrayal of science, truth and citizenship” and immediately make whoever utters them a public danger? This is why I begin with this subject, unfortunately still controversial.

These same people nevertheless speak to us of truth, objectivity, scientific facts. But their approach obscures entire sections of reality. They baptize as “truth” what is only a partial vision, theirs. These political, media or research leaders systematically erase legitimate scientific controversies and discredit anyone who dares to think differently. Prisoners of their confirmation biases, they transform their certainties into indisputable beliefs. In doing so, they judge, essentialize and denigrate those who carry an alternative thought to theirs. They deny the intellectual dignity of the other, presuming that they have been manipulated to be able to think such heresies. And through simplistic associations, they amalgamate all controversy with the extreme right. Yet an anthropological analysis would reveal that their own mode of thinking corresponds precisely to their particular socio-cultural and economic context. Their speech is situated, like all speech, why deny it?

These people, like everyone else, are not objective; they are prisoners of their own logic. Dependent on private actors to fund their research, they find themselves structurally unable to criticize the hand that feeds them. I do not question their sincerity, but I just want to point out that the heralds of the fight against post-truth are themselves already bathed in their own form of post-truth. The most serious thing is that they are convinced they hold THE truth, having lost all critical thinking without even realizing it.

Believing themselves to be holders of scientific objectivity, they ignore that all discourse, including theirs, is necessarily situated. The study of the importance of the subject’s position in the production of knowledge and the power relations that structure this production is nevertheless the object of a science, sociology! Scientists lose themselves precisely when they confuse their certainties with absolute truths. They then compare their field of research, whatever it may be, to mathematics, whose universal truth they would share, by the very term “science”: “two and two make four, come on!”, to discredit their opponents by associating them with flat-earthers or those who would claim that two and two make five.

Conflicts of interest at the heart of research

Through these amalgamations, they seek to discredit those whose ideas, if heard, would threaten their funding sources. For a researcher is never a perfectly objective scientist, we know this and it is one of the foundations of the epistemology of sciences. Like everyone else, the scientist is caught in conflicts of interest, conflicts of loyalty, and his thinking is necessarily biased, despite his good faith and belief in his own objectivity. We observe that even the most apparently objective scientific experiments contain numerous biases, most often unconscious, to validate our prior theory (what we call confirmation bias). Scientists are not strangers to this, and it is precisely for this reason that experiments on similar objects are often organized by different teams.

This is quite normal. What matters for democracy is precisely the awareness of these inevitable biases. One could object to me: “But this is absolute relativism! This would mean that everything is equal, that the flat Earth hypothesis equals its established roundness!”

Would this openness to relativism weaken democracies by opening the door to delusions? Much less than we think, and even quite the contrary, as I explain later.

The examples of therapeutic fasting and photography

Let’s take the concrete case of therapeutic fasting. Among doctors, who are moreover wrongly considered all scientists, when not all do research, this practice provokes a lively debate. Some peremptorily assert that fasting is an imposture, associating fasting advocates with far-right conspiracists, anti-vaccine and opposed to science. Others, with scientific studies to support them, demonstrate its remarkable therapeutic effects. Who to believe when each camp brandishes its “scientific certainty”?

What does “universal science” say? Nothing definitive, because science is precisely a space for research and controversy. To settle this question, long-term comparative studies would need to be conducted, with teams with opposing postulates. But who would fund such research, which would be very expensive? Pharmaceutical laboratories, the primary funders of research, have no interest in discovering that we can heal without medication, do they? They much prefer to defend their “truth,” supporting it with all their might, transforming it into a dogma, a “veridist religion,” from which we would be quite guilty to deviate.

Yet, contrary to what they believe, in my opinion they also weaken themselves through this posture. All professions evolve with the advancement of knowledge and societies, including that of the pharmaceutical industry. And they will not have all power all the time. If, for example, a scientific consensus emerged one day on the therapeutic benefits of fasting, and certain States less subject to conflicts of interest integrated it into their health policies, the industry could, instead of continuing to seek to manufacture post-truth to support their old model, develop new economic models: they could create clinics specialized in fasting support, because fasting correctly requires a precise protocol and rigorous monitoring. It’s not simply stopping eating hoping for a miracle. It’s a very precise process, which needs analyses as it progresses, in light of knowledge, to be able to really heal.

This is the long-term fragility of conflicts of interest: it always cracks one day, because the world advances, evolves, changes, and if we want to stay on old models, because they have always worked, we never question ourselves, and without realizing it, we weaken ourselves gradually. And this even for the most powerful. This is why my hypotheses here are not attacks, but rather proposals to build tomorrow together.

Let’s remember Kodak, which for 100 years made immense profits by manufacturing and selling photographic film. Digital photography was invented in their research laboratory. But they didn’t invest in it, they preferred to continue on their old foundations, which seemed foolproof. They never considered that this “small” invention, or discovery, could change the very foundations of their business, they minimized it, because they “knew,” and those who said otherwise were discredited, as if they were disconnected illuminati from reality, especially economic. The result is that this gigantic century-old company went bankrupt in a few years. They had forgotten that to evolve, you have to learn to think outside your box. This is the principle of true innovation. It was others who invented the economic models, still flourishing, of digital photography.

History teaches us humility

When someone claims to hold the truth and allows themselves to attack the dignity of others without having informed themselves about the foundations of these different ideas, without respecting the cultural rights of their interlocutors, they hold a discourse that comforts them in their certainties. These people are the worst liars, because they ignore that they lie and build post-truth themselves. This is what I call “the veridist religion,” prisoner of its certainties, which is actually a form of obscurantism, believing itself above those who think differently and denigrating them on principle.

From an ethnological point of view, the dominant institutions of truth, particularly scientific ones, have always served the established power. Let’s remember institutional racism based on science: the most eminent scholars of their times explained through morphophysiological arguments why Blacks were inferior beings. It was the scientific consensus, the “truth” of the time. Dissenting voices were discredited and banned, because, although true in today’s vision, they were indeed dangerous for the social order of the time as it was constructed. The Western world would indeed have collapsed if suddenly slaves had been considered equals. Should we therefore have defended the dehumanization, domination and torture of part of humanity?

Why would today’s scientists have more critical distance than their predecessors? In the name of what? Of an era where we would be more lucid than before? A little humility is needed. This does not mean falling into a simplistic relativism that would put all theories on the same level. Rather, it is about examining the processes of reasoning, argumentation, historical foundations, rather than focusing solely on conclusions. Here are my proposals.

For an authentic dialogue between thoughts

I affirm with certainty that the Earth is round, but I am only repeating what I have been taught, without in-depth personal reasoning on this subject. It is an unquestioned evidence. So, observing, without fear, in dialogue, how some come to different conclusions can only enrich us, much more than discrediting them wholesale without seeking to understand their intellectual journey.

What world are we building if every dissenting idea is immediately discredited in the name of a truth forbidden from questioning? An idea that cannot be questioned becomes a dogma, therefore a false truth. To tell the truth, whether it is true or false is no longer the subject. The only subject becomes its social acceptability, and not its level of truth.

Let’s imagine mathematicians trying to demonstrate that 2 + 2 = 5. The exercise would be fascinating. I remain convinced that 2 + 2 = 4, my experience of the world confirms it, and without this truth, no computer would work. But the argued effort to demonstrate the contrary to me, using various mathematical tools, would create a precious space for exchange and reflection. The objective would not be to convince, but to understand the other and allow mutual enrichment. In an in-depth reflection on “2 + 2 = 5,” certain stages of reasoning could prove fascinating, inspiring, and could perhaps prove very useful when applied to other subjects. It is about no longer considering the question of truth as an indissociable block, but as a diversity, always rich with enrichment through the other’s paths, even when the result is false.

Let’s not forget that many scientific discoveries were born from errors, approximations, happy accidents, out-of-the-box thinking. Any person can enrich us. This is not about relativism, but about creating third situations allowing authentic encounter: joint studies, sharing of reasoning in mutual respect, democratic relations, collective artistic creations, respect for the dignity of the other, etc., which are the conditions for founding common ground in diversity. That is to say, not a truth imposed and forbidden from being questioned, but the shared knowledge that truth is vast, complex, multiple and evolutionary.

This is moreover the whole purpose of science: to continually explore, gradually lifting the veil on more and more complexity. Open-mindedness comes through openness to the other who disturbs us, it is the condition of enrichment, it is not destabilizing as they would have us believe, but on the contrary also a deepening of self-knowledge and one’s own independent thought, what we call critical thinking.