I am sadly entertained watching Dr Jessica Knurick’s videos calling out “health influencers” and especially the ones where she begins, “No, that’s not true”. And she has a lot to choose from.
Dr Jessica Knurick is an evidence-based nutrition & public health PhD in Nutrition Science. I have a degree in Mathematical Sciences. We have a lot of science in common.
The Doctor and I share a love for the truth and science. Oh, yes. People like me with strong faith can align with science. We know that science and faith are not mutually exclusive. Truth be told, faith and science share a love for reality and facts.
Trust the Science
Dr Knurick wrote a recent post on Substack pointing out the fallacy of a popular way of thinking about science. For instance, someone posts, “trust the science” in air quotes, using a patronizing tone to suggest we shouldn’t put much weight in science because science doesn’t always get things right.
She pointed out that science itself is not a belief system or a fixed set of truths. It’s a method for understanding the world around us.
Science is disciplined, transparent, and self-correcting process for figuring out what’s real.
“When people say, ‘trust the science,’ they don’t mean science is perfect or that it always gets things exactly right the first time. They don’t mean that scientists are infallible or that our current understanding is the final word. They mean: trust the information we currently have, because it was produced through the scientific method, which is the most reliable tool we have for understanding the world around us.
So, when a scientist says, ‘trust the science,’ they’re not saying, ‘trust every individual study’ or ‘never question authority.’ They’re saying to trust the conclusions that are supported by the best available evidence and filtered through a process that’s meant to catch errors. Not because it’s perfect or absolute truth, but because it’s the most reliable way we’ve found to get closer to the truth.”
Pre-History of Science
This post is longer and deeper on the educational side than most but it won’t be boring. Let’s go back to Grade 10 and hear Dr Knurick offer insights from her Substack post into what life was like at one time.
Before the scientific method, humans relied on tradition, intuition, authority, and anecdote to understand the world. And for thousands of years, what we accepted as “truth” often came from religious leaders, monarchs, and charismatic figures whose power or confidence substituted for actual evidence.
For most of human history, life expectancy hovered around 30 to 35 years (up until the early 20th century in many parts of the world, and even later in others). Infants and young children routinely died from diarrhea, respiratory infections, malnutrition, or common viruses that we can now prevent or treat with basic medical care. Women routinely died in childbirth. A simple cut could be fatal. People believed disease came from bad air or curses.
There, of course, was no system in place to rigorously test these ideas or weed out what didn’t hold up, and beliefs often stuck solely because they were repeated enough times.
The Scientific Method Changed Everything
The turning point came when humans stopped relying solely on tradition or authority and started systematically testing their ideas against the real world.
What we now call the scientific method began to take shape during the Scientific Revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries. Thinkers like Francis Bacon, Galileo Galilei, and later Isaac Newton helped formalize a new approach to knowledge that emphasized observation, measurement, experimentation, and the willingness to revise ideas based on evidence.
(My note: Isn’t interesting that all three scientists Dr Knurick refers to were adherents of the Christian faith. And many leading scientists of their era viewed their scientific work as a way to understand God’s creation.)
Testable evidence gave us vaccines and antibiotics, wiping out or controlling diseases that once killed millions.
Smallpox has been eradicated.
Polio is nearly gone.
Measles was almost gone.
Benefits
The scientific method gave us:
- clean water systems and modern sanitation, both of which did more to reduce child mortality than any single medical intervention.
- radiology, targeted cancer therapies, and the ability to detect and treat disease early.
- anesthesia, making surgery safe and survivable
It helped us understand germ theory, so we could stop blaming disease on bad air or bad energy.
It revolutionized childbirth and maternal care, making pregnancy and delivery dramatically safer through sterile technique, cesarean sections, and neonatal intensive care, transforming what was once a leading cause of death into something far more survivable.
None of this came from instinct, ideology, belief, or common sense. It came from a process, a method, designed to test what works and discard what doesn’t.
Anti-Science Today
Despite everything the scientific method has made possible, today we’re seeing a growing wave of distrust in science, especially when the evidence feels inconvenient, unfamiliar, or politically charged.
That misunderstanding creates an opening for bad actors. Influencers, politicians, and self-proclaimed experts use that gap to sow doubt, distort evidence, or position themselves as brave truth-tellers simply for rejecting consensus. They often frame changing guidance as a sign of failure rather than progress. And in doing so, they erode trust in the very process that got us here.
And we’re seeing the consequences of that today.
Ultimately, trusting the science isn’t about believing it has all the answers. It’s about recognizing that it’s the best chance we have at finding them.
Read the rest of this post on Dr Knurick’s Substsck.
What do you think? Please join the conversation and post a comment below.
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Air quotes around “trust the science” started when science was used as a weapon to control and manipulate and the scientific method was ignored. Questioning whether science had even been conducted got many people cancelled, fined, demonized, fired, and jailed. Scientists advocating for proper use of the scientific method were and are some of the most targeted, many losing their jobs, licenses and livelihoods. True, the mistrust now leaves a gap for charlatans to take advantage for their own purposes. That is what happens when corruption and power lead to mistrust of the very institutions the masses should be able to rely on for good information. We weren’t provided with the “best available evidence”, we were purposely lied to; by government, medicine, education and media, with virtually no accountability. I think it’s safe to say “trust the science” will be spoken with air quotes for the foreseeable future.
Good Morning Pastor Bob. I am a Dietary Technologist that worked at The Cross Cancer Institute for 22+ years. I believe in Science. My education revolved around science….especially Biology & Food Science and how the 2 go hand in hand. Teaching & educating my patients..what would help them, when they are going through the different stages of their treatment. When they are nauseated & not feeling well…the foods to avoid and the foods that will get them through their treatments. It’s so important to help guide them through their journey. I loved my job…helping others…with my education and experience working in the Oncology field. It takes many people…to guide patients through it. A team of folks…each proficient in their own areas. Doctors, nurses, radiation therapists, Unit Clerks, Dieticians & Dietary Technologists, etc. The team that all work together to help others. I was proud to be part of this team. All needing Science & the education that we all received. So, I certainly enjoyed this blog…as always. Critical thinking is always important too. It is necessary in making decisions in every area of one’s life. You can’t go through life with blinders on. Thank you for sharing your blog with us. I am going to check out Dr. Knurick’s videos. Have a great day! ❤️
Hi Jill. Thank you for joining the conversation. I hear what you’re saying.
Science and faith and other pillars of our worldviews have been weaponized to serve political ends and that results in people being as you say “cancelled, fined, demonized, fired and jailed”. For the average person understanding what is science and what is pseudoscience comes down to who they trust to differentiate between the two. (Just because someone says they are a scientist or a Christian does not make them trustworthy, but that’s a whole other rabbit hole.)
It seems as though the most vulnerable among us become the victims. Those victims or their loved ones are hurt and then they get angry. (The opioid crisis is a case in point.) Some politicians play on their anger and weaponize it to their advantage.
Would appreciate hearing what your take on Dr Knurick is. You could DM me.
Glad you enjoyed the blog, Julie and being introduced to Dr Knurick.
Thank you for this. Some time ago during a debate along the lines of “ a little knowledge is a dangerous thing”, a family member who is a psychologist brought up the Dunning-Kruger effect. He explained it as an error in thinking in which people believe they are smarter and more capable than they are.
I learned that David Dunning and Justin Kruger are two psychologists who came up with this concept through their analysis of students. They found that if a student didn’t know something, that student also did not have the ability to recognize that they didn’t know it.
Dunning and Kruger also said that the well educated had the tendency to underestimate their ability. Along the lines of increased education and knowledge gives people a better appreciation of what they don’t know.
That’s an interesting observation, Retha. I’ve heard of the phrase about of bit of knowledge but have not been introduced to the Dunning-Kruger effect. It pays to have people in our lives that are smarter than us and who we listen to.