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Science in Flux

Originally Published in the Frederick News-Post

Environment

by Marta Hummel Mossburg

OP-EDS

It turns out we don't know as much as we think we do. Tribune Newspapers recently reported that antioxidants may not promote health. This should be big news because food and nutrition products with the compounds thought to neutralize free radicals, associated with cancer and other illnesses, are big business.

Last year Americans spent $5 billion on them. It's almost impossible to avoid antioxidants as so many staples, including orange juice and cereal, are fortified with extra doses of them to help those averse to fruits and vegetables.

But as Julie Deardorff reported in "A radical rethinking of antioxidants," studies show mixed results at best for those who pumped up their intake of them.

This is just one of the many findings in recent years that upend conventional wisdom. Any parent of young children sees allegedly hard science change constantly in relation to their offspring. For example, a few years ago children younger than 1 were not supposed to be exposed to certain fruits, including strawberries, and peanut butter, which often cause allergies. Now infants are supposed to eat those things before their first birthday to build their immune system and prevent allergies from forming.

Car seats were until a few months ago considered safe in the front-facing position for children over 1 year. Now children are supposed to remain rear facing until at least age 2. Keeping up with the changes requires daily vigilance.

And overturning of once-set knowledge is not just happening in the seemingly less prestigious subdivisions of science. Physicists recently found neutrinos that travel faster than the speed of light -- an ability deemed impossible by Einstein's theory of special relativity.

And researchers in Switzerland at CERN just published a study showing that cosmic rays and the sun are most likely responsible for climate change on earth -- not man made global warming as is conventional wisdom. The people involved in the experiment are not Fox News presidential wannabes, but scientists at the top of their profession.

Most people take advances in knowledge in stride and adjust their way of thinking based on the latest evidence in concert with their own common sense and personal experience.

But climate science is different. For many it is a religion, not a testable theory of how the world functions. Man-made climate change believers should not be exempt from science in the same way that parents should not ignore the latest research about child health and safety. As Bryan Caplan writes in "Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids," we live in a much safer and healthier world than 50 years ago because of progress across a multitude of professions and products.

We did not achieve the amazing advances he chronicles because of willful ignorance but because of creativity, hard work and intellectual honesty. Gov. Martin O'Malley and legislators who would like to force Marylanders to adopt exorbitantly expensive green energy standards based on a green religion owe Marylanders the same commitment to science in that field as they hold in other areas.