I'm an astrophysicist at a major university. Science is my life.

But when I hear somebody somberly in tone, science says, or follow the science, I get very nervous.

Science doesn't belong to any ideology. Science is the never-ending search for new knowledge.

That's what science means in Latin, by the way. Knowledge. Not wisdom. Not morality. Not social policy. Knowledge.

But we do with that knowledge is where wisdom, morality, and social policy enter the picture.

Knowledge, it turns out, isn't so easy to come by. And sometimes what we think we know for certain,

the earth sure does look flat when we're standing on it, turns out not to be so certain.

Of course, I trust in basic scientific truths, those things for which there is overwhelming evidence,

like, say, gravity, even that humans play a role in the warming of the planet.

But scientists, even the best ones can get things wrong. The brilliant astrophysicist Sir Fred

Hoyle believed the universe existed in a steady state forever and had no beginning.

But his view, once held sacrosanct by all astrophysicists, no longer holds.

It's been superseded by the big bank theory that the universe had a beginning and is still expanding.

In the 20th century, some of the most respective scientists in the world, including Nobel Prize winners,

believed in eugenics, the reprehensible idea that the human race could be improved by selective breeding.

The National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association, and the Rockefeller Foundation

supported it. By the middle of the century, it had been thoroughly rejected as quackery.

No reputable scientists would have anything to do with this idea.

So, we all need to get over this notion that just because someone, be it a politician, a bureaucrat,

or even a scientist employs the phrase, science says, means whatever they're saying is right.

It might be right, but it might also be wrong. And if it's wrong, it won't necessarily be a bunch

of scientists who say it's wrong, it might be one guy. Ask Einstein. 100 scientists wrote a book

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