Matt Kaplan

But there's a difference between arguing and saying, look, I disagree with you, I disagree with you, and deriding him so aggressively that he was thrown out of the scientific community.

Right.

Okay.

That's the behaving badly part.

That's the behaving badly part.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like, you know, there was a difference between Semmelweis making his remarks and being thrown in a lunatic asylum by his own peers.

You know, I think, and same thing with Kati Kariko, it would have been okay for scientists to continue to say, look, I don't think you're onto anything.

I think you're wrong.

But threatening her with deportation, I think is, we can all come together and say that's probably a step too far.

Science still solves a lot of problems.

The thing we need to all be aware of is that science debates, it argues, it disproves, and that's normal.

That's the way it has been for a very, very long time.

It just was on show during COVID in a very public way, and I think a lot of people found that disquieting.

We need to talk more about how science works.

That's a responsibility that falls on scientists.

It's a responsibility that falls on people like me writing in the newspaper.

And it also falls down to everyone out there to say, hang on, I don't understand how that works.

Can you explain that to me?

And we need to start asking more questions and being more tolerant of the fact that sometimes science doesn't know.