At the height of the pandemic, scientists often found their mission to understand and contain COVID-19 blocked by hurdle after hurdle.
They could isolate the virus, they could create a vaccine, they could draft health guidelines to keep millions of people safe.
But they couldn’t convince a significant chunk of the public to believe them.
Whether flouting mask and social distancing protocols or promoting debunked horse tranquilizer and ultraviolet light treatments, many people were in the grip of a different kind of virus: science denial. Rather than trusting health organizations around the world, they latched on to conspiracy theories and partisan politicking.
And for the most part, the science world was caught by surprised. Even then-National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins admitted they had underestimated “the problem of hesitancy.”
But George Washington University Professor of Chemistry Holden Thorp doesn’t buy it. As he tells the 15 first-year students in his Dean’s Seminars class Unreasonable Doubt, he believes they should have seen it coming.
“Anyone who has read the history and social science behind [science denial] should not have been surprised,” he said. “These patterns keep repeating—over and over again.”
From Galileo to the tobacco industry, from climate change to COVID, Thorp tells his class that history is rife with efforts to undermine science from all sides of the political spectrum. And as the editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals who has testified before Congress on COVID misinformation, he uses his own experience—along with the opinions of the journalists, researchers and thinkers he brings into his class—to give students a window into science denial strategies.
“His expertise allows us to dive deep into all the topics we cover. How often can you watch your professor testify at a congressional hearing? How often is your professor a chief editor of the world’s top research journal?” said Raven Belson, a first-year biology major.
Part science symposium, part public policy forum, Thorp’s class, like all Dean’s Seminars within the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, lets first-year students take an in-depth look into topics relevant to the issues of our time.
In his third year teaching Unreasonable Doubt, Thorp has welcomed as many political science students into his class as chemistry and biology majors. Throughout the semester, he guides them through the role of major public research institutions like NIH and the National Science Foundation and outlines the mechanics of scientific research—from how it’s funded and disseminated to the role it plays in public discourse. Along the way, he outlines the signs and signals—the “historical checklist,” as he puts it—many denial campaigns have in common, such as questioning researchers’ integrity and insisting well-established science is still unsettled.
“As someone who’s not used to combining my science focus with public policy and history, [the class] has been the perfect opportunity to push my academics in new directions,” Belson said.
Indeed, as the next generation of science scholars, Thorp aims to equip his students with the tools they’ll need to recognize and combat denial—because, he said, it may be getting worse.
“Given how divided people are, the impact of the pandemic and the overall decline in trust in institutions, it’s hard to see a time in my life where it’s been worse,” he said. “Maybe if we train future scientists in ways we didn’t in the past, we can make it better.”
Inside the Denial Playbook
In most cases, Thorp tells his class, science denial scenarios apply the same playbook—steps followed, for example, by the tobacco industry to curtail smoking regulations and chemical companies to block action on chlorofluorocarbons and ozone damage.
First, create ethical mistrust, Thorp explained. Target the character of scientists by accusing them of tailoring their findings to fit their funding agenda.
Next, flood the airwaves with so-called experts whose questionable scientific credentials are often in unrelated fields. This, Thorp said, sets up a bogus “both sides” debate that journalists follow to appear fair.
Then, cast doubt by elevating minor research footnotes to headline status. “Think about tobacco companies saying, ‘A lot of smokers never end up getting lung cancer,’” Thorp said, or pandemic pundits stressing that more people die from the flu than COVID.
Finally, throw up your hands and conclude that the science is unsettled—and more research is needed.
“Watching the same things happen in each scenario, from how the ozone hole was handled to climate change, is both scary and fascinating” said political science major Nicole Morris. “Since I now know the strategies of how people can attack science, I hope to bring that into whatever field I end up going into.”
A significant portion of the class covers the pandemic, tackling denial campaigns that have already affected students’ lives—sometimes tragically. First-year student Nikita Guarrera lost her grandfather to the virus in 2021, even as he himself was persuaded by denials. “Despite the refrigerated trucks full of dead bodies just three blocks away, he had doubts about the severity of COVID,” she recalled.
At the same, Thorp noted that scientists often sabotage their own goals. Each misstep—like overstating their own research findings—adds fuel to conspiracy doubters. And while their research may seem airtight in the laboratory, they often struggle to communicate it in public forums. “Scientists need to recognize, that as wonderful as we think [the research] is, we haven’t explained it in a way that brings everybody in.” he said. “The science sounds great if you live in a university town where you’re surrounded by other scientists. But huge numbers of people have a hard time seeing how it’s relevant to them.”
By the end of the class, Thorp hopes students will understand that the world of science—like the people who create it—is far from infallible.
“Science is a living, breathing process carried out by human beings,” he said. “You can make it as reductive and quantitative as you want. But you’re never going to take the humanity out of it.”