Tag der Wissenschaft – World Science Day

Since twenty years, November 10 is World Science Day – perhaps more needed than ever in times of the climate crisis and the corona pandemic. Science offers powerful tools for describing the world, and they allow predictions about future developments. Scientific hypotheses evolve and mature by constantly being tested against reality in experiments trying to prove them wrong. This stepwise approach to the truth can be disorientating and yet, it is the cornerstone of the success of science. Step by step, a consensus is reached among scientists, and the broader the consensus, the safer are the predictions. Both the climate crisis and the pandemic are prime examples. In both cases, there is an extremely broad consensus now among the experts, e.g. that climate change is man-made, and that we need to take action now to limit global temperature increase in order to maintain conditions for human health and wealth, or that mRNA-based vaccines are safe (to almost everyone) and effective, and that we need to vaccinate (almost) everyone now to limit further damage to global health and economy. But increasingly, we see people who ignore the scientific consensus, avoiding reliable information even though it is so easily available through trustworthy media sources which critically report on scientific debates and consensus finding. Perhaps, believing in simple fake news from internet bubbles is providing a false sense of security found in an individual ‘truth’ unperturbed by the stepwise scientific approach to reality. Scientific truth finding may appear a bit zig-zag at times, but in the long run, it unfailingly approaches a reliable description of the world. This is what World Science Day is all about: Leave your bubble, open your eyes, listen critically, check the quality of your sources, and if you are a scientist, contribute to improving the consensus picture of our world.