Stranger Than Fiction: The Dangers of Pseudoscience in 21st Century America

By Anonymous / Summer 2020

Pseudoscience is the collection of beliefs in misrepresented and faulty science. To a large extent, pseudoscience is practiced due to the accessibility of internet power. The general belief of believing in important claims without substantial evidence is dangerous and threatens society. Pseudoscience can still be dangerous even if a person does not believe in it or practice it directly, as I have indirectly been impacted by the practice of pseudoscience when my grandfather was dying to cancer. Moreover, currently more than ever, we see how important this issue is during the pandemic. We have citizens in the pandemic who do not believe masks work, and others, who worry about their freedom becoming more limited. With such behaviors taking place, we start to see that in the face of public health crises, the government has a duty to add restrictions and regulations on its’ citizens to promote the common good. To understand why people have come to a consensus that pseudoscience is useful in our society, we must look deeply into the history of how elite groups have used their power to manipulate people to go against the common good. As time goes on, we then must view how this power has stayed through the means of neoliberalism, and ultimately, how a solution to this problem exists through solidarity and education.

To begin, we will investigate how the wealthy class developed a system that enabled them to keep their power, while keeping the masses misinformed. Right after the Civil War during what was known as the Gilded Age, the economy was booming, the Transcontinental railroad allowed people and goods to traverse around the United States at a fast rate, and innovations were made in factories make their products more efficiently. An important fact to remember during this time period, as noted by Howard Zinn in History as a weapon was that many of the business owners at the time came from upper-middle class families and the “rags to riches” stories people always heard were not common, and rather used as a form of control, to make the masses believe that they could gain an absurd amount of wealth (29). The elite class owned the businesses and all the wealth in the country, so voices of the masses were not heard often, and as a result, the political agendas at the time were contrived of how the elites can keep their power and wealth, rather than help out the middle and lower classes. When most of the population works from sun-up to sun-down, and has very little time to enjoy leisure activities or educate themselves further, how can we say this is a true democracy? Moreover, how do we know that the corporations are not buying the peoples’ votes, or threatening to fire them if they do not vote in favor of certain issues? Zinn noticed this when examining the population of inner cities, “Control in modern times requires more than force, more than law. It requires a population dangerously concentrated in cities and factories, whose lives are filled with cause for rebellion, be taught that all is right as it is” (35). Many citizens are working long hours, in dangerous environments filled with pollution, but are told by the media and wealthy folks that life is alright and that we should be grateful for what we have versus what we do not have.

As time goes on, due to social unrest, many regulations were enforced on companies requiring them to create a better quality of workplace for their employees. Moreover, during President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s (FDR) term, he proposed the Second Bill of Rights. FDR stated in this proposition that all Americans should have a certain social safety net and economic rights, so we cannot worry about homelessness or old age, or ever having to pay for healthcare expenses. Many businesses at the time were manufacturing military weapons and goods due to the war we were in; yet FDR was able to see beyond the surface of many of these business owners when he stated, “However, while the majority goes on about its great work without complaint, a noisy minority maintains an uproar of demands for special favors for special groups...They have come to look upon the war primarily as a chance to make profits for themselves at the expense of their neighbors – profits in money or in terms of political or social preferment” (65). The middle and low class attain more help from the government improving their quality of life, and the future for them at this time looked promising with progressives like FDR leading the way. But throughout this era, it becomes clear that the small minority of business owners and elitists still run the economy and can elect politicians that abide by their requests through means of corruption, continuing the cycle of white supremacy.

The continuation of white supremacy and elitists running the country directly correlates to low morale for many Americans. Many Americans work forty or more hours a week and are still scraping to survive every month. How can they be worried about educating themselves or issues in their community when there is a constant struggle of power and hopelessness for the future for them? So, we see as the low and middle class lose hope to see a better future for themselves, they stop voting and taking part of the coveted democratic process. Just to illustrate how many Americans are apathetic of this process, only 56 percent of the U.S. voting-age population voted for the 2016 election, cited from Pew Research Center. Take these facts along with our computing powers and instant access to information, it becomes easy to see how many people fall down the narrow rabbit hole of believing in misinformation. It’s an unfortunate cycle where some citizens do not have an education level that is able to distinguish fact from fiction. Carl Sagan, astronomer, found great importance in the people of a democracy being well educated and active in the community, “if the general public doesn’t understand science and technology, then who is making all of the decisions about science and technology that are going to determine what kind of future our children live in, some members of congress?” And as we see, the ones in charge are still the elitists – they are making the decisions, where their rationale lies upon the fact of creating profits over people and content with damaging our environment.

When we have the elitists make decision for us and spreading their propaganda through the media, it is often easy to believe misinformation if one is not diligent enough. Four years ago, my grandfather was dying from pancreatic cancer, and in hopes of curing him, my aunt and uncle, decided to buy a pseudoscience medicine called miracle mineral solution. The claim of this medicine was that it cured malaria, HIV, and cancer among many other diseases. Unfortunately, my aunt and uncle were not diligent in their pursuit, and they were unable to understand that the medicine contained industrial bleach. I can attest from my experience of viewing my grandfather’s cancer progression, that the industrial bleach only made things worse and caused him more pain. It is for this reason, that when I say pseudoscience can impact us all indirectly, I truly mean it, as it is always possible for us to have friends or family members that believe in such misinformation.

Subsequently, as time goes on, the dominant ideology of neoliberalism in America has allowed pseudoscience to be prominent more than ever before. In short, neoliberalism involves the idea of individual competition and a free market society, where a narrative arises that the private sector can fix everything, and government regulations are bad. For elitists and people with exceptional talent this system works well since they will be rewarded well, but for many others, shortcomings and failures are to be blamed on themselves. George Monbiot, author of Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems, illustrated the problem with neoliberalism and competition when he stated, “Never mind structural unemployment: if you don’t have a job it’s because you are unenterprising. Never mind the impossible costs of housing: if your credit card is maxed out, you’re feckless and improvident...In a world governed by competition, those who fall behind become defined and self-defined as losers” (7). It becomes clear in a society that defines its’ value on the ability to earn money and consume items, a set of beliefs like pseudoscience can arise to due ignorance and corporation corruption.

Currently, due to a combustible mix of pseudoscience and corruption, there is a movement going on in America during the pandemic for people who do not wear masks. They are anti-masks, and they ignore the health expert’s advice to wear masks when in public. A question one could ask themselves is that with the given scientific literature on this matter, why are people refusing to wear masks? One of the answers could be aligned in the notion that the government encroaching on our freedom is bad and we should resist doing so. We have seen throughout history, in our democracy, government ordinances have always faced public resistance and backlash. This was the case also 100 years ago during the 1918 Spanish Flu, when groups in San Francisco questioned the efficacy of the masks and did not appreciate their freedom being encroached upon. Moreover, even in other cities like Philadelphia, they ignored social distancing rules and decided to have a parade in their city.

As noted in the graph above, the death rate is viewed between a socially distant city (St. Louis) versus a non-socially distant city (Philadelphia) provided by Quartz. The numbers are astounding, and it clearly illustrates why we need the government and health experts to be in charge even if this means limiting some of our freedoms for a short time. It is important to realize that, we the people, have a duty to be informed in our democracy: these were not just cases, yet deaths, many deaths from ignorance.

Yet, another issue comes to play when corporations start to influence the general population through advertising and marketing, which gets them to favor their product and buy it, even if it is dangerous. Corporations understand that with neoliberalism they can pay lobbyists, think tanks, and experts to promote pseudoscientific advancements for the goal of making profit. In a system that does not have many regulations, or where corporations can have the regulations put aside in exchange for money or power, it breeds the perfect storm for corporations to advertise and market to the masses that their products are okay, or to question the science behind the experts claiming them as harmful. As viewed in the documentary, Merchants of Doubts, the tobacco companies were paying lobbyists to doubt the science behind the experts claiming tobacco is bad for health. Moreover, we also saw the same thing happening in other industries such as climate change and furniture businesses. All these industries have a common denominator in that they were able to manipulate the masses by doubting science. Due to the corruption of these corporations, it goes without saying, millions of lives have been impacted in a negative way. It has become more apparent as we live our lives through the 21st century, the corruption of corporations abusing their powers and ruining the environment must stop.

The first thing we must do to fix this corruption is to end neoliberalism and create a society that promotes solidarity. When a society works together as one, the concept of consumerism starts to shade away, and people start to gain value from human experiences and helping others. As a result, there will be less push for corporations and politicians alike to promote pseudoscience and I can only imagine we would see a drastic decrease in pseudoscience promotion in general. This change at first will be hard though, as depicted by congressman Bob Ingles in Merchants of Doubt, “Many conservatives, I think see action on climate change as really an attack on a way of live. The reason why we need to the science to be wrong is otherwise, we realize that we need to change.” A challenging issue for many will be the cognitive dissonance they have regarding how their lifestyle is not helping the earth and how they will react against a new system that might encroach some of their freedoms to promote the common good.

I believe such fixing such issues regarding public outburst to this new system will start in our education system. As a child, growing up in America’s education system, I was always told to not argue and go against the authority of the teacher. I think this is a bad method to educate our future generation of America. We need public education to have debates and arguments about ideas, where we push more towards the Socratic method. This will in turn, help students be prepared for new ideas about the world that sometimes might go against the old principles of our government system. As our education system becomes fixed, I am hopeful the next generation will not fall for the tricks of pseudoscience, and that future leaders of businesses will not hold the mentality of profits over people.

In the end, America will be what we the people allow it to be. It can be full of optimism and serve as a beacon of light for the 21st century and beyond, or it can be comprised of politicians and businessmen with a narrow-sighted goal of gaining the most net wealth as possible. We have seen throughout time that when the power and wealth is in the hands of few, the government gets bought out, allowing ideas of pseudoscience to arise and the damaging of our planet to happen. We know the deeply rooted ideology of this all is neoliberalism and the idea that we are individual consumers on a competitive journey to get the highest paying job possible, but it does not have to be this way, I would argue. We can change our view of society and bring a system in that unites us as one. Christopher Hitchens spoke beautifully on this matter of fixing our society and thinking for ourselves, “In the meantime, we have the same job we always had. To say as thinking people and as humans, there are no final solutions. There is no absolute truth. There is no supreme leader. There is no totalitarian solution that says if you will just give up your freedom of inquiry. If you will simply abandon your critical faculties, a world of idiotic bliss can be yours, but we have to begin by repudiating all such claims.” We do not live in a perfect world, and it will always be this way, but this does not mean we cannot make change for the betterment of our society.

Works Cited

Bailesie, director. Carl Sagan's Last Interview with Charlie Rose (Full Interview), Youtube, Apr. 2012.

Coren, Michael J. “This Chart of the 1918 Spanish Flu Shows Why Social Distancing Works.” Quartz, Quartz, 27 Apr. 2020.

DeSilver, Drew. “U.S. Voter Turnout Trails Most Developed Countries.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 21 May 2018.

Kenner, Robert, director. Merchants of Doubt, Participant, Aug. 2014.

Monbiot, George. “Neoliberalism – the Ideology at the Root of All Our Problems.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 15 Apr. 2016.

Rava, Bruno, director. The End ~ Christopher Hitchens, Youtube, 16 Feb. 2013.

Roosevelt, Franklin D. FDR’s “State of the Union 1944.” 1944, pp. 63-73.

Zinn, Howard. “Chapter 11: Robber Barons and Rebels.” History Is a Weapon A People's History of the United States, edited by Harper Collins, Harper & Row, 1980, pp. 28–63.