For coronavirus claims, there is a world between true and false
In high school, you must have learnt about Boolean algebra, possibly the most fascinating kind of algebra for its deceptive ease and simplicity. But thanks to its foundations in computer science, Boolean algebra – at least as we it learnt in school – is fixated with ‘true’ and ‘false’ states but not with the state of ‘don’t know’ that falls in between. This state may not have many applications as regards the functioning of logic gates but in the real world, it is quite important, especially when the truth threatens to be spun out of control.
Amitabh Bachchan recently published a video in which he delivered a monologue claiming that when a fly alights on human faeces containing traces of the new coronavirus, flies off and then alights on some food, the food could also be contaminated by the same virus. The Wire Science commissioned a fact-check from Dr Deepak Natarajan, a reputed (and thankfully opinionated) cardiologist in New Delhi. In his straightforward article, Dr Natarajan presents evidence from peer-reviewed papers to argue that while we know the new coronavirus does enter the faeces of an infected person, we don’t know anything about whether the virus remains viable, or capable of precipitating an infection. Second, we know nothing of the participation of flies either.
The thing to remember here is that, during a panic – or in a pre-panic situation that constantly threatens to devolve into a panic – society as such has an unusually higher uptake capacity for information that confirms their biases irrespective of whether it is true. This property, so to speak, amplifies the importance of ‘not knowing’.
Thanks to scientism, there is a common impression among many experts and most non-experts that science has, or could have, the answers to all questions that could ever be asked. So when a scientist says she does not know something, there is a pronounced tendency among some groups of people – particularly, if not entirely, those who may not be scientistic themselves but believe science itself is scientistic – to assume the lack of an answer means the absence of an answer. That is, to think “If the scientist does not have an answer, then the science does not have an answer”, rather than “If the scientist does not have an answer, then the science does not have an answer yet” or even “If the scientist does not have an answer yet, she could have an answer later“.
This response at a time of panic or pre-panic forces almost all information to be classified as either ‘true’ or ‘false’, precluding the agency science still retains to move towards a ‘true’ or ‘false’ conclusion and rendering their truth-value to be a foregone conclusion. That is, we need evidence to say if something is true – but we also need to understand that saying something is ‘not true’ without outright saying it is ‘false’ is an important state of the truth itself.
It also forces the claimant to be more accountable. Here is one oversimplified but nonetheless illustrative example: When only ‘true’ and ‘false’ exist, any new bit of information has a 50% chance of being in one bin or the other. But when ‘not true/false’ or ‘don’t know’ is in the picture, new information has only a 33% chance of assuming one of the truth values. Further, the only truth value based on which people should be allowed to claim something is true is ‘true’. ‘False’ has never been good enough but ‘don’t know’ is not good enough either, which means that before we subject a claim to a test, it has a 66% chance of being ‘not true’.
Amitabh Bachchan’s mistake was to conflate ‘don’t know’ and ‘true’ without considering the possibility of ‘not true’, and has thus ended up exposing his millions of followers on Twitter to claims that are decidedly not true. As Dr Natarajan said, silence has never been more golden.
