Of peacock tears, cows and global warming

First of all, a potential fake news alert. A story concerning retiring judge Mahesh Chandra Sharma of the Rajasthan State High Court went viral this week. Some of the reported quotations attributed to said judge follow:

“The peacock is a lifelong celibate. It never has sex with the peahen. The peahen gets pregnant after swallowing the tears of the peacock.”

 “(Mother cow) is the only animal that inhales as well as exhales oxygen.”

 “Cow urine has the miraculous property of destroying any kind of germs. It provides strength to mind and heart. It stops ageing,” he said, adding that its horns “acquire cosmic energy“.

 “Houses plastered with cow dung are safe from radio waves.”

The reporting of these comments provoked a bit of an international media storm, well divorced from the initial context. The judge was hearing a case involving the care of cows in government shelters. Not a big issue you might think. But you would only think that if you were not an Indian Hindu, to whom cows, their status and treatment, matter a whole lot more than to your average Westerner. While as far as I can see the judge exists and said these things, a bit of care still has to be taken in interpreting the comments. After all, the original judgement was handed down in Hindi. That said, and taking them at face value, it’s a reminder that there are people and places that have been bypassed by a couple of centuries of scientific progress.

Ignorance is neither innocent nor harmless. It also has a close cousin – denialism. Particularly within healthcare and medicine, there are a number of denial movements which have either cost, are costing or will cost lives. HIV denialism took root in South Africa for a while, and with political support from former president Thabo Mbeki, delayed the introduction of antiretroviral treatment. According to a study by Chigwedere et al (2008)¹, that delay may have cost 300,000 lives. Currently, lives are being lost because of the activity of the anti-vaccines movement. Parents are being persuaded not to have their children vaccinated, whether against measles in the US and Europe, or polio in Africa and parts of the sub-continent, in the face of scientific evidence and consensus. This all takes on a further worrying complexion when the deniers team up with purveyors of snake oil and sugar water, and seek to provide “alternative” remedies, usually at a profit. Like alternative facts, alternative remedies rarely have any positive effects.

In the West what is interesting is that this decline in the public traction that scientific evidence seems to have, at least in some quarters, parallels the decline in the influence of Biblical Christianity, or more particularly the values that flow from it. Arguments have raged for a while about the influence of these values on the rise of science. For all that the conflict metaphor has come to dominate at least the popular conception of the relationship between science and Christianity, it was in “Christian” Europe that the modern scientific enterprise emerged, having faltered in the Muslim world after a good start. Among others Hooykaas² claimed that this was no accident. Perhaps we’re now in a position to begin observing what happens as nature becomes remythologised (seemingly a problem in Rajasthan) and a personal commitment to truth is devalued.

In addition, this week saw international ructions as result of President Trump announcing that the US would pull out of the Paris climate change agreement. This is further evidence of the success of a denial movement, partly motivated by commercial and industrial interests. Again there’s a weight of scientific evidence to be processed, not all of which is unequivocal. Few of us have either the expertise, the time or the inclination to examine the evidence for ourselves and therefore remain relatively ignorant of it. And there’s a small, but apparently influential group of dissidents, who reject both the scientific and the current political consensus. They cite alternative evidence, or provide alternative interpretations of the evidence. And of course, given our relative ignorance, we can fall prey to their efforts. Sometimes, we’re happy to cooperate in this if it supports our prejudices, or looks like it’s in our local, personal, narrow economic self-interest.

Of course, even if the science were 100% clear on one side of the argument (it’s probably more like 95%), in areas where political action is required, there are other considerations that have to come into play. History, economics, fairness and more besides go into making political decisions. That said, the evidence that humanity is warming the planet in a damaging way, while complicated, is fairly compelling.  If the consensus is wrong, then lots of money will be spent to achieve ends that while probably useful we could equally well live without. But if the consensus is right, but proper action is undermined by the deniers, then the consequences will be catastrophic in some places, grim in many others and expensive everywhere. But of course, because the consequences will unfold over a long period of time, the deniers will be long gone.

Maybe the truth of the matter is that ignorance is never bliss. But the only alternative is hard work educating the next generation and for that matter hard work informing ourselves.

1.       Chigwedere P et al (2008) Estimating the lost benefits of antiretroviral drug use in South Africa. J. Acquir Immune Defic Syndr 49(4):410-5. [Link]

2.       Hooykaas R (1972) Religion and the rise of modern science. Scottish Academic Press.