Gaslighting Science

Gaslighting has now become a popular term again based on telling people not to believe what their lying eyes are telling them. Based on the 1944 movie starring Charles Boyer as Gregory and Ingrid Bergman as Paula (you must say Pola with a French accent), Boyer steals her jewelry and causes the gas light to dim when he privately enters the attic. When she tells him about her missing jewelry and the gas, he says that she must be mentally ill. 

This is similar to the Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels who said, “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.” It’s been happening in politics often enough but where it really becomes offensive, and dangerous, is when it happens with science. The clubby cacophony of media and influencers repetitiously sounding science alarms fills the airwaves with this mendacity.

Read the full piece on my Substack here.