Science has come a long way since ancient times. Back then, people believed that bad smells caused disease and good smells kept people healthy. So doctors wore masks with good smells when treating patients with bad smells indicative of disease. I find this ironic because it was a good practice for the wrong reason. It shows that when a belief is widely held, especially if it is held by credible people, it prevails as the truth. In the 1700’s in England a woman named Lady Montagu promoted vaccinations as a means to cure smallpox and was consequently met with resistance from local physicians. After the death of her brother, she had her son “variolated” in Turkey, where they introduced a virus from the pus of someone with smallpox into his system. Although small pox was a widespread problem with no known cure, physicians were unable to consider the idea of vaccination. It may have been because Lady Montagu was a woman, and women generally had no voice in science at the time. She was also not a scientist and did not have anyone in her network that could corroborate her theory. Nowadays, we might believe that we rely on solid evidence to support our beliefs, but I think we will always have a desire to support the ideas of people around us. We will always have subconscious biases we can’t control. As long as we are aware of that, we can challenge false information and come up with new ideas, even if they sound crazy at first. Hundreds of years from now, we might look back on us now and realize that some of the scientific ideas we had were not entirely true. But that is partly what makes science an exciting field, that there is always something new for us to find.
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