Scientists perform a necropsy on the 50,000-year-old baby mammoth nicknamed “Yana” at the North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk on March 27, 2025. (Stringer – AFP / Getty Images)
By Samuel Short July 12, 2026 at 5:30am
“Science” is not a monolithic set of truths that the general public should only eagerly await to be bestowed upon them by elites who supposedly know better.
A more honest appraisal of science recognizes its limitations, its missteps, and its being subject to social and political narratives.
Take an example of science’s lack of perfection from the Smithsonian. In the 1950s, naturalist and archaeologist Otto Geist found woolly mammoth backbones while in Fairbanks, Alaska. The bones were housed at the University of Alaska Museum of the North for 70 years.
Radiocarbon dating helped scientists conclude these bones were only 1,900 to 2,700 years old, much younger than other woolly mammoth bones that were over 10,000 years old.
As it turns out, these usurpingly young bones did not belong to a wooly mammoth. They were whale bones.
Is that anecdote meant to chastise Geist or scientists working with the bones? Certainly not, but is a noteworthy story in proving that the scientific process, when run by humans, is fallible.
For roughly a century, as noted by Science Insights, smoking was not only considered healthy, but prescribed by medical doctors. Smoking “was actively reinforced by the medical establishment and the tobacco industry through physician endorsements, fabricated surveys, and aggressive advertising.”
The American public relied on the science, and the science said smoking was harmless, a night and day difference to the prevailing view now.
The lobotomy — the act of putting an ice pick through a patient’s eyelid to sever supposedly bad brain connections used in the 20th century — was once pushed as a cure to mental illness. It was a barbaric practice that ruined lives, including that of Rosemary Kennedy, the sister of former President John F. Kennedy, who became unintelligible after receiving the procedure.
Again, patients trusted the science.
More recently, the New York Post reported a staple food in the Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay — a diet claiming to reduce Alzheimer’s and dementia — actually increases cognitive decline.
The diet includes whole grains like oats and brown rice, which a study from the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry says is associated with a faster decline in the brain’s grey matter.
During COVID, we were repeatedly told to trust the science because, to refer back to that false notion, it is some ironclad set of unchanging truths that the plebeians of the world only need to have revealed to them.
The science said to take an experimental vaccine and several booster shots. The science said these measures were safe.
Never mind health complications or deaths thereafter, largely dismissed as “vaccine misinformation.”
A man who even called himself the science — the former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci — told Americans to stay six feet apart to stop the spread. He later admitted there was not a scientific backing to the rule per a report by USA Today from June 2024.
There is settled science, but it is buffoonery to act like every claim of science is settled.
It is not only foolish, but dangerous.
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Sam Short is an Assistant Professor of History with Motlow State Community College in Smyrna, Tennessee. He holds a BA in History from Middle Tennessee State University and an MA in History from University College London. The views expressed in his articles are his own and do not reflect the views or opinions of Motlow State Community College.
