People watched an American police shooting of an African American man on video. Many versions of what happened in that video now abound. Some think the victim shot himself and killed himself. Others think the cop shot and killed the civilian. Some think the victim deserved to be shot and killed. Others insist that the cop was wrong and deliberately shot and killed the civilian. Besides all other facetious, ridiculous or even asinine claims of what happened in that video recording, all across the entire nation of the United States, many and everyone still disagreed on the facts.
The frequency and regularity of such incidents in the United States, between the police and the African American victims, even with video footage present, continues to be a fascinating experiment on the idea of seeking the truth. Everyone is allowed to hold dear their version of the truth.
Yet, it is not so with the evidence in a petri dish in a science lab. A petri dish is like a video, only it seems to carry more truth than a video footage of a police shooting. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the “Covid vaccine” was dispatched with supreme alacrity throughout space and time to all the corners of the United States and even the world. You will not find food distributed that fast. Even in Gaza, the occupying Israelis permitted the “vaccine,” but not food to reach the Palestinians. The American public, and indeed the rest of the world outside America, barring a handful of nations, without ever seeing the data or understanding the methods, simply trusted the “vaccines:” This is safe. This is effective. This is the truth.
The petri dish, in this context, becomes a powerful symbol—not just of science, but of authority. A single interpretation from a lab, often endorsed by government agencies or pharmaceutical companies, can become the official version of reality. In contrast, the video of a police shooting—something we all can see—remains endlessly debated and open to interpretation.
The public trusts scientists in the same way that some of the public trust their Catholic Priests. A man in a white lab coat from one of the many well-funded Big Pharma laboratories, who is employed there to make profits for Big Pharma, makes a claim that he saw this, that and the other in a petri dish, and his view can quickly become the acceptable truth in public, in the world, although no one else can verify or validate his view and summary interpretation of the petri dish evidence.
In the rare instance that another white lab-coat wearing scientist presents a counter-interpretation of the same petri dish “footage—” challenging the dominant view—he might face professional ruin, or worse. Why is dissent permitted in one domain, but punished in another?
You have probably come across this weird phenomenon about truth at least once: two different truths—one more acceptable than the other; one more taught in school than the other; one more funded by the government than the other; one punishable, the other laudable. Sometimes even three or four different truths. Sometimes everyone is allowed to have their version of the truth. Other times no one is allowed to have another version of the truth.
What is the truth? Perhaps it doesn’t exist in the way we think. Perhaps “truth” is just a placeholder—a comforting word we use to describe interpretations that gain enough power, consensus, or authority. Science is not the truth. Religion is not the truth. Politics is not the truth. None of these domains offer certainty, only perspectives shaped by culture, bias, access, and belief.
If people are allowed to draw different conclusions from video evidence, why shouldn’t scientists be allowed to reach different conclusions from their observations? That’s what science is supposed to be: a continual process of inquiry, challenge, and revision—not dogma. But, will the government and their private business partners, like Big Pharma, allow other versions of the truth? Be forewarned and beware.
