On June 10th, the New Yorker Staff Writer, surgeon, and medical researcher Atul Gawande delivered a commencement address to the graduating class at the California Institute of Technology on the importance of scientific thinking. Gawande discussed the rise in anti-science sentiment and how to combat the resistance to facts and evidence we've seen around issues like vaccines and climate change. The New Yorker ran Gawande's speech on their website.
At the speech's conclusion, Gawande spoke to the students about the need to constantly question our own assumptions:
The mistake, then, is to believe that the educational credentials you get today give you any special authority on truth. What you have gained is far more important: an understanding of what real truth-seeking looks like. It is the effort not of a single person but of a group of people—the bigger the better—pursuing ideas with curiosity, inquisitiveness, openness, and discipline. As scientists, in other words.
Read the rest at The New Yorker.
Source: Bill Gates
