The age of endarkenment

Why is no one questioning the rise of new-age nonsense in the name of science, asks David Colquhoun

Guardian Unlimited
Wednesday August 15 2007

"Education: Elitist activity. Cost ineffective. Unpopular with Grey Suits. Now largely replaced by Training." Michael O'Donnell, in A Sceptic's Medical Dictionary (BMJ publishing, 1997)

The enlightenment was a beautiful thing. People cast aside dogma and authority. They started to think for themselves. Natural science flourished. Understanding of the real world increased. The hegemony of religion slowly declined. Real universities were created and eventually democracy took hold. The modern world was born. Until recently we were making good progress. So what went wrong?

The past 30 years or so have been an age of endarkenment. It has been a period in which truth ceased to matter very much, and dogma and irrationality became once more respectable. This matters when people delude themselves into believing that we could be endangered at 45 minutes' notice by non-existent weapons of mass destruction.