Rationality in the Face of Controversies: Listening to the Voice of Scientists

“Be careful, the screens will cause the loss of your blond heads.” “Parents, you are too lax, be more authoritarian!”… The educational injunctions are more and more numerous, as are the articles, programs and books – often successful – by the new popes and popesses on the subject. Unfortunately, these self-proclaimed experts are proving to be quicker to ride these new moral panics. than transmitting scientific data, which is often much more nuanced.

How can we put a little rationality back into these controversies? The answer seems obvious. By giving a voice to the real experts: the scientists who work on these issues such as child psychiatrists, scientific psychologists and neuroscientists. Thanks to them, it becomes possible to disentangle risky opinions from measurable facts. Thus we learn that the time-out, promoted by the psychotherapist Caroline Goldman against the proponents of positive education, too permissive according to her, is an invention of… positive parenting. Or even if the effectiveness of this tool has been demonstrated by studies, the version it offers is probably harmful for children. Similarly, we discover, almost surprised, that concerns about screens have absolutely not been confirmed by scientific work on the subject.

Science finally gives us a simple but essential lesson: beware of spectacular speeches like easy conclusions, and prefer to take a step back and measure them. A subject of the utmost importance, which the astronomer and popularizer Carl Sagan understood well: “More than a body of knowledge, science is a way of thinking”, he underlined, while regretting that it was, already in the 1970s, so badly perceived and explained when our societies rely entirely on it. Science may not answer everything, but it enlightens us, and undoubtedly deserves more attention and respect.