If it feels like the world is rejecting science and truth, here are five ways to fight back | Helen Pearson

‘You can also check if scientific claims stand up to scrutiny.’ Photograph: Matt Turner/AAPView image in fullscreen‘You can also check if scientific claims stand up to scrutiny.’ Photograph: Matt Turner/AAPOpinionMedical researchIf it feels like the world is rejecting science and truth, here are five ways to fight backHelen PearsonAll of us can choose to consider facts, not vibes, in our next decision. One simple hack is go and look up some easily accessible peer-reviewed studiesHelen Pearson is an editor for Nature and author of Beyond Belief: How Evidence Shows What Really WorksTue 28 Apr 2026 06.20 EDTLast modified on Tue 28 Apr 2026 06.31 EDTShareIn 1992, a group of rebel doctors published a radical idea in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association. They argued that the practice of medicine needed to be transformed so that doctors didn’t rely on intuition and conventional wisdom, but on evidence from science – such as clinical trials showing whether a drug really worked. This was called “evidence-based medicine”, and the backlash against it was fierce. Some doctors complained that it was a “dangerous innovation” that restricted their traditional freedom to practise and prescribe as they saw fit. Happily, the mavericks ignored them, their approach proved itself to be better for patients, and quickly became the norm.Today, it feels like the world is rejecting science again. Donald Trump calls climate change a “con job”. The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, is undermining vaccines and slashing science agencies by 25,000 staff. Alternative facts and misinformation are rife. In the UK, only 40% of people think that information they hear about science is “generally true”.But there’s a bigger picture – and a more hopeful counter-narrative: the quiet, decades-long movement by which evidence from research is becoming integrated into our lives. I’ve spent the past five years speaking with more than 200 experts in evidence from around the world while researching my book, Beyond Belief. The experience showed me a fresh way to make decisions – and five ways to fight back against the forces of unreason.The first step is to get some historical perspective. The idea that medicine should fundamentally be based on research is a surprisingly recent one; right up to the 1980s, many doctors weren’t taught to study clinical trials. Generally, everyone followed the advice of the most senior doctor in the room – they practised “eminence-based medicine”. Also popular was Gobsat: good old boys sat around a table, pontificating about what they thought best.Doing your own research isn’t a bad thing, I tell my patients. But just how will they spot the fraudulent papers? | Ranjana SrivastavaRead moreThe term “evidence-based medicine” was formally introduced in 1991. Now, despite the initial pushback, doctors and patients draw on knowledge from rigorous research when working out what to do. By 2014, this change had been called “one of modern medicine’s greatest intellectual achievements” and ranked alongside the discovery of sanitation and anaesthesia.Knowing this puts the current situation in context. It’s not that people are suddenly rejecting evidence – it’s that people only recently started using scientific evidence to routinely guide decisions in health and policy, and this is one of many setbacks along the way.And if you look around, you’ll see there are so many ways evidence increasingly informs our world. Take education. Over…

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