Abstract
During December 2017, arose a polemic about some news
which showed as Trump administration has secretly banned
some words for their use in the Centers for Disease Control and
#Prevention official documents, the following ones: “diversity,”
“fetus,” “transgender,” “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “science-based”
and “evidence-based”. It is obvious that there are strong bonds
between cultural and political agenda and scientific progress,
as well as that no all researches must be automatically allowed
without control. Trump is an example (but not the first one, just
remind George W. Bush religious ideas that banned most of #stemcells research in the U.S.A., allowing the heading of this field to
Sought Korea scientists [1], as he has already put in danger the
future of several academic scientific fields [2-6]. If something has
been demonstrated is that language occupies a fundamental space
in Epidemiological debates: from causality to webs of causation,
and, finally, to determinants [7-11]. Due to the social and complex
nature of health determinants [12], it is very dangerous the political
control over scientific terminology. This Orwellian scientific
newspeak pushes epidemiological research to a #dangerousswamp in which only those ‘good’ concepts can be used, undermining the
informational richness which allows the existence of a grounded
#Epidemiology. The attack and unjustified control over scientific
terms is a great mistake not only for political and democratic
reasons (consider for example the recent electronic censorship
war-as Julian Assange referred to- in Spain against Catalans right to
decide peacefully about their future), but because is a direct attack
to the heart of a ground and reliable scientific Epidemiology.
Post Truth, Newspeak and #EpidemiologicalCausality by Jordi Vallverdú in BJSTR
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