“Let Us Hope It is Not True, But If It is, Let Us Pray It Does Not Become Widely Known”

These are the supposed words of the wife of the Bishop of Winchester, spoken in 1860 on first hearing of Darwin’s theory that we are descended from apes.

In fact humans are not descended from apes; we merely share a common ancestor. Besides there is no evidence the lady in question ever said anything of the kind. (Anecdotes are no less subject to evolutionary forces than anything else, and the phrasing and attribution tends to get less accurate and more apposite with every retelling). 

However it seems that someone did once say something very similar: it was the pastor Robert Forman Horton; in an 1893 lecture written to be delivered at Yale he quotes an unnamed spinster as saying something fairly close.  

The Church swarms with people who have no spiritual sinew, and whose lungs cannot breathe the invigorating air of Truth: they take up the cry of that timid and decorous spinster who, on hearing an exposition of the Darwinian theory that men are descended from apes, said, “Let us hope it is not true, or if it is, let us hush it up.” 

Horton was a Christian, but he believed it was wrong to try to suppress information which conflicted with religious doctrine since dealing frankly with conflicting ideas was likely to strengthen theology, whereas censorship or hand-waving disavowal of conflicting ideas would tend to weaken it. 

I thought of this conundrum the other day. It now applies less and less to religions, and much more to the church of science. In particular the dilemma that faces a scientist when they fear their perfectly truthful findings may lead others people to unpleasant or erroneous conclusions, or to adopt behaviours and attitudes we would prefer to suppress. 

This is more acute today where almost anything (no matter how recondite the publication in which it originally appears) might end up causing foment in the darker reaches of social media, or else furnishing a poorly understood opinion piece in a newspaper, written for maximum impact by a sensationalist journalist with very little scientific nous. 

People who study genetics are faced almost daily with this conundrum. Robert Plomin is a liberal-minded man with left-of-centre political views, whose work on genetic inheritance nevertheless raises the hackles of many people, not because they necessarily distrust Plomin himself, but because they imagine his work will be co-opted by racists and extremists to further their own dastardly ends. 

The question also applies to any finding where the resulting behaviour consequent to a scientific finding may be perfectly safe, but where the second-order effects may not be so good. 

I wrote about this in the Spectator recently. 

Fairly early in the pandemic it was widely accepted in scientific circles that the likelihood of outdoor transmission of Covid at low-density events — say garden parties or beer gardens — was relatively low. 

It might therefore have seemed logical to allow such gatherings to take place sooner than we did. From a practical point of view, however, it could have been a terrible move. As is so often the case, a straightforward scientific finding does not always translate into practical legislation. As the saying goes: ‘In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is.’ In reality, policy-makers cannot simply follow the science: there is always something else at work. 

In reality, policy-makers cannot simply follow the science: there is always something else at work 

Here two confounding factors are human behaviour and weather. Had we allowed socialising in gardens, it is likely many such events would have continued into the early evening when it began to get cold. Or, this being Britain, it would have started raining.... What this means is that, at some point in any outdoor party, two party-goers would inevitably have moved, shivering, to the conservatory, and five more would have needed the loo. An hour later, following a general migration indoors, what started as an outdoor gathering would have morphed into an indoor superspreading event. Something like this seems to have happened at the White House. Any garden party is effectively a house party in the making. 

What this means is that, although garden parties under covid conditions may be safe in and of themselves, they are likely to lead to unsafe behaviours later on. Which is why it might have seemed incumbent on policy-makers and scientists not to admit the acceptability of something “the science” said was overwhelmingly safe. 

Just to show how complicated this is, consider these three known findings about smoking – which I only reveal because this is Substack: I would not share the third in a public space. 

1. If you smoke throughout your adult life you are 4400% more likely to fall victim to lung cancer than if you have never smoked. 
    

2. If you quit smoking at the age of 35, you are likely to enjoy the same life expectancy as if you were a life-long non-smoker. 
    

3. Smokers (in both directions, I think, but I need to check) have significantly more oral sex than non-smokers. 
    

Now number 3 here is a correlation not a causation. And it’s true to say that not everyone understands the distinction. Nevertheless many people, even quite eminent statisticians, may read this and think “What the hell – I'm happy settling for correlation here (evil Muttley-like snigger optional).  

I think we would not want this fact to be widely known (which is why I am confining the information to my pay-channel). 
 
Number 1 is also relatively simple here. It is a highly convincing argument against lifelong smoking. We would want everyone to know that. 

It’s number 2 that poses real problems. Because you probably don’t want people under the age of 35 to know that fact. But you almost certainly do want people aged 35 or over to know it.  

It was this fact that more or less convinced me to quit – or at least switch to vaping – in my mid-thirties. “Shit,” I remember thinking on my 35th birthday “From now on every cigarette counts”. When I worked on government anti-smoking campaigns I even suggested sending a letter to people on their 35th birthday to tell them that “You have got away with it so far, but you’ve reached the point of no return.” 

You see there are two reasons why you would want 35-year-olds appraised of the irrevocable risk of every cigarette after the watershed: for one thing it creates a heightened appreciation of risk; for another it prevents that problem which besets many quit attempts: “Well, I might as well keep going, because the damage has already been done. It’s too late now.” In fact it is never too late, and the sooner you quit, the better your prospects. 

On the other hand do we want everyone aged under 35 to think they have up to a couple of decades of risk-free cigarette consumption ahead of them? When you are 18, being 35 seems a world away. 

Not so easy, is it? 

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