Science is Fallible

"Cover up". "Lather up". "Make sure you put sunscreen on, with at least an SPF of 15". "Wear a hat". For years medical science has been warning us to stay out of the sun. "I know the sun feels good on your face and that a little tan may look beautiful, but the risk of skin cancer, especially melanoma, is too great". "The sun can kill you".

Ever heard this before? Of course you have. The science collective has been issuing this mantra for decades.

"But wait". "New data has come in; you need some sun after all". "In fact, not getting enough may kill you".

Hyperbole? Nope. Take a look at this story from Marilyn Marchione:

Scientists Say Sunshine May Prevent Cancer

The vitamin is D, nicknamed the "sunshine vitamin" because the skin makes it from ultraviolet rays. Sunscreen blocks its production, but dermatologists and health agencies have long preached that such lotions are needed to prevent skin cancer. Now some scientists are questioning that advice. The reason is that vitamin D increasingly seems important for preventing and even treating many types of cancer.

In the last three months alone, four separate studies found it helped protect against lymphoma and cancers of the prostate, lung and, ironically, the skin. The strongest evidence is for colon cancer. Many people aren't getting enough vitamin D. It's hard to do from food and fortified milk alone, and supplements are problematic.

So the thinking is this: Even if too much sun leads to skin cancer, which is rarely deadly, too little sun may be worse.
No one is suggesting that people fry on a beach. But many scientists believe that "safe sun" - 15 minutes or so a few times a week without sunscreen - is not only possible but helpful to health.

One is Dr. Edward Giovannucci, a Harvard University professor of medicine and nutrition who laid out his case in a keynote lecture at a recent American Association for Cancer Research meeting in Anaheim, Calif. His research suggests that vitamin D might help prevent 30 deaths for each one caused by skin cancer. "I would challenge anyone to find an area or nutrient or any factor that has such consistent anti-cancer benefits as vitamin D," Giovannucci told the cancer scientists. "The data are really quite remarkable."

The talk so impressed the American Cancer Society's chief epidemiologist, Dr. Michael Thun, that the society is reviewing its sun protection guidelines. "There is now intriguing evidence that vitamin D may have a role in the prevention as well as treatment of certain cancers," Thun said.

Even some dermatologists may be coming around. "I find the evidence to be mounting and increasingly compelling," said Dr. Allan Halpern, dermatology chief at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who advises several cancer groups.

Link to rest here


No, the new data is not a license for baking in the sun. As one who has had two basil cell carcinomas cut out of his skin, I do not recommend it. Regardless, the new and emerging consensus represents a sea change of conventional opinion that the sun is bad for you. More to the point, it is yet another example in a long succession of how science, the god of postmodern culture, can - and often does, get it wrong. For readers with little tolerance to challenges on the theory of evolution this lesson ought to be considered. Remember Piltdown Man? For years he was widely considered among paleontologists as absolute proof of man's ascent from the apes, until that is the fossil was found to be a complete hoax. Like "Lucy", Piltdown had a sudden meltdown.

Science in the service of humanity is of inestimable value. There is no debate about that. But science is not infallible; Truth is. Think!