A Mouthful of Bad Ideas

When I’m not singing about science in the summer, I’m teaching science at Mississippi State University. Just a few weeks ago I was wrapping up a conceptual chemistry unit with my Physical Science Survey II students by talking about water treatment and water purification. Since I like to pepper in personal stories in my teaching, I shared a selfie of my mouth and told my students that I have a mouthful of bad ideas.

Not a pretty sight, right? The reader deserves some backstory. I grew up in very rural Pennsylvania in the 1970s. Living out in the country, we did not have a municipal water supply — that is, we weren’t on “city water.” Rather we had a well that was drilled 250 feet deep into Limestone Ridge. The important nugget to glean here is that I wasn’t receiving fluoride in my drinking water.

I was not alone. Most of the kids who went to my school (Green Park Elementary – West Perry School District) were country kids like me. Fluoride, while available in some toothpastes at the time, was not an ingredient in all brands. So the school provided fluoride pills at the beginning of each school day. Of course, parents could opt out — and mine did. I don’t know the exact reason why they opted out, but perhaps they held a belief that fluoride posed a greater threat than a benefit to my health. Or perhaps they saw this is as some form of governmental overreach. Or perhaps they hadn’t really thought about it much at all. As I am fond of telling my students — beliefs inform actions, and actions often impact others . . . the others in this case being me and my brother.

This is why I also tell students that it is really important to have a reliable way to determine whether the things you believe to be true are actually true. Critical thinking skills must be learned and honed — this series of critical thinking skills videos, inspired by lessons learned during my own teaching career, might be a useful resource.

Thankfully, in the ensuing decades, fluoridation of municipal water supplies has become a widespread and accepted practice. Fluoride in toothpaste, mouthwash, and chewing gum is easily and commonly found on store shelves these days. Just like lead in gasoline had been phased out (another thing that I vividly remember from my childhood) in the interest of public health, a fluoridated water supply has been one of the most successful health interventions in recent history.

Imagine my surprise when, days before the presidential election, water fluoridation was back in the news thanks to the potential elevation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from “conspiracy opinionist” to Secretary of Health and Human Services in the new administration.

If you take the time to watch my critical thinking skills videos, I talk a lot about the importance of falsification (disconfirmation, if you like). I could be mistaken, but my hunch is that there is nothing that RFK Jr could learn or find out that could affect his confidence in his belief that fluoride in drinking water has the negative health impacts that he lists in his tweet. This, then, would be a belief that is not falsifiable — he is at risk of believing something that might not be true. Beliefs inform actions, and actions often impact others — and RFK Jr holding a cabinet-level position can impact a lot of “others” through public policy.

As I mentioned above, I don’t really know why my parents “objected” to fluoride pills distributed by the school. I don’t think they had done a whole lot of research on the issue one way or the other. When fluoride toothpaste became more common in the marketplace, it became part of the daily routine at my house. Better ideas replaced bad ideas because the bad ideas weren’t held that closely. In the case of RFK Jr, holding unfalsifiable beliefs appears to be part of his brand. And if he can “do what he wants” when it comes to public health policy, citizens should be justifiably concerned. Hone your critical thinking skills with me — as far as I can tell, it’s the best thing to protect against “truth decay.”