The Legitimate face of Pseudoscience in Ghana

Every corner of this world has its fair share of intellectually dishonest people, who peddle pseudoscience for their own agenda. If you are lucky, you can also find a significant number of people with similar exposure and influence, who do their best to challenge the erroneous statements to mitigate the negative effects.

It is no surprise that I have noticed many such people in Ghana. You know, the know it all yet know nothing experts, the I have a phD in Biology from youtube university internet debaters, the I am a health professional/scientist but let me ignore every known fact in my field and say something absolutely wrong based on my personal beliefs or bias etc.

I think this happens because the cognitive dissonance that arises from having your beliefs challenged by facts is definitely something that makes people uncomfortable. And making the effort to be objective and up to date with knowledge in your field is not a process many want to go through even though it is necessary for progress in whatever field or profession you are in, and for the society as a whole.

Also, we have made it almost criminal to say, “I don’t know”. This start in school where saying “I don’t know” is unacceptable.

But really, sometimes you do not know something or unsure and that is ok. Just as it is perfectly okay to just be quiet and learn about it. But people feel compelled to comment and turn out very wrong …and loud.

Even in your field of specialty you cannot have every fact in your head to recall at will. However, one advantage of being educated in that field is to be able to know where to look for info on it and evaluate it.

Ok back to my main point, what alarms me about the situation of pseudoscience in Ghana is that it has a  “legitimate face”.  By that I mean a significant number of the people being intellectually dishonest actually have titles, positions and are found in places that give them credibility. Eg. In academia, government leadership positions, healthcare etc.

And in a country where exceeding reverence is given to degrees and titles, add that to the “mysticism” surrounding science and you have their flawed, obtuse, and erroneous statements easily accepted as scripture.

A perfect example of someone who really should know better but rather make terrible and wrong statements in the capacity of his profession is Ghana’s Chief Psychiatrist Dr. Akwasi Osei. His cringe worthy statements on topics like homosexuality, weed and mental health is indeed stunning.

This September, I took a taxi from Osu to Circle.  The radio was tuned to a program in twi with the presenter talking about HIV. (I did not catch the beginning or end so I am not sure if he was trying to sell something or just speaking on the issue. I suspect the former. It wasn’t a Q&A, he just went on talking, like preachers do but the topic is on HIV).

 This presenter started by talking about HIV and its symptoms. Ok, cool. The next point was how scientists found sex workers in East Africa that are naturally resistant to HIV infection.

It starts getting murky, in his next point he talks about how eating well and exercising help you fight HIV. This is where I start getting confused, if he is saying taking good care of yourself help survival, well that is known fact but why the bit about people who are naturally resistant?

 why mention that unless you are trying to imply the 2 are related (which is not true).

My suspicions were confirmed when he eventually made the implication that doing what he says (taking care of yourself) will make you like “them”(the HIV resistant sex workers).

At this point I was incensed and just kept saying to myself “Wth..this is wrong” many times.

My taxi driver was kind enough to point out that I should take it easy and listen carefully, he is a researcher he knows what he is saying. I tried explaining to him that yes there are people who are naturally resistant but it’s not about what they do and that the presenter's cherry picking of facts( to look legit) and attempt to conflate self-care with resistance to HIV infection is absolute travesty and dangerously misleading.

Now try explaining (in 2/4 twi) HIV virus recognition of cell surface proteins and how mutations or low gene expression is believed to be involved in resistance, to a taxi driver convinced the man on the radio is preaching the gospel. Yeah, I gave up and the taxi driver went back to asking me about how to get a visa to America anyway.

I don’t think these are obscure cases or anecdotes. There are so many instances pointing to the same issue. Of course the good ones exist, but they are in the minority unfortunately.

So whether it is a “researcher” on radio cherry picking facts but using them to draw wrong conclusions, or our dear Chief Psychiatrist, the issue of pseudoscience peddled by people who are supposed to know better is too common for comfort. Because these snake oil salesmen are numerous and are the ones at the helm of affairs, in charge of making and executing policies. And I find this alarming.