To the Editor:
Re “If Science Keeps Changing, Why Trust It?,” by Elay Shech (Opinion guest essay, Jan. 7):
Professor Shech offers a thoughtful argument for what he calls “disciplined trust” in science, a position that avoids both naïve faith and unfounded skepticism. To regain public confidence in science, we would add that earning such trust depends as much on how science is communicated as on how it is conducted.
Public mistrust of science accelerated during the Covid pandemic, when changing guidance was viewed by many as either deceptive or revealing feet of clay. In fact, those changes reflected science working as it should, responding to new evidence virtually in real time during an emergency.
To rebuild trust, scientists and public health leaders must communicate not only scientific facts, but also the process of science itself: testing, revising, questioning and learning. When science or public health guidance changes, explanations should begin not with “we were wrong,” but with “new evidence now shows.”
Revision is not a weakness of science; it is fundamental to its process, and clear communication of this is a mark of integrity. Disciplined trust grows when science openly and consistently shows how it arrives at its conclusions.
Robert A. Phillips Dirk Sostman Houston The writers are, respectively, a professor of medicine and a professor emeritus of radiology at Weill Cornell Medicine.
To the Editor:
It is inaccurate to say that science changes. Science is a process by which our understandings of various aspects of the universe are intermittently independently tested for evidence of fallibility.
Because our ability to test phenomena is constantly evolving as new ideas emerge and technology improves, a hypothesis that originally survived that process and was presumed true may later be revealed to be incorrect.
A new paradigm is never expected to achieve absolute truth. Ptolemy’s geocentric universe gave way Copernicus’s heliocentric one. And Newton’s theory of universal gravitation gave way to Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
Science’s willingness to subject every facet of a theory to ruthless scrutiny is precisely why it is a process that merits our trust, even though certainty is unattainable.
Stephen A. Silver San Francisco
To the Editor:
Elay Shech’s essay does not mention an important point: Our ability to measure is far better developed now than in the past. We now have scientific theories holding up through decades of observation.
What the skeptical public often overlooks is that while science may not always know what is true, it definitely knows what is not true. Yes, occasionally the maverick thinker with the novel theory turns out to be right. But no amount of new observations is going to return the Earth to being flat.
Deborah Moran Houston
Treating Opioid Addiction
To the Editor:
Re “The Opioid Crisis Never Ended,” by Barbara Kingsolver and Tamara Reynolds (Opinion guest essay, Jan. 4):
The heartbreaking stories of opioid addiction, powerfully captured by the photographs and writing in this essay, too often end with families shattered and children separated from their parents.
In New York and across the country, there is an urgent need to expand treatment models that work with the whole family — parents and children together — rather than isolating addiction as an individual failing.
At Odyssey House, we see every day that mothers are far more likely to seek and stay in treatment when they can keep their babies and young children with them in a safe, structured, residential treatment setting.
Providing on-site child care, early childhood education, medical and mental health care, and parenting and built-in peer support not only fortifies recovery but also breaks the intergenerational cycle of trauma and substance abuse.
If policymakers are serious about addressing the intractable opioid epidemic, they must invest in family-centered treatment programs that prioritize keeping infants and young children with their mothers whenever it is clinically safe to do so.
Treating addiction as a family illness — and recovery as a family project — should not be optional; it is the standard of care our communities deserve.
Peter Provet New York The writer is the president and the chief executive of Odyssey House.
When Judges Serve a President, Not the Public
To the Editor:
Re “Trump’s ‘Superstar’ Judges Backed Him 133-12 in ’25” (front page, Jan. 11):
As a retired New York State Supreme Court justice, I understood my role and that of my colleagues as fair adjudicators of disputes according to law and fact, not ideology or political loyalty.
Before reading the statistics reported in your article, I believed that the media practice of identifying the appointing president of a judge when discussing a ruling unnecessarily conveyed overtly political information, eroding public confidence in an independent judiciary and the rule of law.
The data in your article, however, reflects that appellate judges appointed by a single president voted overwhelmingly in that president’s favor. That pattern raises serious questions about judicial independence and the constitutional role of the courts. If the identity of the appointing president becomes a predictor of the way a judge will rule, the promise of equal justice under law is diminished and the public will lose confidence in the authority of the courts.
Courts must remain free, without intimidation, to identify and redress abuses of power and governmental injustice. Only an independent judiciary can maintain the balance of power among the branches of government and maintain the rule of law.
Barbara Jaffe New York The writer now volunteers for Lawyers Defending American Democracy.
When Cursive Was in Style
To the Editor:
Re “In New Jersey, Cursive Becomes Requirement for Third, Fourth and Fifth Graders” (news article, Jan. 22):
In second grade, I moved from Los Angeles to Chicago. My new teacher told me to write my name on the blackboard so the class could learn it. As my chalk scratched along the board, the class began murmuring behind me. I knew I’d done something wrong, but I didn’t know what.
As I finished and hurried back to my seat, the teacher pointed to my name and told the class: “This kind of writing is called cursive. You’ll learn it in third grade.”
It was 1947, and I’d been taught cursive from the beginning. I’ve never understood the sense of waiting to teach children a faster method of writing.
Susan Sussman Aventura, Fla.
To the Editor:
In public school I spent hours a day perfecting my script, which I took much pride in. Today I have to print the birthday cards I write to my grandchildren, because they don’t know how to read my cursive writing. Please, bring it back.
Monique Shehebar Brooklyn
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