Science change. Part 2

By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative director, etc. / LMMiami.com

• As I pointed out last week, not too long ago coffee was a stale, passé, commoditized product.
• To add a definitive nail to its coffin, some scientists in the late 80s found evidence indicating a potential correlation, if not causality, between coffee and certain forms of cancer.
• In the early 90s the thing was regarded as little more than liquid tobacco.
• A teeth-staining carcinogenic.
• Not unlike red wine, which was was headed in the same direction of discredit among consumers and public opinion.
• Wait!
• New science popped up in academia and the peer-reviewed press.
• Coffee and red wine might actually be good for you!
• Next thing you know, America is chugging caffè latte and cabernet by the gallons.
• Wait again!
• A California judge has recently passed a ruling identifying a coffee as a potential cancer risk.*
• And so on and so forth.
• Anyhoo.
• What other categories do you think are ripe for this type of bipolar scientific disruption?
• Mind you, the scale can tilt either way: in the age of social media and the 24-hour news cycle, heavenly canonization as well as excommunication and the depths of hell can befall anyone or anything overnight.
• Here’s a few, off the top of my head, to wit:
• – Urban sprawl: for decades in pre and post war America the migration of the middle classes from urban centers to the surburbs was regarded as an antidote to a varied list of concrete jungle ills, namely crime, substance abuse, respiratory diseases, sedentarism, overcrowding and even sexual promiscuity. Suburbia was the very embodiment of the American Dream. Today, the suburbs are considered little less than ghettos of displaced, alienated, self-segregated SUV drivers locked up in vulgar McMansions. Manicured lawns are a sign of water waste and inefficient energy consumption. Need I remind you what the correctness police thinks about gated communities?
• – Multilingualism: a few decades back, “experts” believed that speaking more than one language, especially in early childhood, was associated with learning disabilities. As we well know, a lot of Hispanics in America discouraged their children from the stigma of learning Spanish, let alone speaking it in public. Now, this theory is totally debunked and there might be evidence that multilingualism improves cognitive abilities while reducing the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease.

* https://www.cancercenter.com/community/blog/2019/01/busting-myths-can-coffee-cause-cure-or-prevent-cancer