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We Hold These Truths

This Big Think article is from December. You know, that special time of year when they gotta retrospect all the things.

10 scientific truths that somehow became unpopular in 2025  
Scientific truths remain true regardless of belief. These 10, despite contrary claims, remain vitally important as 2025 draws to a close.

Yes, I'm going to quibble about the headline before even getting into the article: "Scientific truths remain true regardless of belief" right up until new science tweaks the old truths.

Some take issue with this, but personally, I embrace it. Neil deGrasse Tyson once said, “The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.” As regular readers know, I'm a big fan of science. Science is cool. Science (combined with mathematics) is the absolute best method we have for understanding the universe (and perhaps beyond). No other philosophical system even comes close, not even actual philosophy.

But that quote? a) science gets overwritten by more science all the time; and b) religious people can, and often do, make the same claim about religion. And that's not even getting into the accusations leveled against Tyson; it's possible to be right (or wrong) about some things and also be a sex pest.

However. Science is overturned by more science, not by people who've seen a few YouTube videos or listened to the disinformation specialists on social media. Certainly not by people who claim divine inspiration. And when it comes to scientific "truths," some are more certain than others. For example, there's a really extraordinarily high level of certainty when it comes to things like how atoms combine to make molecules, but significantly less for things like nutrition science.

So, with that lengthy disclaimer out of the way, here's (some of) the article.

No matter what it is that humans do — what we think, feel, accomplish, believe, or vote for — our shared scientific reality is the one thing that unites us all.

Well. Except for that subset of "us all" who insist that there's no such thing as objective reality.

Moreover, some of the quantum rules that govern reality are fundamentally indeterminate, limiting our ability to predict a system’s future behavior from even an arbitrarily well-known starting point.

I'm pretty sure that chaos theory (which is what he's describing there) doesn't rest on quantum mechanics alone. And I'd make a distinction between "indeterminate" and "unpredictable." But again, those are probably quibbles.

Still, scientific truths remain true, even if there are very few who accept them. Gravity worked for billions of years before humans figured out the rules that govern massive objects. Life formed, thrived, and evolved for billions of years before humans discovered evolution, genetics, and DNA.

There is a probably-untestable hypothesis that the universe sprang into being, fully formed, just a few seconds ago, along with all of our memories and literature and science. This seems far-fetched, of course, but by the rules of quantum mechanics, it's not impossible; and given infinite spacetime, anything that's not impossible happens.

There is another, older, probably-untestable hypothesis that you are the only consciousness, and everything else is a product of your imagination.

These things are fun to think about and maybe write science fiction about. I don't actually believe them. But I suspect some people do. If, at any rate, those people actually exist and aren't products of my admittedly twisted imagination.

However, many scientific truths have fallen out of public favor in recent times. Now, in 2025, some of the misinformation that’s replaced those truths has been elevated to prominence, and many cannot tell fact from fiction any longer. Whether you believe them or not, here are 10 scientific truths that remain true, even though you might not realize it here in the final month of 2025.

None of my commentary here is meant to override the matters covered in this article. It is only to say that I understand, on some level, how one could deny these things.

As always, I'm only covering a portion of this. There's quite a bit more at the link, including pretty pictures and graphs of questionable utility.

2.) Interstellar interlopers are real, and while we found a new one (only the third ever) in 2025, they are still not aliens.

When I was a kid first getting hooked on astronomy, as I recall, at one point I was learning about comets and their orbits. I have a memory of being taught that some comets could have a hyperbolic trajectory, not an elliptical one, because they came from outside the solar system and would return to outside the solar system. Apparently, that was hypothetical back then. If I can even trust my memory at all. It might be something like extrasolar planets: We knew they had to be there, but there was never any direct or even indirect evidence.

As for "they are still not aliens," 1) technically, they are aliens, by some definition, as they are alien to our solar system; 2) dismissing the idea out of hand that they're the product of tech-using space aliens is contrary to science and inquiry; 3) continuing to believe that they're the product of tech-using space aliens when there's overwhelming evidence that they're not is also contrary to science and inquiry.

In short, it's awesome that we can track objects visiting us from extrasolar space, but screaming about space aliens doesn't help anyone's credibility.

Regardless of what you believe (or what anyone believes), this object is a natural comet-like interloper originating from beyond our Solar System, and has absolutely nothing to teach us about alien life beyond Earth.

First part: high probability of truth. Second part: I wouldn't jump to that conclusion. Such objects might very well provide insights into the early stages of life's development. Not sentient life, mind you.

4.) Earth’s orbit has a finite “carrying capacity,” and if we exceed that, such as with megaconstellations of satellites, it will inevitably lead to Kessler syndrome.

Remember, this is a "truth" that is dismissed or ignored. You'd have to go to the article, or elsewhere on the internet, for a fuller explanation (spoiler: Kessler syndrome has nothing to do with a starship making the Kessel run in 12 parsecs). But, to me, this is an absolutely prime example of the tragedy of the commons: there's no overriding authority to regulate the number of satellites in orbit, so people keep lofting them up there. Readers of science fiction have known about this problem since, I don't know, at least as long as I've been alive.

It hasn't even been 100 years since we first figured out how to put satellites in orbit, and already we're fucking it up.

5.) The germ theory of disease is real, and vaccination is the safest, most effective strategy to combat these deadly pathogens.

Denial of this royally pisses me off, and sometimes I wish there were a Hell so frauds like Andrew Wakefield, who falsely claimed a link between vaccines and autism, could burn in it forever.

Besides, believing that falsehood is basically saying "I'd rather have a dead child than an autistic one," which I can only imagine pisses off actual autistic people.

7.) The Universe’s expansion is still accelerating, the Hubble tension remains an important puzzle, and the much-publicized evidence we have is insufficient to conclude that dark energy is evolving.

Look, unlike the vaccine thing, this one's pretty damn esoteric. We have to live here on Earth with the consequences of vaccine denial (and of climate change, which the article covers but I didn't quote). But this? I say let the cosmologists sort it out. I want to know the answers, too, but it tells me absolutely nothing about whether I should get a measles booster or try to recycle more stuff.

To be clear, this doesn't mean I'm dismissing anything. Just that it doesn't impact anything apart from my own innate curiosity—at least, as far as I know.

9.) We’ve found evidence for organics on Mars (again), but still have no good evidence for life on any planet other than Earth.

It’s important to remember, especially when specious claims about the existence of aliens are at an all-time high, that we still have no robust evidence for the existence of life on any planet or world other than Earth. Sure, other worlds could be inhabited.

As with the exoplanet thing, or the extrasolar comet thing, it would be absolutely shocking if life (by which I mean simple life) doesn't exist outside our tiny planet. But until they find actual evidence, I for one am not interested in leaping to conclusions. I mean, as a fiction writer, it's fun to play with the idea, and I like Star Trek as much as the next person (and probably more), but my answer to everything unknown isn't to shrug and say "must be space aliens."

Unless I'm making a joke. Which, if there's anything I enjoy more than science, it would be that.

These 10 truths, although they should be completely non-controversial in a world that values factual reality, are often disputed here in 2025. Despite their unpopularity, they’re just as true as they’ve ever been, and will likely remain true for a long time to come. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise until they’ve obtained the extraordinary evidence needed to convince even a skeptic; if the evidence cannot yet decide the matter, then the matter hasn’t been decided.

All that said, I would absolutely change my mind about space aliens if a flying saucer landed in my street. Actually, my personal level of proof is way lower than that; I don't need to experience something directly to believe in it. But there needs to be a higher level of support than any "alien hypothesis" has now, even when it comes to UFO/UAP sightings.

So, in brief, while I think the article's on the right track, I do feel like it's a bit simplistic and/or misleading in a couple of places. That's okay, though. It gives me something to write about. Its true sin, though, in my view anyway, is not staying on track with the "this is a truth that some people choose to deny" thing, and the subject headers are all over the place with that. I think I figured it out through context clues, though.