On Scientific Stupidity

Peter McCullough recalls that in 1943, the Lutheran pastor and member of the German resistance Dietrich Bonhoeffer was arrested and incarcerated in Tegel Prison: 

• There he meditated on the question of why the German people—in spite of their vast education, culture, and intellectual achievements—had fallen so far from reason and morality. He concluded that they, as a people, had been afflicted with collective Stupidity (German: Dummheit). 
• The events in Germany between 1933 and 1943 had shown him that perfectly intelligent people were, under the pressure of political power and propaganda, rendered stupid—that is, incapable of critical reasoning. 

This is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer concluded from his analysis in his Letters and Papers from Prison: 

• Folly is a more dangerous enemy to the good than evil. One can protest against evil; it can be unmasked and, if need be, prevented by force. Evil always carries the seeds of its own destruction, as it makes people, at the least, uncomfortable. Against folly we have no defence. 
• Neither protests nor force can touch it; reasoning is no use; facts that contradict personal prejudices can simply be disbelieved - indeed, the fool can counter by criticizing them, and if they are undeniable, they can just be pushed aside as trivial exceptions. 
• So the fool, as distinct from the scoundrel, is completely self-satisfied; in fact, he can easily become dangerous, as it does not take much to make him aggressive. 
• A fool must therefore be treated more cautiously than a scoundrel; we shall never again try to convince a fool by reason, for it is both useless and dangerous.
• But there is some consolation in these thoughts on folly: they in no way justify us in thinking that most people are fools in all circumstances. What will really matter is whether those in power expect more from people’s folly than from their wisdom and independence of mind.
• There are people who are mentally agile but: foolish, and people who are mentally slow but very far from foolish - a discovery that we make to our surprise as a result of particular situations. 
• We thus get the impression that folly is likely to be, not a congenital defect, but one that is acquired in certain circumstances where people make fools of themselves or allow others to make fools of them. 
• We notice further that this defect is less common in the unsociable and solitary than in individuals or groups that are inclined or condemned to sociability. It seems, then, that folly is a sociological rather than a psychological problem, and that it is a special form of the operation of historical circumstances: on people, a psychological by-product of definite external factors. 
• If we look more closely, we see that any violent display of power, whether political or religious, produces an outburst of folly in a large part of mankind...

We know very well that there are many expressions of foolishness in the history of both politics and science and it is natural to ask if we are less stupid today than 100 years ago when preparing for WWII. Since we now seem to be actively preparing for WWIII the answer must be no, at least as concerns politics. But what then about science? It seems that science and stupidity do not blend well, but is it really true that the stupidity in science is less today than 100 or 200 years ago? 

With the amazing advances in many areas of technology (and warfare), it would seem that stupidity is no longer a problem in science, only in politics, but is it true? Let us listen to what some famous leading modern physicists say, stupid or not:

• Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it. (Niels Bohr)
• Niels Bohr brainwashed a whole generation of theorists into thinking that the job (interpreting quantum theory) was done 50 years ago. (Murray GellMann)
• Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense. (Roger Penrose)
• If quantum mechanics is correct, it signifies the end of physics as a science. (Alfred Einstein)
• I do not like quantum mechanics, and I am sorry I ever had anything to do with it. (Erwin Schrödinger)
• If you are not completely confused by quantum mechanics, you do not understand it. (John Wheeler)
• There was a time when the newspapers said that only twelve men understood the theory of relativity. I do not believe there ever was such a time. (Richard Feynman)
• I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics. (Richard Feynman)
• Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity, I do not understand it myself anymore. (Einstein)
• No matter how hard you try to teach your cat general relativity, you're going to fail. (Brian Greene)

So we learn from highest scientific authority that modern physics based on the theories of quantum mechanics and relativity are not understood. Does it mean that physicists are stupid, or only that the theory is stupid?