Forget the Higgs Boson, the Landing on Comets, Missions to Mars, the Genome Project, Nanostructures and all that. This start of this new millennium looks like the dark ages to me if I have to gauge it from discussions I overhear in public places. 

True, the internet has brought more people to science and scientific literacy is at an all-time high. Yet, there are superstitions and common credences that fail to die out, and continue to hamper human progress. Religions, of course; but religions, in my opinion, are on a league of their own - they are so ingrained in the fabric of most cultures that we cannot expect to get rid of them through common sense and rational thinking. Rather, here I am focusing on homeopathy, natural remedies, miracle cancer cures, anti-vaccine movements, organic food fanaticism, and climate-change denial.

What accomunates the rather diverse set of credences above is the failure of acceptation of what science has to say. Science does not always provide a certain answer to precise questions, and this is interpreted by some to mean that one should not trust it. More in general, there are people with an agenda who push forth those credences, usually for financiary gains, less often for fanaticism or cargo-cult tendencies.

All the above is well known, and I have not said anything new above. However, today I feel a bit more cynical than I usually am, and I offer to you the following thought. I believe humankind will be saved by natural selection, as it has been in the past. The survival of the fittest, in other words. If people with a brain do not intend to use it and insist in curing themselves with homeopathic treatments, so let them do that - in the long run they will become extinct, and humankind will increase the proportion of people who do use their brain.

The same goes with miracle cures, and unfortunately with vaccines - it is parents who decide to not vaccinate their siblings, and if the latter have a smaller life expectancy the discendency will still be hindered.

Climate change denial, however, brings in a different kind of situation. Its supporters may cause a damage to everybody. But maybe there, too, there is some hidden natural selection mechanism at work which will eventually get us rid of them. Or am I really too optimist ? You know, optimists are also a endangered species, as they usually underestimate the danger...