Having headed up the Human Genome Project and led the race to find a Covid vaccine, Franics Collins is one of the most influential Christian scientists in the world. Dr Ruth Bancewicz reviews his new book, The Road to Wisdom
Whatever the outcome of the US election, this book will remain incredibly timely for any Christian trying to understand and respond to the truth wars.
Francis Collins is arguably one of the most powerful biologists in the world, serving three US presidents. As a geneticist, I knew about his work to identify the cause of Cystic Fibrosis and a number of other key genetic diseases before I was aware that he was a Christian. His achievements also included leading the Human Genome Project and, much later on, the race to find a vaccine and effective treatments for Covid-19.
Collins is very open about his faith, identifying as an evangelical. After writing his best-selling book, Language of God, which shared his journey to faith as a young adult, he established the organisation BioLogos to help people explore ideas about the harmony between science and Christianity. Collins is not just highly intelligent and successful, but also a down-to-earth person who takes people seriously. His upbringing by parents working in a government-sponsored community for impoverished miners during the Great Depression may have something to do with this.
The Road to Wisdom is Collins’s response to the growing mistrust of scientists among the US public, and the disturbing rise in polarisation in recent years.
The son of a drama teacher, Collins knows how to tell a story. The opening scene of the book sees him crying in the toilets when his first project as a medical researcher goes up in smoke. He continues in this vein, sharing how he didn’t publish a single paper in his first three years of running his own lab and how one member of his lab was caught falsifying data. He learned the hard way that failure is an essential part of the scientific process, and that trust is key.
The premise of this book is that wisdom is key in discerning truth, and also to communicating it outside of the scientific community. The scientific method works very well on the whole, with inbuilt checks and balances. But trust in science involves more than faith in the reliability of data. In a survey of the US public before and after the pandemic, confidence that scientists would act in the public interest went down from 86% to 69%. This 17% drop is trust was caused - at least in part - by mistakes in communicating and implementing the shifting policies that we all experienced over several years of the pandemic. Collins is very open about the errors he made during that time. He also gives some much-needed scientific details and behind the scenes perspective that paint a clearer picture of what was going on during that fraught time.
It is to be expected that someone who was a lynchpin in the scientific process can share some insightful behind the scenes analysis. Collins explores vested interests and ethical boundaries, demonstrating the way in which decisions can be made when shrill voices call for public policy one way or another. His treatment of truth and our own webs of belief is especially thought-provoking. But having embraced the idea that no one is completely unbiased, it’s odd he continued to use such loaded words and phrases as “objective facts”.
This book is a call for a better way forward - for a Church that meets people’s longing for something more and stalls the loneliness epidemic. Collins calls for trust in reliable sources, not unquestioning partisan support of any side. The thought-process he lays out is rational but also provides footholds for moving forwards. Stories of conversations with individuals on the other side of the scientific-political divide were especially heartening. Whatever your background in faith or science, if you are fed up with politics and polarisation, this book is for you.
The Road to Wisdom: On Truth Science, Faith and Trust by Francis Collins (Hodder & Stoughton) is out now
