“Challenging scientific myths is crucial to combating the phenomenon of magical thinking within Western science. This refers to the entrenched belief in unverified assumptions, particularly those propagated by modern European science, which historically colonized, racialized, and dehumanized most of humanity. An example of this is the misconception surrounding keloids, a type of scar that can develop after receiving the anti-tuberculosis shot.

In 2011, my general practitioner in the UK doubted my immunization status against TB because I lacked a keloid, assuming I should have at least a scar due to my African ancestry. Until today, no data supports this bold assertion. As a labeled global citizen, I request copies of my medical records when relocating to a new country. Sometimes, healthcare professionals deny my plea, as if I’m engaged in an unnecessary power struggle for the data I own. Hopefully, the European General Data Protection Regulation has made it a problem of the past. I ask for my medical records because I don’t trust Western education about humanity. I want to control my scientific narrative. Indeed, some Western healthcare professionals perceive me as stupid and untrustworthy, thanks to historical biases of the science that still claims to universally and objectively treat all humanity. Unfortunately, I had just moved to the UK, so I had yet to ship the proof that I wasn’t a liar; I had nothing to bust the scientific myth of my general practitioner’s Western magical thinking.

Throughout my international life, some European physicians doubted my symptoms. Others tried to shut me up when they misprescribed the drugs for which I, as a regulatory scientist, got the approvals and labels from the European Medicines Agency. Some privileged monocultural colleagues of European descent challenged my global expertise. They did, despite my doctorate in pharmaceutical science, master’s in European law and regulation, the eleven European languages I speak, and an around-the-world tour investigating diverse cultures and healthcare practices. I heard humanely uneducated peers working in drug development tell me right to my racialized face that Europe has fewer equity problems than the USA. I felt often as if their 500-year ivory tower’s misperception was all humanity’s experience. How can the place that first created this global reality distortion be the least affected, especially when it has just started to address its problematic past in the last ten years? The answer is magical thinking: Western science doesn’t need more cognitive dissonance.

I also know many courageous Western scientists, humanities scholars, educators, patients, and concerned citizens who took the same enlightening, empathetic journey to understand humankind as I’ve done, regardless of their cultural and professional backgrounds. We continue to learn outside of an outdated education system that still believes that scientists inventing for humanity only need to learn science, not the humanities.

So, for the sake of my mental health, I focus on collaborating with people curious about the reality that lies beyond a 500-year-old misperception while ignoring others, as my Dharmic Indian culture taught me through my Sikh architect father. Humankind has much to contribute to progress when we can co-create as equal partners.

For more insights on Western science’s magical thinking about keloid, see Joel Bervell’s LinkedIn post.

My post is also available on LinkedIn, where you can follow me.