Abstract

Academic medical ethics must be a bulwark against a disturbing trend toward post-truth cultures. Activism of course has its place in massive cultural debates like abortion. The fact that so many people care so deeply about these debates is part of what makes them so important. But especially when coming from clinicians, academics, and others to whom we entrust the care of our public discourse, interventions into the debates must be disciplined by a thoroughgoing commitment to engage with the available data to back up the central claims even when those claims seem like common sense—perhaps especially when they seem like common sense.