STEM Archives - Tales of Times Forgotten

Dr. Anthony Fauci has been getting a lot of attention lately for his tireless work promoting public safety measures in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Polls consistently find that Dr. Fauci is by far the most trusted person in the United States on matters pertaining to COVID-19. An article published in The New Yorker on 20 April 2020 hails him as “America’s doctor.” On 10 December 2020, Time magazine named him a “Guardian of the Year,” along with “front-line health care workers.”

An interesting thing that many people don’t know about Dr. Anthony Fauci, though, is that he graduated in 1962 from the College of the Holy Cross not with a standard pre-med degree, but with Bachelor of Arts (BA) in classics with a pre-med track. In other words, Dr. Fauci has a degree in classical studies.

On 12 November 2020, The Atlantic published an article titled “The Next Decade Could Be Even Worse.” This article, written by a staff writer named Graeme Wood, is primarily a profile piece about Peter Turchin, a Russian American entomologist-turned-pseudohistorian. It is also, however, to a large extent a full-on polemic against real historians, whom Wood portrays as obsolete curmudgeons who don’t really understand the past and are allergic to science.

As can only be expected, the entire article displays an absolutely flagrant ignorance of what the historical discipline is and what historians actually do. Indeed, it is full of all kinds of outlandish howlers, bordering on outright silliness. Unfortunately, many of the misconceptions that the article promotes are becoming more and more common as our society continues to devalue the study of history.

Tag: STEM

Dr. Fauci Has a Classics Degree!

No, History Doesn’t Need to be “Mathematized”