Sònia Fernández-Vidal: "Many anti-vaxxers were teenagers, and now the time has come for the flat-earthers"

BarcelonaAt what point did quantum physics go from being a theoretical revolution to a force capable of transforming or even destroying the world? It may seem like a complex question to answer, but it is an entirely necessary approach in times of war and polarization. The Doctor of Quantum Optics from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and science communicator Sònia Fernández-Vidal (Barcelona, 1978) concludes the successful trilogy The Door of the Three Locks with the prequel titled The Shadow of the Two Suns (Destino). Aimed at a young audience, the author once again turns to fiction to put one of the great debates of our time on the table: what has led human beings to the development of nuclear energy and the atomic bomb? Despite being a story with fictional characters, Fernández-Vidal incorporates tangible certainties and figures of 20th-century science.

It is a children's book, but you touch on topics that generate the great debates of our time.

— Without lecturing anyone, and even less so children, because I have great respect for them, I intended to reflect a little on the ethics of what the Manhattan Project entailed. It is about asking more questions than providing answers. After all, science works the same way as ethics. It is about exposing the shades of gray that derive from science because, in the end, those we assumed were the “good guys” were the ones who ended up dropping the bombs on Japan.

There are many popular science books.

— I want to address precisely those people who would never choose a science book or who have a bad memory of the subject. The best way to approach this profile is precisely by writing a story for children. As my friend Aleix Rovira says, stories serve to put children to sleep and wake up adults. I do not use metaphors and I try to use a language that a 9-year-old child can understand. However, all the concepts I describe are always accurate. 

Did you like the movie Oppenheimer?

— You realize that there are things that perhaps are not as precise or entirely accurate to how they happened, but I am very open. Your purpose is to entertain and, if you also teach something, then even better. The same happens in Interstellar, the other great success by Christopher Nolan. Regarding something as complex as black holes, the director managed to make the general public grasp the idea, even while imagining what was inside a black hole. It is clear that everyone understands that this is a literary and cinematographic device.

Are we prepared to assume the consequences of the knowledge we generate?

— I want to make children understand that today we must continue to ask ourselves this question, which remains valid. We are developing technologies exponentially that we do not have time to digest. Artificial intelligence is one, yes, but quantum physics is too. We do not yet fully understand how it works and we already have quantum computers… This book makes it clear that, in the end, science is not a cornucopia from which kind images of human beings emerge.

Science is suffering from widespread discredit.

— Unfortunately, science finds itself in checkmate. One of the great challenges we have with the youngest is teaching them to discern which information is good and which is not. One of the antidotes to this era of over-information is, precisely, the scientific tone because it is based on two pillars: the first, flexibility and imagination. And the second, scrutiny. We are obliged to seek the origins of things, go in search of the sources, and understand that it is necessary to delve into the message.

We are not all scientists.

— Quantum technologies, supercomputers… This is not science fiction in schools, it is 21st-century policy. We democratize this knowledge and, in the end, in my opinion, it is the only way. Scientific evolution is not about understanding exactly how new technologies work. But it is about having some basic notions. 

Which specific aspects should be addressed in children?

— Algorithms, definitely. We are fully aware of how they address you. When you do an infinite scroll there comes a moment when you think “wow, how well the algorithm works with me, right?”. It is at that moment when you need to become aware and stop, because otherwise the technologies will be the ones that end up using us.

Where has the scientific community failed?

— It is worrying that the anti-vaxxers arrived first during the pandemic, a very large proportion of whom were young people and teenagers who were deniers. Now it is the turn of the flat-earthers and I find it mind-blowing. The truth is that too often we scientists lock ourselves in our laboratories, which are like our ivory towers, and we are not aware of the need for good scientific communication, especially that aimed at children. We have designed a society totally based on science and technology, but in which no one understands anything about the subject. At the end of the day, that was an explosive mixture that, what is more, we liked. This has inevitably led to the fact that it is a handful of people who make the decisions for the future. As Santiago Ramón y Cajal used to say: "Our culture's cart is missing the wheels of science..."

We already asked ourselves these questions in the past.

— The same question was just as good at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution as it is now. Also in the Victorian era. These are turning points in which our way of living changes completely. The history of the human being is cyclical, we will have to ask ourselves these questions again sooner than we think.

So, I understand that there will be a continuation of the saga, right?

— As a prequel to the trilogy, I consider it closed. If anything, it will be in the form of a sequel because new technologies will surely appear that will force us to talk about them.