Gad Saad’s Chapter 5 takes on one of the most dangerous ideas in modern discourse: the notion that science can ever be truly “settled.” Using powerful historical examples and recent events, Saad shows how declaring certain conclusions beyond debate does not protect truth. Instead, it often protects power, prestige, and comfortable beliefs while harming real people. This chapter is a clear warning about what happens when empathy overrides evidence and when we stop allowing science to remain falsifiable and open to correction.

The Semmelweis Reflex: When New Evidence Threatens Old Beliefs

Saad opens with the story of Ignaz Semmelweis, the 19th-century Hungarian obstetrician who discovered that doctors were spreading childbed fever by moving from autopsies to deliveries without washing their hands. His simple solution of scrubbing with a chlorinated lime solution between patients dramatically cut death rates. Yet his ideas were ridiculed, blacklisted, and he was eventually driven from his position years before Louis Pasteur’s germ theory was accepted. Semmelweis was right, but the medical establishment could not accept that their own practices were killing mothers.

Saad pairs this with the more recent case of Barry Marshall and Robin Warren, who proved in the 1980s that Helicobacter pylori bacteria, not stress or spicy food, caused most stomach ulcers. Marshall even drank the bacteria himself to demonstrate causation. Both stories reveal the same pattern: established institutions resist ideas that challenge prevailing wisdom, even when lives are at stake.

This resistance is what Saad calls the Semmelweis reflex, the knee-jerk rejection of evidence that threatens comfortable norms. It shows how difficult it is for even highly educated people to accept that science is never finished.

Misguided Empathy Becomes Peak Anti-Science

Saad’s central argument is that misplaced empathy often fuels this resistance. When we prioritize protecting feelings, preserving consensus, or avoiding the discomfort of admitting we were wrong, we create taboo trade-offs. We refuse to weigh real costs and benefits because doing so feels disloyal to the dominant narrative. The result is the shutdown of inquiry.

Saad draws on Karl Popper’s principle that genuine science must remain open to falsification. Once we declare something “settled,” we stop doing science. Empathy then becomes a tool to shield bad ideas rather than a guide toward truth.

Taboo Trade-Offs on Full Display: COVID Policies and Selective Compassion

Nowhere is this dynamic clearer than in the COVID era. Strict lockdowns and mandates were framed as acts of community care and empathy. People were told that supporting the measures and getting vaccinated proved they cared about others. Yet the same rules were not applied evenly.

Saad highlights the irony of 1,288 liberal activists and public health officials signing a letter claiming it was acceptable to attend large BLM marches after George Floyd’s death, while families were forbidden from visiting dying loved ones in hospitals. If you understood the pain of being Black in a country described as steeped in white supremacy, the argument went, then marching was worth the risk. Empathy was selectively granted.

Voices who opposed the measures were silenced. Medical doctors and professors who pointed to data showing the chance of death from COVID was extremely low for many groups often had their accounts shut down on platforms such as Twitter and YouTube. Debate was treated as dangerous rather than as part of normal scientific inquiry.

Elon Musk has publicly highlighted this exact problem by referencing Gad Saad’s concept of “suicidal empathy.” In a widely shared clip, Musk explains how excessive compassion toward certain groups can become self-destructive to society as a whole. [You can insert the link to the clip here: https://x.com/XFreeze/status/2056406145292546107]

When Empathy Overrides Evidence in Climate and Transgender Policies

Saad shows the same pattern repeating in climate activism and in the push for immediate transgender affirmation in children. In each case, empathy is invoked to make certain questions off-limits. Questioning policy becomes framed as lacking compassion, so real trade-offs, failed predictions, and emerging evidence are never honestly examined. Those who raise concerns, often people with more cautious or conservative perspectives, are accused of being cold or uncaring.

This is the heart of what Saad means by taboo trade-offs. Important decisions require weighing benefits against genuine human costs. When empathy is weaponized to declare those trade-offs morally unspeakable, serious analysis stops. Science and reason take a back seat to emotional appeals and ideological loyalty.

A Chapter That Demands Honest Reflection

This chapter is the needed antidote to adhering to settled science. It is critically important to be willing to shift your mindset and shut down the flow of endless irrational  empathy. 

Chapter 5 is one of the most important in Suicidal Empathy. Saad shows how the same forces operate today whenever empathy is used to shut down debate rather than to seek truth. The chapter leaves the reader with a clear choice: continue protecting narratives at all costs, or recommit to the uncomfortable but necessary work of open inquiry.

This book, and especially this chapter, should be widely read. It offers a powerful reminder that real compassion requires the courage to examine evidence, even when it challenges our current beliefs. I highly recommend it.

Excited to continue sharing these reviews with you all.

— Gail Alfar