Stephen BarrThe thesis of the conflict between science and faith is a myth generated by the polemics of the end of the 19th century".José Carlos González-HurtadoThe more science, the more God".Miguel Ángel Martínez-González is a physician, researcher and epidemiologist, professor of Preventive Medicine and Health Public University of Navarra and Associate Professor of Nutrition at Harvard University. He has published the following books with Planeta Health for sure (2018), What do you eat? (2020), Healthcare in flames (2021) y Salmon, hormones and screens (2023). In 2021, he was included in the "Highly Cited Researchers 2021" list of Clarivatewhere he is among the 6,600 most cited scientists in the world. The Ministry of Science and Innovation awarded him the prestigious Gregorio Marañón National Research Award in Medicine in 2022 for his contributions on the importance of nutrition, Mediterranean diet and healthy lifestyle in the field of preventive medicine.
How does your scientific side enrich your faith, and vice versa?
I think that for a scientist, especially when one is in the first division in research, there are many dangers that can spoil all his work, related to ego, pride, vanity, the desire to appear, etc. And this has very bad consequences for the professional work of a researcher, because it often turns out that senior researchers want to be everywhere and do not allow young people to have sufficient relevance and prominence, or to be able to continue their work in the long term. Planting trees whose shade will benefit others is something that I am very committed to, precisely because of my faith, because it seems to me that the theme of Christianity is that he who gives is happier than he who receives. That attitude of generosity, of knowing how to hide at many times and give way to others, that others begin where you have finished, are values of faith that certainly make research much more productive in the long run. It is much more effective to make thirty people work than to work as thirty, but, when the ego takes over, one wants to be everywhere, to appear, and does not allow the people who are collaborating to show their heads. You have to know how to take steps back at the right time, especially when you are reaching the peak of your career and you are approaching retirement. That step back makes the research more productive, because more people get involved, take the lead and take the reins.
And, vice versa, professional work enriches faith. Delving into human biology always has a sense of fascination with how the human being functions, his control mechanisms, his organs, his physiology, etc. And it is very difficult for that not to lead to God. One discovers some really impressive wonders. That fascination seems to me to be a very powerful force for approaching faith and God.
Also, through the work, one acquires many relationships with other people and sees many opportunities to help them spiritually, to try to bring them closer to God with an apostolic zeal that is inherent in Christianity. I have been with several of the recipients of the National Youth Research Awards, which were given for the first time last year, and the conversations with them, in a natural way, ended up transmitting aspects of the faith, aspects that you have inside you because of your Christian belief. This helps, and the same when you have an important scientific work, which takes up a lot of your time. It gives you the opportunity, especially with your students, with the people to whom you are directing your thesis or who are training with you as young professors, to open their horizons to the supernatural and to see that through science it is easy to reach God. In all lifestyle and public health issues, which is the field in which I have developed my scientific career, you see that in the end what goes against human nature harms the human being. You see it with scientific data, not only from faith. Putting into the body a series of substances that are not typical of natural foods, or getting carried away by a series of behaviors that are fundamentally hedonistic, consumerist, ends up producing more physical and mental illnesses. Somehow, you say: "The Bible was right". In the end, science proves that humility, sobriety, the right use of reason and putting order in our concupiscibles appetites has an impact on health, and when you see it with the data of studies with tens of thousands of people, it strengthens your faith.
So you could say that believing is healthy?
Yes, in Boston, two of the people who work with me at Harvard are also collaborating with the Human Flourishing Center run by a very prestigious Harvard professor, a convert to Catholicism, named Tyler VanderWeele. One of the most powerful papers he has published, in one of the best medical journals, shows how religious practice prevents suicide. This is something that has been proven with empirical data, that having religious convictions and practicing them reduces the risk factors for suicide.
I remember that when I designed the large cohort study that we had in Navarra 25 years ago at Harvard, with the help of the professors there, one of them, who was not exactly a believer, said to me: "Look, if you are going to recruit former students from the University of Navarra, where there are so many Catholics, it will lower mortality rates, because they will die less, they will have fewer diseases". And he was an atheist, but he told me: "I already have a lot of experience having done epidemiological studies and I see that when people have more religious practice they have better health habits, they get drunk less, take drugs less, have less sexual promiscuity, go to the doctor when it is their turn and are more responsible for their own health". In the end, when a population has more Christian beliefs, they have better healthy habits, and that reduces mortality rates. So, logically, it is a health benefit.
Is your interest in research just scientific or also a way to help others?
Of course, helping is the driving force, it is an absolute priority. I repeat this a lot to my collaborators and I always try to keep it in mind. I recently met with a group of cardiologists in Madrid, because we are developing a very ambitious study that I have been funded by the European Research Council, and I said to them: "We are going to incorporate a lot of doctors into this study, and they may ask: 'And if I contribute patients to this study, are you going to give me a certificate of participation, are you going to put me in the articles as an investigator? And I said, 'Of course, we'll do all this, but that's not what's important.' You have to think about the service you are doing to a lot of patients who have a problem that we are going to give a solution to." I also explained to them that if a doctor examines a patient in the emergency room who comes in with chest pain, tells him that nothing is wrong, and the patient goes home and dies because he had a myocardial infarction and you had not detected it, this is a terrible medical failure. But in public health, if you tell the patient: "There is nothing wrong with this habit", and it turns out that this habit is increasing mortality by 10 %, but it is shared by 70 % of the population, millions of deaths are produced by not doing it properly. What we do in public health has immense repercussions. I was told the other day at Harvard at a conference I gave: it takes a great sense of responsibility and courage to carry out public health studies, because the lives and health of millions of people are at stake and, logically, we have to see Jesus Christ in each one of them, just as in clinical medicine. What happens is that, when it comes to epidemiology and public health, it is on a large scale. Maybe you don't see it as immediately as the patient who you haven't done the EKG and dies of a heart attack, but the reality is that, with the decisions we make in public health and with the research we do, we can be benefiting or harming millions of people. And in those people we have to see Jesus Christ, because, if not, we have lost the Christian meaning of life.
Do you think that in the scientific field there is a prejudice towards believers, or is it already overcome?
No, no, the prejudice exists, and it is absolutely unfair, because it is just that, a prejudice. The reality is that we must have the perspective that Catholics are not second-class beings, and that we have the same right to investigate as anyone else. We cannot be people who are marginalized. Here we must also exercise fortitude and courage and not allow ourselves to be cornered, not be timorous or self-conscious. I believe that we Catholics must have the conviction that faith provides a more global, complementary vision, and that it makes us raise our sights and be more rigorous, precisely because we have faith. Because we see that what we do here has repercussions beyond this life, and that gives us a great sense of responsibility. God is going to ask me to account for all of this. And the transcendence beyond life on this earth is something that helps us to do our professional work better, and above all with St. Josemaría's vision that this work is sanctifiable. So, logically, we look at that work with much more solidity than if we didn't have faith.
