We've had the best of intentions, of course. But efforts to protect our children may be backfiring.

You may remember the story of the Meitivs in Maryland, investigated twice for letting their kids, 10 and 6, walk home together from the park. Or the Debra Harrell case in South Carolina, where a mom was thrown in jail for allowing her 9-year-old to play at the sprinkler playground while she worked at McDonald's. Or the 8-year-old Ohio boy who was supposed to get on the bus to Sunday school, but snuck off to the Family Dollar store instead. His dad was arrested for child endangerment.

Beginning in the 1980s, American childhood changed. For a variety of reasons—including shifts in parenting norms, new academic expectations, increased regulation, technological advances, and especially a heightened fear of abduction (missing kids on milk cartons made it feel as if this exceedingly rare crime was rampant)—children largely lost the experience of having large swaths of unsupervised time to play, explore, and resolve conflicts on their own.

A 2010 study found "kidnapping" to be the top parental fear, despite the fact that merely being a passenger in a car is far more dangerous. Nine kids were kidnapped and murdered by strangers in 2011, while 1,140 died in vehicles that same year.

Trots det dystra läget visar det sig att fakta fungerar om man bara är beredd att ge dem en chans. Antropologen Eugenie Scott berättade om flera hårdföra amerikanska klimatskeptiker – Bob Inglis, Michael Shermer och Richard Cizik – som har ändrat uppfattning. Deras egen förklaring till omsvängningen var att evidens vinner i längden. På samma sätt har flera evolutionsförnekare kommit till en punkt där de inte kan försvara kreationismen för sig själva: den är helt enkelt inte intellektuellt hederlig. Mer om detta kan man läsa i antologin "How I changed my mind about evolution" (Intervarsity Press, 2016).