Ex-Church Member Now Fights Misinformation for the UN

Paul Martin Jensen spent his childhood nights imagining government agents publicly executing him at the end of the world. Today, he consults for those same government organizations, teaching them how to fight misinformation.

Jensen grew up in Massachusetts as the son of a minister in a global end-times Pentecostal movement. The church rejected any science that contradicted Christian scripture and taught that the apocalypse was coming soon.

But Jensen loved snakes. His fascination with them clashed with the church's teaching that serpents were fundamentally evil from the Garden of Eden story. That small contradiction planted a seed of doubt that eventually changed everything.

"I was always raised that science was true if it validated our doctrines, and if science undermined our doctrines, then it wasn't true," Jensen told STAT News at the Breakthrough Summit East in New York City. The church treated evolutionary theory as a lie and left no room for questions.

Science offered something his church couldn't: permission to doubt. Jensen found freedom in an environment where saying "I don't know" was acceptable and any question was fair game. "I can't say that science saved my life, but it certainly saved my mind," he said.

Now Jensen runs a health research communications firm and uses his unusual background as an advantage. He understands how conspiracy theories spread because he grew up learning them in the 1980s when they were fringe beliefs.

Why This Inspires

Jensen sees untapped potential in science communication by watching how effectively his former church spread its message. Starting over 100 years ago, the movement invested heavily in reaching new audiences through direct mail, radio, television, and eventually digital media. They sent missionaries to the hardest-to-reach communities specifically because they were difficult to access.

Meanwhile, scientists receive little training or recognition for sharing their work with the public. Jensen believes making it okay to be wrong is crucial for persuading skeptics. Positioning scientists as ultimate authorities often backfires because it leaves no space for others to explore questions.

His advice to science communicators reflects his journey: create room for doubt and uncertainty. The ability to say "we were wrong about that" is one of science's greatest strengths, not a weakness.

Jensen confirmed his childhood passion never faded. He now owns a pet python.