Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science?

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ThirstyBarbarian

ThirstyBarbarian

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Here's an article I read today in my National Geographic magazine. I found it interesting enough to look up the online version of the article and post it here: https://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/science-doubters/achenbach-text

The gist of the article is that anti-science mindsets and attitudes are on the rise in this country and are showing up in many forms: climate change denial, the anti-vaccination movement, moon landing hoax conspiracy theories, anti-evolution creationism, the anti-GMO food movement, etc. Polarization is increasing on these topics, not decreasing. And the article tries to examine why these reactions are happening.

One interesting point the article makes is that polarization on these topics on both sides is strongest among people with scientific literacy. In other words, people with a reasonable amount of scientific knowledge can be strongly pro-science or they can also be some of the strongest opponents on these polarizing anti-science topics. Also people who are generally reasonable can often take anti-sceintific positions. That's interesting, because generally I think the pro-science side would expect that anti-science attitudes come from ignorance, and that is not always the case. That's why arguments based on facts are not effective at swaying anti-science positions.

I could summarize the reasons the article gives for why this happens, but it would be better if you read the article.

If you want to post in this thread, please only do so AFTER YOU HAVE READ THE ARTICLE.

The point of the thread is the article and whatever thought you may have about it, not anyone's personal position on climate change, vaccination, the moon landing, evolution, GMO food etc. Keep off of those topics. Thanks!
 
Why do folks have to insult those that don't agree with them? Just because we do not agree, does not make you right or me any less intelligent. Assuming your opinion or the science is right is a form of arrogance. You must accept that not everyone agrees and move past it.

Difference on opinion and belief is what makes free society strong.

Watch this thread or I will lock it. If this results in personal attacks or political discussion, the poster will be in the wrong for violating forum policy. So few of these discussion get past 3 pages.
 
I happen to view myself as VERY pro science, and I share a belief that you've listed as anti science. From my point of view the people that disagree with me on that topic seem to be more anti-science.

It could be that people on both sides of most of those topics to themselves as having the more scientific viewpoint.
 
You know as I get older my distrust of Published Science when money is involved has risen to a point of becoming a sceptic. Unfortunately science and corporate greed can no longer be separated. Remember science said agent orange was safe, science said DTT was safe, science said BPA had no health impact, in the 70's science said we were out of economically viable fossil fuel, science said asbestos was safe, science said testosterone supplement treatment was safe. How many times have we been led to believe a new miracle drug is safe or harmless only to latter find out the real damages. You getting the point?

Fool me once shame on you, fool me now hundreds of times shame on me

Just so you know I had worked in the medical research field for 14 years before buying my family business so I do consider myself a reasonable scientific minded person, just lied to too many times. People no longer trust what the science says.

Greg
 
Biggest pushers of both science and anti-science? youtube. I see one more "conspiracy" post.... I've blocked so many commenters that are obvious trolls, you see the same people lining up behind the same idiot theories or "truth".

I have enough conspiracies and idiocy around me as it is... :p
 
I disagree with the premise of the article. People do not doubt science but they have been conditioned over the last 40 years to distrust institutions. This is the result.
 
I earn my living doing scientific research, so if you flat out don't trust scientists just skip past my remarks. As a scientist I will be using "we" a bit, though I recognize not all scientists would agree with my statements.

One thing the article called out is the fundamental difference in the way we communicate. A scientist will almost never say things in absolute terms, after all we have four laws in science (4 laws of thermodynamics), and that is it. To a lot of people who hear us discuss things in terms such as "likely", "probably", "related to", "trends toward" it just sounds like we are kind of 60:40 on what is right, when many times these words represent 95:5 or 99:1 levels of certainty. Amongst ourselves we talk in standard deviations and p-values, but that just isn't in the language when we talk to non scientist, surely some non scientists would understand what these terms mean, but you have bo idea who they are, and people don't carry around signs that say "I (or don't) understand things when explained with statistics." This makes for poor communication. As such many of us have withdrawn from these discussions entirely. This vacuum inevitably gets filled by more polarizing members of our society, politicians, celebrities, news broadcasters, and political pundits. They make me cringe even when I agree with them, because so many of the, are already on "sides" that they automatically skew people's opinions of the underlying material based on their opinions of that person. Obvious examples would be Al Gore and Ted Cruz (chair of Senate committee that among other things oversees science policy). does anyone who knows who they are not have a (strong) opinion on these two? So when they say anything, isn't it just human nature to let some (or a lot) of those pre-existing views color what they are saying independent of their statement's validity?

The reimergence of the snake oil salesman has not helped either, I'm looking at you Dr. Oz. Also, some wonder drugs have turned out to be not so much in the past few decades. Personally, I think alot of that was the conversion of pharmaceutical research labs away from being largely run by scientists to being run by business professionals. That being said some truly amazing drugs are coming along, wait until you start hearing about CAR-T...the potential there is astounding (notice I didn't say it will work, because it hasn't been sufficiently studied and proven yet).

It isn't always necessary to have the other person agree with you though to be able to effectively communicate. I recently gave a talk to a group that included folks that flat out don't believe evolution occurred, but for me to effectively communicate the material I needed them to not be walled off to everything I said because of this litmus test of sorts. So I went about saying early in my talk that I would be relying on the concepts of evolutionary biology, because without them it would be impossible for me to explain the observations. Also, that they did not have to believe that humans evolved from anything, just that the framework of evolution was required for the data to be explained. This didn't work for everyone, but a few extra folks were able to come along for what was the central point of the presentation. Doing this requires a degree of pragmatism that is difficult for a dyed in the wool scientist to muster, but it is necessary sometimes.

I have a lot more to say, but there is probably enough in what I've written so far to get people inflamed, and i need to get this posted before the thread is inevitably locked.

We should really start a pool on how long these threads will last.
 
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Darn it, just as I was about to go to bed, you post something really interesting. I'll read it tomorrow...

D'oh! I posted before I read the article--Sorry!

In the meantime, there is a whole body of literature on influencing attitudes and attitude change, but I think it may have something to do with this:

Unskilled and Unaware of It

Warning...it is a psychology journal article, but it is very accessible and even entertaining in spots.
 
It's all about epistemology.

There is a lot of sound and rational reasons to doubt Big Science. Anyone remember the infamous "Hockey Stick" hoax?

Just because someone wears a lab coat does not make him or her "agenda free and impartial". Scientists can be just as partisan as any politician.

Greg
 
Several answers were in part correct; power, money, and control. These are manifestations of the same phenomena.


I disagree with one of the fundamental statements made in the article,


"Science is not a body of facts,” says geophysicist Marcia McNutt, who once headed the U.S. Geological Survey and is now editor of Science, the prestigious journal. “Science is a method for deciding whether what we choose to believe has a basis in the laws of nature or not.”
Click to expand...


Science is BOTH a collection of facts, AND an iterative methodology of verifying the facts and discovering new ones. The "Scientific Method*" is little more than an established way of proving "I'm right". One of the main assumptions in science is 1) experiments are repeatable, and 2) stuff can be proven. It differs from religion in this regard; religion has dogma, science should have none.


Anti-science mindsets *may* be on the rise (the author gives no proof). And ends with the conclusion I felt was inevitable when I began reading the article - it comes down to a debate about climate change. The author is ending with the claim that so-called climate deniers are ignoring scientific fact because "facts" (which the author discarded in the genesis of the article) prove the temperature is increasing. The problem is, that as with the example of medical research, the "facts", the evidence published, cannot be trusted because it has been "adjusted", "modified", "compensated" to give an outcome more to the experimenter's liking. I'm reminded of the famous experiment done by Dr. Robert Millikan in 1909 to measure the charge of the electron. Looking at his journal notes, Millikan disregarded the results of a number of tests, and left them out of his final calculations, seemingly because they did not seem to be in line with the expected results. If he had included these in his final calculations, He would have gotten a more accurate reading.


*Scientific Method
1) devise hypothesis
2) create and run experiment to prove hypothesis
3) analysis of how data fit hypothesis
4) create new hypothesis that better explains data
5) repeat
 
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That was a good article. Another factor is that a lot of science is hard to examine by individuals. I can't quickly provide substantial evidence of evolution, climate change or even the moon landings to a skeptic.

One of the biggest ones to remember is that people are not rational; we can ignore proof when it is staring us in the face. And we all do it. ALL of us. Me, you, everyone reading this.


This is a conversation I have had several times with a good friend of mine. He is smart and well educated and complains about not having enough money to retire.

Friend: I'm buying some lottery tickets tonight; the jackpot is huge.

Me: It's a sucker bet so don't waste your money; the odds are really, really, really stacked against you. You'll spend money for tickets and almost certainly get nothing back.

Friend: Somebody has to win.

Me: Uh... no, not really. It's possible that no one wins tonight's drawing. And theoretically, everyone could lose every lottery drawing from now to eternity (assuming someone can't walk in and buy one of every combination). This is highly unlikely, but statistically it could happen. And I do have a Master's degree in statistics; it's one of the reasons you freakin' hired me!!!
 
cwbullet said:
Why do folks have to insult those that don't agree with them? Just because we do not agree, does not make you right or me any less intelligent. Assuming your opinion or the science is right is a form of arrogance. You must accept that not everyone agrees and move past it.

Difference on opinion and belief is what makes free society strong.

Watch this thread or I will lock it. If this results in personal attacks or political discussion, the poster will be in the wrong for violating forum policy. So few of these discussion get past 3 pages.
Click to expand...


Chuck, I feel like you didn't read the article and probably didn't even read my post and reason for starting the thread.

What insult are you referring to? I didn't insult anyone, and the article doesn't insult anyone. Go back and read them both. It's actually posts like yours with knee-jerk reactions that get these threads way off track.

I didn't claim anyone I disagree with was less intelligent than me, and the article doesn't suggest that the anti-science mindset is the product of unintelligent or ignorant thinking. The entire point is that INTELLIGENT and WELL INFORMED people can have strongly held beliefs that run counter to scientific evidence, and the article is trying to answer in part why that is. There was no disrespect expressed or implied.
 
Mushtang said:
I happen to view myself as VERY pro science, and I share a belief that you've listed as anti science. From my point of view the people that disagree with me on that topic seem to be more anti-science.

It could be that people on both sides of most of those topics to themselves as having the more scientific viewpoint.
Click to expand...

The list of topics is from the article, not my list. I also have strong doubts about the science on one of the topics, and mild reservations on another.

You can have a disagreement with scientific consensus and have your doubts also rooted in scientific thinking. It's just that that's not the usual reason for disagreeing evidence-based conclusions on these topics.
 
sooner.boomer said:
One word: POWER.
Click to expand...

slipperyfrog said:
Second word: MONEY.
Click to expand...

KidRockET said:
Word Three: CONTROL
Click to expand...

The article does touch on the fact that when there is money at stake, entrenched interests do often attempt to muddy the scientific waters and promote fringe conclusions. To avoid getting into any of the present day hot-button issues, one example would be tobacco. In order to protect profits, the tobacco industry worked very hard to sow doubt about the evidence that tobacco use is harmful, because the industry feared that scientific evidence would be used to legislate restrictions on tobacco use or to impose taxes. The first line of battle was to deny the science.

I think that kind of behavior is pretty well understood by everybody and is nothing new. What I found more interesting in the article was the more psychological aspects of why individual people hold the beliefs that they do, not so much about how different powers try to influence those beliefs.
 
Last edited:
cwbullet said:
Does money = "carbon coupons".
Click to expand...

Wow, Chuck. It seems like you are doing more to take the thread off track to where I asked people not to take it and where you yourself said it should not go. The topic is NOT politics and NOT about the specific hot-button issues. It's about the method of thinking and how people come to their beliefs and positions. I'd appreciate if you not be the one to get the thread locked. Stay on topic.
 
rms said:
You know as I get older my distrust of Published Science when money is involved has risen to a point of becoming a sceptic. Unfortunately science and corporate greed can no longer be separated. Remember science said agent orange was safe, science said DTT was safe, science said BPA had no health impact, in the 70's science said we were out of economically viable fossil fuel, science said asbestos was safe, science said testosterone supplement treatment was safe. How many times have we been led to believe a new miracle drug is safe or harmless only to latter find out the real damages. You getting the point?

Fool me once shame on you, fool me now hundreds of times shame on me

Just so you know I had worked in the medical research field for 14 years before buying my family business so I do consider myself a reasonable scientific minded person, just lied to too many times. People no longer trust what the science says.

Greg
Click to expand...

I think a lot of people feel the same way. One thing I would add to that is that a person can be very scientifically minded, so they want to see evidence for any claims that are made. But we can't all personally evaluate all evidence on every topic in the world. So if we actually do not know much about a particular topic but have a scientific mind, the tendency is to have doubts and concerns about the claim and to fall back on evaluating the motivations for the claim. Then trust comes into play. That's not a scientific process, but it doesn't mean it's not a thoughtful or reasonable process.

The article talks about how who we trust affects our beliefs. It also talks a bit about how certain personality types tend to trust different sources of information than other personality types do. It's interesting to me that polarization on a scientific topic might come down to basic personality traits not the evidence itself or the intelligence to understand the evidence.
 
dave carver said:
Biggest pushers of both science and anti-science? youtube. I see one more "conspiracy" post.... I've blocked so many commenters that are obvious trolls, you see the same people lining up behind the same idiot theories or "truth".

I have enough conspiracies and idiocy around me as it is... :p
Click to expand...

The article talks a bit about the Internet's roll in reinforcing these kinds of beliefs.
 
I haven't read the article that you cite and probably won't as I did not renew my subscription to National Geographic about ten years ago after they began clogging there otherwise beautiful magazine with a blizzard of advertising. I've got two 8" x 8" x 20" boxes packed solid with a dozen years worth of back issues that are free to a good home if you pay the shipping charges. The local libraries won't take them anymore nor will the schools. There's a lot of history packed in those pages. It's a pity they've sold their legacy to the high tech corporate hustlers and con artists.

They send me a Christmas catalog, or three, every year. Ho, ho, horse....
 
jderimig said:
I disagree with the premise of the article. People do not doubt science but they have been conditioned over the last 40 years to distrust institutions. This is the result.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't say the article is necessarily off base in stating there is a lot of doubt in science, but I'd agree that a lot of it has to do with mistrust of institutions.
 
Cl(VII) said:
I earn my living doing scientific research, so if you flat out don't trust scientists just skip past my remarks. As a scientist I will be using "we" a bit, though I recognize not all scientists would agree with my statements.

One thing the article called out is the fundamental difference in the way we communicate. A scientist will almost never say things in absolute terms, after all we have four laws in science (4 laws of thermodynamics), and that is it. To a lot of people who hear us discuss things in terms such as "likely", "probably", "related to", "trends toward" it just sounds like we are kind of 60:40 on what is right, when many times these words represent 95:5 or 99:1 levels of certainty. Amongst ourselves we talk in standard deviations and p-values, but that just isn't in the language when we talk to non scientist, surely some non scientists would understand what these terms mean, but you have bo idea who they are, and people don't carry around signs that say "I (or don't) understand things when explained with statistics." This makes for poor communication. As such many of us have withdrawn from these discussions entirely. This vacuum inevitably gets filled by more polarizing members of our society, politicians, celebrities, news broadcasters, and political pundits. They make me cringe even when I agree with them, because so many of the, are already on "sides" that they automatically skew people's opinions of the underlying material based on their opinions of that person. Obvious examples would be Al Gore and Ted Cruz (chair of Senate committee that among other things oversees science policy). does anyone who knows who they are not have a (strong) opinion on these two? So when they say anything, isn't it just human nature to let some (or a lot) of those pre-existing views color what they are saying independent of their statement's validity?

The reimergence of the snake oil salesman has not helped either, I'm looking at you Dr. Oz. Also, some wonder drugs have turned out to be not so much in the past few decades. Personally, I think alot of that was the conversion of pharmaceutical research labs away from being largely run by scientists to being run by business professionals. That being said some truly amazing drugs are coming along, wait until you start hearing about CAR-T...the potential there is astounding (notice I didn't say it will work, because it hasn't been sufficiently studied and proven yet).

It isn't always necessary to have the other person agree with you though to be able to effectively communicate. I recently gave a talk to a group that included folks that flat out don't believe evolution occurred, but for me to effectively communicate the material I needed them to not be walled off to everything I said because of this litmus test of sorts. So I went about saying early in my talk that I would be relying on the concepts of evolutionary biology, because without them it would be impossible for me to explain the observations. Also, that they did not have to believe that humans evolved from anything, just that the framework of evolution was required for the data to be explained. This didn't work for everyone, but a few extra folks were able to come along for what was the central point of the presentation. Doing this requires a degree of pragmatism that is difficult for a dyed in the wool scientist to muster, but it is necessary sometimes.

I have a lot more to say, but there is probably enough in what I've written so far to get people inflamed, and i need to get this posted before the thread is inevitably locked.

We should really start a pool on how long these threads will last.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the post. I think was very insightful, and hopefully it is still here in the morning! Honestly, I don't think any one has crossed any bounds yet, so I don't see a reason the thread would be locked, at least at this point.
 
The_Lone_Beagle said:
Darn it, just as I was about to go to bed, you post something really interesting. I'll read it tomorrow...

D'oh! I posted before I read the article--Sorry!

In the meantime, there is a whole body of literature on influencing attitudes and attitude change, but I think it may have something to do with this:

Unskilled and Unaware of It

Warning...it is a psychology journal article, but it is very accessible and even entertaining in spots.
Click to expand...


Hey... I'm reading your article until you read mine...
 
GregGleason said:
It's all about epistemology.

There is a lot of sound and rational reasons to doubt Big Science. Anyone remember the infamous "Hockey Stick" hoax?

Just because someone wears a lab coat does not make him or her "agenda free and impartial". Scientists can be just as partisan as any politician.

Greg
Click to expand...

I think you're making a similar point to rms and jderimig above. Trust is certainly a factor.
 
sooner.boomer said:
Several answers were in part correct; power, money, and control. These are manifestations of the same phenomena.


I disagree with one of the fundamental statements made in the article,





Science is BOTH a collection of facts, AND an iterative methodology of verifying the facts and discovering new ones. The "Scientific Method*" is little more than an established way of proving "I'm right". One of the main assumptions in science is 1) experiments are repeatable, and 2) stuff can be proven. It differs from religion in this regard; religion has dogma, science should have none.


Anti-science mindsets *may* be on the rise (the author gives no proof). And ends with the conclusion I felt was inevitable when I began reading the article - it comes down to a debate about climate change. The author is ending with the claim that so-called climate deniers are ignoring scientific fact because "facts" (which the author discarded in the genesis of the article) prove the temperature is increasing. The problem is, that as with the example of medical research, the "facts", the evidence published, cannot be trusted because it has been "adjusted", "modified", "compensated" to give an outcome more to the experimenter's liking. I'm reminded of the famous experiment done by Dr. Robert Millikan in 1909 to measure the charge of the electron. Looking at his journal notes, Millikan disregarded the results of a number of tests, and left them out of his final calculations, seemingly because they did not seem to be in line with the expected results. If he had included these in his final calculations, He would have gotten a more accurate reading.


*Scientific Method
1) devise hypothesis
2) create and run experiment to prove hypothesis
3) analysis of how data fit hypothesis
4) create new hypothesis that better explains data
5) repeat
Click to expand...


I'm going to disagree with you that the article comes down to a debate about climate change. That's not what the article is about. The author is definitely of the opinion that the "pro science" consensus on the issues I listed at the beginning of the thread is the correct conclusion and the "anti science" position is incorrect. But the article is not about debating climate change or any of the other issues.

It's about how people come to their beliefs. You can completely disagree with the author on the issues and still learn something about how people form beliefs. In fact, if you do disagree with the author on the issues, then maybe you might examine why that is and maybe the article will help you think about where your beliefs come from and why you disagree. The author does a great job of laying out his own system of thought and how he personally thinks he goes about forming his own beliefs, and I think it's probably a good idea for everyone to be able to do the same.
 
A lot has to do with your world view-those few core beliefs that you have that color all of your other beliefs. Unfortunately your beliefs do not necessarily have anything to do with reality, and I would say that the "Absolute true reality" is all but unknowable. So we all just run around trying to force whatever new information we get into our established beliefs. That makes for a lot of, "Those guys are lying." and conspiracies.

The next concept would be the strength of your beliefs. The stronger your belief the harder it is to convince you to change it. How hard would it be for me to make you believe that 1+1=Q???
I have seen the proof that 0.999 to infinity is equal to 1.0, I still don't believe it. Even though it is used regularly to accomplish other math.
The article talks about things that are easy to see but go against known facts. Particularly the whole flat earth thing. How many of us could prove that the earth is a sphere using only our own observations and first hand knowledge? The only reason we believe that it is a sphere now is because it has been beaten into our heads at a young age. If you first heard of the earth being a sphere when you were twenty, how hard would it be to believe?

Another that was touched on that is big for me is the miss-trust of the media. First they say one thing, then they say that the opposite is true. It turns out that most every article that I actually knew of the events reported, it has been miss-reported, miss-represented or contained factual errors.

So with all of this interference to "The Truth" it's all but unknowable. So why modify ones beliefs to match the new reality when there is little or nothing to gain by it?
 
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