A September 2021 poll suggested 61% of Americans identified COVID-19 as a serious threat to public health.
Another recent survey of Americans found a significantly higher increase in climate concern among democratically inclined respondents (27%) compared to those who were Republican (6%).
Understanding why people may ignore scientific evidence when forming an opinion can help scientists and science communicators better engage the public.
More recently, scientists highlighted four key reasons why people may ignore scientific evidence when forming opinions, as well as strategies to improve communication.
“The authors reiterate many important recommendations that researchers and practitioners of science communication have been promoting for a long time,” said Dr. Dietram A. Scheufele, a distinguished professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was not involved in the study. Medical news today.
“Perhaps the most visible: communicate your messages in a way that responds to things that are important to the people you are trying to reach, not making fun of,” he explained.
For the study, researchers combined modern findings on anti-science attitudes with principles derived from research on attitudes, persuasion, social influence, social identity, and the acceptance and rejection of information.
In doing so, they identified four principles that underpin the rejection of scientific evidence when forming an opinion:
Dr. Bastiaan Rutjens, an assistant professor in the department of social psychology at the University of Amsterdam who is not involved in the study, told MNT that “it is important to appreciate the fact that anti-science beliefs do not represent some monolithic essence, but are rather varied and […] they reflect potentially very different attitudes of objects. “
“In some cases, scientific knowledge is a more important predecessor, so the style of thought principle may be more important, while in other cases political ideology plays a key role, and in still other cases, religious or spiritual beliefs conflict with scientific theories,” he noted.
In order to counter the above-mentioned principles, the researchers proposed several solutions. As a “source of scientific message” they recommended:
To address the “audience of the scientific message”, they recommended activating a shared or overarching identity when communicating science and engaging and collaborating with marginalized communities.
For “the scientific message itself”, the researchers recommended:
Dr. Scott Morgan, associate professor of psychology at Drew University, not involved in the study, told MNT:
“Society may not always understand that science is the process of refining knowledge, and while errors do occur, the scientist will update his beliefs in the light of the best evidence. The public may believe that scientists “don’t know what they’re talking about” when they are actually grappling with new, complex information and updating beliefs in the light of new discoveries. “
In the case of “mismatch between delivery and epistemic audience style,” they suggested conveying information in a style that suits their way of knowing, for example, “framing the message as imminent benefits for a promotional-focused audience, but as avoiding losses for a preventive-focused audience.” “
The researchers concluded that “scientists should be prepared to empathize” with the people they are trying to reach in order to best communicate their ideas.
Dr Scheufele added that while the study was very well-intentioned, it assumes that large groups of citizens are ‘anti-scientific’. He noted that in his experience, “Americans trust science more than almost any other institution except the military.
‘People can report exactly what scientists believe to be’ fixed discoveries ‘, but they draw very different conclusions about how it aligns with their political or religious values,’ added Dr Scheufele. “Here there are discrepancies between the somewhat naive models of scientific communication with the sage […] and the realities of social debates around science.”
He pointed out that while scientific research can provide statistical evidence for different outcomes – whether related to public or environmental health – they cannot tell people if they should do the right thing. Rather, he thinks it is a political issue that is “informed but not determined by science”.
Dr Scheufele also noted that citizens and policymakers may have different priorities than scientists and therefore prefer different methods and results. “It’s not people who are against science, these are the realities of creating a democratic science policy,” he told us.
Last year, Dr. Scheufele co-wrote an article warning against scientists who want to fix “public pathologies” and build as much support for new science as possible.
In his opinion, “artificial intelligence, brain organoids and other groundbreaking scientific research undermine what it means to be human. In these contexts, public blind trust in science would be as democratically undesirable as no trust in general. “
“A society that is critical of and continuously evaluating science is extremely important as we have to make difficult political, moral and regulatory choices in many of these new fields of science. Simply limiting ourselves to anything that is not in line with the preferences of the scientific establishment as “anti-science” is not only a simplification, but is inherently undemocratic, “he commented.
However, he agreed with the authors of the current study, who noted that “people with greater science literacy are simply more sophisticated in reinforcing their existing beliefs by selecting curated ideas and information to defend their worldview.”
“Ironically, this diagnosis also describes what many scientists do when they mourn the anti-science sentiment among the public: their complaints may reflect their own worldview more than what the public really cares about,” he concluded.
Can scientific knowledge be trusted?
Science is the best way we know to develop reliable knowledge. Read also : How Queer Chefs Reclaim bottom line food. It is a collective and cumulative process of evaluating evidence that leads to ever more accurate and reliable information.
What Makes Scientific Knowledge Reliable? Reliable knowledge is knowledge that has a high probability of truthfulness, because its truthfulness has been justified by a reliable method. Reliable knowledge is sometimes called reasonable true belief to distinguish reliable knowledge from belief that is false and unreasonable, or even true but unfounded.
Why trust in science is important?
It is a fundamental part of any relationship, but for the mutual benefit of the scientific endeavor and the people who support it, trust is essential. Simply put, a scientific endeavor that is not trusted by the public cannot adequately contribute to the development of society and, as a result, will be limited.
Is science based on trust?
While science is said to be evidence-based, it’s actually based on trust for most people. Scientific evidence is largely unavailable. To see also : Craftsmen, vendors galore at the Fort Greene International Festival of African Arts. Scientific journals are hard to come by, and their articles are written in a specialized language that is incomprehensible to everyone except a few experts in the field.
How many scientific papers are wrong?
According to the new analysis, most of the published scientific papers are incorrect. To see also : Launch of Hong Kong Science Fair Celebrates Young Hong Kong Designers. Assuming the new article is correct in itself, problems with experimental and statistical methods mean that there is a less than 50% chance that the results of any randomly selected research article are… true.
Are all scientific journals reliable? Most journals are reliable. But at the bottom of the list in terms of impact are two types of journals: reputable journals that publish peer-reviewed results that are solid but of little interest – because they can feature dead ends or very specialized local topics.
How many scientific papers are never cited?
When it comes to literature as a whole – 39 million scientific articles across all disciplines registered in the Web of Science from 1900 to the end of 2015 – about 21% have yet to be cited.
What percent of published research is wrong?
, and is free from bias, there is still a 36% chance that a document with a positive result will be incorrect; if the baseline probability of a true outcome is lower, it will also lower the PPV.
What makes science scientific?
Science is the search and application of knowledge and the understanding of the natural and social world according to a systematic, evidence-based methodology. The scientific methodology includes the following: Objective observation: Measurement and data (possibly, but not necessarily using mathematics as a tool) Evidence.
What Makes Life Science Scientific? The natural sciences are one branch of science dealing with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation.
What makes an idea scientific?
A scientific idea is an explanation of how something works, or the truth about some aspect of the world that has been known through a scientific process. Science is how we understand the world by collecting data and conducting experiments. Scientific ideas change over time as our evidence improves.
What 3 things make something scientific?
Scientific arguments consist of three elements: an idea (hypothesis or theory), expectations generated by that idea (often called predictions), and actual observations relating to those expectations (evidence).
