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A survey from September 2021 suggested that 61% of Americans accepted COVID-19 as a major public health threat.

A recent survey of Americans found a greater rise in climate change among Democrat-leaning respondents (27%) compared to Republican-leaning respondents (6%).

Understanding why people may ignore scientific evidence when expressing opinions can help scientists and science advocates contribute to society.

Recently, researchers highlighted four main reasons why people may ignore scientific evidence when expressing opinions, as well as strategies to improve communication.

“The authors agree with many important recommendations that researchers and science communication experts have been promoting for a long time now,” Dr. Dietram A. Scheufele, a distinguished professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was not involved in the study, said. Medical News Today.

“Perhaps above all: Communicate your messages in ways that are responsive rather than mocking the things that are important to the people you are trying to reach,” he explained.

For the study, the researchers combined recent research on anti-science attitudes with principles from research on attitudes, motivation, social influence, social identity, and the acceptance of contrast. refuse information.

In doing so, they identified four principles that support the rejection of scientific evidence when forming opinions:

Dr. Bastiaan Rutjens, assistant professor of Social Psychology at the University of Amsterdam, who was not involved in the study, told MNT that “[it] is important to understand that anti-scientific beliefs do not represent only one organization but are different and they are different. […] it reflects very different possibilities.”

“In some cases, scientific literacy is a more important predictor, so the principle associated with the way of thinking can be very important, while in other cases political opinion plays an important role. but in some cases religious or spiritual beliefs contradict scientific theories,” he noted.

To oppose the above principles, the researchers proposed several solutions. For the “source of the scientific message” they suggested:

To deal with the “recipient of the scientific message,” they suggested implementing a shared or higher identity process when discussing science and connecting and interacting with disadvantaged communities.

For the “scientific message itself,” the researchers suggested:

Dr. Scott Morgan, an assistant professor of psychology at Drew University, who was not involved in the study, told MNT:

“People may not always understand that science is a way of refining knowledge, and even though mistakes happen, scientists will update their beliefs based on the best evidence. People may believe that scientists ‘don’t know what they’re talking about’ but in reality, they are grappling with new, complex information and beliefs that are updated based on new findings.”

For the “mismatch between the delivery of the speech and the way of thinking of the receivers,” they suggested that the information be conveyed in a way that is compatible with their way of knowing, such as “doing messages as looming gains for promotion-oriented recipients, but loss avoidance for prevention-oriented recipients. ”

The researchers concluded that “scientists should be willing to empathize” with the people they are trying to reach to express their views better.

Dr. Scheufele added that while the study is well-intentioned, it assumes that large sections of the population are “against science.” He noted that, in his experience, “Americans trust science more than almost any other institution, except the military.

“People can give an accurate account of what scientists consider to be ‘stable findings,’ but make very different decisions about how that fits with their political or religious values, “Dr. Scheufele added. “This is where the divides appear between the unconscious modes of scientific communication […] and the reality of public debate about science.”

He pointed out that, although scientific studies can provide statistical evidence for various outcomes – whether related to public health or the environment – they cannot tell people what to do. . He thinks this is a political question that is “informed, but not determined by science.”

Dr. Scheufele also noted that citizens and policymakers may have different priorities than scientists, so they choose different methods and outcomes. “That’s not anti-science people, that’s the reality of democratic policymaking,” he told us.

Last year, Dr. Scheufele wrote an article warning against scientists who aim to correct “social pathologies” and to build ​​new sciences as much as possible.

In his view, “[a]rtificial intelligence, brain systems, and other disruptive advances in science are challenging what it means to be human. In this situation, blind trust in science will be as undesirable in terms of democracy as it is not trustworthy at all.”

“A community that engages with science in a serious way and continues to explore science is very important as we need to make difficult political, ethical and regulatory decisions for many of these new areas of science. against anything that is not in line with scientific preferences as ‘anti-science’ is not only simplistic, but inherently undemocratic,” he opined.

However, he agreed with the authors of a recent study who noted that “people with more scientific literacy are more sophisticated in justifying their existing beliefs by selecting ideas and information to protect their worldview.”

“Ironically, this analysis also explains what many scientists do when they complain about anti-scientific sentiment in the public: Their complaints may be a reflection of their world than what the audience really cares about,” he concluded.

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