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May 4, 2022 · The U.S. Surgeon General and the World Health Organization (WHO) have declared that health misinformation is a threat to public health because it leads people to ignore science-based recommendations about behaviors to practice and to avoid.
- Overview
- Framework
- Counteracting anti-science beliefs
- Study limitations
- The question of democracy
•Researchers investigated the reasons behind why some people overlook scientific evidence when forming opinions.
•They highlighted four underlying principles, alongside ways to overcome them.
•They concluded that “scientists should be poised to empathize” with the people they try to reach to best communicate their ideas.
A poll from September 2021 suggested that 61% of Americans recognized COVID-19 as a major public health threat.
Another recent poll of Americans found a much higher rise in climate concern among Democrat-leaning respondents (27%) compared to those who were Republican-leaning (6%).
Understanding why people may overlook scientific evidence when forming opinions could help scientists and science communicators better engage the public.
For the study, the researchers connected contemporary findings on anti-science attitudes with principles from research on attitudes, persuasion, social influence, social identity, and acceptance versus rejection of information.
In doing so, they identified four principles that underlie the rejection of scientific evidence when forming opinions:
•source of the scientific message — when sources of scientific information, such as scientists, are perceived as inexpert or untrustworthy
•recipient of the scientific message — when scientific information activates one’s social identity as a member of a group that holds anti-science attitudes, that has been underrepresented in science or exploited by scientific work
•the scientific message itself — when scientific information contradicts preexisting beliefs, what people think is favorable and a preexisting sense of morality
•mismatch between the delivery of the message and the recipient’s epistemic style — when information is delivered in ways that a reader does not conceptually understand, or that does not address their need for closure.
To counteract the above principles, the researchers suggested several solutions. For “source of scientific message” they recommended:
•improving the perceived validity of scientists’ work
•conveying warmth and prosocial goals in science communication and using accessible language
•conveying that the source is not antagonistic by portraying both sides of the argument.
To address “recipient of the scientific message,” they recommended activating a shared or superordinate identity when communicating science and engaging and collaborating with marginalized communities.
For “the scientific message itself,” the researchers recommended:
Dr. Scheufele added that while the study has very good intentions, it presumes that large groups of citizens are “anti-science.” He noted that, in his experience, “Americans trust science more than almost any other institution, other than the military.
“People can accurately report on what scientists consider ‘settled findings,’ but they draw very different conclusions about how that aligns with their political or religious values,” Dr. Scheufele added. “This is where the disconnects come from between the somewhat naïve sage-on-the-stage models of science communication […] and the realities of societal debates surrounding science.”
He pointed out that, while scientific studies can provide statistical evidence for different outcomes — be they public health-related or environmental — they can not tell people whether they should act accordingly. This, he thinks, is instead a political question that is “informed, but not determined, by science.”
Dr. Scheufele also noted that citizens and policymakers might have different priorities than scientists and thus prefer different methods and outcomes. “That’s not people being anti-science, those are the realities of democratic science policy-making,” he told us.
Last year, Dr. Scheufele co-authored an article warning against scientists setting out to fix “public pathologies” and build as much buy-in to new science as possible.
In his view, “[a]rtificial intelligence, brain organoids, and other disruptive breakthrough science challenge what it means to be human. In those contexts, blind societal trust in science would be as democratically undesirable as no trust at all.”
“A public that critically engages with and continuously evaluates science is crucially important as we need to make difficult political, moral, and regulatory choices for many of these new areas of science. Simply reducing against anything that doesn’t align with the preferences of the scientific establishment as ‘anti-science’ is not only simplistic, it is inherently undemocratic,” he opined.
Yet he agreed with the authors of the current study who noted that “people with more scientific literacy are simply more sophisticated at bolstering their existing beliefs by cherry-picking ideas and information to defend their worldview.”
- Annie Lennon
Feb 4, 2022 · Untrustworthy science can and should be discounted and challenged, but uncertainty in science is unavoidable, and scientific characterization of uncertainty can be extremely useful when decision-makers have strategies for making decisions amidst that uncertainty.
Jul 1, 2021 · But in their zeal to fight back against vaccine rejection and other forms of science denial, some scientists say things that just aren't true—and you can't build trust if the things you...
Dec 27, 2022 · The trustworthiness of science should not require scientific expertise to assess. Expert Heather Douglas of Michigan State University argues in this think piece that trustworthiness should be based on the presence of expertise, good expert community functioning, and shared values.
Oct 9, 2020 · For example, a majority of Americans trust science as long as it does not challenge their existing beliefs. To the question “When science disagrees with the teachings of your religion,...
People also ask
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Nov 28, 2021 · We examine the kinds of bias that can affect science, the mechanisms available for dealing with them, and the arguments against treating them as a basis for blanket scepticism.
