Why do people reject good science? | Eugenie C. Scott

[Music] last month I had an opportunity to attend a conference in Stockholm where I found the Swedes using a term that I hadn't heard before knowledge resistance and some of us who are interested in science communication have been using the term denialism to refer to people who reject accurate information that would correct their misunderstanding but I'm I'm really growing to like the idea of knowledge resistance I think it applies to a much wider range of topics than certainly just science so I changed my title but I don't think you'll care of all that that's and there are a lot of things that people get wrong y'all know that great Woody Allen joke I've just finished the Evelyn Woods reading dynamics course in three hours I read war and peace it's about Russia and we only use 10% of our brains the Mozart Effect and so forth there's a lot of things that people get wrong but it's interesting that there are many things that we get wrong that people are willing to change their minds about if you explain why these notions are incorrect and then there's a whole lot of other topics that people are wrong about which seem not to be very susceptible to changing with new information the 9/11 truthers the creationists the climate change deniers etc providing more accurate information doesn't seem to change opinions or rejection of erroneous views so there seem to be some erroneous ideas that people change their minds about and others that they are very knowledge resistant why can we change our minds about some things but have a tough time changing our minds about others it's an interesting question but it's also a very important question for Americans and probably for other people around the world as well many crucial decisions that our society needs to make require accurate information and there are consequences when we make steak's Iraq having weapons of mass destruction being only one example or the idea that tax cuts for the wealthy increase more increased jobs there is a growing body of research on the subject of knowledge resistance and it's possible to make some tentative conclusions to explain this phenomenon though it's clear that obviously nobody's got all the answers at this point and certainly for people like us who are interested in science we would very much like to know better ways to get people to accept the scientific consensus on subjects like evolution climate change vaccinations and so forth so why do we have knowledge resistance well maybe the 9/11 truthers and creationists and people who think Trump's and aughh Eurasian crowd pictures were fakes are just dumb they're unintelligent it doesn't seem to be very likely no one is out there giving intelligence tests to climate science deniers but our experience dealing with people who hold such views certainly doesn't lead us to conclude that they are below average in intelligence as a group maybe they're ignorant recalling of course that stupidity and ignorant are two different things one is curable and that's a very interesting question and if the answer was ignorance then we would know how to go about solving about coping with knowledge resistance maybe they're ignorant and if we provide them with more information they will see the light as Steve novela noted yesterday and his lunchtime talk the knowledge deficit model however doesn't work very well at least for the second class of things people are knowledge resistant about but before you conclude that knowledge is irrelevant please note that there's research on this and the results are a bit mixed excuse me Dan kahan and colleagues surveyed a group of Americans about their attitudes toward climate change and also collected information on their general scientific and mathematical knowledge now if the ignorance is the explanation for knowledge resistance then we would expect people who know more science would tend to agree with scientists that climate change is something to be concerned about but that's not what kahan and his colleagues found kahan and his colleagues found that the more knowledgeable people tended to be less concerned with climate change yet there is other research that suggests that this is not the end of the story Gahan used a very general measure of scientific literacy the questions on the science and engineering indicators this is the publication that comes out every two years from the National Research Council of the National Science Foundation you're familiar with these questions this is the the survey of adult Americans that asks things like how does the earth go around the Sun of the Sun go around the earth and most Americans get that right this is good and then for those who get the answer right it asks how long does it take does it take one day one year it's there so you've you've run into this study before even if you didn't know what it stuff what it's called but this is a pretty low bar for science literacy most of the questions asked on the SceI are not terribly sophisticated so it's not hard to be somebody of relative higher science literacy excuse me Australian researchers instead asked their sample about not general science knowledge but knowledge of climate science Sofi guy and colleagues had a rather small sample but nonetheless they found that people who knew more about climate science were more concerned about its effects now there's more to this figure than I'm explaining but please hang in there I'll get to this individualism high and low a little bit later on but in general though it seems that ignorant of science is not the main driver of scientific excuse me of knowledge resistance well maybe knowledge resistors just hate science well this one we actually have considerable research on how many of you think Americans are anti science anybody have that opinion ok let's take a look at the data the Pew Research Center data on adult Americans shows that a majority of Americans believe science has a mostly positive effect on society and only four percent believe that science is mostly negative if Americans were anti science they would not be likely to trust scientists to be reliable sources of information on important issues yet for questions like the MMR vaccine measles mumps rubella the causes of climate change and GMO foods the public is more likely to trust scientists to provide information compared to other providers of information you'll notice elected officials are at the bottom which shows that Americans are at all uninformed in this 2014 harris poll on occupations and prestige scientists are right up there with doctors firemen in the military as high prestige occupations and maybe one of the best indicators that Americans have a very high regard for science is when people are asked would you encourage your child to go into this profession scientists are right up there with doctors and engineers so there doesn't appear to be a big anti science movement in the American public in fact this is just a smattering there are many many polls over many years that show that Americans have quite positive reactions to science they want their kids to study it they think science is a good thing so how many of you think Americans are anti science there are fewer see it goes to show information does help denying evolution or climate change or vaccinations or other scientific topics is not the same thing as saying I think science is bad what people are saying is I don't like this science but science is good I don't like that science but science is good this is at least what the data seemed to show us so what can explain knowledge resistance apparently it's not stupidity ignorance or hatred of science so what is it there are a lot of concepts that are floating around in the literature which overlap a lot cultural cognition confirmation bias etc for our purposes for my purposes today they all refer in some way to viewing factual information through a filter usually an ideological or values Laden or identification filter the ideas we are reluctant to change are the ones that have negative consequences or otherwise challenge our ideologies values or social identification values and ideology are shared by we social primates and become part of the identification that we share with our tribes identification can also sometimes refer to one's livelihoods we can change our minds more easily about what percentage of our brains do we use then we can about the prospect of Lewis losing a job in the oil industry let me put in a good word for ideology to many people ideology is a four-letter word in the cartoon it's contrasted with science science is good therefore ideology must be bad I prefer a different understanding of ideology the word ideology is like the word operation it depends on the context that you were in which you're using that term a lobotomy and an appendectomy are both operations I have had one and I assume you will grant me the benefit of the doubt as to which of these two it is but in all seriousness just like with operations there are ideologies that are destructive and injurious and those that are beneficial and fulfilling ideologies affect how we shape our lives and how we run our lives they are our isms and they reflect and to some degree determine what is important to us and each of us is a mixture of ideologies one can be a feminist humanist environmentalist feminism humanism and environmentalism these isms our ideologies reflecting values we consider important are some of us consider important values are part of being a social primates they govern our interactions we human beings live in groups we identify with other people we form tribes skeptics are a tribe in some context holding mutual values and interests we embrace groups that share our ideologies so when I talk about people being motivated by ideologies it's not necessarily a bad thing it is in fact a human thing and context determines whether it is good or bad the problem is when an ideological position determines excuse me when an ideological position prevents someone from considering empirical evidence that might conflict with values or ideologies and overcoming that very human tendency is one of the hardest things we have to do and most people including skeptics don't do it very well none of us we all need to practice harder and much of knowledge resistance is grounded exactly here so let's look at how ideologies values and identifications can affect knowledge resistance working with some ideas from the anthropologist Mary Douglas they Cahan and colleagues at the yellow cultural cognition laboratory suggested that people can be placed along two axes depending on their values there is an individual communic individualist communitarian axis and a cross-cutting hierarchical egalitarian axis now everybody has tendencies on both of these I'm sure you can go online and fill out a questionnaire or somewhere and find out where you fit on this grid and it's good clean fun that's fine these values are loosely associated with political party and course other groupings as well Republicans are more likely to be hierarchical and individualistic Democrats are more likely to be egalitarian and communitarian libertarians are egalitarian individualist and I didn't know their symbol was the porcupine either in the literature there's not much of a discussion about that northeast quadrant there in my opinion evangelical Christians are hierarchical eteri ins but of course this is not really parallel to the other three cells which are political parties so take that with a grand grain of salt there but these axes are kin are associated with differing opinions about social issues what's do people holding these differing views worry about well hierarchical individualist don't worry much about climate change nanotechnology or guns but they are very concerned about gun control diagonally to them egalitarian communitarians worry a lot about climate change nanotechnology and guns but are rather positive about gun control and differences occur between the other two diagonals as well these concerns reflect values and ideologies as well as identities with groups and individualist egalitarian if you're down in the lower left who feel strongly about involuntary mental health treatment is going to be resistant to information that promotes that practice such information may threaten libertarian values and or potentially cause a rift with other libertarians the tribe so such information is likely to be rejected kahan and colleagues surveyed about how much risk they associate with global warming which is that Green Line gun ownership the red line marijuana legalization the blue line and vaccinations and found strong correlations with political affiliation liberals were very concerned about global warming and gun ownership and not especially concerned about marijuana legalization and conservatives were just the opposite now childhood vaccinations were very interesting and an exception but then a huge majority over 90 percent of Americans think vaccination is a good idea you should get your kids vaccinated and they get their kids vaccinated and so the variance is much less deal with if you're talking about statistics vaccination is not a left right kind of thing and there's more data on this actually given that people hold values related to an issue can you change opinions with more information now the bulk of the studies show that when information contradicts values ideologies or identification it's going to be resistant let's look at some research by Hannah and Riefler conducted several studies all showing about the same thing when people with strong opinions are presented with articles that correct misinformation they don't change their views they often double down on their original positions and one example subjects were given a fake news article to read quoting President George W Bush making a statement that sounded like Iraq had weapons of mass destruction it was followed up by a correction hmm excuse me and then subjects were asked whether Saddam had stockpiles of WMD s people who reported themselves as strongly conservative were even more likely to believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction after reading the correction in another study they quoted President Bush as claiming the tax cuts improved government revenue than they gave them a correction from actually a Republican Bush advisor that in fact tax cuts do not improve government revenue and they found that the subjects who got the correction were more likely to believe the original erroneous statement the tax cuts improved government revenue this is referred to as the backfire effect the backfire effect though doesn't always happen and I think that's an important thing to realize not everyone doubles down mostly to occurs among the people who are the most polarized in another study by nine hands group they had a sample of parents ranging from strong anti-vaccination to strong Pro vaccinations one group was given an article debunking the idea that the measles mumps rubella vaccine caused autism now overall the autism correction story decreased the percentage of parents who thought vaccines caused autism but it didn't work for a subset of the parents who were really really really strong anti-vaxxers for that group that caused a backfire effect so I mean one posit they don't they didn't state but one possibility is that giving them the correction might have reinforced their somewhat conspiracy inclinations but in any regard the take-home here is don't assume that providing information always fails the backfire effect isn't universal nobody in this research field is saying don't try to correct misinformation nobody is saying that information doesn't count but it has to be used correctly and that is needs all that more research in this study kahan and did the study blew my mind when I was reading kahan and colleagues tested a sample of adult of Americans on numeracy are they good at math can they read charts can can they do simple numerical calculations and in the sample you had numeracy ranging from high to low they also collected information on the political leanings of their sample when asked to evaluate a study of the efficacy of a skin cream for treating rashes the more numerous did better which you would expect they were asked to evaluate a two by two table whereas some people got the skin cream some did not and some got better and some got worse they were asked to decide whether using the skin cream is more likely to make the rash get better for part of the sample the correct answer was that the rash got worse for another part of the sample the rash got better but they used the same numbers for the cells in both treatments okay all they did is change the column headings but then they changed it up a bit and using the same numbers in each cell asked subjects to decide whether gun control has a positive or negative effect on crime if you ban concealed weapons does that increase or decrease crime as with the hand cream they jeered the column headings so part of the sample would get one correct answer that's see the crime decreases another part of the sample would get the other correct answer which is D that crime increases if the numbers were the same for all treatments this is a really depressing research now overall most of the sample did pretty poorly on either the skin cream or the gun control question skin creams on the Left gun control the question is on the right regardless of the correct answer the cream works or it doesn't work handgun control desert doesn't reduce crime it wasn't until you got up to the higher levels of numeracy that substantial percentage of people got the answer right but what you want to look at here is the shape of the distribution it's pretty similar low numeracy equals more wrong answers high numeracy is more correct answers this changed a bit when they factored in political identification as in the previous slide rash increases or decreases are both correct answers depending on the column headings and here the results are separated by party affiliation blue for Liberal Democrats red for conservative Republicans as in the general population results the more numerous did better than the least number and party affiliation didn't really make any difference the red and blue lines are pretty similar it's a little different for the gun control answer here Democrats largely believe that crime decreases when guns are restricted and when that is the correct answer they're more likely to get it right and when crime increases is the correct answer they are more likely to get it wrong which fits their ideology similarly Republicans are more likely to get correct that crime increases when you restrict guns and less likely to get it right when the correct answer is crime decreases which is ideologically less attractive and and this is the really depressing part notice that having greater numeracy doesn't make you more likely to get it right if the right answer doesn't fit with your ideology now there are a lot of studies like this showing that values ideology or identification tend to trump empirical evidence in a half hour I don't have time to give you more examples but the literature is full of them my personal experience dealing with creationism and climate change underscores these conclusions which is really great when the research supports your idiosyncratic experience and identification as a conservative Christian and the ideology of biblical literalism are major barriers to the acceptance of evolution for conservative Christians similarly the values of personal responsibility small government has strong military the importance of capitalism and recently at least identification as a Republican our prime inhibitors of the acceptance of anthropogenic global climate change for political conservatives so what to do about it I think coping with knowledge resistance requires distinguishing between opinion and fact probably everybody in this room would agree with Senator Moynihan everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts in a democracy people will have different opinions and debates about opinions are healthy there are very important issues that Americans have different opinions about how to handle health care what to do about Isis the problem of criminal justice what to do about gun violence or climate change and so we're facts and empirical information come in is in informing these opinions but those of us from the fact-based world have to realize that opinions include so much more than facts and empirical evidence we risk committing Huxley's naturalistic fallacy if we don't realize that the way things are is not necessarily the way things should be and opinions are quite often about the shoulds so let us by all means vigorously debate our opinions opinions hopefully informed by empirical and factual information but opinions are determined by more than just the facts they're determined also by our values and our ideologies but opinion should not be confused with whether the earth goes around the Sun or the Sun goes around the earth with weather living things have common ancestors with whether a co2 is a warming gas those are not opinions and scientists have already debated them - creationists evolution is an opinion not scientifically real - climate change deniers a warming planet is an opinion not scientifically real excuse me part of our job is to get people to realize the difference between science and opinions that may be informed by science to a greater or lesser degree debate opinions it's good clean fun to argue about whether we should have a carbon tax or cap-and-trade but we shouldn't be debating whether we are experiencing anthropogenic global warming this may not be as difficult as it seems because Americans already have an interest in and high degree of acceptance and confidence in science but ultimately our task is not primarily about the science the problem isn't primarily science deficits the science isn't going to be listened to if people have their fingers jammed in their ears what keeps the fingers jammed in the ears is the belief that something very important is going to be lost if the other guy is right - anti-evolutionists if evolution is true the consequences are stupendous and horrendous they believe they have to give up their belief in God and the truth of the Bible which means the loss of salvation loss of a center for morality and behavior the loss of friends social support their tribal affiliation for climate Sharon change contrarians they believe that climate change alarmists will weaken the economy increase central government endanger national security and require compromises in individual liberty if those concerns are despised all the science in the world won't be convincing the values ideology and identification variables are essential to consider in addition to the science a communications research has suggested that changing minds requires effective messages and there's a lot of research on what these messages would be of course depending on subject effective messages for evolution will be different from those for climate will be different from those for tax policy and so forth and so on I did a radio show a couple of years ago in Canada where there was in the community there was this tiny little flare-up of anti-vaxxers 'im and I remember just being so delighted because the talk-show host that the host of the radio interview program was saying how in her opinion one of the really important reasons for getting your children vaccinated was herd immunity to protect the community I was thinking god I love Canada I you know can you imagine saying that in the United States and getting a whole bunch of people saying yes we should all go and get our kids immunized so that we will have social solidarity and group no I I just don't think that would be in effect I think it's a really important message I don't think it'd be very effective with Americans there's been a lot of research about crafting messages and maybach at the George Mason Center for climate change communication stresses simplicity when communicating the importance of climate change their research show that people who have these five beliefs it's happening it's real it's us it's bad it's solvable these are the people who are more likely to support action regarding climate change translating these beliefs into messages has generated another large literature for example point for that climate change is bad for people rather than other organisms is more effective we care more about people than we do about polar bears so stressing the health problems associated with climate change is one such effective message importantly the message has to come from a trusted messenger now of course the most trusted messengers are the ones who are most like you the idea is that someone like yourself can speak the same language has the same values and concerns and identifications a friend told me he got into a discussion about GMOs with an acquaintance and wasn't making any headway at all at one point the other guy said something like oh you libertarians are all alike mrs. libertarian well I'm not libertarian I'm a socialist totally change the whole conversation the other guy started to listen and my friend described this at because I was like him maybe I was saying something that ought to be listened to evangelical Christians who accept evolution like Dennis Lamoureux and Glenn Morton and pretty much anybody from BioLogos are very important messengers to the evangelical community about evolution Katharine Hayhoe is a climate scientist who is also an evangelical Christian as a fellow evangelical she is in a unique position to be a trusted messenger to evangelicals who reject climate change the trusted messenger has to have the right message to be effective Katherine's message to her fellow evangelicals stresses a theology called Creation Care stewardship theology and also the value is expressed in social gospel theology which is important to many evangelicals by the way don't confuse the anti-evolution movement with the anti climate science movement there are by and large different groups the major motivating factor for anti evolution is religious ideology conservative Christianity the major motivating idea climate change rejection rejection is political and/or economic conservatism there's a little overlap of evangelical Christians who are anti climate change but that's because they are also politically conservative there's a whole lot of green Christians who are very very much concerned about climate change there's a certain amount of overlap with political conservatives and the anti-evolution movement but that's because they are religious conservatives as well as political conservatives this is much easier if I had a Venn diagram to show you these overlapping things here but you know one reason why why I read my talks is so otherwise I go off my tether and I start talking about all these other things and then I go way over my time oh crap here I go again so I'm just gonna I'm gonna go back to the notes okay stay with me anyway Katherine's great these individuals can be trusted messengers on climate change to different audiences Bob Inglis is a former Republican congressman Michael Shermer is a libertarian another group that has been known to reject climate change and Richard syczyk is the former head of the National Association of Evangelicals interestingly enough all three of them have had conversions from being climate change contrarians to recognizing the reality of anthropogenic climate change finally communication specialists tell us that messages need to be repeated often before they are absorbed finally climate communication specialists tell us that messages need to be repeated often before they are observed another ad lib and I'm going over time I often I always used to tell my colleagues at NCSC that no one ever changed somebody's mind in one pass the best you can hope for is to crack that door a little bit and then maybe the next person to come along with that same message may be able to crack the door a little bit better don't expect to change ever somebody's mind in one barrage of information shall we say and about this repetition thing there is research to show that an idea well such as the lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that's repeated very often in the news eventually gets accepted or at least more people will accept it this of course can be good or bad NPR released a poll a few days ago reporting that 55 percent of American White's believe that whites are discriminated against the data do not support that minorities are getting all the jobs perhaps this qualifies as a message repeated often which becomes accepted so what does research tell us about knowledge resistance well we know there are some ideas that we that can change our minds about and others that we are resistant to change our minds about it's partly the ideas themselves you can change your mind about how photosynthesis works or that we use 10% of our brain because those ideas don't challenge our ideologies values or identification with social groups we know that people are reluctant to change their minds for many reasons and it's not stupidity ignorance or rejection of science it's not that people ignore the science Americans like science and there is evidence that information can change minds it's not all the backfire effect it's just that ideology values and how people identify with others comes first before the science can be listened to finally we need to consider communication strategies that have been shown to work to help us do a better job here is my low-tech suggestion people need to talk to one another we need to build up relationships of trust which requires mutual respect trusted messengers are listened to the most trusted are people from the same tribe clearly but even if you're from a different tribe you can build a trustful relationship with someone who disagrees with you who has different opinions as a humanist I nonetheless have built up a level of trust among evangelical Christians over the years by treating them respect and listening to their concerns you learn a lot that way mutual respect Oh occurs when people get to know one another as individuals rather than as symbols if you can establish trustful relationship then there's a chance that you can get the fingers out of the ears and that you can move forward the science then has a chance to be listened to and I'll bet you everybody in this room has confidence that science can make a difference information can make a difference what we know the evidence supports is very important once values ideology and identification are not the most important issues thank you very much [Applause]

Channel: Center for Inquiry

Views: 11,389

Keywords: Eugenie C. Scott, reject good science, evolution, climate change, CSICon Las Vegas, CSICon, Center For Inquiry, CFI, Skeptics, Skepticism, skeptic, Science (Field Of Study), pseudoscience, pseudoscience vs science, sound research, scientific method, anti-vax movement, evolution wars, Why people believe anti-vaxx, Why people believe anti-vax, well-founded medical research

Id: 1U7exr4EGr0

Length: 35min 6sec (2106 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 26 2018