Examining the Mistrust of Science Proceedings of a Workshop–in Brief (2017) / Chapter Skim
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Examining the Mistrust of Science: Proceedings of a Workshop--in Brief
Examining the Mistrust of Science: Proceedings of a Workshop--in Brief
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A scientist will approach the question differently, not starting with a foregone conclusion and arguing towards it, but examining both sides of the evidence and trying to make a fair assessment." According to Otto, anti-science positions are now acceptable in public discourse, in Congress, state legislatures and city councils, in popular culture, and in presidential politics. Discounting factually incorrect statements does not necessarily reshape public opinion in the way some trust it to.
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. Otto's suggestions include a proposal that academics create a national center for science and self-government; journalists could improve attempts to hold the powerful accountable to evidence; and granting agencies could require and support public outreach by funding fulltime science communicators in each lab.
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Two groups -- parents with children ages 0 to 4, and younger adults more generally -- had comparatively more concern about the risks versus the benefits of vaccines.3 "Overall, there are divides in public opinion, but only one of these divides -- climate change -- is rooted in political party differences," said Funk. Pew researchers also looked at how the public perceives scientific consensus across these three issues -- estimating what share of scientists agree that vaccines are safe, that climate change is caused by human activity, and that GM food is safe -- and compared these perceptions with scientists' own perception of the consensus.
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SOURCE: Dan Kahan, Yale Law School. Kahan added that there is far less ideological difference on vaccines, in terms of trust in what medical scientists say dispelling links between vaccines and autism.
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"Ending polarization over these issues demands that institutions and norms protect the science communication environment from antagonistic social meanings and keep that environment pristine, so that people can get the benefits of what scientists know." The next presentation was given by Gordon Gauchat of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, who noted that people have limited time and energy to spend thinking about scientific knowledge. "Unlike interest groups who are engaged in these issues, most people do not really have strong attitudes about science or science issues, unless those issues are useful for making distinctions about cultural identities.
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It is the same quote, but the identity of the actor affects how people respond to the quote and to the news release content." Appropriated trust happens when someone who is not a scientist takes that mantle and invokes research they have read. "Trust always flows to the lowest level, so a person who talks about science attaches his or her credibility level to that science, not the other way around.
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Organizing Science to Regain Trust in Today's Political Climate The next presentation was offered by Dan Sarewitz of Arizona State University, who explored the question of whether science should be trusted. He showed a graph depicting the decline of manufacturing jobs juxtaposed against the increase in scientific peer-reviewed articles published over the past 40 years (see Figure 4)
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" An article Sarewitz wrote for Nature immediately after the 2016 election explored the question: what might a science policy strategy that addresses the economic disenfranchisement and deindustrialization of parts of the country look like? According to Sarewitz, "This question is important to for us to think about if we want to continue making claims about the connection between science and public welfare." Sarewitz made a plea to the scientific community to revive a more sophisticated form of the foundational political debate around science policy that happened between 1945 and 1950 over the creation of the National Science Foundation.
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" Like Sarewitz, Prabhakar also referenced Vannevar Bush's Science: The Endless Frontier, and was struck by how much has changed in the 70 years since its publication. According to Prabhakar, "Much of the rationale Bush laid out was based on the idea that the United States had relied on Europe for far too long and needed to develop its own capacity.
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If that is the sole rationale for public investment, should the sciences be funded at the same level as the arts, which exist to enhance the human experience? Factoring in inflation of the growth in GDP, we are now funding public R&D at the level of 10-100 times what Bush envisioned.
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STAFF: Susan Sauer Sloan, Director, GUIRR; Megan Nicholson, Associate Program Officer; Claudette Baylor-Fleming, Administrative Coordinator; Cynthia Getner, Financial Associate. SPONSORS: This workshop was supported by the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable Membership, National Institutes of Health, and the United States Department of Agriculture.
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