5 ms·

Scientific communication in a post-truth society

34 points by joeyespo 8y ago

foolrush 8y ago
Seems like the scientism in this paper neglected to historicise the notion of “post truth”. Sociologist and well studied scholar Nathan Jurgenson wrote a recent piece regarding our collective willingness to subscribe to this belief: https://reallifemag.com/faked-out/ https://reallifemag.com/faked-out/ > Kakutani misses how poststructural and postmodern thought has long been a response to science’s unwarranted claims of neutrality and objectivity. Yes, sometimes this work really is just a set of stylistic whims and nihilistic postures or arguments for full epistemic relativism. But the core of much of what was popular and is still taught — Foucault, Haraway, Harding, Latour, and so on — uses empirical evidence to show that objectivity is never as such. These theorists show how accepted notions of truth are deeply rooted in cultural contingencies, and that interrogating these notions helps better articulate reality than accepting false objectivism with blind faith. This work was not “post-truth,” but rather called for smaller, more local truths instead of absolute or universal claims made from a posture of neutrality. Epistemology isn’t new, and lays below the foundation of “science”. This isn’t a new concept, but one that we are sadly being forced to face in contemporary culture.
- tensor 8y ago
  I feel like this is the philosophical equivalent of "all sides are the same." That is to say, it's a way to just dismiss the issues rather then try to fix them and be more objective.
  - DennisAleynikov 8y ago
    Is that incorrect? Is some science more correct than other science? All sides are the same in this case, and communication in a climate of science where P values are eeked out of questionable datasets who is truly agendaless? Science used to carry this undeserved "objectivism" which has always been informed opinion, subject to change by newer more compelling research. So I don't understand what really changed. It's always been a post truth society.
    - presscast 8y ago
      You realize _some_ science put a man on the moon, right? Clearly some of it is "more correct".
      - goatlover 8y ago
        Technology is a good counter to science being part of the post-truth world. Prior to modern science, the world was more post-truth than it is now with rampant superstition and religious authorities dictating the truth. Someone gets sick and the cause is likely a curse, possession, or sinning against God. Now we know about cells and germs.
    - tensor 8y ago
      All sides are not the same. First, science is a process with the goal of objectively determining truths about the world. Already it is wildly different from most other processes whose goals are things like building something, making money, influencing people, etc. Just that different alone is huge. It's like comparing runners to people who don't even enter the race and claiming they are the same. But what most people refer to when they talk about science is the results of the process. There too, we have a wide spectrum of quality. It's rather dishonest to throw all results into a single bucket and then cherry pick the poor quality results and claim everything is the same. It is not. On p-values, yes, there is currently a large problem with some areas of science not understanding statistics correctly. This is not a problem with the theoretical process or goal, it is a problem with implementation that should be addressed. But again, to compare even this with non-scientific information which is literally made up to suite various non-scientific goals is very dishonest. These bodies of information are not remotely "the same." The whole post-truth this article refers to is more about the wider dissemination of scientific knowledge to non-practitioners. While it's always been a challenge to communicate sometimes complex information to the wider public, what has changed in society today is arguably the amount of "corrupted" versions of the data. When you have people taking the scientific results and producing slightly distorted versions with the intention of misleading or making it hard to discern what is original, it's a bigger problem. This is what the article is referring to as "post-truth." It's a wider societal problem that affects both scientific knowledge and other information alike. Let's not dismissing the problem by saying "all sides are the same." There is a very large range of quality of information, it is not all the same. The amount of bias and ulterior agenda in information varies hugely.
  - gweinberg 8y ago
    There's a huge difference between saying "there's more than one side to the story" and saying "all sides are equally valid". Similarly, there's a huge difference between saying " scientists must make value judgments, if only to decide what is important or interesting" and saying "it's all subjective". As scientists we are supposed to be trying to answer questions. If we've decided in advance what the answer should be, and that we'll spin the data to get the preconceived result if possible and bury the result if it isn't what we wanted, we're not doing science, we're doing antiscience masquerading as science. There is a lot of that out there.
    - DennisAleynikov 8y ago
      This. And ultimately to prove the record of scientific knowledge we need reproducible data that can be independently confirmed. Its entirely possible and common to do science wrong and that's kinda the point. To try and find truth and then corroborate claims with other researchers. Science is always a best guess until a better guess comes along.
booleandilemma 8y ago
I feel like anyone who uses the phrase “post-truth society” has an agenda.
- DennisAleynikov 8y ago
  Yeah especially since that term is used to describe the Trump campaign and fake news in one go. More truthful analysis would reveal science was never objective and just a collection of best guesses by all the scientists that contribute to the body of work. Truth was never an easy to define concept so the fact we only now realize that is almost scarier.
- buboard 8y ago
  "We can talk about post-truth, because We know the Truth"
conistonwater 8y ago
> Distrust in the scientific enterprise and misperceptions of scientific knowledge increasingly stem less from problems of communication and more from the widespread dissemination of misleading and biased information. What's interesting about this is that I think it directly contradicts what people like Dan Kahan have been saying (http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/ http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/), which is that motivated reasoning has always been the key problem for science communication, and that the only thing that really changes is not so much the degree of political partisanship but the choice of which scientific issues are the ones that end up being linked to politics. (For example, vaccinations have all the potential to be divisive but nevertheless have almost no political partisanship about them apart from the occasional tweet by Trump.) It seems they put up the videos of the colloquium at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGJm1x3XQeK2xwsj2vkRgovtvIWSNstex https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGJm1x3XQeK2xwsj2vkRg... Also, I had to look this up, it's an Arthur M. Sackler Colloquium, which is the Sackler that marketed Valium (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_M._Sackler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_M._Sackler), not one of the Sacklers responsible for Oxycontin.
buboard 8y ago
Why does this crap get published in PNAS and our papers don't? Oh i guess we ll never know , and i don't see a comment section. Apart from the suspicious title and almost vulgar buzzword journo-lingo, the article doesn't add citations for its their most controversial claims such as this: > "Democrats are the party of the poor, city dwellers,women, nonwhites, and secularists. Republicans, in contrast, represent white males, rural areas, evangelicals, and the well off." , they admit to invalid extrapolations of their own claims (ref 28) and their analysis lacks any attempts at comparative analysis. Their entire message is that "scientists have to put up with fake news". Yeah tough shit, this is 2018. So much more could be said about decades of promotic "scientific" politics (technocracy) and its failures as well. And apparently, this is an opinion piece which somehow got peer reviewed and it dates from April.
- EGreg 8y ago
  Because in postmodernism, rationality and logic is a tool of the patriarchy, the (various types of) establishment, or otherwise a construct of those in power, against those who are not in power. Thus we must balance it out https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3463968/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3463968/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair https://everydayfeminism.com/2016/03/why-rationalism-is-irrational/ https://everydayfeminism.com/2016/03/why-rationalism-is-irra... http://www.indiana.edu/~koertge/rfemlog.html http://www.indiana.edu/~koertge/rfemlog.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_wars A number of different philosophical and historical schools, often grouped together as "postmodernism", began reinterpreting scientific achievements of the past through the lens of the practitioners, often positing the influence of politics and economics in the development of scientific theories in addition to scientific observations. Rather than being presented as working entirely from positivistic observations, many scientists of the past were scrutinized for their connection to issues of gender, sexual orientation, race, and class. Some more radical philosophers, such as Paul Feyerabend, argued that scientific theories were themselves incoherent and that other forms of knowledge production (such as those used in religion) served the material and spiritual needs of their practitioners with equal validity as did scientific explanations.
nuguy 8y ago
Assuming that this is a well known and trusted scientific website, this kind of message just gives tons of ammo, very legitimate ammo, to political entities that claim the scientific community has political bias. This article is clearly left-wing, not neutral. It is absolutely imperative that science and politics are kept separate so that there is no opportunity for people to claim that a scientific insight is politically biased or motivated. For example, the left leaning tone of this article could make it more difficult for a right wing person to believe other scientific literature that claims global warming is real. Anyone who advocates political messages in the scientific community is an enemy of society.

34 points by joeyespo 8y ago

Seems like the scientism in this paper neglected to historicise the notion of “post truth”. Sociologist and well studied scholar Nathan Jurgenson wrote a recent piece regarding our collective willingness to subscribe to this belief: https://reallifemag.com/faked-out/ https://reallifemag.com/faked-out/ > Kakutani misses how poststructural and postmodern thought has long been a response to science’s unwarranted claims of neutrality and objectivity. Yes, sometimes this work really is just a set of stylistic whims and nihilistic postures or arguments for full epistemic relativism. But the core of much of what was popular and is still taught — Foucault, Haraway, Harding, Latour, and so on — uses empirical evidence to show that objectivity is never as such. These theorists show how accepted notions of truth are deeply rooted in cultural contingencies, and that interrogating these notions helps better articulate reality than accepting false objectivism with blind faith. This work was not “post-truth,” but rather called for smaller, more local truths instead of absolute or universal claims made from a posture of neutrality. Epistemology isn’t new, and lays below the foundation of “science”. This isn’t a new concept, but one that we are sadly being forced to face in contemporary culture.

tensor 8y ago
I feel like this is the philosophical equivalent of "all sides are the same." That is to say, it's a way to just dismiss the issues rather then try to fix them and be more objective.
- DennisAleynikov 8y ago
  Is that incorrect? Is some science more correct than other science? All sides are the same in this case, and communication in a climate of science where P values are eeked out of questionable datasets who is truly agendaless? Science used to carry this undeserved "objectivism" which has always been informed opinion, subject to change by newer more compelling research. So I don't understand what really changed. It's always been a post truth society.
  - presscast 8y ago
    You realize _some_ science put a man on the moon, right? Clearly some of it is "more correct".
    - goatlover 8y ago
      Technology is a good counter to science being part of the post-truth world. Prior to modern science, the world was more post-truth than it is now with rampant superstition and religious authorities dictating the truth. Someone gets sick and the cause is likely a curse, possession, or sinning against God. Now we know about cells and germs.
  - tensor 8y ago
    All sides are not the same. First, science is a process with the goal of objectively determining truths about the world. Already it is wildly different from most other processes whose goals are things like building something, making money, influencing people, etc. Just that different alone is huge. It's like comparing runners to people who don't even enter the race and claiming they are the same. But what most people refer to when they talk about science is the results of the process. There too, we have a wide spectrum of quality. It's rather dishonest to throw all results into a single bucket and then cherry pick the poor quality results and claim everything is the same. It is not. On p-values, yes, there is currently a large problem with some areas of science not understanding statistics correctly. This is not a problem with the theoretical process or goal, it is a problem with implementation that should be addressed. But again, to compare even this with non-scientific information which is literally made up to suite various non-scientific goals is very dishonest. These bodies of information are not remotely "the same." The whole post-truth this article refers to is more about the wider dissemination of scientific knowledge to non-practitioners. While it's always been a challenge to communicate sometimes complex information to the wider public, what has changed in society today is arguably the amount of "corrupted" versions of the data. When you have people taking the scientific results and producing slightly distorted versions with the intention of misleading or making it hard to discern what is original, it's a bigger problem. This is what the article is referring to as "post-truth." It's a wider societal problem that affects both scientific knowledge and other information alike. Let's not dismissing the problem by saying "all sides are the same." There is a very large range of quality of information, it is not all the same. The amount of bias and ulterior agenda in information varies hugely.
- gweinberg 8y ago
  There's a huge difference between saying "there's more than one side to the story" and saying "all sides are equally valid". Similarly, there's a huge difference between saying " scientists must make value judgments, if only to decide what is important or interesting" and saying "it's all subjective". As scientists we are supposed to be trying to answer questions. If we've decided in advance what the answer should be, and that we'll spin the data to get the preconceived result if possible and bury the result if it isn't what we wanted, we're not doing science, we're doing antiscience masquerading as science. There is a lot of that out there.
  - DennisAleynikov 8y ago
    This. And ultimately to prove the record of scientific knowledge we need reproducible data that can be independently confirmed. Its entirely possible and common to do science wrong and that's kinda the point. To try and find truth and then corroborate claims with other researchers. Science is always a best guess until a better guess comes along.

booleandilemma 8y ago

I feel like anyone who uses the phrase “post-truth society” has an agenda.

DennisAleynikov 8y ago
Yeah especially since that term is used to describe the Trump campaign and fake news in one go. More truthful analysis would reveal science was never objective and just a collection of best guesses by all the scientists that contribute to the body of work. Truth was never an easy to define concept so the fact we only now realize that is almost scarier.
buboard 8y ago
"We can talk about post-truth, because We know the Truth"

conistonwater 8y ago

> Distrust in the scientific enterprise and misperceptions of scientific knowledge increasingly stem less from problems of communication and more from the widespread dissemination of misleading and biased information. What's interesting about this is that I think it directly contradicts what people like Dan Kahan have been saying (http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/ http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/), which is that motivated reasoning has always been the key problem for science communication, and that the only thing that really changes is not so much the degree of political partisanship but the choice of which scientific issues are the ones that end up being linked to politics. (For example, vaccinations have all the potential to be divisive but nevertheless have almost no political partisanship about them apart from the occasional tweet by Trump.) It seems they put up the videos of the colloquium at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGJm1x3XQeK2xwsj2vkRgovtvIWSNstex https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGJm1x3XQeK2xwsj2vkRg... Also, I had to look this up, it's an Arthur M. Sackler Colloquium, which is the Sackler that marketed Valium (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_M._Sackler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_M._Sackler), not one of the Sacklers responsible for Oxycontin.

buboard 8y ago

Why does this crap get published in PNAS and our papers don't? Oh i guess we ll never know , and i don't see a comment section. Apart from the suspicious title and almost vulgar buzzword journo-lingo, the article doesn't add citations for its their most controversial claims such as this: > "Democrats are the party of the poor, city dwellers,women, nonwhites, and secularists. Republicans, in contrast, represent white males, rural areas, evangelicals, and the well off." , they admit to invalid extrapolations of their own claims (ref 28) and their analysis lacks any attempts at comparative analysis. Their entire message is that "scientists have to put up with fake news". Yeah tough shit, this is 2018. So much more could be said about decades of promotic "scientific" politics (technocracy) and its failures as well. And apparently, this is an opinion piece which somehow got peer reviewed and it dates from April.

EGreg 8y ago
Because in postmodernism, rationality and logic is a tool of the patriarchy, the (various types of) establishment, or otherwise a construct of those in power, against those who are not in power. Thus we must balance it out https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3463968/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3463968/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair https://everydayfeminism.com/2016/03/why-rationalism-is-irrational/ https://everydayfeminism.com/2016/03/why-rationalism-is-irra... http://www.indiana.edu/~koertge/rfemlog.html http://www.indiana.edu/~koertge/rfemlog.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_wars A number of different philosophical and historical schools, often grouped together as "postmodernism", began reinterpreting scientific achievements of the past through the lens of the practitioners, often positing the influence of politics and economics in the development of scientific theories in addition to scientific observations. Rather than being presented as working entirely from positivistic observations, many scientists of the past were scrutinized for their connection to issues of gender, sexual orientation, race, and class. Some more radical philosophers, such as Paul Feyerabend, argued that scientific theories were themselves incoherent and that other forms of knowledge production (such as those used in religion) served the material and spiritual needs of their practitioners with equal validity as did scientific explanations.

nuguy 8y ago

Assuming that this is a well known and trusted scientific website, this kind of message just gives tons of ammo, very legitimate ammo, to political entities that claim the scientific community has political bias. This article is clearly left-wing, not neutral. It is absolutely imperative that science and politics are kept separate so that there is no opportunity for people to claim that a scientific insight is politically biased or motivated. For example, the left leaning tone of this article could make it more difficult for a right wing person to believe other scientific literature that claims global warming is real. Anyone who advocates political messages in the scientific community is an enemy of society.