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I believe this is a public perception problem. The reason that a troubling number of people no longer believe in science isn't that scientific method is flawed

I believe this is a public perception problem. The reason that a troubling number of people no longer believe in science isn't that scientific method is flawed or that people don't believe in scientific method. The bigger concern is the way that scientific studies are mounted, paid for by interested parties that have conflicts of interest to produce results favourable to a desired outcome and then they're presented as science instead of politics. When one can't trust the information they're looking at without having to dig into the political backing of the study and the results and without having to wonder which outliers have been trimmed to further hammer home the point of the stakeholders, we're no longer looking at science, we're looking at propaganda. So the problem isn't science. The problem is the manner in which science is being subverted for financial gain. That's not science. This is why science is losing credibility and authority outside of scientific circles. If you want credibility and authority, you have to not only act with integrity, you have to be seen to be acting with integrity. It does't matter how honest your study or how objective your results, if people look at your study and see that it was funded by Monsanto and makes Monsanto look good, it looks like Monsanto paid for a study to make Monsanto look good and therefore it's biased and can be ignored. This is life. If you want to be seen as having integrity, you have to act with integrity. And when people who were already distrusting of the way science is presented in the media are being told that they can't trust the media by authority figures, as ridiculous as those authority figures may be, eventually people stop listening until the furor abates.

joe_the_user 8y ago
I would say that an even larger problem exists. Among the public, science has always had some portion of people who understood it's processes as those of a secular priesthood and those who understood it's processes as discovering the truth through skepticism and experimentation. Even among this working scientists, this division has existed (and given a society that never discarded religion, anti-science along with anti-intellectual views have naturally always been part of American thought). The problem today is two-fold. Aside from the corruption of scientific processes others have noted, the other aspect is the majority of people aren't seeing the material gains that science offers the world - science is broadly part of progress and when the average American's life expectancy and median income isn't increasing, why would they believe in progress?
- balabaster 8y ago
  It's like hearing that science says that fat is bad... and then eggs are bad for you... and alcohol is bad... and then another study says that a glass of wine a day is good for your heart... and salt is bad... then sugar is bad... then carbohydrates are bad... and now fat is good as long as you don't overdo carbohydrates... and eggs have good cholesterol and are really good for you... and salt is necessary to balance hydration... and sugar isn't bad as long as it's balanced with fibre. When the studies say so many different things, all contradictory and all purporting to be good and then bad and then good again, people give up trying to understand. Why should I believe that anything I eat today is bad when tomorrow you're just going to tell me that it's good for me again? People are tired of listening to science that appears to ebb and flow like the tides.
  - mjevans 8y ago
    Oversimplification for sound bytes (and headlines/click-bait) is the primary cause for this. News outlets are eager to 'report first' and don't bother correctly framing the science in a proper context of one study //which suggests more research and confirmation is necessary//. Publish or perish, along with the lack of replication rather than trying to find something exciting to publish, or even enshrining the effort of replicating results (repudiating or confirming) to more strongly establish fact and carefully observe to see if there may be other causes/effects; is ruining the integrity of the scientific methods. Finally, a lack of stable funding for maintaining and improving what should be public domain (established facts about nature) and the work of students of all ages to re-study and double check as they learn, is nearly the ultimate root cause. The true root cause being greed and the increasing likelihood that as we as a species approach 'abundance' that capitalism ceases to be a good means for wisely allocating resources. Surely that is the case when we are to the point of automated micro-transaction harvesting HFT and fractions of a second of advantage translating to profits in a financial sector that is a vastly over-sized portion of the GDP.
    - chiefalchemist 8y ago
      Most of the time the news outlets / pulishers don't understand the difference between correlation and causation. Frankly, I'm not even sure if many scientists understand the difference. Get some data. Beat it up until you get something attention grabbing. Publish. Get paid. Worry about any fallout later.
gus_massa 8y ago
A very big problem is that press coverage exaggerate the importance of clickbait articles. Two non political / economical cases: * Is 'Oumuamua an alien spacehip / solar sail? * Does the Tabby's star have a alien megastructure / partial Dyson sphere? You can't blame to Monsanto for them. The article appears, get a huge press coverage, the authors get interviewed, and somewhere the fact that it's only an improbable weird hypothesis is lost. A few month later the new evidence refute the paper, and people get the idea that scientific discovers are not reliable. (And there are batteries breakthrough that increase your battery capacity a 80% before disappearing, nutrition recommendation that get reversed after a few years, ... but these are more motivated for money.)
- balabaster 8y ago
  Sorry, I wasn't trying to make that a political statement about Monsanto. They're just an easy name to pluck out of the air because they have a few known controversial studies to make a point. It wasn't supposed to suggest that Monsanto was evil or that the science wasn't legit. All I'm saying is that if ACME Co. funds a study that suggests ACME Co. are good, then the test results look pretty sketchy. > A few month later the new evidence refute the paper, and people get the idea that scientific discovers are not reliable. And do this a few dozen times and people stop listening to science because they know a couple of months from now, this study is going to be refuted.
- jimbokun 8y ago
  Remarkable how often the answer to headlines ending in a question mark is "no". Counter examples seem exceedingly rare.
  - jnord 8y ago
    See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
  - laretluval 8y ago
    If the answer were yes they would phrase it as a statement, not a question.
yeahitslikethat 8y ago
That's why I believe in science, but I don't believe in people. People will and have corrupted every institution ever created.
- Kaiyou 8y ago
  I for once welcome our future AI Overlords.
chiefalchemist 8y ago
> "I believe this is a public perception problem." I see it differently. The problem isn't the public. The public has actually done a commendable job sensing what's been going on. It's not fair - however unintentional - to tie the public to the problem. It's bad enough Science keep denouncing the public, when it's Science who has mucked up it's own reputation. The pubic is a mirror. Science, much like journalism, has been drinking too much of its own Kool Aid. It has forgotten it can't just talk, but it needs to walk that talk, as well. Science would also be wise to show some humility and admit when it's gotten something less than perfect. Yes, that is part of the process. Does Science understand that? Instead, it just sweeps those aside and keeps self-professing it's eternal greatness, and how we should bow our heads, etc. Bill Nye? Neil deGrasse Tyson? These are the face of Science? Me thinks they got the wrong end. They are doing more harm than good.
- arduanika 8y ago
  I think you and GP are pretty close to agreement on this point. The whole thing has a Will Rogers twang to it -- "We've got a public perception problem. To be specific, the public is too perceptive." (Not an actual quote, just the sort of thing he might have said).
rumcajz 8y ago
I don't understand medicine much. I would prefer to believe my doctor. However, if my doctor suggests using homeopathics I will start questioning any other advice they might give me.
- balabaster 8y ago
  If my doctor is also getting kickbacks for prescribing me drugs for something that probably isn't what I have, then what incentive does he have to diagnose me properly when the drugs I do need don't pay him to endorse them? Having doctors and hospitals getting kickbacks for promoting certain drugs is an ethical problem that needs to be curtailed. This all feeds into public perception. If you want to be seen as having integrity, you have to act with integrity.
- Kaiyou 8y ago
  Not everything under the umbrella term homeopathics these days is useless. Of course, that's not necessarily something Big Pharma likes to hear.
shstalwart 8y ago
To me, this sounds suspiciously like a No True Scottsmen argument. What you describe is the science we have. Maybe we can fix some of the corruption and pollution in the literature, maybe we can't. But it seems, to me, disingenuous to blame the "public" for conflating the science that exists with the Platonic ideal. FWIW, I'm about to defend my PhD in a STEM discipline. In my eyes, science has far less credibility to me now than it did five years ago before I saw how the sausage is made. That's an N of at least one that this not only a problem outside scientific circles.
- balabaster 8y ago
  I don't blame the public. You can no more blame the public for their perceptions than you can blame a dog for being a dog. You have the perceptions you have because of the ideals you were sold in school and in your childhood. The role models you choose are those that make you aspire to be the very best human being you can... at least, this was my world. Integrity means something. Honour means something. So to come out and find that the science I was taught, chase the evidence to find the truth, has been subverted and is now chase the narrative, find the evidence to support the narrative - that's a fundamental problem for me because what is being sold as science in the real world is not what I was taught science was supposed to be in school. It seems that many others were taught to manipulate the world around them at everyone else's expense to get ahead. They were taught that their own goals and objectives were more important than those of humanity. Are they any more wrong? Can I blame people for trying to get rich when we're taught in the West that money is success? It buys freedom and happiness. When all the propaganda fed to us by the media every day brainwashes us into believing this narrative, can I really blame anyone for doing whatever they have to, to get rich? I'm not blaming the public. It's not a trivial problem to solve. We don't live in a culture that rewards integrity. We live in a culture that rewards behaviour that makes people rich. If you don't put authenticity and integrity at the heart of your cultural beliefs, how can you blame anyone when they ignore it to chase money, which you will be rewarded for?
xkcd-sucks 8y ago
All of this is correct. From teaching science at the collegiate level, it also seems like a shockingly large proportion of students want to be told the truth by an authority (not necessarily because they're "intellectually lazy"), and are not so good at looking at the world with their own eyes.
- balabaster 8y ago
  Life is complicated. It seems now that it's way more complicated than at any time in our past, but I think the truth is more likely that we didn't see it was complicated back then because a lot was shielded from us. We just didn't need to worry about it as kids. Plus, we have the world at our fingertips now and didn't back then. We have access to so much information that it's all but impossible to sift through it all and figure out what can be trusted and what can't. Nobody can keep up. This is why none of us are masters of everything and we tend to specialize in niches. We want to be told the truth by an authority because we don't have the time to dig into everything ourselves. We want happy fulfilling lives. That means we can't look at everything with our own eyes, we need to be able to trust authorities. The less we can trust what we're being told, the more we have to research ourselves, the less time we're able to spend doing what we love with the people we love, the more miserable and disconnected our lives become. We need to be told the truth by an authority and we need them to have the integrity to chase the truth and deliver it to us honorably. It's not that we're not good at looking at the world with our own eyes, it's not that we're not capable, it's that we just don't have the time and we've run out of the energy to do so.

joe_the_user 8y ago

I would say that an even larger problem exists. Among the public, science has always had some portion of people who understood it's processes as those of a secular priesthood and those who understood it's processes as discovering the truth through skepticism and experimentation. Even among this working scientists, this division has existed (and given a society that never discarded religion, anti-science along with anti-intellectual views have naturally always been part of American thought). The problem today is two-fold. Aside from the corruption of scientific processes others have noted, the other aspect is the majority of people aren't seeing the material gains that science offers the world - science is broadly part of progress and when the average American's life expectancy and median income isn't increasing, why would they believe in progress?

balabaster 8y ago
It's like hearing that science says that fat is bad... and then eggs are bad for you... and alcohol is bad... and then another study says that a glass of wine a day is good for your heart... and salt is bad... then sugar is bad... then carbohydrates are bad... and now fat is good as long as you don't overdo carbohydrates... and eggs have good cholesterol and are really good for you... and salt is necessary to balance hydration... and sugar isn't bad as long as it's balanced with fibre. When the studies say so many different things, all contradictory and all purporting to be good and then bad and then good again, people give up trying to understand. Why should I believe that anything I eat today is bad when tomorrow you're just going to tell me that it's good for me again? People are tired of listening to science that appears to ebb and flow like the tides.
- mjevans 8y ago
  Oversimplification for sound bytes (and headlines/click-bait) is the primary cause for this. News outlets are eager to 'report first' and don't bother correctly framing the science in a proper context of one study //which suggests more research and confirmation is necessary//. Publish or perish, along with the lack of replication rather than trying to find something exciting to publish, or even enshrining the effort of replicating results (repudiating or confirming) to more strongly establish fact and carefully observe to see if there may be other causes/effects; is ruining the integrity of the scientific methods. Finally, a lack of stable funding for maintaining and improving what should be public domain (established facts about nature) and the work of students of all ages to re-study and double check as they learn, is nearly the ultimate root cause. The true root cause being greed and the increasing likelihood that as we as a species approach 'abundance' that capitalism ceases to be a good means for wisely allocating resources. Surely that is the case when we are to the point of automated micro-transaction harvesting HFT and fractions of a second of advantage translating to profits in a financial sector that is a vastly over-sized portion of the GDP.
  - chiefalchemist 8y ago
    Most of the time the news outlets / pulishers don't understand the difference between correlation and causation. Frankly, I'm not even sure if many scientists understand the difference. Get some data. Beat it up until you get something attention grabbing. Publish. Get paid. Worry about any fallout later.

gus_massa 8y ago

A very big problem is that press coverage exaggerate the importance of clickbait articles. Two non political / economical cases: * Is 'Oumuamua an alien spacehip / solar sail? * Does the Tabby's star have a alien megastructure / partial Dyson sphere? You can't blame to Monsanto for them. The article appears, get a huge press coverage, the authors get interviewed, and somewhere the fact that it's only an improbable weird hypothesis is lost. A few month later the new evidence refute the paper, and people get the idea that scientific discovers are not reliable. (And there are batteries breakthrough that increase your battery capacity a 80% before disappearing, nutrition recommendation that get reversed after a few years, ... but these are more motivated for money.)

balabaster 8y ago
Sorry, I wasn't trying to make that a political statement about Monsanto. They're just an easy name to pluck out of the air because they have a few known controversial studies to make a point. It wasn't supposed to suggest that Monsanto was evil or that the science wasn't legit. All I'm saying is that if ACME Co. funds a study that suggests ACME Co. are good, then the test results look pretty sketchy. > A few month later the new evidence refute the paper, and people get the idea that scientific discovers are not reliable. And do this a few dozen times and people stop listening to science because they know a couple of months from now, this study is going to be refuted.
jimbokun 8y ago
Remarkable how often the answer to headlines ending in a question mark is "no". Counter examples seem exceedingly rare.
- jnord 8y ago
  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
- laretluval 8y ago
  If the answer were yes they would phrase it as a statement, not a question.

yeahitslikethat 8y ago

That's why I believe in science, but I don't believe in people. People will and have corrupted every institution ever created.

Kaiyou 8y ago
I for once welcome our future AI Overlords.

chiefalchemist 8y ago

> "I believe this is a public perception problem." I see it differently. The problem isn't the public. The public has actually done a commendable job sensing what's been going on. It's not fair - however unintentional - to tie the public to the problem. It's bad enough Science keep denouncing the public, when it's Science who has mucked up it's own reputation. The pubic is a mirror. Science, much like journalism, has been drinking too much of its own Kool Aid. It has forgotten it can't just talk, but it needs to walk that talk, as well. Science would also be wise to show some humility and admit when it's gotten something less than perfect. Yes, that is part of the process. Does Science understand that? Instead, it just sweeps those aside and keeps self-professing it's eternal greatness, and how we should bow our heads, etc. Bill Nye? Neil deGrasse Tyson? These are the face of Science? Me thinks they got the wrong end. They are doing more harm than good.

arduanika 8y ago
I think you and GP are pretty close to agreement on this point. The whole thing has a Will Rogers twang to it -- "We've got a public perception problem. To be specific, the public is too perceptive." (Not an actual quote, just the sort of thing he might have said).

rumcajz 8y ago

I don't understand medicine much. I would prefer to believe my doctor. However, if my doctor suggests using homeopathics I will start questioning any other advice they might give me.

balabaster 8y ago
If my doctor is also getting kickbacks for prescribing me drugs for something that probably isn't what I have, then what incentive does he have to diagnose me properly when the drugs I do need don't pay him to endorse them? Having doctors and hospitals getting kickbacks for promoting certain drugs is an ethical problem that needs to be curtailed. This all feeds into public perception. If you want to be seen as having integrity, you have to act with integrity.
Kaiyou 8y ago
Not everything under the umbrella term homeopathics these days is useless. Of course, that's not necessarily something Big Pharma likes to hear.

shstalwart 8y ago

To me, this sounds suspiciously like a No True Scottsmen argument. What you describe is the science we have. Maybe we can fix some of the corruption and pollution in the literature, maybe we can't. But it seems, to me, disingenuous to blame the "public" for conflating the science that exists with the Platonic ideal. FWIW, I'm about to defend my PhD in a STEM discipline. In my eyes, science has far less credibility to me now than it did five years ago before I saw how the sausage is made. That's an N of at least one that this not only a problem outside scientific circles.

balabaster 8y ago
I don't blame the public. You can no more blame the public for their perceptions than you can blame a dog for being a dog. You have the perceptions you have because of the ideals you were sold in school and in your childhood. The role models you choose are those that make you aspire to be the very best human being you can... at least, this was my world. Integrity means something. Honour means something. So to come out and find that the science I was taught, chase the evidence to find the truth, has been subverted and is now chase the narrative, find the evidence to support the narrative - that's a fundamental problem for me because what is being sold as science in the real world is not what I was taught science was supposed to be in school. It seems that many others were taught to manipulate the world around them at everyone else's expense to get ahead. They were taught that their own goals and objectives were more important than those of humanity. Are they any more wrong? Can I blame people for trying to get rich when we're taught in the West that money is success? It buys freedom and happiness. When all the propaganda fed to us by the media every day brainwashes us into believing this narrative, can I really blame anyone for doing whatever they have to, to get rich? I'm not blaming the public. It's not a trivial problem to solve. We don't live in a culture that rewards integrity. We live in a culture that rewards behaviour that makes people rich. If you don't put authenticity and integrity at the heart of your cultural beliefs, how can you blame anyone when they ignore it to chase money, which you will be rewarded for?

xkcd-sucks 8y ago

All of this is correct. From teaching science at the collegiate level, it also seems like a shockingly large proportion of students want to be told the truth by an authority (not necessarily because they're "intellectually lazy"), and are not so good at looking at the world with their own eyes.

balabaster 8y ago
Life is complicated. It seems now that it's way more complicated than at any time in our past, but I think the truth is more likely that we didn't see it was complicated back then because a lot was shielded from us. We just didn't need to worry about it as kids. Plus, we have the world at our fingertips now and didn't back then. We have access to so much information that it's all but impossible to sift through it all and figure out what can be trusted and what can't. Nobody can keep up. This is why none of us are masters of everything and we tend to specialize in niches. We want to be told the truth by an authority because we don't have the time to dig into everything ourselves. We want happy fulfilling lives. That means we can't look at everything with our own eyes, we need to be able to trust authorities. The less we can trust what we're being told, the more we have to research ourselves, the less time we're able to spend doing what we love with the people we love, the more miserable and disconnected our lives become. We need to be told the truth by an authority and we need them to have the integrity to chase the truth and deliver it to us honorably. It's not that we're not good at looking at the world with our own eyes, it's not that we're not capable, it's that we just don't have the time and we've run out of the energy to do so.