8 ms·

How Americans Came to Distrust Science

37 points by andrewl 6y ago

newlikeice 6y ago
>Before the 1920s, many Americans viewed science as a kind of “people’s knowledge,” a practical, commonsense mode of reasoning that stood against all forms of elite authority. Thinking about this the conclusion that is arising is Science has become more of status thing and less of an entrepreneurial tool. This is pretty evident in the reason why the really cool code is always not open source.
underseacables 6y ago
Politics. Science used to be about absolute data, testing, and facts. When science sold its soul to politics and power, it lost the confidence of the masses. By sold I mean scientists holding back data (global warming), and manipulating data, (COVID), to support a specific political agenda. The best thing we can do is remove politics from science before it’s too late.
- bioinformatics 6y ago
  That's spot on. It's a self inflicted wound.
  - yokaze 6y ago
    Except it is the American public which is suffering, not science.
- dmarchand90 6y ago
  Could you be more specific by what you mean by "holding back data" or "manipulating data".
  - Agustus 6y ago
    Look at Mann’s email trove of behind the scenes discussion.
  - solarwinds123 6y ago
    Look into the replication crisis
- natmaka 6y ago
  Politicians like having an "expert" advocating stuff they want. A scientist is the perfect "expert", as he appears, for most, as intrinsically expert and objective/neutral. Hence some scientists happen to recommend things (ways to solve a practical problem) and are used by some politicians (through mass-media) who promote those things (far various reasons), and silent counter-arguments from other scientists. Note: consultants also often act as such "excuses", forking a "report" recommending actions which were secretly planned before their mission began. Those scientists may shoot themselves in the foot by doing so if, as I believe, their job is to explain how things work (nothing more).
- Fanch22 6y ago
  > scientists holding back data (global warming) I spent ten hour a week, during 3 months (lookdown helped) parsing data for global warming as well as economic data for model like DICE and others. Which data was held back please? I would really like to know? I might have been fooled by the treasure trove of data publicly available. Is it that the atmosphere overall have the same average temperature[0]? Its not held back. Is it that the low troposphere warming is causing the artic circle to break more often? Nah, i still found the raw data too. What was really surprising to me about the climate change denial is that the most well-know of "solar forcing" was debunked by physics college students circa 2004, and that despite that (and the cycle ending a while ago) it is still the argument i found the most often. The better argument, low-troposhpere CO2 concentration have a low effect on radiation, i hav seen exactly twice. Without the corollary, a c02 surplus at the surface level take between 20 and 30 year to reach the hgh troposphere/low stratosphere, so every emission right now will have almost no effect until 2040. This data is not held back, and is discussed quite often too. Did i miss something important? [0] https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018JD028901 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/201...
- refurb 6y ago
  When was this magical time when science and politics not been intertwined?
- getlawgdon 6y ago
  Oh dear, no. No. We need science in politics than ever. We need science-based policy more than ever. The closest thing we have to a "science party" is the Green and it isn't enough. We need a culture of science and that includes a political SCIENCE.
egwynn 6y ago
I think this discussion needs to include a lot more consideration about money. When I’ve encountered antivax and anti-GMO sentiments, it’s often been tied up in a distrust of the for-profit interests that are related to both of those. In a nutshell, there are many who think that some kinds of science can’t be trusted to tell the truth if that truth would be bad for business for the people conducting the science.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Or a slightly different take on the it, that businesses with money at stake will claim "science" when they need support, though the business can't be trusted to tell the truth about the science. And the business is usually better at publicity than the scientists are.
- thatguy0900 6y ago
  You can see this right now on the front page with Googles ai reaserchers
gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
This article really misses the crux of how science massively screwed up and forever tarnished its image. It's egregiously silent about the disastrous role science had in American society around the 1920s. Eugenics! The scientific management of society through experts. Scientific racism. The rise of the corporation as a new empirical organization of people. This is so painfully obvious especially now: that science empowers political people and individuals with moral sure-footedness. Instead of imbuing people with a doubt and skepticism (for science is bound to change with new information), science is used as a sort of license to micromanage and extend power over people and silence criticism.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Postmodernism really undermined science's epistemology. Not among scientists (they don't really care what postmodernism says about epistemology), but among the public. And part of this is I think deliberate. Postmodernism put forth ideas about epistemology, and science was over there, not involved in that discussion, but reputable, delivering results using science's epistemology. The existence and success of science was a counter-argument to postmodernism's epistemological claims. So (at least parts of) postmodernism attacked science, and science's claims of knowing objective reality.
- imbnwa 6y ago
  Eh, I don't think this is very accurate. "Postmodernism" (a terribly indescript term if I might add) had nothing to say on the order of David Hume like "hey just because the sun came up today and yesterday doesn't mean you can prove it'll come up tomorrow", which is how we got Kant arguing that you can't perceive reality without fundamental laws being true, and so began modern philosophy. The writers that are grouped under "postmodernism" were more like post-marxists: they were interested in describing social production independent of the traditional Marxist theorem that all social production (culture/ideology/religion) is a reflection of the dominant mode of the production of material things. Michel Foucault, a pivotal writer for many other writers on post-colonialism that have become of consequence today, was explicit in interviews and his writings that the model of the "hard" sciences was what he aspired to, which is to say describing reality indendepent of human narrative interpolation. It was the "soft" sciences of anthropology, psychology, criminology, and others, that Foucault was after. These he saw as social productions and he wanted to describe their cause, how they came about, without referring to some inherent rationalism (these studies are possible because we can make an assumption about the nature of human cognition) or Marxist historical materialism (they are Capitalist apparatuses of control). This is what all his work is about and I hope it helps dispel this myth that "the postmodernists" are responsible, it would be more accurate to say that the interpretations and applications of those writers by American Humanities departments that the contemporary "identity politics" (post-colonialism seems more accurate to me) derives from.
  - hertzrat 6y ago
DougN7 6y ago
I’m a believer in science - was a physics major in college. However, I find the hubris in science distasteful. Theories are treated like facts. Also, words like “we know” are used, and then a decade later that knowledge turns out to be wrong. Science changes, but at a point in time it often acts like it has reached the ultimate truth. A simple example: I remember in Jr High being taught that red shift and slowing of the expansion of the universe proved beyond doubt the Big Bang happened. Except, oops, turns out the universe is expanding after all. But you would be ridiculed if you didn’t believe
- aaron-santos 6y ago
  After moving from software development to data science, I've observed a change in my terminology when discussing findings. Rather than constructing definitive statements like 'X is greater than Y', I tend to soften it to 'We have evidence that X is greater than Y'. I see it as a move analogous to the move from verificationism to falsification. Though someone with a better grasp on the philosophy of science may have better perspective. If I want to be a good scientific reader, I have to add in 'We have evidence of' to nearly all pop science articles. Article writers either tend to omit this or it ends up being edited out for either obvious or obscure reasons depending on what you believe.
  - rizpanjwani 6y ago
    Out of curiosity, why and how did you switch to data science?
    - aaron-santos 6y ago
      I worked on getting a data pipeline up and running. It was fun enough that I downloaded rstudio and started playing around with some machine learning methods after the kids went to bed. After a few conversations with higher ups that started with 'hey want to see something cool?' I had the opportunity to start a data team.
      - 6y ago
onecommentman 6y ago
1. Always nice if an article focusing on one concept, e.g. “science”, actually defines the term, say, “science”, before ranting on. If the article doesn’t, I have found it profitable not to read the article in any depth. Great truths of general semantics... 2. On a related note, is the thesis that Americans (as opposed to New Zealanders?) distrust science, or scientists, or the reporting of work by scientists. My observation is the mistrust increases as you go down that list, but it is only the last item that most people ever really experience.
- selfishgene 6y ago
  >Always nice if an article focusing on one concept, e.g. “science”, actually defines the term to know if the author intends to include by reference, for example, "the dismal science"
- amw-zero 6y ago
  You need the word “science” to be defined?
mikedilger 6y ago
Few conservatives are questioning whether science as a methodology is good or bad. Some extreme Christians might doubt science itself, but I sense they are quite a small group. There is also a small group on the left which has rejected science (and often objective reality and reason) apparently in favor of a belief that everything is textual, socially constructed and about power dynamics. Putting both of those wackadoodle groups aside, the core issue in America is a lack of trust between the major political camps. This lack of trust is unfortunately justified, as both camps often show a willingness to act in bad faith, to do "whatever it takes", ignoring the long term effects (of erosion of trust in the institutions of society). Dr Fauci said masks didn't work in order to prevent a run on masks. Unfortunatly in the current environment the cost of that decision is very steep. The news media ran with the Russian Collusion narrative with far too much certainty. The cost of that decision, a near utter lack of trust from conservatives, is far too much. Lies about Hunter Biden's laptop being Russian disinformation... a blatant revolving door between the CIA propagandists and the media... social media banning or automatically editoralizing many widespread conservative opinions... and more trust evaporates. Trust is easily squandered and hard to regain. A media telling folks to shelter indoors due to COVID-19, and then immediately praising street rioting exacerbated an already near utter collapse in trust. If American conservatives refuse to believe that COVID-19 is serious, or that lockdowns can work, or that climate change is a serious issue... the American progressives need to take some large measure of responsibility for that. They taught them time and time again "you cannot trust us" while saying "the most trusted source in news." Liberal/progressive institutions shirked their societal duty to actually be fair, balanced, cautious, do investigative research, and for God's sake to tell the truth rather than trying to manipulate votes. The end does not justify the means, in no small part because few are bright enough to see the more complete set of ends. To restore trust you must first start with respect. Allow the wingnut ideas to be spoken and spread. Put forth counternarratives and reasoned arugments rather than silencing "misinformation" (silencing alienates and drives deeper tribalism). Don't fall into the trap of believing that arguments never convince anybody -- they don't seem to because few people openly admit to being wrong or having been changed -- but they do have an effect. Respect the people while arguing the ideas. And that's just the first step. If you can't take this first step of showing respect by cherishing free speech again, America will just sink deeper into tribalism and all that it breeds. Full disclosure: I write from New Zealand, consider myself classical liberal centrist and atheist, believe in lockdowns and socially distance, and take personal action to do my part to slow down climate change.
jet_32951 6y ago
Friedrich Hayek warned about just this in "The Counter-Revoluion of Science" wherein he decried the impulse to reduce behavior to mechanical impulses, and the subsequent rise of sociology as being considered a hard science. One isn't going to engineer societies without bending the scientific method way beyond what it stands for or merits, no matter the PR methods applied.
teslaberry 6y ago
it's amazing how many people push 'climate change' as a scientific 'fact'. science doesn't have facts. it has falsifiable theories. people who study the art of scientific investigation, often contend with more or less certain realities. in them, they tend to measure variability over sample size and time. complex systems, containing massively variable circumstances, can be rendered into simulation systems. these system have tremendous variability depending on the initial inputs, which are themselves dependent on assumptions. the models, are thus , only as valuable as the assumptions. climate science 'simulation' is about feeding assumptions with sets of scenario data into an output machine and reporting the results as 'fact' . this is non-science nonsense. they are not facts. people who question an analyze simulations are scientists. people who claim scientists results are facts are anti-science agenda driven ignoramus's who would like everyone to stop thinking about how science is practiced. without the practice of science we would never have discovered green house gas effects. and yet, people want these effects to be interpreted as ideologically assumed facts of immanent eschatological doom , turning scientific investigation into a set of religious dogmas we would describe as 'scientism'. this is why american distrust what many true believers have come to call their new god. it isn't 'science' , but they use the word anyways, denigrating that which actually IS science. so no, americans still trust that which is science far more than many other people in the world. but the corporatisation of climate warming as a tax ans spend racket, has driven a small contingent of people and media outlets to dress scientism up with accusations that not bleieving in their dogma is being 'anti-science' tell them otherwise, and you generally get the cancel culture totalitarian word police after you at universities. skeptics of doom and gloom , or of the possibillity or man mad 'reversal' of global climate direction fear they will be subject to witch hunts for speaking at all with critical thought. this climate is a climate of fear. many people cannot afford to lose their job. when they come for job, they are comign for your freedom. you have cause to be afraid. disc, was a bio/math major worked in labs, and am an attorney with an economcis background. i've spoken to biologists who think economics is a hard science. many people are a mile deep and an inch wide, even in the sciences. study some epistemology. 'phenomenology' aside, there is NO such thing as the 'science' of language. we don't use the rubric of fasifiability of theory in linguistics. it's a complex social study of how humans use their own highly variable methods of communicating. economics is , too, the study of complex human interactions. these areas, like climate science , are highly complex, not easily predicted ....or predictable. so one can say there are theories, but to say they are scientific 'fact' is to ignore how science is used to investigate complex phenonmena.
aaron695 6y ago
> How Americans Came to Distrust Science It's the internet. Anything before is historically interestingly but now meaningless. Pre-internet I'd passively watch science shows on physics and lap String Theory up. Now I can hear the dissenting voices and see how the String Theorists don't address the simple issues raised. Science is dead to me and I don't think it should be revived. I think we need something better. Science doesn't have to be the best way forward. There are alternative frameworks to science.
- pjkundert 6y ago
  Perhaps you misunderstand the word "science". The proposal of testable hypotheses, rejected if the tests fail? How is that "dead to you"? Is there some reality in which you can continue to successfully live a life based on beliefs that are invalidated by failed tests? A reality in which "science is dead"? There does seem to be a weird societal belief growing in something other than evidence-based reality. Let us know how it works out for you all, in a couple generations. Personally, I remain ... unconvinced.
rufus_foreman 6y ago
When a valid study is retracted by its authors because they don't like the conclusions being drawn from it, when a university professor is fired for citing research that his university published, when journals publish any research that conforms to certain political views, even when it is obvious garbage, it is not science being distrusted because it is not science which is being performed. When we are told by scientists that masks don't work, and then, with no new research being done, we are told by scientists that we must all wear masks, it is not science being performed. It is propaganda. I distrust propaganda. In any field in which I am not an expert it takes time to determine if something that is claimed to be science is really science, or if it is propaganda. I trust the scientific method but I don't trust that people claiming to be scientists are using it.
- c06n 6y ago
  > valid study is retracted Which study was that?
- TheOperator 6y ago
  I have absolutely seen recent research on the efficacy of masks. Scroll down to "Human Studies" [1]. I was sceptical on masks from the start (although I still wore them when you weren't supposed to) but new evidence came in about a novel coronavirus. People then did spread this information via yes, propaganda, for the efforts of disease control. I do think how "science" at once proclaimed that masks don't work so don't wear them we need them for hospitals made me fairly incredulous at the obvious contradiction. So I defied science. Worked out. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/masking-science-sars-cov2.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/masking-scien...
pjkundert 6y ago
Americans don’t distrust science. They distrust scientism; the abuse of people through fear and manipulation masquerading as science.
galaxyLogic 6y ago
Many Americans don't understand science. That is not a big surprise considering that 10% of the population CAN NOT READ (https://www.google.com/search?q=HOw+many+americans+can%27t+read&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS875US875&oq=HOw+many+americans+can%27t+read&aqs=chrome..69i57.4873j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=HOw+many+americans+can%27t+r...). You can not trust something you don't understand. Now enter some bought-up politicians who tell people "Science is a hoax believe us. You don't have to feel stupid because you don't understand it because you don't need to understand it because it is a hoax. And keep smoking your Marlboro it is good for you,

37 points by andrewl 6y ago

>Before the 1920s, many Americans viewed science as a kind of “people’s knowledge,” a practical, commonsense mode of reasoning that stood against all forms of elite authority. Thinking about this the conclusion that is arising is Science has become more of status thing and less of an entrepreneurial tool. This is pretty evident in the reason why the really cool code is always not open source.

underseacables 6y ago

Politics. Science used to be about absolute data, testing, and facts. When science sold its soul to politics and power, it lost the confidence of the masses. By sold I mean scientists holding back data (global warming), and manipulating data, (COVID), to support a specific political agenda. The best thing we can do is remove politics from science before it’s too late.

bioinformatics 6y ago
That's spot on. It's a self inflicted wound.
- yokaze 6y ago
  Except it is the American public which is suffering, not science.
dmarchand90 6y ago
Could you be more specific by what you mean by "holding back data" or "manipulating data".
- Agustus 6y ago
  Look at Mann’s email trove of behind the scenes discussion.
- solarwinds123 6y ago
  Look into the replication crisis
natmaka 6y ago
Politicians like having an "expert" advocating stuff they want. A scientist is the perfect "expert", as he appears, for most, as intrinsically expert and objective/neutral. Hence some scientists happen to recommend things (ways to solve a practical problem) and are used by some politicians (through mass-media) who promote those things (far various reasons), and silent counter-arguments from other scientists. Note: consultants also often act as such "excuses", forking a "report" recommending actions which were secretly planned before their mission began. Those scientists may shoot themselves in the foot by doing so if, as I believe, their job is to explain how things work (nothing more).
Fanch22 6y ago
> scientists holding back data (global warming) I spent ten hour a week, during 3 months (lookdown helped) parsing data for global warming as well as economic data for model like DICE and others. Which data was held back please? I would really like to know? I might have been fooled by the treasure trove of data publicly available. Is it that the atmosphere overall have the same average temperature[0]? Its not held back. Is it that the low troposphere warming is causing the artic circle to break more often? Nah, i still found the raw data too. What was really surprising to me about the climate change denial is that the most well-know of "solar forcing" was debunked by physics college students circa 2004, and that despite that (and the cycle ending a while ago) it is still the argument i found the most often. The better argument, low-troposhpere CO2 concentration have a low effect on radiation, i hav seen exactly twice. Without the corollary, a c02 surplus at the surface level take between 20 and 30 year to reach the hgh troposphere/low stratosphere, so every emission right now will have almost no effect until 2040. This data is not held back, and is discussed quite often too. Did i miss something important? [0] https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018JD028901 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/201...
refurb 6y ago
When was this magical time when science and politics not been intertwined?
getlawgdon 6y ago
Oh dear, no. No. We need science in politics than ever. We need science-based policy more than ever. The closest thing we have to a "science party" is the Green and it isn't enough. We need a culture of science and that includes a political SCIENCE.

egwynn 6y ago

I think this discussion needs to include a lot more consideration about money. When I’ve encountered antivax and anti-GMO sentiments, it’s often been tied up in a distrust of the for-profit interests that are related to both of those. In a nutshell, there are many who think that some kinds of science can’t be trusted to tell the truth if that truth would be bad for business for the people conducting the science.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Or a slightly different take on the it, that businesses with money at stake will claim "science" when they need support, though the business can't be trusted to tell the truth about the science. And the business is usually better at publicity than the scientists are.
thatguy0900 6y ago
You can see this right now on the front page with Googles ai reaserchers

gnusty_gnurc 6y ago

This article really misses the crux of how science massively screwed up and forever tarnished its image. It's egregiously silent about the disastrous role science had in American society around the 1920s. Eugenics! The scientific management of society through experts. Scientific racism. The rise of the corporation as a new empirical organization of people. This is so painfully obvious especially now: that science empowers political people and individuals with moral sure-footedness. Instead of imbuing people with a doubt and skepticism (for science is bound to change with new information), science is used as a sort of license to micromanage and extend power over people and silence criticism.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

Postmodernism really undermined science's epistemology. Not among scientists (they don't really care what postmodernism says about epistemology), but among the public. And part of this is I think deliberate. Postmodernism put forth ideas about epistemology, and science was over there, not involved in that discussion, but reputable, delivering results using science's epistemology. The existence and success of science was a counter-argument to postmodernism's epistemological claims. So (at least parts of) postmodernism attacked science, and science's claims of knowing objective reality.

imbnwa 6y ago
Eh, I don't think this is very accurate. "Postmodernism" (a terribly indescript term if I might add) had nothing to say on the order of David Hume like "hey just because the sun came up today and yesterday doesn't mean you can prove it'll come up tomorrow", which is how we got Kant arguing that you can't perceive reality without fundamental laws being true, and so began modern philosophy. The writers that are grouped under "postmodernism" were more like post-marxists: they were interested in describing social production independent of the traditional Marxist theorem that all social production (culture/ideology/religion) is a reflection of the dominant mode of the production of material things. Michel Foucault, a pivotal writer for many other writers on post-colonialism that have become of consequence today, was explicit in interviews and his writings that the model of the "hard" sciences was what he aspired to, which is to say describing reality indendepent of human narrative interpolation. It was the "soft" sciences of anthropology, psychology, criminology, and others, that Foucault was after. These he saw as social productions and he wanted to describe their cause, how they came about, without referring to some inherent rationalism (these studies are possible because we can make an assumption about the nature of human cognition) or Marxist historical materialism (they are Capitalist apparatuses of control). This is what all his work is about and I hope it helps dispel this myth that "the postmodernists" are responsible, it would be more accurate to say that the interpretations and applications of those writers by American Humanities departments that the contemporary "identity politics" (post-colonialism seems more accurate to me) derives from.
- hertzrat 6y ago

DougN7 6y ago

I’m a believer in science - was a physics major in college. However, I find the hubris in science distasteful. Theories are treated like facts. Also, words like “we know” are used, and then a decade later that knowledge turns out to be wrong. Science changes, but at a point in time it often acts like it has reached the ultimate truth. A simple example: I remember in Jr High being taught that red shift and slowing of the expansion of the universe proved beyond doubt the Big Bang happened. Except, oops, turns out the universe is expanding after all. But you would be ridiculed if you didn’t believe

aaron-santos 6y ago
After moving from software development to data science, I've observed a change in my terminology when discussing findings. Rather than constructing definitive statements like 'X is greater than Y', I tend to soften it to 'We have evidence that X is greater than Y'. I see it as a move analogous to the move from verificationism to falsification. Though someone with a better grasp on the philosophy of science may have better perspective. If I want to be a good scientific reader, I have to add in 'We have evidence of' to nearly all pop science articles. Article writers either tend to omit this or it ends up being edited out for either obvious or obscure reasons depending on what you believe.
- rizpanjwani 6y ago
  Out of curiosity, why and how did you switch to data science?
  - aaron-santos 6y ago
    I worked on getting a data pipeline up and running. It was fun enough that I downloaded rstudio and started playing around with some machine learning methods after the kids went to bed. After a few conversations with higher ups that started with 'hey want to see something cool?' I had the opportunity to start a data team.
    - 6y ago

onecommentman 6y ago

1. Always nice if an article focusing on one concept, e.g. “science”, actually defines the term, say, “science”, before ranting on. If the article doesn’t, I have found it profitable not to read the article in any depth. Great truths of general semantics... 2. On a related note, is the thesis that Americans (as opposed to New Zealanders?) distrust science, or scientists, or the reporting of work by scientists. My observation is the mistrust increases as you go down that list, but it is only the last item that most people ever really experience.

selfishgene 6y ago
>Always nice if an article focusing on one concept, e.g. “science”, actually defines the term to know if the author intends to include by reference, for example, "the dismal science"
amw-zero 6y ago
You need the word “science” to be defined?

mikedilger 6y ago

Few conservatives are questioning whether science as a methodology is good or bad. Some extreme Christians might doubt science itself, but I sense they are quite a small group. There is also a small group on the left which has rejected science (and often objective reality and reason) apparently in favor of a belief that everything is textual, socially constructed and about power dynamics. Putting both of those wackadoodle groups aside, the core issue in America is a lack of trust between the major political camps. This lack of trust is unfortunately justified, as both camps often show a willingness to act in bad faith, to do "whatever it takes", ignoring the long term effects (of erosion of trust in the institutions of society). Dr Fauci said masks didn't work in order to prevent a run on masks. Unfortunatly in the current environment the cost of that decision is very steep. The news media ran with the Russian Collusion narrative with far too much certainty. The cost of that decision, a near utter lack of trust from conservatives, is far too much. Lies about Hunter Biden's laptop being Russian disinformation... a blatant revolving door between the CIA propagandists and the media... social media banning or automatically editoralizing many widespread conservative opinions... and more trust evaporates. Trust is easily squandered and hard to regain. A media telling folks to shelter indoors due to COVID-19, and then immediately praising street rioting exacerbated an already near utter collapse in trust. If American conservatives refuse to believe that COVID-19 is serious, or that lockdowns can work, or that climate change is a serious issue... the American progressives need to take some large measure of responsibility for that. They taught them time and time again "you cannot trust us" while saying "the most trusted source in news." Liberal/progressive institutions shirked their societal duty to actually be fair, balanced, cautious, do investigative research, and for God's sake to tell the truth rather than trying to manipulate votes. The end does not justify the means, in no small part because few are bright enough to see the more complete set of ends. To restore trust you must first start with respect. Allow the wingnut ideas to be spoken and spread. Put forth counternarratives and reasoned arugments rather than silencing "misinformation" (silencing alienates and drives deeper tribalism). Don't fall into the trap of believing that arguments never convince anybody -- they don't seem to because few people openly admit to being wrong or having been changed -- but they do have an effect. Respect the people while arguing the ideas. And that's just the first step. If you can't take this first step of showing respect by cherishing free speech again, America will just sink deeper into tribalism and all that it breeds. Full disclosure: I write from New Zealand, consider myself classical liberal centrist and atheist, believe in lockdowns and socially distance, and take personal action to do my part to slow down climate change.

jet_32951 6y ago

Friedrich Hayek warned about just this in "The Counter-Revoluion of Science" wherein he decried the impulse to reduce behavior to mechanical impulses, and the subsequent rise of sociology as being considered a hard science. One isn't going to engineer societies without bending the scientific method way beyond what it stands for or merits, no matter the PR methods applied.

teslaberry 6y ago

it's amazing how many people push 'climate change' as a scientific 'fact'. science doesn't have facts. it has falsifiable theories. people who study the art of scientific investigation, often contend with more or less certain realities. in them, they tend to measure variability over sample size and time. complex systems, containing massively variable circumstances, can be rendered into simulation systems. these system have tremendous variability depending on the initial inputs, which are themselves dependent on assumptions. the models, are thus , only as valuable as the assumptions. climate science 'simulation' is about feeding assumptions with sets of scenario data into an output machine and reporting the results as 'fact' . this is non-science nonsense. they are not facts. people who question an analyze simulations are scientists. people who claim scientists results are facts are anti-science agenda driven ignoramus's who would like everyone to stop thinking about how science is practiced. without the practice of science we would never have discovered green house gas effects. and yet, people want these effects to be interpreted as ideologically assumed facts of immanent eschatological doom , turning scientific investigation into a set of religious dogmas we would describe as 'scientism'. this is why american distrust what many true believers have come to call their new god. it isn't 'science' , but they use the word anyways, denigrating that which actually IS science. so no, americans still trust that which is science far more than many other people in the world. but the corporatisation of climate warming as a tax ans spend racket, has driven a small contingent of people and media outlets to dress scientism up with accusations that not bleieving in their dogma is being 'anti-science' tell them otherwise, and you generally get the cancel culture totalitarian word police after you at universities. skeptics of doom and gloom , or of the possibillity or man mad 'reversal' of global climate direction fear they will be subject to witch hunts for speaking at all with critical thought. this climate is a climate of fear. many people cannot afford to lose their job. when they come for job, they are comign for your freedom. you have cause to be afraid. disc, was a bio/math major worked in labs, and am an attorney with an economcis background. i've spoken to biologists who think economics is a hard science. many people are a mile deep and an inch wide, even in the sciences. study some epistemology. 'phenomenology' aside, there is NO such thing as the 'science' of language. we don't use the rubric of fasifiability of theory in linguistics. it's a complex social study of how humans use their own highly variable methods of communicating. economics is , too, the study of complex human interactions. these areas, like climate science , are highly complex, not easily predicted ....or predictable. so one can say there are theories, but to say they are scientific 'fact' is to ignore how science is used to investigate complex phenonmena.

aaron695 6y ago

> How Americans Came to Distrust Science It's the internet. Anything before is historically interestingly but now meaningless. Pre-internet I'd passively watch science shows on physics and lap String Theory up. Now I can hear the dissenting voices and see how the String Theorists don't address the simple issues raised. Science is dead to me and I don't think it should be revived. I think we need something better. Science doesn't have to be the best way forward. There are alternative frameworks to science.

pjkundert 6y ago
Perhaps you misunderstand the word "science". The proposal of testable hypotheses, rejected if the tests fail? How is that "dead to you"? Is there some reality in which you can continue to successfully live a life based on beliefs that are invalidated by failed tests? A reality in which "science is dead"? There does seem to be a weird societal belief growing in something other than evidence-based reality. Let us know how it works out for you all, in a couple generations. Personally, I remain ... unconvinced.

rufus_foreman 6y ago

When a valid study is retracted by its authors because they don't like the conclusions being drawn from it, when a university professor is fired for citing research that his university published, when journals publish any research that conforms to certain political views, even when it is obvious garbage, it is not science being distrusted because it is not science which is being performed. When we are told by scientists that masks don't work, and then, with no new research being done, we are told by scientists that we must all wear masks, it is not science being performed. It is propaganda. I distrust propaganda. In any field in which I am not an expert it takes time to determine if something that is claimed to be science is really science, or if it is propaganda. I trust the scientific method but I don't trust that people claiming to be scientists are using it.

c06n 6y ago
> valid study is retracted Which study was that?
TheOperator 6y ago
I have absolutely seen recent research on the efficacy of masks. Scroll down to "Human Studies" [1]. I was sceptical on masks from the start (although I still wore them when you weren't supposed to) but new evidence came in about a novel coronavirus. People then did spread this information via yes, propaganda, for the efforts of disease control. I do think how "science" at once proclaimed that masks don't work so don't wear them we need them for hospitals made me fairly incredulous at the obvious contradiction. So I defied science. Worked out. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/masking-science-sars-cov2.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/masking-scien...

pjkundert 6y ago

Americans don’t distrust science. They distrust scientism; the abuse of people through fear and manipulation masquerading as science.

galaxyLogic 6y ago

Many Americans don't understand science. That is not a big surprise considering that 10% of the population CAN NOT READ (https://www.google.com/search?q=HOw+many+americans+can%27t+read&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS875US875&oq=HOw+many+americans+can%27t+read&aqs=chrome..69i57.4873j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=HOw+many+americans+can%27t+r...). You can not trust something you don't understand. Now enter some bought-up politicians who tell people "Science is a hoax believe us. You don't have to feel stupid because you don't understand it because you don't need to understand it because it is a hoax. And keep smoking your Marlboro it is good for you,