Science and Society

[padren]

I considered putting this under politics, but it's not related to any specific political event, just some observations and questions about how science and politics/society interact and sometimes clash... hope this is the right place:

 

 

 

I've noticed that it seems we are at the same time dependent on science, benefit from it, and also are at it's mercy in ways that make us often (as a society) highly paranoid and skeptical. From what I've been able to tell, things kind of break down into one of of the following ways when new scientific theories or research is introduced into society:

 

1) "Yay Science!"

When a medical diagnosis has an easy to treat solution, when a new phone allows humorous kitten videos to be downloaded even faster at higher resolution, or we get to stick our favorite flag on another astronomical body people tend to be very supportive and non-skeptical. "Those guys sure know what they are doing." Seems to sum up the sentiments. It seems to be the default reaction when the new event is welcomed and seen as beneficial to the observer.

 

2) "Those guys have their own agenda, and they sure aren't unbiased"

Despite the fact that all the same biases and agendas apply to the first welcomed category as do to the second, every statement, purported fact, and even motive is suspect. Depending on the reacting subset of society, things that fall into this category range from discoveries in geology/evolutionary biology, global climate change, to vaccinations and dietary benefit/harm research. Occasionally when people are especially skeptical of mainstream medicine, it will also be applied to cancer research, AIDs research, and a huge number of established treatments.

 

What's really interesting to me, is that you can sample different cross-sections of society and find the same arguments in favor and against the same elements. For instance, someone may trust their oncologist completely, yet be skeptical of the bias of climate change researchers and the big money they are chasing by making big claims. Others, may be totally convinced that climate change research is beyond reproach, but believe that you can't trust doctors who make all their money treating cancer with expensive treatments, who are threatened and thus dismissive of the low cost healing power of certain crystals and aromatherapy.

 

 

The conclusion I can't help but to draw, is that scientific data is not absorbed in a scientific manner by people in general. If it is beneficial by making life easier or simply fits their world view (Love Mother Earth, stop hurting it, all we do is hurt it - oh, we are hurting it's climate? Of course that makes sense, good smart scientists need to stop us from being bad.) it is accepted without concern for the scientific merit or critique.

If it runs against their world view or is seen as costly, then the opposite happens, again without any real proper assessment.

 

The fact of the matter is we can't individually process all the information necessary to make informed decisions about all the information flying around today. We use short-hand techniques constantly. These short cuts are often tied to what we consider to be logical fallicies:

 

1) Appeal to authority: A celebrity says vaccines gave her kid autism... Bill Nye says special water can clean stuff real well... Stephen Hawking says black-holes can shrink and be destroyed... your professor says the standard model is reliable...

 

2) Appeals to the majority: Everyone uses cell phones, how could they cause cancer? The majority of Americans believe...

 

3) Weighing the prize: (not sure real term for this) Well if they are right we can power our whole house on nothing but tap water! If they are right we will all be dead when sea levels rise...

 

The end result is both good and bad scientific information is accepted or rejected with far less emphasis on the science than is useful for people to really make a decision. We end up with people advocating a particular stance and debating skills/rhetoric/charisma/logic pushes them up as a higher authority - and logical reasoning does play a role - but when the natural resistance or blind acceptance factors are too high, the logical facet quickly looses it's influence as a primary factor.

 

 

 

 

So the question is: Can this problem be lessened or rectified? Can we optimize our science <-> society interface in some manner that leads to a more well rounded and educated way of arriving at societal perspectives?

As we become more dependent on science in our daily lives, to both warn us of impending dangers and provide benefits to long life, health and prosperity, these old tools we use are going to become only more problematic. Blind acceptance won't do any more good than blind rejection. What we need, is better ways to filter information that isn't based on preconceived biases.

[Double K]

I agree with most of your points here.

I also think that a certain level of "paranoia" is not a bad thing, and is actually a natural state (just watch how jumpy a cat is!)

And it also means that some things masquerading as science are put through the proper testing and questioning.

It's more to do with survival and being cautious than anything else.

 

I think the problem with alot of scientific debate is that some science is good and the general public have a certain level of knowledge, but as soon as you start presenting something like a climate change model, or quantum theory, or string theory people (in general) just look at it and go whaaaaaaaaaat?!

 

I will try to illustrate this point using a real world example.

If I presented someone in the general public with some construction documents, they would be completely baffled by it, and yet I could show an engineer and in several minutes he could point out design flaws, areas where I may find trouble or areas that need unusual details to be produced for construction.

 

This plays out with scientific debate, and scientists are baffled by people making wild claims that are simply unsupported (but only if you have the knowledge of the particular thing being presented) The person making the claim feels completely justified and feels hurt when told they are stupid, the debate then escalates into argument as the name calling ensues, and all debate on the topic is now lost or clouded by the argument. The problem is ego (on both sides) when it comes to these debates.

 

If there was some way to present the highly technical document without being condescending, to the general public so that they could understand the item enough without needing the technical expertise to comprehend it, I think this may be the key. The example of your phone vs climate change illustrates this well - people can understand the phone, its already existing technology in use, the upgrades are really just expanding on an already understood or accepted item, and - they are not all that expensive in the grand scheme of things. Where-as climate change is a new topic (relatively speaking) and people can not see an immediate benefit, in fact they see an immediate disdvantage to their pay through new taxes and more expensive living costs. It's pretty hard to sell something with no intrinsic value, and a benefit that can't truly be gauged. Not only that but someone, somewhere is making money out of it and it sure isnt me!

 

I don't know the answers, but rest assured those who release the media on it, and those who release media opposing it are well versed in the psychology of herd mentality and they exploit this to achieve their ends.

For anyone with a slight understanding in the psychology behind those points, you immediately begin to question the motive (which is unrelated to the science) and yet that gets interpreted as the science being bad.

 

Science is the messenger, but people can often be very quick to shoot the messenger rather than go after the source.

[Moontanman]

I think one of the problems with the interface of science in society is that the percived attitude of science is often dismissive and even ridiculing of what regular people think instead of being seen as taking the time to listen and explain. Sites like this one do a great job to bridging that problem but few regular people visit science forums.

 

I believe most people are capable of understanding the principles of science but the idea of science being above the average person (this is not necessarily the attitude of science in general but often outside sources amplify this for their own ends IE the media for ratings or popularity) In turn real science people often responds to the media hype instead of the reality of regular people.

 

The principles of science need to be brought into the common arena and things like U-tube and other popular media should be used in this way more often instead of being "lets see what we can convince people of today" The popular media has disintegrated into a circus that does it's best to get onlookers by telling them what they want to hear instead of what is correct.

 

Of course until regular people see soem value in not attending the circus and start looking further than what some one wants them to believe it will not happen.