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Getting The Public To Listen To Good Science
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "We all know that false or misleading science headlines are all too common these days and that misleading media combined with an apathetic and undereducated public lead to widespread ignorance. But the real question is, how can this trend be reversed? At a session at the recent AAAS meeting, a study was discussed indicating that what matters most is how the information is portrayed. While people are willing to defer to experts on matters of low concern, for things that affect them directly, such as breast cancer or childhood diseases, expertise only counts for as much as giving off a 'sense of honesty and openness,' and that it matters far less than creating a sense of empathy in deciding who people will listen to. In other words, it's not enough to merely report on it as an expert. You need to make sure your report exudes a sense of honesty, openness, empathy, and maybe even a hint of humor."
People have been taught, for several generations now, that causality is optional, that science is for geeks, that geeks are there to serve the jocks, that man needs to serve the state, and that perception is reality. Why would they care about your silly little experiments?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Well when a major chunk of the population believes the earth is only umpteen thousands of years old, I don't think a presentation of any style or quality is going to get them to listen to what science has to say in any meaningful capacity unless it easily and directly benefits them.
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
Anyway, what is Good Science? A lot of the more entertaining science is Bad Science. For example, Discovery Channel segments on dinosaurs often feature people making roaring extrapolations: find a tooth fragment and say that they have found something from a dinosaur that would have been 25 ft long and run at 40 mph. What bullshit.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Unfortunately, this is a war that we are unlikely to win. The hearts and minds of the populace are mostly centered between the stomach and groin. What the AAS report is basically saying is that science has to "advertise" - just like everything else.
Then it's not "science". It's just one more religion / belief system in a pile of others out to get converts.
The only thing we can do is teach the scientific method - in schools, at home, in conversations. It's the only weapon we've got, however small.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
the only way we're going to see the public at large be able to evaluate claims and discard the "bad scinece"/pseudoscience is by starting in the schools. As long as there is a problem conveying basic science concepts to the younger members of our population, there is no hope of solving the problem in adults. Dover, Florida, Kansas etc. all examples where science was dumbed down, misrepresented or ignored entirely in favor of teaching pseudoscience that contributes nothing to the understanding of the world around people. It's terribly disturbing as a biologist to see that the educational system is as it stands, a complete and utter failure especially in regard to the major sciences and that there are little or no plans to remedy the situation.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
The lack of emphasis on Science, Maths and good ol' Logic during schooling, especially in the earlier years, is to blame for the lack of public interest in real science. Many of my relatives and friends just don't care about how things work, as long as they do. That, the natural curiosity to find answers for the "how" questions, is what is lacking in society today in general. The only time people want to know it seems, is if they are in danger or if their wallets are involved.
The problem is, the majority of the "ruling class" in management, government and all other areas are generally not scientifically inclined nor are they actively promoting science. They influence education policy and funding for research, which trickles down to the education system and the public's view of science.
I personally found algebra and calculus to be interesting and challenging, the latter is what drove a lot of my friends away, when I first learned it ages ago. I know that if I had worst teachers or if my father weren't an engineer, my feelings towards would have been quite different. Until scientists are more popular than movie stars and mathematicians are more well known than recording artists, the root of the problem will still be that science is just not popular enough to be seen as interesting or useful.
The fact that people actually care about Paris Hilton is also a nice solid data point in my suggestion that people's perspective on what's interesting and important is just waaaay off the mark from reality.
If I can do it, its probably not worth doing... probably
You seem to be a pretty good example of how pseudo-scientists try to paint themselves as victims, and thus serve the cause of disillusioning the public to science by misinformation, strawmen and outright lies.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
And to insinuate that weather and climate are the same thing pretty much indicates you don't have the foggiest notion what the hell you're talking about, which leads me to believe that you are probably the last person on Earth I'd want to get information on a climatological debate with.
All science is tentative, but thus far the denier community has tried to push that to an extreme, and are even invoking similar kinds of arguments (invoking conspiracies, questioning the peer-review process, getting lists of "scientists" who disagree with global warming that often include non-climatologists and even non-scientists) that evolution-deniers use.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Maybe we have to be a little less sensitive. When her baby dies (or is left sterile, or with heart damage) from one of those diseases everyone gets immunized against, someone (better yet lots of someones) should point out that she killed him. The news should carry the story.
I'm irritated that my health plan doesn't properly cover real medical expenses like wisdom tooth extraction or eye exams, but it does cover naturopathy. Why do I have to pay for someone's placebo habit?
Part of the problem, at least here in the U.S. (land of self-centeredness and instant gratification) is that science often fails to give people the answers they want to hear, or the results they want to have.
This is especially true when it comes to medical science. As far as medicine has advanced, there are still diseases and maladies that cannot be cured or even mitigated by current knowledge and practices. It can be very hard, if you are someone suffering from something of that sort, to accept that there may be little, or even nothing, that can be done. Desperation can cause even basically level-headed people to seek out untested or even already debunked alternative treatments that may at best have a mild placebo effect, more likely will do nothing to alleviate their suffering, and at worst can worsen the condition or hasten the person's ultimate demise.
Religion, obviously, can be a powerful impediment to acceptance of science as well. If your faith stands or falls with a literal reading of Genesis, then you will not, indeed CANnot accept scientific evidence to the contrary.
Finally, one thing I've always noted about humans is that we don't like "grey areas." We want answers that are complete, definitive, and satisfying. The fact that science can sometimes be wrong, and theories changed as more evidence is gathered, is unsettling to those who don't understand the scientific method, and leads them to have little faith in its conclusions.
This can only be remedied by not only pushing basic science courses hard and early in school (something way more comprehensive than that which produces the mere ability to answer a few multiple-choice questions on some standardized test), but instruction in reasoning and critical thinking as well. And I don't see that happening, not by a long shot. If you have a child, and want him or her to be scientifically literate, you pretty much have to teach them yourself. Schools today are about establishing minimal (very minimal) levels of ability, and high (very high) levels of conformity. Teaching too much science threatens the former goal, while instruction in critical thinking thwarts the latter.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
Yes, see it. Note the quote at the end, from a working scientist:
"When I read the literature, I'm not reading it to find proof like a textbook. I'm reading to get ideas. So even if something is wrong with the paper, if they have the kernel of a novel idea, that's something to think about," he says."
Also, the author of the paper points out that replication is more important than the original finding. Generally things aren't elevated to the level of scientific "truth" on the basis of one study. If the public wants to peruse scientific journals or if publish by press conference is going to become an accepted standard, then the public should understand this.
But when your oncologist recommends chemotherapy he is not speaking from the results of one small, unregulated study.
Note also that even if "most published scientific results are wrong," those results are still more likely to be correct than any other result.
Then again, every once in a while, someone hits on a previously unknown fundamental breakthrough that turns the rules as we know them on their head. Think Gallileo, Newton, Einsten, et al. It DOES happen.
That said, it's highly unlikely that the inventor of the "free energy" stuff is actually on to anything. I take his claims with a truckload of salt, but am willing to see what is really going on there.
It is possible that he hit on something, but pretty highly unlikely.
"YOU CAN'T GET ENERGY OUT OF NOTHING"
Very true. But if someone DOES hit on a way to tap into something we've been heretofore unaware of, that doesn't make it energy from nothing, just energy from something we didn't know about before -- the same as fusion, fission, and antimatter anniahlation would have been unthinkable in 1670.
Why do I have to pay for someone's placebo habit?
Presumably because they're cheaper than real medicine.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
The first step towards solving the problem, in my opinion, is stop making college degrees the minimum requirement for employment, regardless of major. There are too many people attending college today simply looking for any degree. This results in over-enrollment in so called easy majors, and less funding for science and engineering. You don't see nearly as many foreign students in those programs because, for them, the job market back home requires real knowledge, not just a piece of paper.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
"The clear message of the session was that a command of facts is never going to be good enough to convince most segments of the public, whether they're parents or Congress. How the information is conveyed can matter more than its content, and different forms of communication may be necessary for different audiences."
Translation: Sophistry trumps logic in public debate.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
... is a big problem. Your report could look honest, open, have some humor etc etc, and that will have nothing to do with the fact that it is good or bad science. You can even honestly think that your are an expert in whatever topic is about. But still, it could be very wrong. As in the universe there is no single atom of justice (Pratchett dixit), the same goes for that kind of bells and whistles you want to see in the "truth" (or how it is presented). Wonder how much scientific reports presenting that the earth were flat, or the center of the universe, or that we were created by a superior being had all those attributes, even with the addendum of being of "common sense" at that time.
Still is pending how you distinguish good from bad science, of both can be presented in similar ways. Maybe some trusted authority/organization/etc can say that it is good, or at least, that the followed methodology is right.
I've watched friends become church-goers; kneel before a priest and promise to believe in biblical claims. How can anybody "promise" to believe anything? Isn't belief the final product after a process observational and logical cross analysis has taken place? All you can realistically promise to believe is what your mind tells you is true. And since we are constantly learning, then we cannot promise, ever, that our belief system will not change when new information enters our awareness. Such promises can only be kept if we effectively stop learning and stop cross analyzing. --So either my friend was just nodding and repeating what he was told to say at his religious confirmation ceremony without thinking about it, or he was actually really promising to limit his rational thought processes to only those which would allow continued "belief" in biblical doctrine; a virtual lobotomy. Either way, it was a very disheartening event to witness; this is a guy who is otherwise smart and aware and caring. Luckily, it's possible to change your mind, and so all I can do is continue being myself and allow him to grow as he best sees fit. But it has been a challenge to remain respectful.
I'd been invited to his confirmation and he really wanted me to be there, so I went. It was my first time inside a church in many years, and I was reminded again why I cannot stand religion. --I was the only person, I think, in a church filled with almost my entire community, sitting there thinking, "This is all absolutely fucking insane. All these people are crazy! Aren't they hearing this stuff? Don't they SEE what is going on here?" --I've read the bible, and I've studied the other various religions, I know how cults work, I know how social control works, I know how mind-programming works, and I know enough psychology to know how and why people can be seduced, or worse, how (as you point out), they WANT to be seduced. I can tear the whole thing apart like the sand castle that it is, and I've done this over and over. Anybody with a brain can do it; it's fish in a barrel stuff.
But I held back on that day. I'd been invited by my friend, who knows full well my views on this, so all I could do was agree to watch him do this thing.
Brrr. I'm sorry. I'm venting.
Or perhaps I should say. . .
Fucking 'A'.
-FL
There are serious questions regarding the safety of immunizations, especially regarding thimerosal preservatives.
Thimerosal preservatives haven't been used in vaccines for children in years. Long enough, in fact, that the much ballyhooed (but never demonstrated) link between that and autism has been disproven because autism rates haven't decreased since the discontinuance of thimerosal.
-- Alastair
I've toyed with ideas about programs that would be more corporately focused. For example, what if student loan recipients were chosen by companies? The company would be on the hook for hiring the student after graduation. The student would be responsible for maintaining good grades in a major approved by the company (note: students would be able to pick the company that offered a major that they wanted). Students who flunk out, change majors (without a new sponsor), or who decide not to work for their sponsor have to pay the loan back. If the company cuts back staff and does not hire the student, then the company eats the loan. If the company hires the student, the company is assumed to have adjusted the student's pay appropriately. After some number of years, the student will finish the loan period and can switch companies without paying back the loan.
Another possibility would be to replace federal grants with corporate tax credits. Companies could pay for a student's tuition and mark it down as taxes paid. Obviously it would be more efficient for a company to pay tuition for a student it would like to hire than someone who is interested in an entirely different field.
A big problem with US education before college is the shortness of the school year. Why not take a page from Germany's book and switch to ten 216 day years in elementary and secondary school (the same 2160 days that come from twelve 180 day years)? Then go to a two year program that could be more general than a university degree (i.e. something like Engineering, Science, or Liberal Arts rather than Electrical Engineering, Physics, or Philosophy) and more specific than the final two years of secondary school currently are. Afterwards, students could go to the regular university with a more consistent and focused presentation. For people who aren't college inclined, they could use those two years in a trade school.
There are many problems with this approach. First, fields seen as "not profitable" by corporate leaders would suffer greatly. Fields such as paleontology, philosophy, history and even pure mathematics would go the way of the dodo bird. Next, those who wanted one of those unpopular majors would be forced into a government student loan that has dwindling users meaning the cost would go through the roof (as if it isn't already there) simply because nobody except those unpopular majors are getting them. Lastly, the whole concept of "general education" would die because companies wouldn't pay for classes that don't directly relate to whatever job they have lined up for the student. That is just a small sample of the problems. I''m sure others can think of more.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
Would you listen to someone who views you in that way?
People don't listen to geeky experts because
- The average person has much greater emotional intelligence than the average geek. I had to learn that the hard way. We think we are communicating factually, and the average Joe is hearing something completely different, because he is listening on a broader and higher level. The things he is hearing don't invite trust.
- Experts are so 1950's. I grew up in the 60's, when "Question Authority" was a radical slogan to put on your bumper. Now days, no one accepts authority automatically, but I remember when they did. Bottom line, the experts put forth a lot of bad information that led many people to do things they deeply regretted. Remember the insulin treatments in "A Beautiful Mind"? That's why I don't trust experts, either.
- People learned long ago that experts are just as political and dogmatic as fundamentalists, and they can be just as misguided.
BTW, some of the postings make me embarrassed to be a geek. I don't see disrespect as a sign of intelligence.Simple, as atheist's selfish agenda is to hate God and deny his revealed truth, no atheist can be moral. Nobody "doesn't belive in god" they know he is real, they just deny him, which is evil and therefore immoral.
You cannot be moral without God, therefore you cannot be a moral atheist nor a moral atheist agenda Utilitarianism, Kantian ethics, virtue ethics, etc., don't require you to worship some supernatural entity in order to make moral judgments. Some people like to pretend than morality only exists with obeying some made up deity, but that only shows how shallow their imaginations are that they need to read what actions are explicitly allowed or disallowed from some book to know whether they are acting good or bad. Two moral judgments that illustrate this point are the treatment of homosexuals and the issue of stem cell research. No non-deistic moral system would condone averse treatment of homosexuals or the banning stem cell research. Only those who don't have a moral 'system' but instead some arbitrary list of dos and don'ts would. Another example is prevention of cruelty to animals. The religious folks adjusted their dogma only after the lead of the 'immoral' atheists who pointed out that it was not a moral action to stage cockfights, stage dogfights, place livestock in cruel conditions, or torture animals.
I think I'll be just fine with my atheistic moral system. It forces me to think why an action is moral instead of searching for some verse in a holy book that I can interpret to my whims.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
Here, here!
My majors (well, if I were studying in the USA, they would be called majors) are English, Linguistics and Information Science, all with a reputation of being "easy".
Information Science, the way it is taught here, really is an easy major, no question there.
Linguistics is a field that is relatively obscure and, in a small country such as Croatia, not very profitable.
As for English — well, everyone speaks English, so everyone can teach English and everybody can be a translator or even an interpreter. Yet for some reason most of them would still make a mistake such as "here, here!" instead of "hear, hear!" (yeah, that was on purpose), or even "shoe, shoe!" instead of "shoo! shoo!" (I kid you not).
I dropped out from Electrical Engineering and Computer Science once upon a time and switched to these "easy" majors, and let me tell you: the only subject that really is easy is the one you enjoy doing. I flunked certain courses in EE and CS even though some of my colleagues, who subsequently graduated, would come to me for explanations — I was simply no longer interested in doing the hard work necessary to pass the exams. And even now, studying the "easy stuff", I see very few people really good at it.
It's all easy if you don't look harder into it.
Ignore this signature. By order.