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."

Comments

People don't believe in it anymore

[Gothmolly]

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?

What we have here

[ColdWetDog]

Is a failure to communicate ...

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.

Re:What we have here

[isomeme]

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.

Of course, one big problem is that the scientific method is usually taught incorrectly. People frame it as if the scientific method explained everything about how actual scientists do actual science; there's this weird image that scientists just mechanically follow a set of steps, and science results.

In fact, of course, the scientific method is merely (though crucially) a way to apply rigorous tests to the results of intuition and imagination. Kekule dreamed that benzene was a ring; no amount of mechanical scientific-method application would have ever resulted in that golden idea. But, having had that idea, he then went into the lab and applied the scientific method to test it, to measure his confidence in the results of those tests. He published his results in a form which allowed others to reproduce his experiments, and to analyze his proposed explanation for the results of those experiments. All that is how science manages to be more than opinion.

But the interesting part, the human part, the part that gets people interested in science, is the very part that isn't subject to the scientif method. I believe it was Brecht who remarked (paraphrased from memory) that science is not a gateway to infinite wisdom, but rather a guard against infinite folly. That's the best summary of the scientific method I've ever run across.

Re:Don't let facts get in the way of good fun

[johnsonav]

I would argue that the USA's peak of scientific interest was during the late 1960s when the space program was a national obsession and every second kid had a Nasa poster on their bedroom wall. You're probably right. But, I'm sure there were plenty of people back then that thought there were too many kids interested in The Beatles, not science. If anything, I believe that what has been lost is a generation of physicists and biologists to the siren's song of computer science. If the Apollo program was what drew them in the '60s, then dot-coms and OSS draw them now. There is no other field today where the barriers to entry are so low that almost anyone can make a real contribution.

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.

Re:Yeah, but can you 'prove' it?

[Aglassis]

So what is the belief system that suits moral atheist agenda?

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.