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Scientists Seen As Competent But Not Trusted By Americans
cold fjord writes The Woodrow Wilson School reports, "If scientists want the public to trust their research suggestions, they may want to appear a bit 'warmer,' according to a new review published by Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. The review, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), shows that while Americans view scientists as competent, they are not entirely trusted. This may be because they are not perceived to be friendly or warm. In particular, Americans seem wary of researchers seeking grant funding and do not trust scientists pushing persuasive agendas. Instead, the public leans toward impartiality. 'Scientists have earned the respect of Americans but not necessarily their trust,' said lead author Susan Fiske, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and professor of public affairs. 'But this gap can be filled by showing concern for humanity and the environment. Rather than persuading, scientists may better serve citizens by discussing, teaching and sharing information to convey trustworthy intentions.'"
Fox news goes on and on to perpetuate the idea that scientists would rather be shamed and discredited by releasing junk science to receive grant money than be honored as brilliant to discover something profound. I swear those people are nitwits.
I pity USA scientists. It must be hard to live and work in a country where the powers that be turned all facts into opinions.
Science is about reproducible results. Publish the details of your experiment, so I can perform your experiment (and variations on it) myself. Your claim is strengthened if I get the same results you do.
The entire goddamn point of science is that you prove the theory using experiment, publish a paper explaining what you did and how you did it, and then anybody else [who is competent] can go read the paper and reproduce similar results for themselves.
The real issue here is the part I put in square brackets as an aside: "anybody [who is competent]." It's true that if you're not competent then you need to trust something. But what you need to trust is not the individual scientists themselves, but rather that competent people will, as a group, follow the process and weed out the disproven theories.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
True, but when it comes down to it, I'll trust a scientists' word about something scientific over a celebrity's word or a preacher's word.
For example, Scientist A, a respected immunologist, says that vaccines prevent disease and are good. Celebrity M, a former Playboy model, says they're filled with icky stuff and should be banned. Too many Americans would listen to the celebrity over the scientist or give their views equal weight when there is no comparison: The scientist should win out.
For another example, Scientist B, a geologist, says that the evidence points to the Earth being 4.54 billion years. Preacher Z claims that the Bible says it is only 10,000 years old. Again, too many Americans would either give them equal weight or would side with the preacher.
Avoiding the authority fallacy is a good thing, but this doesn't mean that a person's knowledge of a field should be disregarded in all cases.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
An intelligent leader does not need to be a scientist, however, an intelligent leader needs to be scientifically literate. I feel that the lack of scientific literacy and statistical literacy as a whole has created a great gap between understanding what is going on and trusting people who have the bests interests of the people at heart. However, some exceptions exist. I honestly feel Pope Francis has been one of the best leaders of the Catholic church in the last century. I don't know if he will exceed Pope John Paul II or not, but in a short time, he has undone a lot of damage that his predecessor did. I feel his scientific background has assisted in this.
On top of that, we have an economy built on short term gains. This has created a lot of negative perceptions on things that need to be done. We can't push alternative energy because we will destroy the economy, but China and Germany have been doing just that and their economies are booming.
Sadly, what we are being told by this study is that our researchers need a PR team. Everyone can imagine what that will do to the cost of research and development. On a positive note, we might now have justification for employing the people who spent all of that time getting marketing degrees.
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