Why Science is so Hard to Believe

[á´…eparted]

While I realize that the thread I had made previously on a related matter is still active, it was made more than 3 weeks ago. I feel that this article deserves it's own thread. It's a long article, but I find it to be very well written, insightful, and worth the read.

Why Science is so Hard to Believe

Excerpts from the article, though the first one I think captures it all, and is very interesting:

The “science communication problem,” as it’s blandly called by the scientists who study it, has yielded abundant new research into how people decide what to believe — and why they so often don’t accept the expert consensus. It’s not that they can’t grasp it, according to Dan Kahan of Yale University. In one study he asked 1,540 Americans, a representative sample, to rate the threat of climate change on a scale of zero to 10. Then he correlated that with the subjects’ science literacy. He found that higher literacy was associated with stronger views — at both ends of the spectrum. Science literacy promoted polarization on climate, not consensus. According to Kahan, that’s because people tend to use scientific knowledge to reinforce their worldviews.

Empowered by their own sources of information and their own interpretations of research, doubters have declared war on the consensus of experts. There are so many of these controversies these days, you’d think a diabolical agency had put something in the water to make people argumentative.
...
In this bewildering world we have to decide what to believe and how to act on that. In principle, that’s what science is for. “Science is not a body of facts,” says geophysicist Marcia McNutt, who once headed the U.S. Geological Survey and is now editor of Science, the prestigious journal. “Science is a method for deciding whether what we choose to believe has a basis in the laws of nature or not.”
...
Shtulman’s research indicates that as we become scientifically literate, we repress our naive beliefs but never eliminate them entirely. They nest in our brains, chirping at us as we try to make sense of the world. ... Yet we have trouble digesting randomness; our brains crave pattern and meaning.
...
Even for scientists, the scientific method is a hard discipline. They, too, are vulnerable to confirmation bias — the tendency to look for and see only evidence that confirms what they already believe. But unlike the rest of us, they submit their ideas to formal peer review before publishing them.
...
The media would also have you believe that science is full of shocking discoveries made by lone geniuses. Not so. The (boring) truth is that science usually advances incrementally, through the steady accretion of data and insights gathered by many people over many years.
...
We believe in scientific ideas not because we have truly evaluated all the evidence but because we feel an affinity for the scientific community. When I mentioned to Kahan that I fully accept evolution, he said: “Believing in evolution is just a description about you. It’s not an account of how you reason.”

I think this article captures the essence of the issue here, and it's that science denial stems from the availability of information to everyone. I sort of touched on this in [MENTION=4945]EJCC[/MENTION]'s blog earlier today, and she did as well, and it's idea of experts and laymen; who causes the problem, do they both, and what can be done to mitigate it. It seems like there isn't any offering of a solution here. Nevertheless, it shows what's going on, and that it's actually quite complex. I wonder what others here feel would be a good solution to managing this problem in this modern era with it's overflowing information availability.

On a personal level (and to be perfectly honest, I am not proud to admit this, but I feel I must for the purposes of the thread), I have experienced the effect of using science to reinforce my world views. For several years when I was around 16-20 (2005-2009), I was anti-fluoride, anti-vaccine, and partially anti-GMO. A lot came from influence from my mother, and I parroted it back. But I found I wanted those things to be true, so I found "evidence" (it wasn't really of course) to support it. It wasn't until I started to stay more alert and critical instead of starting from idealism that I was forced to admit that I was looking at the wrong evidence, and finding things to support my views. It wasn't fun, admitting I was doing it wrong, and was wrong. I still find myself wresting with this at times. I also still have an internal fear reaction whenever I get a vaccine, despite rationally knowing it's good. It's very important though for us to run against what our guts tell us with science when faced with credible evidence, because a lot of the time (as the article points out) science isn't intuitive, and even the deepest education of it can't prevent one from slipping.

Discuss.

 

[Magic Poriferan]

This is a little bit of an aside, but I remember when I was a younger lad and wikipedia just came into existence, and there was this chatter about the future of expertise, even the future of intelligence itself. there were editorials here and there and casual conversations abounding about this concept that the availability of information in the internet age was going to make the concept of the expert, or the scholar, what-have-you, obsolete.

Back then, I correctly predicted how wrong that was. The availability of information does not increase the odds that people will seek it. It does not in any way improve a person's ability to know how to make sense of that information, to assess its veracity or know what it really implies. It doesn't require anyone to submit anything they find to anyone else's review. And it does not give them a stronger memory. So, experts are still a distinct thing because they differ on those accounts, and are therefore not obsolete.

But, it seems that it has caused people to be more likely to believe that experts and scholars are obsolete. The reason for this has already been covered here.

But I will say that whatever the solution is, it most certainly isn't taking information away from people. We must find a way, though I do not know how, to make people more responsible with information, either on the consumption end or the production end.

 

[gromit]

I think it's a lot of work for the average person who is NOT involved in some sort of STEM or healthcare field to make sense of a lot of concepts. And, for people in those fields, it takes a lot of effort to understand the nuances of studies and ideas outside of their area of expertise.

I remember recently reading the results of a study/poll(?) that a surprising proportion of people would support mandatory labeling of foods that contain DNA (labels would state that deoxyribonucleic acid has been shown to be passed from a mother to her unborn child and can result in birth defects or some similar wording). The fact that DNA is present in our own bodies and every food we consume, necessary for life to replicate itself, is apparently not something on the radar of most people.

I guess for the average person, it almost seems like it comes down to whether or not you trust the "experts."

The idea of scientific literacy being linked to stronger/more extreme opinions is interesting too. But now I have to go to bed.

 

[93JC]

I'm not sure that the "science communication problem" can ever be solved, precisely because of the "overflowing information availability" we have today. It's easy for biased people to seek out pseudoscience to support their views. (E.g. Jenny McCarthy famously said "The University of Google is where I got my degree from," when asked by Oprah Winfrey how/why she believed that vaccines caused autism.)

The best we can hope for may be to teach people how to detect BS, but it will never completely eliminate the problem. People choose to believe the science they want to believe and disregard the science they don't want to believe. It has been an ongoing phenomenon for all human history.

 

[á´…eparted]

I think it's a lot of work for the average person who is NOT involved in some sort of STEM or healthcare field to make sense of a lot of concepts. And, for people in those fields, it takes a lot of effort to understand the nuances of studies and ideas outside of their area of expertise.

I remember recently reading the results of a study/poll(?) that a surprising proportion of people would support mandatory labeling of foods that contain DNA (labels would state that deoxyribonucleic acid has been shown to be passed from a mother to her unborn child and can result in birth defects or some similar wording). The fact that DNA is present in our own bodies and every food we consume, necessary for life to replicate itself, is apparently not something on the radar of most people.

I guess for the average person, it almost seems like it comes down to whether or not you trust the "experts."

The idea of scientific literacy being linked to stronger/more extreme opinions is interesting too. But now I have to go to bed.

You are exactly right.

I remember reading about that poll as well. It really brings light to how little the general public knows, and yet still desires to influences decisions like this without a rational basis. I'm in a STEM field and I make a point to defer my understanding to experts when it is on fields too far outside of what I study since I don't have the credentials or facillities to accurately assess what's going on.

I'm speculating here, but I think the reason for the stronger extremes in more scientific literate individuals is because of the increased confidence in onesself when it comes to being an expert in something. EJCC talked about this earlier and reminded me of the phenomon known as the dunning-kruger effect. I think what were seeing might be that in action in a number of individuals in some form. I'm not sure if it exactly fits, but it's at least inflated self confidence. Some justified, some not.

 

[Cellmold]

There is also the overuse of the term 'expert' such that it can be hard to tell where it has been earned and where it is just being bandied about, particularly by media reports.

Especially since most people hear about scientific breakthroughs from the news. This isn't too surprising though, especially when you consider that people usually start with a theory and then look for evidence to support it as opposed to the opposite.

 

[sprinkles]

Science is like Zen. It isn't easy, and it isn't difficult. It's neither simple nor complicated. To fill your cup it must first be empty.

 

[sprinkles]

Also another issue is pervasive layman terms being taken as correct facts, such as the old argument about whether the earth goes around the sun, or the sun around the earth, where actually both perspectives are wrong - the earth and sun together orbit a point called a barycenter, which is the balance point of their respective masses. So people think they understand something but often they don't even know what it is they understand.

 

[93JC]

Also another issue is pervasive layman terms being taken as correct facts, such as the old argument about whether the earth goes around the sun, or the sun around the earth, where actually both perspectives are wrong - the earth and sun together orbit a point called a barycenter, which is the balance point of their respective masses. So people think they understand something but often they don't even know what it is they understand.

Pervasive misuse of scientific terms by laymen is also a great source of misunderstanding. The common creationist argument that "evolution is just a theory" is example numero uno...

 

[sprinkles]

Pervasive misuse of scientific terms by laymen is also a great source of misunderstanding. The common creationist argument that "evolution is just a theory" is example numero uno...

Or saying evolution violates thermodynamics. I still see people tricked by that one and it ticks me off. It sucked people in because it sounds "scientific" but ironically that statement is basically hanging a sign around their own neck which says "I don't know the first thing about thermodynamics"

 

[grey_beard]

While I realize that the thread I had made previously on a related matter is still active, it was made more than 3 weeks ago. I feel that this article deserves it's own thread. It's a long article, but I find it to be very well written, insightful, and worth the read.

Why Science is so Hard to Believe

Excerpts from the article, though the first one I think captures it all, and is very interesting:





I think this article captures the essence of the issue here, and it's that science denial stems from the availability of information to everyone. I sort of touched on this in [MENTION=4945]EJCC[/MENTION]'s blog earlier today, and she did as well, and it's idea of experts and laymen; who causes the problem, do they both, and what can be done to mitigate it. It seems like there isn't any offering of a solution here. Nevertheless, it shows what's going on, and that it's actually quite complex. I wonder what others here feel would be a good solution to managing this problem in this modern era with it's overflowing information availability.

On a personal level (and to be perfectly honest, I am not proud to admit this, but I feel I must for the purposes of the thread), I have experienced the effect of using science to reinforce my world views. For several years when I was around 16-20 (2005-2009), I was anti-fluoride, anti-vaccine, and partially anti-GMO. A lot came from influence from my mother, and I parroted it back. But I found I wanted those things to be true, so I found "evidence" (it wasn't really of course) to support it. It wasn't until I started to stay more alert and critical instead of starting from idealism that I was forced to admit that I was looking at the wrong evidence, and finding things to support my views. It wasn't fun, admitting I was doing it wrong, and was wrong. I still find myself wresting with this at times. I also still have an internal fear reaction whenever I get a vaccine, despite rationally knowing it's good. It's very important though for us to run against what our guts tell us with science when faced with credible evidence, because a lot of the time (as the article points out) science isn't intuitive, and even the deepest education of it can't prevent one from slipping.

Discuss.

The problem is threefold.

1a) Half the population has an IQ under 100. Even of those to the right of the dividing line, there is no guarantee that they are honest, either due to their wishes, or ulterior motives.
These include marketing, power over other people, and career advancement (publish or perish).
1b) To make it worse, if there are competing interests each often tells only part of the story to gain adherents (smoking does not CAUSE cancer as there are smokers who have lived to 100 while being cancer free; but it does greatly increase the odds; but those odds are not tremendous to begin with: in the UK, 1/14 people will die of lung cancer; 86% of *those* are smokers. So smoking all your life means you have a 12% chance of dying of lung cancer: a lousy way to die, but not a certainty).
2) Knowledge may grow over time, but it does not propagate evenly, and there is no "garbage collection" feature.
3) Many things presented as "absolute fact" by experts on the grounds that they are "the latest research" turn out to be baldfaced lies, or jumping the gun on phenomena not yet understood (see #1 and such things as the USDA grain-based food pyramid and Anthropogenic Global Warming).

 

[grey_beard]

Or saying evolution violates thermodynamics. I still see people tricked by that one and it ticks me off. It sucked people in because it sounds "scientific" but ironically that statement is basically hanging a sign around their own neck which says "I don't know the first thing about thermodynamics"

In such cases I like to call it the "First Law of Thermal Documents"...
I once heard Murray Gell-Mann mention this after an invited talk, he at least had the grace to point out (about the people making such claims) that they didn't know organisms are *open* systems...

 

[Totenkindly]

The problem is threefold.

1a) Half the IQ has a population under 100. Even of those to the right of the dividing line, there is no guarantee that they are honest, either due to their wishes, or ulterior motives.

What does that even mean, aside from "half the people are under the average intelligence of all the people?" It's inherent in the definition of the process, isn't it? Actually, that's not right on my part, it's the median:

When current IQ tests are developed, the median raw score of the norming sample is defined as IQ 100 and scores each standard deviation (SD) up or down are defined as 15 IQ points greater or less,[2] although this was not always so historically. By this definition, approximately two-thirds of the population scores an IQ between 85 and 115, and about 5 percent of the population scores above 125.[3][4]

Anyway, that's rather a side note. The question I'm left with asking is more this: "Is the scientific process something that can be understood and practiced even by people who are below an IQ100?" [and apparently 2/3 of the population is within 15 points on either side of 100, so... let's say "can people with an IQ85 still practice a scientific process?"] Where's the point where a certain level of intelligence is incapable of understanding the scientifice process of information weighting and evaluation? That could be below the 50% mark, it could be higher than the 50% mark.

I do agree that a major part of the problem is that people are people. I know even wanting to be objective, I regularly have to remind myself to take a step back and reconsider. It's pretty natural for human beings to put together the way "something works" and then treat it as a fixed point on which to build other knowledge, and it can be uncomfortable and/or confusing to constantly look at something you thought was established and say, "Oh, that might not be right, let me reexamine that, then fix EVERYTHING ELSE that it was supporting." But that's the process is: If you come up with new information that doesn't seem to mesh, you explore it further to see if you need to change what you thought you knew or whether it can still mesh with what you thought you knew.

 

[GarrotTheThief]

I think science is hard to believe for many because they do not understand the idea of accumulation, thresholds and critical points. It is hard to believe for example that the findings in quantum physics can occur without altering our perceptions of our Newtonian scale views because we have a hard time believing that there are limits and borders between thresholds, or critical points where things seem to change in surreal ways but which do not leak over.

This to me is evidence of design...a border implies separation, and separation implies intelligent design. The idea of a chaos in its general form is absurd and if there is intelligence inside of us it can only be that there is also intelligence outside of us.

The biggest obstacle of the modern person is understanding that there is such a thing as a non-living brain, which is order basically...we think that something is random, in truth nothing is random, our perception of random is the product of limitation, being limited to time, we age...but time is a derivative of a thing which we cannot exactly see or measure.

Whether there is a god or not...that is not relevant. There is certainly, however, non-living thinking, the universe thinks, it feels but it is non-living thought and feeling. Of this, no one can deny and be considered logical.

The universe is an ordered system, you see...for every action there is also a reaction, but how this plays out in a non-causal way is beyond us...again we are biased by this thing we experience as the passage of time which is arbitrary to us...but we cannot fathom how we suffer to it and therefore we become prejudice.

The scientist is as biased as anyone in that he is limited by his lifespan and seeks to reconcile this with his work.

It is hard for us to step out of our subjective state of limit based thought and see how there is no such thing as a finite amount, hence we call numbers which cannot be described in a finite way irrational, but is us who is irrational in thinking things are rational according to us since we are the inferior to the infinite.

Hence, infinity is what is truly rational, and we are the irrational ones assuming that what exists is only what we can see.

 

[GarrotTheThief]

Think of it this way....

We define something as living by its carbon based parts and by its ability to reproduce...one is arbitrary and the other myopic. We know even non-living things reproduce but because we set limits to the nature of reproduction we assume it doesn't - a false assumptions because we know for a fact that star systems and galaxies do in fact reproduce.

Similarly, we say that only living organisms can think, another false dichotomy, for we see that inanimatate objects also display a form of thought and logic based on the fact that they exhibit decision making capabilities but we chose to turn a blind eye to it.

For example, the earth and its ecosystem engages in game theory based on the decisions and choices of its sub-parts (us)...the whether, markets, all make choices and decisions, probabilistic determinations, but we chose to live in a fantasy world and think that only living things can make choices...this is false..and as sacriligious to science as believing that painting your face white and doing a rain dance will make it rain.

 

[Xander]

I think the problem is reality is the everyday. The dopler effect can be demonstrated and still can confuse people. Microbiology, astro physics, quantum mechanics.... Much harder to exemplify.

People believe what they see, smell, taste and touch... They're backwards that way.

Mind you, doesn't explain the acceptance of a god.

 

[93JC]

Or saying evolution violates thermodynamics. I still see people tricked by that one and it ticks me off. It sucked people in because it sounds "scientific" but ironically that statement is basically hanging a sign around their own neck which says "I don't know the first thing about thermodynamics"

Never heard that one. That's also a problem: people accumulate just enough scientific knowledge to get themselves into trouble. It reminds me a lot of those "freemen-on-the-land" who use as much legal jargon as they can to obfuscate their rationale for not paying taxes, squatting in other people's homes, etc..


EDIT: I decided to satiate my curiosity and google "evolution second law of thermodynamics" to find out precisely how "creation scientists" have determined that evolution violates the second law.

Oh boy. The pseudo-scientific claptrap makes my head hurt. It's more akin to the freemen movement than I thought...

 

[sprinkles]

What does that even mean, aside from "half the people are under the average intelligence of all the people?" It's inherent in the definition of the process, isn't it? Actually, that's not right on my part, it's the median:



Anyway, that's rather a side note. The question I'm left with asking is more this: "Is the scientific process something that can be understood and practiced even by people who are below an IQ100?" [and apparently 2/3 of the population is within 15 points on either side of 100, so... let's say "can people with an IQ85 still practice a scientific process?"] Where's the point where a certain level of intelligence is incapable of understanding the scientifice process of information weighting and evaluation? That could be below the 50% mark, it could be higher than the 50% mark.

I do agree that a major part of the problem is that people are people. I know even wanting to be objective, I regularly have to remind myself to take a step back and reconsider. It's pretty natural for human beings to put together the way "something works" and then treat it as a fixed point on which to build other knowledge, and it can be uncomfortable and/or confusing to constantly look at something you thought was established and say, "Oh, that might not be right, let me reexamine that, then fix EVERYTHING ELSE that it was supporting." But that's the process is: If you come up with new information that doesn't seem to mesh, you explore it further to see if you need to change what you thought you knew or whether it can still mesh with what you thought you knew.

I think people of average or even a little below average intelligence could grasp science fine if they were placed in a conductive environment.

It's not so much that science is difficult to understand, it's more that it simply takes a bit of focus to pick up the 'signal' through the 'noise'. It isn't that average people can't understand the signal, they just have a harder time filtering out the noise.

It's like when I first thought Rubik's cubes were hard. The issue wasn't how complex the cube is - sure it has 400 whatever quintillion combinations but it's only ever in one of those combinations. In that respect it's like a jigsaw puzzle when you dump the pieces out of the box, and in fact a large jigsaw puzzle is probably many times more difficult than the Rubik's cube is. I learned that if I just clear my mind and get rid of the noise, it's not hard to understand. Once I figured it out I wanted to kick myself for how over complicated I'd been making it. One very simple principle allows you to arbitrarily move the pieces to wherever you want, with only a few caveats, so I'm not talking about 'solving' by memorized patterns - I can do anything I want to the cube. Solve the corners first, solve the edges first, solve corners on one half and edges on the other, make arbitrary patterns, etc. all just intuitively.

 

[sprinkles]

In such cases I like to call it the "First Law of Thermal Documents"...
I once heard Murray Gell-Mann mention this after an invited talk, he at least had the grace to point out (about the people making such claims) that they didn't know organisms are *open* systems...

I've heard that excuse. The problem with it is that there are other open systems which would appear to violate thermodynamics by their reasoning - e.g. their refrigerators. Where is the outcry that refrigerators are a lie?

 

[Passacaglia]

I think it's a lot of work for the average person who is NOT involved in some sort of STEM or healthcare field to make sense of a lot of concepts. And, for people in those fields, it takes a lot of effort to understand the nuances of studies and ideas outside of their area of expertise.

QFT, and not just outside of the STEM crowd.

I've been meaning to read up on a few salient topics, including climate change and global warming, because I want to understand them better. But when I get done with my engineering classes, doing my engineering homework, studying for my next engineering quiz, and running down my daily to-do list, the last thing I want to do is delve into yet another thought-intensive endeavor. Usually all I want to do is play a few hands of Hearthstone and then go to sleep.

Somehow I don't see that changing much after I graduate, either.

I'm speculating here, but I think the reason for the stronger extremes in more scientific literate individuals is because of the increased confidence in onesself when it comes to being an expert in something. EJCC talked about this earlier and reminded me of the phenomon known as the dunning-kruger effect. I think what were seeing might be that in action in a number of individuals in some form. I'm not sure if it exactly fits, but it's at least inflated self confidence. Some justified, some not.

I think you're onto something here. There are some personalities especially that, when combined with competence in one area, seem to assume generalized competence.