Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And today we're going to do an episode following up
Speaker 1: on a panel Robert saw this year at the World
Speaker 1: Science Festival in New York. So we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: topics having to do with bias, belief, public opinion, and
Speaker 1: science communication. And I think we should start in some
Speaker 1: territory that's sure to annoy at least a few listeners
Speaker 1: right from the get go. So Robert, I got a
Speaker 1: pop quiz for you. Don't look at the numbers. If
Speaker 1: you had to guess how many Americans do you think
Speaker 1: accept the scientific consensus on global warming? Oh, well, of
Speaker 1: course that's a big one, because of course, when you
Speaker 1: when you go to answer that question, you think about
Speaker 1: your your immediate you know, sphere of influence and the
Speaker 1: people you know, or perhaps you think of media representations
Speaker 1: on the question. So it depends on on on on
Speaker 1: the reporting, on the on the panels of experts you're
Speaker 1: presented with. I would I would tend to just off
Speaker 1: the top of my head, and I'd want to rate
Speaker 1: it of people except the scientific consensus, you're not too
Speaker 1: far off, but that's optimistic. Uh so. Gallup has been
Speaker 1: tracking Americans beliefs about global warming for over a decade now,
Speaker 1: and some of the questions they tend to ask people
Speaker 1: are more subjective. It's things like do you worry a
Speaker 1: great deal about global warming? And uh, intent of people
Speaker 1: said yes. That's up from thirty seven percent in sixteen,
Speaker 1: and up from thirty two percent in But technically, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's worth pointing out that there's no objective fact about
Speaker 1: whether you should be worried or not. Maybe you don't care.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it comes down to worry and what what? What?
Speaker 1: To what extent? Are you worrying a great deal about something? Right? Like,
Speaker 1: you can you can realize something is a vital threat
Speaker 1: to the human race. You can just not care anyway. Right,
Speaker 1: you can say, well, if it happens, it happens, or
Speaker 1: you know or what or well that's a problem for
Speaker 1: the next generation to figure out. There are various ways
Speaker 1: of calculating that question in your head. Right. It also
Speaker 1: hinges on the word worry, like maybe you do care
Speaker 1: about fighting climate change, but you wouldn't characterize your feeling
Speaker 1: as worried. You're invigorated by the idea of trying to
Speaker 1: do something about it. Right, Are you worried about it
Speaker 1: versus do you think this is this is a problem
Speaker 1: that government should work together too to address. Right. That
Speaker 1: Some of the other questions have straightforwardly right or wrong answers.
Speaker 1: For example, in seventy one percent of Americans said they
Speaker 1: agree that most scientists believe global warming is occurring. Right,
Speaker 1: So the question is, do you think most scientists believe
Speaker 1: global warming is occurring? Se said yes. That's up from
Speaker 1: sixty in sixteen and sixty, so there's there's a climb
Speaker 1: in that number. More people are saying yes, I think
Speaker 1: most scientists believe that the Earth is warming. There is
Speaker 1: just an objective fact to the matter about whether most
Speaker 1: scientists or most climate scientists believe the planet is warming.
Speaker 1: They do. There's no debate about that. Now, what has
Speaker 1: been reasonably debated is the exact figure of the agreement,
Speaker 1: because it's not necessarily easy to calculate exactly what numbers
Speaker 1: of scientists agree with a certain proposition. Right, Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you if you just give yourself this assignment and
Speaker 1: start hitting Wikipedia. Yeah, you're gonna find lists of scientists
Speaker 1: who or either opponents or proponents. But then when you
Speaker 1: start trying to peal back and figure out who these
Speaker 1: people are and what their field of expertise are, it
Speaker 1: just gets increasingly complicated. Right, But there are studies that
Speaker 1: look into this. They try to impose a methodology and say, Okay,
Speaker 1: what do scientists think or what has the published literature said. Now,
Speaker 1: one study like this was published in two thousand nine
Speaker 1: in EOS Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, Uh good
Speaker 1: good professional publication title there, and it's called Examining the
Speaker 1: Scientific Consensus on Climate Change. And so what they did
Speaker 1: is they sent invitations out to more than ten thousand
Speaker 1: Earth scientists, basically all of the geoscientists they could find
Speaker 1: at universities and public research institutions, with two survey questions.
Speaker 1: And these were the two questions. First question, when compared
Speaker 1: with pre eighteen hundreds levels, do you think that mean
Speaker 1: global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
Speaker 1: And then the second question, do you think human activity
Speaker 1: is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?
Speaker 1: So of the people they pinned with this survey, three thousand,
Speaker 1: one forty six geoscientists responded. They said, that's about a
Speaker 1: standard survey response rate over all of the earth sciences.
Speaker 1: Nine of participants answered risen to the first question. Now,
Speaker 1: that's geoscientists. That's people who study the Earth in anyway,
Speaker 1: so geologist, ocean hydrologists, meteorologists, economic geologists. Um, what about
Speaker 1: people who study the climate specifically? Well, Of the subset
Speaker 1: of respondents who were experts in climate science and had
Speaker 1: published more than half of their recent papers weighing in
Speaker 1: on the subject of climate change, ninety six point two
Speaker 1: percent or seventy six of seventy nine answered risen to
Speaker 1: the first question. That's a high that's a high percentage
Speaker 1: right there, right yeah. And there have been multiple other
Speaker 1: studies that use different methodologies to ask slightly different questions,
Speaker 1: but all of them have found overwhelming agreement among scientists
Speaker 1: in general, and especially among climate scientists in particular, that
Speaker 1: the planet is rapidly warming. So those seventy one percent
Speaker 1: of Americans who say that most scientists believe global warming
Speaker 1: is happening, they are factually correct. Those who disagreed are incorrect.
Speaker 1: Though it is worth saying that a large share of
Speaker 1: the people who didn't agree with that said they were unsure.
Speaker 1: So if you're unsure, you're unsure. But if you if
Speaker 1: you didn't agree with that, you are incorrect. But then,
Speaker 1: of course, there you get into questions in the global
Speaker 1: warming debate that are not quite as cut and dry
Speaker 1: as whether the majority of scientists agree that the Earth
Speaker 1: is warming. For example, what's causing the warming? Is global
Speaker 1: warming caused by human activity primarily greenhouse gas emissions, or
Speaker 1: by natural causes? Well, it shouldn't be surprising that there
Speaker 1: have been plenty of attempts to study the opinion of
Speaker 1: scientists on this question as well. So, for example, in
Speaker 1: that same survey from two thousand nine we just mentioned
Speaker 1: a d two percent of all Earth scientists said yes
Speaker 1: that humans are a major contributing factor, and nine seven
Speaker 1: point four percent of active climate researchers said yes. Again,
Speaker 1: these are high percentages. If these were the experts telling
Speaker 1: me that I should cut something out of my diet
Speaker 1: or maybe, you know, make other some sort of major
Speaker 1: change in my life, I would be seriously inclined to
Speaker 1: listen to them. Okay, sure, but maybe maybe you say, well,
Speaker 1: that's just one study, but has anybody else studied this?
Speaker 1: Actually yes. So a commonly cited figure is from a
Speaker 1: study in the journal Environmental Research Letters by John Cook
Speaker 1: at All that what they did is looked at abstracts
Speaker 1: of published papers on the subject. They looked at about
Speaker 1: twelve thousand research papers published over the previous two decades,
Speaker 1: and uh they found quote, sixty six point four percent
Speaker 1: of abstracts expressed no position on anthropogenic global warming, meaning
Speaker 1: human cause global warming, thirty two point six percent endorsed it,
Speaker 1: and zero point seven percent rejected it, and zero point
Speaker 1: three percent were uncertain about the cause of global warming.
Speaker 1: So this means that among papers that expressed a view
Speaker 1: on the cause of global warming, ninety seven point one
Speaker 1: percent endorsed the consensus. Now, I want to just cut
Speaker 1: in are real quick and say if it sounds like
Speaker 1: we're just hitting you over the head with a bunch
Speaker 1: of figures and numbers to drive home the fact that
Speaker 1: climate change is caused by hum an activity, the vast
Speaker 1: majority of this episode is dealing not with those facts,
Speaker 1: but how we process those facts. Right, We just want
Speaker 1: to establish clearly what the scientific consensus is beyond any
Speaker 1: reasonable doubts. We will get to science, communication and public
Speaker 1: consumption of the information in a bit right. Uh. So
Speaker 1: you've got this Cook paper, and obviously there's a lot
Speaker 1: of people in the general public don't agree with climate change.
Speaker 1: So there's been plenty of criticisms of the cook papers methodology.
Speaker 1: For example, in there was a Dutch born economist named
Speaker 1: Richard Toll who criticized the Cook study and tried to
Speaker 1: revise the estimates down. Uh. Toll is often cited as
Speaker 1: a critic of the consensus on global warming. But even
Speaker 1: when he revised the numbers down, he recrunched them and said, no,
Speaker 1: actually it's not as high as they said. He found
Speaker 1: nine one percent agreement instead of agreement. And I should
Speaker 1: add that Cook also defended their original figure on in
Speaker 1: a response article that attributed tolls lower figure of to
Speaker 1: a math era one last study before we move on, Uh,
Speaker 1: andreg at all expert credibility and Climate Change Proceedings of
Speaker 1: the National Academy of Sciences two thousand ten. They used
Speaker 1: a data set of one thousand, three seventy two climate
Speaker 1: researchers to determine that of climate scientists in general were
Speaker 1: convinced that human activity was the main cause of global
Speaker 1: warming and of climate scientists who were actively publishing in
Speaker 1: the field, between nine and percent of them agreed with
Speaker 1: the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the
Speaker 1: i p c C, which concluded that the main reason
Speaker 1: the climate is changing is human activity, primarily greenhouse gas emissions.
Speaker 1: So this is pretty unambiguous anyway you cut it. The
Speaker 1: large majority of scientists, especially those that study the climate
Speaker 1: directly and published in the field, agree that the Earth
Speaker 1: is warming and that human activity is the main cause.
Speaker 1: But let's go back to those gallop results. Only of
Speaker 1: Americans agree with the objective fact that the majority of
Speaker 1: scientists believe the Earth is warming, and only sixty eight
Speaker 1: percent of Americans agree with the clear consensus that human
Speaker 1: activity is a significant cause of this warming. And this
Speaker 1: gap between the expert consensus in public opinion is sometimes
Speaker 1: maddening to science and science communicators, Like if you are
Speaker 1: a dissenting climate researcher and you've got some reason of
Speaker 1: your own to disagree, sure, but why would non experts
Speaker 1: like you and me disagree with the overwhelming majority of
Speaker 1: people who know what they're talking about. And the ungenerous
Speaker 1: question that comes out of frustration with this situation is
Speaker 1: why don't they believe in science? And is that really
Speaker 1: what's going on? So that's a question we wanted to
Speaker 1: ask today is the city. Is the situation really that
Speaker 1: they don't believe in science or is that there's something
Speaker 1: particular to this issue where their ability to judge science
Speaker 1: has been corrupted. Now, obviously you're listening to a science podcast,
Speaker 1: so I'm we're not gonna try and belabor the point
Speaker 1: here too much. But of course science, science is the
Speaker 1: true path as a systematic exploration of the universe and
Speaker 1: the properties that government science. I mean, this has allowed
Speaker 1: humanity a path out of darkness, ignorance, and disease. It
Speaker 1: underlies all the marvels of modern technology and provides us
Speaker 1: with a chance for humanities a long term survival on
Speaker 1: and potentially beyond Earth. I mean, if you listen to
Speaker 1: the podcast, you know I'm not saying that that science
Speaker 1: will answer all of life's questions, especially in teleological questions
Speaker 1: related to him like why do I exist? What's my
Speaker 1: purpose in life? Right? But if you're trying to answer
Speaker 1: facts about the material universe with reliable accuracy, uh, I
Speaker 1: mean we're science advocates around here, right, you have the
Speaker 1: science you have the scientists, and here's the thing. For
Speaker 1: the most part, we trust it, or at the very
Speaker 1: least we claim to trust it. That's right. Is pointed
Speaker 1: out in an often cited uh Pew research study from
Speaker 1: two thousands sixteen. Americans in particular trust only the military
Speaker 1: over scientists. So there's a whole ranking. Yeah. So they
Speaker 1: repeatedly do this study where they'll put up public institutions
Speaker 1: and they'll ask you how much trust you have in them,
Speaker 1: like great deal of trust, a significant amount of trust,
Speaker 1: not too much, exactly like that, And people will rank
Speaker 1: these different institutions, including things like the media. You can
Speaker 1: guess where that goes. But how does the ranking work out? Well,
Speaker 1: based on this two thousand and sixteen ranking, it goes
Speaker 1: as follows military at the top, then medical scientists, scientists
Speaker 1: k through twelve principles, religious leaders, news, media, business, and
Speaker 1: finally elected officials. Yeah. Now, one of the main people
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about from this seventeen World Science
Speaker 1: Festival panel, Dan Kahan, is what he made this point
Speaker 1: in the panel that I thought was great. He said,
Speaker 1: even religious people say on this survey that they generally
Speaker 1: trust science more than they trust religious leaders. And and
Speaker 1: percentages for trusting these groups a great deal, because, like
Speaker 1: you said, there are different levels of it and the questions.
Speaker 1: Uh So, the percentages for trusting these groups a great
Speaker 1: deal range from thirty three for the military and twenty
Speaker 1: four and twenty one for medical scientists and scientists, respectively,
Speaker 1: down to a mere three percent for elected officials. Just
Speaker 1: to let you know what politicians, Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: why we don't trust them more. But but particularly noteworthy
Speaker 1: here is the fact that of the Americans poll, the
Speaker 1: participants expressed a fair amount of confidence in medical scientists
Speaker 1: and scientists. So, uh, that alone, I think it is
Speaker 1: is telling about our overall cultural trust in scientific expertise.
Speaker 1: And of course that's not been getting into the fact
Speaker 1: that if if you're talking about the military, aren't you
Speaker 1: also talking about military scientists. But that's that's kind of
Speaker 1: a separate question. Yeah, and so that's interesting. Generally, people
Speaker 1: say they put at least a fair amount of trust
Speaker 1: and scientists. A lot of people put a great deal
Speaker 1: of trust in scientists. People claim to believe in science,
Speaker 1: people claim to say that scientists are working with the
Speaker 1: public's best interests at heart. But there are particular issues
Speaker 1: where for some reason, the public's understanding of the scientific
Speaker 1: consensus gets very out of whack. Yeah. Yeah, we have
Speaker 1: this polarizing effect, or seemingly polarized based on what we
Speaker 1: see and what we hear in the media. That how
Speaker 1: can we hold such high opinions of scientists and science
Speaker 1: in general and disagree on the clear scientific consensus regarding,
Speaker 1: for instance, human driven climate change? Why are so many
Speaker 1: of us scared away by the prospect of Frankenstein food? Um?
Speaker 1: And then other other topics, of course are vaccine safety,
Speaker 1: uh for um, evolution and whether your kids should watch
Speaker 1: Dinosaur Train? What does Dinosaur train? Dinosaur Trains a lovely
Speaker 1: show by the Jim Hinson Company where dinosaurs travel in
Speaker 1: time on a train through a wormhole and your child
Speaker 1: memorizes all of these complex dinosaur names. That's wonderful. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then of course another big one, This is what
Speaker 1: I hadn't really thought about much, but I understand you've
Speaker 1: you've covered in the past for Harvard thinking. Yeah, is
Speaker 1: the deep geological isolation of nuclear waste. Yeah, so, high
Speaker 1: level radioactive waste. I mean, there's pretty clear scientific consensus
Speaker 1: that the best thing we need to do with it
Speaker 1: is bury it deep underground. But when you pull the
Speaker 1: general public, even the educated public, people who say they're
Speaker 1: into science, you you do not get the high levels
Speaker 1: of agreement with the scientific consensus on this. And what
Speaker 1: some of these UH things should indicate is, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's no secret that the consensus on climate change has
Speaker 1: been particularly identified with one half of the political spectrum,
Speaker 1: at least in the United States. But this is not
Speaker 1: to criticize conservatives, because there are plenty of these issues
Speaker 1: where where. Apparently if you pull people, liberals are more
Speaker 1: out of tune with the scientific consensus than conservatives are.
Speaker 1: Like last time I saw more liberals were out of
Speaker 1: tune with the scientific consensus on vaccine safety, namely that
Speaker 1: they are safe uh than conservatives. Now we've already mentioned
Speaker 1: that the the World Science Festival panel that I attended
Speaker 1: UH and then you watched online, and then you too, listener,
Speaker 1: can watch online. I'll include either a link or embedded
Speaker 1: video of it on the landing page for this episode
Speaker 1: Stuff to Abow your Mind dot com. But the title
Speaker 1: the discussion was Science in a Polarized World. It was
Speaker 1: moderated by author and journalist John don Van UH and
Speaker 1: the panelist included astrophysicist France Cordova, physicist and World Science
Speaker 1: Festival co founder Brian Greene, geneticist Sir Paul Nurse, and
Speaker 1: most notably that one of the individuals we are probably
Speaker 1: gonna spend the most time with here today, Ale law
Speaker 1: professor and science communication expert Dan Kahan. He's the Elizabeth K.
Speaker 1: Dollard Professor of Law and Professor of Psychology at Yale
Speaker 1: Law School, and his primary research interests are risk perception,
Speaker 1: science communication, and the application of decision science to law
Speaker 1: and policy making. Yeah, so I was looking at some
Speaker 1: of his research in preparing for this episode, and it's
Speaker 1: an interesting thing he's doing. Obviously he's not the only
Speaker 1: person doing it, but trying to apply, for example, psychology
Speaker 1: psychological science to laws. So he'd published things in the
Speaker 1: Harvard Law Review that are saying, hey, you know, judges
Speaker 1: should be aware that human brains tend to work like X, Y,
Speaker 1: and Z like. For example, one thing that judges might
Speaker 1: really benefit from being aware of is that research shows
Speaker 1: that when you tell people to be rational and objective,
Speaker 1: they do not become more rational and objective to get
Speaker 1: more entrenched. Al Right. So in this discussion panel everybody.
Speaker 1: He had some great commentary on on polarization regarding a
Speaker 1: scientific consensus. Um Sir Paul Nurse was wonderful. Uh, Brian Green,
Speaker 1: the physicist, it just was really fired up for this
Speaker 1: one and it was just you know, enjoy to watch
Speaker 1: and listen to. But one of the things that Brian
Speaker 1: Green was saying in the panel was, you know, so
Speaker 1: we've got this problem of polarization of public opinion on
Speaker 1: scientific issues. There were some issues where the public, as
Speaker 1: we talked about at the beginning of the episode, just
Speaker 1: doesn't line up with what scientists are saying. Why is that?
Speaker 1: And I think Brian Green was coming at it from
Speaker 1: the point of view like, if we could just make
Speaker 1: them understand science better, if we could just teach, we
Speaker 1: could educate people better in the scientific process and what
Speaker 1: science is about, then they would agree with the scientific consensus.
Speaker 1: And Kahan had a really interesting response to this. I
Speaker 1: think his answer was was, don't get ahead of yourself.
Speaker 1: That's not necessarily the case, right, because I mean, because
Speaker 1: Brian Green's question makes sense, right because you think, well,
Speaker 1: you want to say, what do you realize that that
Speaker 1: science is to quote Sir Paul Nurse, tentative knowledge that
Speaker 1: we're it's it's not a complete, prepackaged understanding the universe.
Speaker 1: It's a continued exploration. You want to say, don't you
Speaker 1: understand the mistakes are part of it. This was definitely
Speaker 1: Brian Green's argument that if you want to talk about
Speaker 1: people who are skeptical of climate change, talk to the
Speaker 1: climate change scientists who have studied it, because science is
Speaker 1: about you. If you you have a hypothesis and you're
Speaker 1: studying it, you were skeptical about it every step of
Speaker 1: the way. Yeah, if you're not being skeptical about the
Speaker 1: theory you advocate, then you're not doing science right, right,
Speaker 1: You're not being very good at your job. So all
Speaker 1: of the that, that entire argument makes sense, and it
Speaker 1: does lead one to think, all right, it's just it's
Speaker 1: scientific literacy or lack of reasoning that's being employed here.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Kahan is saying that you'll find plenty of
Speaker 1: people resisting sientific consensus who are highly literate in science
Speaker 1: and highly logical, and they just wind up applying their
Speaker 1: cognitive resources to fit their beliefs in worldview. In fact,
Speaker 1: it gets crazier than this, because it's not just that
Speaker 1: people who are highly educated in science, who apparently, if
Speaker 1: you test them, they understand how science works. It's not
Speaker 1: just that they can disagree with the scientific consensus, but
Speaker 1: that people who have more rational capacity and who have
Speaker 1: greater cognitive resources in fact, tend to apply those more
Speaker 1: strongly on entrenching themselves against the scientific consensus when they
Speaker 1: disagree with it. It's like people who are better educated
Speaker 1: in science are better at coming up with reasons to
Speaker 1: explain why they don't agree with scientists or why they
Speaker 1: don't agree. Not just don't agree with scientists, but don't
Speaker 1: agree about even objective facts like the fact that the
Speaker 1: majority of scientists to endorse the fact that the Earth
Speaker 1: is warming. Yeah, and it is worth noting here that
Speaker 1: when we're talking about these these dissenting individuals, like it's
Speaker 1: generally it's not across the board. They're not they're not
Speaker 1: dissenting on all scientific consensus. It's about a particular topic,
Speaker 1: be that topic climate change, or be that topic, um,
Speaker 1: you know, vaccines or genetically modified organisms. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: it's also important Kahan points out that you also see
Speaker 1: this this sort of thing outside of science. You see
Speaker 1: you see the same process involved with say, abortion or
Speaker 1: military recruitment, any issue in which protests becomes a badge
Speaker 1: of identity. And this place specifically into one paper that
Speaker 1: Khan refers to, which is this paper they saw a protest. Uh.
Speaker 1: So this comes up in the conversation where you you
Speaker 1: can show people video of a protest taking place, right,
Speaker 1: and you ask them just objective facts about what they
Speaker 1: see at the video. Did you see the protesters, uh,
Speaker 1: screaming in someone's face, did you see the protesters bocking
Speaker 1: someone's path? Did you see the protesters doing this and that?
Speaker 1: All these sort of negative behaviors that would render the
Speaker 1: protest in a bad light. And it turns out people
Speaker 1: claim to see different things in the video depending on
Speaker 1: whether they think the politics of the protesters line up
Speaker 1: with their own. So if you show a person with
Speaker 1: certain politics a video and you say that it's people
Speaker 1: protesting outside an abortion clinic, they'll have a very different
Speaker 1: report of what they see in the video than if
Speaker 1: you tell them that it's protesters outside a military recruiting
Speaker 1: center protesting. Don't ask, don't tell. And this is a
Speaker 1: specific example of motivated reasoning. Maybe we can talk about
Speaker 1: motivated reasoning more later on, but it's the fact that
Speaker 1: we we just do not process the facts of reality
Speaker 1: and the evidence of our senses with perfect objectivity. We
Speaker 1: in fact process them in a highly goal oriented way,
Speaker 1: and a lot of times that goal is I don't
Speaker 1: want people like me or the people in my group
Speaker 1: to look bad. All Right, we're gonna take a quick break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we're gonna jump jump right
Speaker 1: back into Kahan's research. Than all right, we're back. So
Speaker 1: one of the things that people obviously do when they
Speaker 1: are motivated to arrive at a certain conclusion is that
Speaker 1: they cherry pick facts. Right that you can. You can
Speaker 1: always find stuff that makes your worldview look better or
Speaker 1: stuff that makes the other person's worldview look better. And
Speaker 1: it is in fact, incredibly easy and causes almost no
Speaker 1: cognitive dissonance whatsoever for people to just say, Okay, this
Speaker 1: fact that supports what I already believe. That's a good
Speaker 1: fact that's legit and real and should be included. And
Speaker 1: a fact I encounter that doesn't support my point of view, well,
Speaker 1: that's that's a bunch of bunk. You know, why would
Speaker 1: anybody believe that? And it extends to experts as well,
Speaker 1: so that the same thing. It's like, here's this, uh,
Speaker 1: this this expert, and I'm using expert in quotation marks
Speaker 1: because to what degree they're an expert also depends on
Speaker 1: your cherry picking this individual. Let's say this individual with
Speaker 1: some sort of scientific background. Uh, they're making a statement.
Speaker 1: I will consider them more of an expert based on
Speaker 1: how their opinion matches up with my preconceived beliefs and worldview. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is another point Kahan makes it it comes
Speaker 1: straight out of that. So he says, it's not that
Speaker 1: people who don't, for example, except the consensus on climate
Speaker 1: change or on vaccine safety, don't believe in scientific expertise.
Speaker 1: They do. They do believe in scientific expertise generally statistically
Speaker 1: they do, but they don't think that people who disagree
Speaker 1: with them are legitimate experts. Now, Kahan wrote about this
Speaker 1: in a very recent paper like this month. Um, misconceptions, misinformation,
Speaker 1: and logic of identity, protective cognition. When we're talking about
Speaker 1: your views as as a badge of identity, that's what
Speaker 1: we're getting to here. Um. This came out June for
Speaker 1: the Cultural Cognition Project. So in this paper, Kahn tackles
Speaker 1: what he refers to as the public irrationality thesis or pit.
Speaker 1: So this is something he's setting up to be an
Speaker 1: opposition to. Right. This is the idea that we can
Speaker 1: touched on earlier, the idea that the general public largely
Speaker 1: quote display only modest familiarity with fundamental scientific findings and
Speaker 1: lack proficiency in the forms of critical reasoning essential to
Speaker 1: science comprehension unquote and uh, and they're therefore easily swayed
Speaker 1: by special interest groups who muddy the waters with non
Speaker 1: scientific information. Yeah, I think this is a is a
Speaker 1: common thesis people on both sides of a contentious issue
Speaker 1: of fact in the public debate sphere. They just tend
Speaker 1: to think that, well, people on the other side are
Speaker 1: just ignorant, and they just they just don't understand and
Speaker 1: they're just being swayed by propaganda. Yeah, you listen to
Speaker 1: the wrong news channel, you listen to the wrong radical
Speaker 1: and now you have you have a faulty understanding of
Speaker 1: the facts. So Gahan argues that Pitt reflects a misconception
Speaker 1: of science communication, like a basic misconception. Controversy over so
Speaker 1: called decision relevant science is increasingly tied to identity protective cognition.
Speaker 1: This is the quote tendency to selectively credit and discredit
Speaker 1: evidence in patterns that reflect people's commitments to competing cultural groups.
Speaker 1: And that's a concept, he says, it's rooted in the
Speaker 1: two thousand to two thousand sixteen work of D. K.
Speaker 1: Sherman and G. L. Cohen. Right, so maybe we should
Speaker 1: try to go a little bit deeper into where this
Speaker 1: idea of of identity protective cognition comes from. So obviously
Speaker 1: there are a lot of ways to be wrong. Right.
Speaker 1: You can be mistaken due to pure error, right, But
Speaker 1: as we've already shown, you can also be mistaken for
Speaker 1: a reason. Our our brains are not so made as
Speaker 1: to perceive and judge the world objectively, like when you're reasoning,
Speaker 1: and perceptions are skewed by a desire, conscious or unconscious,
Speaker 1: to reach particular conclusions. This is what we call motivated reasoning.
Speaker 1: And Kahan in an article he did for the Harvard
Speaker 1: Law Review in that he reproduced an exerpt from on
Speaker 1: his blog, he he said, quote motivated reasoning refers to
Speaker 1: the unconscious tendency of individuals to process information in a
Speaker 1: manner that suits some end or goal extrinsic to the
Speaker 1: formation of accurate beliefs. That unconscious part. It is very
Speaker 1: critical because because no, but we're not arguing that argument.
Speaker 1: Here is not that someone is saying, well, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't like this climate change. This is the expert
Speaker 1: for me. This is it, or or vice versa, theyd
Speaker 1: someone saying, Oh, I'm I don't really like the idea
Speaker 1: of these GMO foods. I'm gonna listen to this expert
Speaker 1: right here. This is taking place, uh in the unconscious. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You you don't even and realize when it's going on.
Speaker 1: And so there there is a classic, highly cited paper
Speaker 1: in the history of psychology that he goes back to
Speaker 1: to talk about early examples of motivated reasoning, and this
Speaker 1: is a precedent, I guess for his They Saw a
Speaker 1: protest paper. The original one was this paper called They
Speaker 1: Saw a Game a case study, and it goes to
Speaker 1: stuff that has nothing to do with politics, absolutely nothing.
Speaker 1: You can take the politics and you can take the
Speaker 1: science completely out and you still get the exact same effects.
Speaker 1: And what this is is there was a football game
Speaker 1: between Dartmouth and Princeton in ninette that had some highly
Speaker 1: controversial behavior, leading injuries for a few players. Players were
Speaker 1: hurting each other in the Researchers in this study recruited
Speaker 1: Dartmouth and Princeton students to review footage of what happened
Speaker 1: and answer questions about what they saw, and it turns
Speaker 1: out what they saw depended on their school allegiance. Dartmouth
Speaker 1: students claimed to see things favorable to Dartmouth's reputation. Princeton
Speaker 1: students claim to see things favorable to Princeton's reputation. They
Speaker 1: didn't just have different opinions about the game, they apparently
Speaker 1: perceived a different reality based on institutional allegiance. They were
Speaker 1: not reasoning impartially but in a motivated way, and lots
Speaker 1: of studies over the years have reflected other versions of
Speaker 1: these findings. It's totally clear when people have a goal,
Speaker 1: when they consciously or unconsciously want things to be a
Speaker 1: certain way, they're usually not capable of reasoning and perceiving
Speaker 1: reality impartially. And to get back to the main example
Speaker 1: of this that we we came in with is the
Speaker 1: idea of identity protective cognition. We want to affirm our
Speaker 1: membership in reference groups because we're social creatures, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: one of one of the main things that's been hypothesized
Speaker 1: that our brains evolved to do is to manage social relationships.
Speaker 1: We were just talking about the social brain hypothesis another episode.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah on one of the main things we appear
Speaker 1: to be optimized for is for group membership and group
Speaker 1: solidarity and understanding group dynamics. Yeah, I mean, survival has
Speaker 1: a almost has a different definition when you're talking about
Speaker 1: an individual versus a a larger especially a global culture.
Speaker 1: We didn't evolve to save the planet from the human
Speaker 1: caused climate change or or meteorites. Uh. We evolve to
Speaker 1: survive um social dynamics, to to adapt our thinking to
Speaker 1: fit in with the group that has access to the fire,
Speaker 1: that has access to the uh to to the food
Speaker 1: and the shelter that is necessary for survival. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: so we deeply, deeply want we're highly motivated to affirm
Speaker 1: our membership in reference groups and the character and the
Speaker 1: reputation of those groups. When those things are at stake,
Speaker 1: we are highly motivated to defend them. So the idea
Speaker 1: here's the culture comes before fact. Perception of what acts
Speaker 1: even are are shaped by values. So many of these
Speaker 1: individual members of the public simply have a quote bigger
Speaker 1: personal stake in fitting in with important affinity groups than
Speaker 1: informing correct perceptions of scientific evidence. Yet again, this is
Speaker 1: not necessarily done consciously. In fact, it's almost never done consciously.
Speaker 1: You don't think I'm sacrificing knowing the truth for fitting
Speaker 1: in with my group. That's just what your brain does
Speaker 1: and doesn't really let you in on the fact that
Speaker 1: that's what it's doing. Yeah, and the members of the
Speaker 1: public that are most polarized over a topic are the
Speaker 1: ones that have the highest degree of scientific comprehension. Where
Speaker 1: I discussed that this is the nature of the dissenting expert.
Speaker 1: The problem, then, Kahan points out, is not a gullible public,
Speaker 1: not this pit scenario, but quote, a polluted science communication environment. Now,
Speaker 1: he referred to a two thousand eleven study that that
Speaker 1: he himself worked on with Jenkins, Smith and Brahmin, in
Speaker 1: which a scientist headshot and credentials were presented along with
Speaker 1: attributed quotes about climate change, and whether he this individual
Speaker 1: was a true expert in the eyes of the subject
Speaker 1: depended entirely on their particulars and their views. So people
Speaker 1: are simply quote, using the consistency of new evidence with
Speaker 1: their group's positions to determine whether the evidence should be
Speaker 1: given any weight at all. And this is how deniers
Speaker 1: of scientific consensus become stuck in their opinions. Right, So,
Speaker 1: if somebody presents you an alternative opinion, the scientist comes
Speaker 1: on TV or writes a book or something like that
Speaker 1: and says, look, here's what the science says. It's pretty clear.
Speaker 1: This is why scientists agree. This is where the consensus
Speaker 1: comes from, and here's why the public should agree with
Speaker 1: it too. If you are part of a group that
Speaker 1: is culturally polarized against that scientific position, you don't think
Speaker 1: I'm being anti science. You just think this person isn't
Speaker 1: a real expert. Why should I trust what they say? Indeed,
Speaker 1: and I also want to point out that the con
Speaker 1: touches on on disinformation. He says that disinformation doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to have as much impact as you might think. And
Speaker 1: the embar in mind that there are several flavors of misinformation.
Speaker 1: There's self misinformation, there's motivated consumption of misinformation. They're straight
Speaker 1: up fake news. Uh. Kahan states that while such misinformation
Speaker 1: certainly does have an impact on the world, UH, the
Speaker 1: reality is is a little bit different. He says what
Speaker 1: these individuals do with misinformation in most circumstances will not
Speaker 1: differ from what they would have done without it. So
Speaker 1: I find this whole scenario very, very illuminating. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's help It's a helpful model not only in
Speaker 1: understanding or trying to understand individuals who have a differing
Speaker 1: opinion in your own on scientific consensus, but also to
Speaker 1: to self reflect and and try and think, well, how
Speaker 1: do I think about scientific consensus? Yeah. Well, one of
Speaker 1: the things that you should really take away from this,
Speaker 1: and we should emphasize this very strongly, is that this
Speaker 1: applies to you too. It applies to me and to you. Um,
Speaker 1: it's not so much surprising that motivated reasoning happens, or
Speaker 1: that identity protective cognition happens, but it's surprising that it
Speaker 1: applies to you because it doesn't feel like it does. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when it just feels like I'm being objective, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what's true, it's those other people who
Speaker 1: are reasoning from their cultural point of view, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that that is how how it how it feels.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the that's one of the tricky parts
Speaker 1: about this is you. You can't simply hold up the
Speaker 1: mirror uh so much and say look, look, look how
Speaker 1: you're thinking. Look at look at the way you're processing
Speaker 1: your information. Yeah. And so this actually leads to problems,
Speaker 1: and Cohn writes about this in uh. In that piece
Speaker 1: in the Harvard Law Review, he points out how this
Speaker 1: leads to really bad cultural situations, where so you've got
Speaker 1: your group and another group who are both motivated to
Speaker 1: perceive facts differently for reasons having nothing to do with
Speaker 1: forming accurate beliefs. You know, you're both using motivated reasoning.
Speaker 1: Each group correctly perceives that the other group is used
Speaker 1: motivated reasoning, but each group incorrectly believes that it is
Speaker 1: just looking at the plane obvious objective truth. And of course,
Speaker 1: when you feel like, well, I'm just looking at the
Speaker 1: plane obvious objective truth and this other group is deluding themselves,
Speaker 1: that can lead to feelings of disgust and polarization. You're like,
Speaker 1: why won't they accept reality? Why are they being so dishonest? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And in this the divide deepens even more, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And of course leads to these uh, these partisanship situations.
Speaker 1: And of course this makes the problem even worse because
Speaker 1: once you get entrenched partisanship on an issue in the
Speaker 1: public conversation, this provides even more incentive to group a
Speaker 1: line right, and so it re reinforces the motivated reasoning
Speaker 1: that caused you to divide in the first place. Now,
Speaker 1: there are some things that you might think you could
Speaker 1: do to solve the problem. For one thing, you could say, hey,
Speaker 1: what if we just tell people, no, don't don't think
Speaker 1: with your culture, I don't think with your identity, be
Speaker 1: rational and be objective. Does that solve the problem? Well,
Speaker 1: Khan says, research says no. When people use motivated reasoning,
Speaker 1: they tend to believe they're already being objective. They think, yes,
Speaker 1: I am being objective. And this is due to what
Speaker 1: he calls naive realism. This is just the belief that, well,
Speaker 1: what I'm looking at is is a clear and and
Speaker 1: accurate perception of reality. So we're we're all correctly perceiving
Speaker 1: that other people are reasoning with motivation. We're buying into
Speaker 1: naive realism about our own points of view, saying well,
Speaker 1: I'm just looking at the facts. And this leads to
Speaker 1: that horrible state of affairs of of cultural cognition, where
Speaker 1: where partisanship rules. Uh, these certain issues that have been
Speaker 1: infected with the toxic sludge of culture bleeding into questions
Speaker 1: of fact. I always end up coming back to Dr
Speaker 1: Seuss when thinking about these these issues, and not only
Speaker 1: the sneeches, the starbellied sneeches, who who are so caught
Speaker 1: up in in the the identity of their groups that
Speaker 1: they're only cured of it due to just catastrophe. And
Speaker 1: then there's a shorter story in that same book where
Speaker 1: we have the North going Zacks in the South going Zacks.
Speaker 1: These two individuals that need in the desert going in
Speaker 1: a straight line, and they neither one budgets. They can't
Speaker 1: move through each other, but neither one is going to
Speaker 1: go around. Uh. And it just over time like a
Speaker 1: city is built around them while they're just frozen in
Speaker 1: their their their their their unshakable ability to either compromise
Speaker 1: or to understand each other. Yeah. Well, so this situation
Speaker 1: can really induce feelings of despair. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: multiple problems here, one of which is that some issues
Speaker 1: are becoming infected with this with this motivated reasoning, this
Speaker 1: cultural cognition. A toxin is how Kahan referred to it
Speaker 1: as a pollutant. Yeah, it's a pollutant that just infects
Speaker 1: certain issues and then makes it impossible to have a
Speaker 1: clear discussion on them because you get people retrenched in
Speaker 1: their positions and don't budge. But then the retrenchment leads
Speaker 1: to the general worsening of the situation. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a self reinforcing cycle that just gets worse and worse.
Speaker 1: It's like everybody's identity and their politics has all just
Speaker 1: drained out into this, into this body of water. How
Speaker 1: do you unpollute that enough that you can have the
Speaker 1: unpolluted discussion again? Now, maybe that's what we should turn
Speaker 1: to next. If you're hearing this and you're you're following
Speaker 1: along with us, like, if you agree that these are
Speaker 1: valid ways of examining what's going on in in these
Speaker 1: public conversations, uh, you might be feeling to spare right,
Speaker 1: How do we ever get out of this? If we
Speaker 1: all use motivated reasoning and there are these horrible situations
Speaker 1: where issues of fact and scientific questions are just polluted
Speaker 1: by cultural partisanship, how do we get out of it?
Speaker 1: We'll take a quick break and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we can discuss why it's not necessarily always time to despair. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. Okay, So we were saying, it can feel
Speaker 1: like it's time to despair once you look at the
Speaker 1: situation of partisanship, partisan reasoning, cultural cognition. But it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily time to despair. First of all, if you're just
Speaker 1: thinking about motivated reasoning and you accept the fact that
Speaker 1: you use it too, it's not just those other people,
Speaker 1: it's me, it's you. We all use it. How can
Speaker 1: we ever know anything is true? Well, i'd say two
Speaker 1: things to that. First of all, not every question is
Speaker 1: settled through motivated reasoning, right, There are plenty of questions
Speaker 1: where we actually do have the primary motivation of just
Speaker 1: getting an accurate answer people. People do show identity splitting
Speaker 1: on whether climate change is dangerous, but they don't show
Speaker 1: identity based splitting on issues like whether X rays are
Speaker 1: harmful to the human body. If you pull people based
Speaker 1: on their ideology and political affiliation, all the other stuff
Speaker 1: you'd be looking for their you know, liberals and conservatives,
Speaker 1: or these other groups that are oft inside, like the
Speaker 1: hierarchical individualist versus the egalitarian communitarian. These groups are in
Speaker 1: agreement X rays are equally harmful to the human bodies
Speaker 1: say they yeah, because, as Khan points out again, these
Speaker 1: these instances of polarization over scientific consensus, these are are
Speaker 1: pathological in the sense that they're harmful, but they're also rare. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there, it's just these certain issues that we're reasoning
Speaker 1: this way about. Not everything suffers from this problem. Many
Speaker 1: issues are uncontroversial. We generally approached them with no real
Speaker 1: motivation other than just knowing what's true. The problem is
Speaker 1: that even though you're not always using motivated reasoning, you're
Speaker 1: probably not going to know it when you are, uh,
Speaker 1: using motivated reasoning apparently feels similar to using actual objective reasoning.
Speaker 1: You can you can know this firsthand by the fact
Speaker 1: that you don't ever think you're using motivated reasoning. You
Speaker 1: think you're just honestly judging things. But you also know
Speaker 1: you're not right about everything. You're some of those things
Speaker 1: you believe you're definitely wrong about, even though it feels
Speaker 1: like you're just clearly judging what's true. So is there
Speaker 1: any way to know what's true when issues are controversial
Speaker 1: and when we're motivated to reason one way or another. Well,
Speaker 1: I'd say this is when we come back to our
Speaker 1: starting principle going with science, right, Science is exactly a
Speaker 1: way of getting around motivated reasoning and bias if you're
Speaker 1: doing it right. I mean, of course it's possible to
Speaker 1: be really bad at science, but if you're following the
Speaker 1: norms of science, what it is supposed to do is
Speaker 1: make it really hard to get away with motivated reasoning
Speaker 1: for an extended period of time. You've got obstacles built
Speaker 1: into science that are specifically designed to kill motivated reasoning.
Speaker 1: So you've got rigorous empirical method using objective measurement criteria,
Speaker 1: trying to take your own subjective judgments out of things.
Speaker 1: You've got blinding and double blinding of experiments where you know,
Speaker 1: you get people who don't even know what's going on
Speaker 1: to perform the experiment. People in the experiment don't necessarily
Speaker 1: know what's going on. You've got peer review by critical experts,
Speaker 1: you've got replication attempts, you've got professional competition. This is
Speaker 1: the thing that often doesn't get emphasized enough, is that
Speaker 1: there's professional and career based incentive in science to disprove
Speaker 1: the consensus. Right. Yeah, and and again, like like we said,
Speaker 1: skepticism is built into the recipe, right, So if you're
Speaker 1: doing science in a motivated way, your science number one
Speaker 1: is not going to look very strong to begin with,
Speaker 1: and number two, you're not going to get away with
Speaker 1: it for very long. People are going to figure out
Speaker 1: what you're up to. And we've seen examples of this
Speaker 1: when people get caught doing scientific fraud. It seems to
Speaker 1: be fairly rare, but they get caught. Maybe people can't
Speaker 1: replicate your results, people start noticing your regularities in your data.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a system that is just not very
Speaker 1: forgiving to this kind of nonsense. Yeah, I mean, I don't.
Speaker 1: It depends in each case, like I guess whether it
Speaker 1: falls with fraud or bad science. But with artificial g
Speaker 1: vity or gravity repelling technology is one example where you
Speaker 1: do see studies that have come out where someone claims
Speaker 1: to have developed a means of achieving this. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: they can't be replicated. It doesn't, it doesn't work. It
Speaker 1: doesn't it doesn't pass the tests that are built into
Speaker 1: the scientific process, right, And so this is why science
Speaker 1: is a good way of arriving at correct conclusions about
Speaker 1: the world. I mean, you're not if you go with
Speaker 1: the scientific consensus, you might not be right. Every time,
Speaker 1: But it's your best bet for being right the most
Speaker 1: times of any other thing, you'd go with um. So
Speaker 1: the problem is, of course we can't all be scientists,
Speaker 1: and even scientists themselves can't use all the tools of
Speaker 1: science to solve every controversial question they encounter. Right, So,
Speaker 1: even if you're a scientist, there's tons of stuff in
Speaker 1: your life where you can't bring to bear all of
Speaker 1: that machinery of skepticism and empiricism and impartiality, where you've
Speaker 1: just got to work like everybody else. You've got to
Speaker 1: decide on some issue of public substance what you think
Speaker 1: about it without having the most impartial method possible. So
Speaker 1: the question there, I guess is how can we avoid
Speaker 1: deluding ourselves on issues where identity protective cognition come into play,
Speaker 1: where we can't use the scientific method. Yeah, Like, one
Speaker 1: of the points Gone brings up is like, how do
Speaker 1: you how do you avoid these scenarios in the future,
Speaker 1: Because there's one thing to figure out, how do we
Speaker 1: unpollute this pool of scientific communication? But then how do
Speaker 1: we how do we avoid polluting this one? How do
Speaker 1: we avoid polluting pools that don't really exist yet? As
Speaker 1: a matter of like, public consideration. Yeah. In fact that
Speaker 1: he mentions in the panel that we should have quote
Speaker 1: a science of science communication um, meaning that science communicators
Speaker 1: should have some experiments they can draw on that show
Speaker 1: them how to predict when an issue it's some just
Speaker 1: innocuous question of fact, will become politicized where people suddenly
Speaker 1: take cultural positions on it. I mean, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of variables involved here. It depends on you know,
Speaker 1: who's who's relaying the information there, Uh, that their identity is,
Speaker 1: what what ideals they're pushing on everybody, and how that
Speaker 1: ends up polluting the message. It also depends on a
Speaker 1: number of cultural problems. I mean there are certain polarizing
Speaker 1: issues that are issues here in the United States that
Speaker 1: are not so in Europe, such as such as climate change,
Speaker 1: and then the reverses. You see stuff like genetically modified
Speaker 1: organisms being more of a of a hot topic in
Speaker 1: say England than it is in the States. Totally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the in the UK, there's way more controversy over
Speaker 1: GM crops than there is in the United States. Not
Speaker 1: to say there's not some controversy here, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: how do you predict it? I mean, con mentions the
Speaker 1: possibility of well, maybe you can run simulations, if there's
Speaker 1: some sort of simulation system you could employ, which I
Speaker 1: love because they instantly get this sort of star trek
Speaker 1: Um hollow deck scenario where we're running simulations and and
Speaker 1: trying to catch these these polarization points, these confusions, these
Speaker 1: pollution points before they occur, and forget how do you
Speaker 1: davocating how to communicate ahead of them? Yeah, and some
Speaker 1: things are going to be more predictable than others, Like
Speaker 1: there are some facts of science that, if true, tend
Speaker 1: to be unfriendly to the world view that certain people hold,
Speaker 1: tend to be unfriendly to their values. A couple of
Speaker 1: examples Kahn gives is that if you're generally more of
Speaker 1: an individualist and an anti communitary and action person, this
Speaker 1: may make you inherently opposed to the idea of climate change,
Speaker 1: because really the only way that you can do anything
Speaker 1: about climate change is with organized communitary and action. Likewise,
Speaker 1: if you are a person whose values are sort of
Speaker 1: anti big business, that might predispose you to be against
Speaker 1: GMOs because you see them as like a tool that's
Speaker 1: being used by large agrib business to to get their
Speaker 1: profits and to drive other people out of business. And
Speaker 1: and you know, and whip the environment into the shape
Speaker 1: they want it. And I mean, it'd be worth pointing
Speaker 1: out that like you could, for example, use GMOs if
Speaker 1: you're a big business in a way that would be
Speaker 1: very unethical, very damaging to the environment. I mean, the
Speaker 1: whole thing about the scientific consensus on GMOs is that
Speaker 1: there's nothing inherently dangerous about GMOs as a rule, But
Speaker 1: any individual genetically modified organism could be dangerous, just as
Speaker 1: any other organism could. Yeah, that the process is not
Speaker 1: the problem. The potential problem is in the product that's
Speaker 1: created with it, which can be said of most processes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it can be said just as equally of products that
Speaker 1: are created through traditional agriculture. It's not it's not the
Speaker 1: gene and the lab that makes the problem. But on
Speaker 1: the other hand, uh Kahn points out, you know, there
Speaker 1: there can be other things that are not nearly as
Speaker 1: determined by our core values. It's not necessarily the conservative
Speaker 1: values or liberal values or whatever other kind of dichotomy
Speaker 1: you want to establish in the culture determine how how
Speaker 1: your opinion comes out on them. Some things are much
Speaker 1: more accidental. It can just be that some prominent figure
Speaker 1: on one side of the political spectrum just sort of
Speaker 1: declares for one side of a factual disagreement, and because
Speaker 1: of group affiliation and identity, the groups just start lining
Speaker 1: up accordingly, even though it's not determined by anything inherent
Speaker 1: to their values. Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that's a that's a good point because it's it's
Speaker 1: easier to see it coming together a polarization effect occurring
Speaker 1: when either the problem or the solution either disagree or
Speaker 1: line up with your worldview, such as well, the solution
Speaker 1: is for us all to come together as a as
Speaker 1: a nation that have some sort of top down governmental
Speaker 1: fix that's going to disagree with some people's world views.
Speaker 1: If the if the solution is we're all going to
Speaker 1: eat you know, plants that grow naturally in harmony with
Speaker 1: mother Earth, that's going to fit another worldview more than another.
Speaker 1: But but when it occurs outside of those parameters, yeah,
Speaker 1: it becomes increasingly different. It's like, what is it a
Speaker 1: slow newsweek? Is it just is this just a topic
Speaker 1: that happened to be out there during particular politicians campaign
Speaker 1: and they just took it up and ran with it,
Speaker 1: pressed to distract from something else. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it looks very very possible that there can be issues
Speaker 1: where there is cultural cognition going on, where society divides
Speaker 1: on a question of scientific fact along cultural lines in
Speaker 1: a way that really just doesn't have very much to
Speaker 1: do with ideology or values at all. It's just one
Speaker 1: side picked one side arbitrarily, and then the other side,
Speaker 1: because they know they always disagree, picks the other side.
Speaker 1: All right. So in terms of solutions here or possible solutions,
Speaker 1: I mean, on one hand, there I feel like there
Speaker 1: is validity in the idea that yes, we have to
Speaker 1: continue to trust science as a process and trust scientists
Speaker 1: that are speaking on behalf of it. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're a person who if you're not yourself a scientist,
Speaker 1: if you're not yourself an expert, and you don't have
Speaker 1: a good reason based in expertise in the subject matter
Speaker 1: for disagreeing with the consensus, I'd say it's usually your
Speaker 1: best bet to go with what most of the people
Speaker 1: who know what they're talking about are saying. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: and then beyond that, I agree with without Khan is
Speaker 1: saying that we do need a science of science communication,
Speaker 1: We need ability to to predict and maneuver around potential
Speaker 1: pollution points in our communication of science. Yeah, how can you?
Speaker 1: How can you preemptively defend contentious facts about reality from
Speaker 1: becoming politicized or becoming subject to cultural cognition? That would
Speaker 1: be a really good thing. One thing that Kahan offers
Speaker 1: that I think is very interesting is that I get
Speaker 1: the impression that he subscribes to what he calls them
Speaker 1: the law of social proof, meaning that if you want
Speaker 1: to convince somebody to to agree on a point of
Speaker 1: fact that they are resistant to for cultural reasons, don't
Speaker 1: try to keep giving them more evidence that you're right
Speaker 1: and they're wrong, because that's just not what works on us.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what should work on On one hand,
Speaker 1: we feel like we should do that because that would
Speaker 1: be the logical thing to do, but psychologically that is
Speaker 1: not what changes people's positions. What would probably be more
Speaker 1: effective is if they simply see people who are culturally
Speaker 1: like them and part of their in group agreeing with
Speaker 1: this fact. But then that can also come back into
Speaker 1: science communication, like who who are the science communicators? Then
Speaker 1: that are that are reaching out to these groups that
Speaker 1: have a certain amount of polarization present within them. Well,
Speaker 1: it makes me think that if if, what science communicators
Speaker 1: want to do is try to get everybody across different
Speaker 1: cultural groups on the same page. One thing that should
Speaker 1: really be encouraged is cultural diversity of science communication, is
Speaker 1: that there should be people from all different cultural groups
Speaker 1: within a society, all communicating like, hey, here's what the
Speaker 1: science says. So at least when it's a question of science,
Speaker 1: you can be on the same page and not bring
Speaker 1: in these cultural issues because it's not just people from
Speaker 1: that other cultural group telling you what the science says.
Speaker 1: You're hearing about it from people like you, so they
Speaker 1: have it. Hopefully we gave you some some new tools
Speaker 1: to illuminate not only the understanding of others, but growing understandings,
Speaker 1: and also to better understand how science communication is working
Speaker 1: and how these these blockages, the scientific communication breakdowns are occurring,
Speaker 1: and how we might even treat them. Yeah, I hope,
Speaker 1: I hope today maybe we said something of substance that
Speaker 1: will help people. Uh, I don't know, bridge the partisan
Speaker 1: divide and come to some agreement about the things we
Speaker 1: should be able to agree on. Um. But yeah, it's tough, man,
Speaker 1: the partisan divide. It's the thing I often think about
Speaker 1: in in how we communicate stuff like this and it
Speaker 1: can get you down at times, but we shouldn't despair.
Speaker 1: We should try to find ways to get around it.
Speaker 1: Come together, have have one of those big happy Uh
Speaker 1: what were you talking about? Grow grow food together? Oh yes, yes,
Speaker 1: uh in a nice communal Kumbaya moment. Yeah, you might
Speaker 1: have just alienated something. Oh yeah, probably did so. Hey
Speaker 1: did we alienate you? Did we did? We did we
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