"Why Don't People Believe in Science" Why? Radio episode with Dan M. Kahan
10:30PM Nov 10, +0000
Speakers:
Announcer
Jack Russell Weinstein
Dan Kahan
Keywords:
science
climate change
question
evolution
people
fact
issues
hpv vaccine
kinds
philosophical discussions
good
doctor
figure
religious
society
believed
problem
group
evidence
understand
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The original episode can be found here: https://philosophyinpubliclife.org/2015/08/06/why-dont-people-believe-science-with-dan-m-kahan/
Why philosophical discussions about everyday life is produced by the Institute for philosophy and public life, a division of the University of North Dakota's College of Arts and Sciences. This season is made possible in part by a grant from the Knight Foundation and the community foundation of Grand Forks and East Grand Forks. Visit us online at why Radio show.org Hello, everybody.
Welcome to why philosophical discussions about everyday life. I'm your host, Jack Weinstein. Today we're asking our guests Dan Kahan, why people don't believe in science, but I'd like to begin by thanking this episode's sponsors, William and Jody Hougue for their generosity and support. If you'd like to sponsor an episode visit why Radio show.org for details.
For most of human history, people have believed that if we can only reveal the truth about things agreement would quickly follow. This has been the case for religion. Paul on the road to Damascus Muhammad in the cave of Hira and Moses on Mount Sinai, all believed that everyone should and would be moved by revelation. But this has also been true for what used to be called natural philosophy, what we now call science, this kind of knowledge was supposed to replace superstition with fact, it was supposed to improve everyone, regardless of who they were, or what they believed. Nature physics in Greece is in the word physics is the object science seeks to uncover by discovering the principles that govern matter and energy, the laws of motion that move the stars and planets, and the innumerable forces that direct agriculture, natural scientists aim to expose the reality behind the curtain of everyday experience. This, they argued, would allow us to predict and harness nature and to cultivate health and goodness, it would make humans a stronger, healthier, dominant and more ethical race. If we only follow the dictates of discovery, we would finally be in control of our own destiny, because we would understand how the universe actually operated. It's not a coincidence that both Buddha and Kant wanted people to reach enlightenment. Unfortunately, human history had other plans. It seems that the more we know, the more we disagree. We have a basic understanding of how nature operates. We can cure major diseases, manufacture great machines and communicate over massive distances, we can fly and go to the moon. But for each of these achievements, doubt remains. worldly people reject evolution. college educated parents refuse to vaccinate their kids, climate change deniers are too numerous to mention. And conspiracy theorists use their technological wherewithal to inspire the most irrational suspicions from chem trails to a fake moon landing. It's all nonsense. It each is believed by huge swathes of the population. Science, it seems, does not stand on its own, it is not self evident. In part, this is because facts are never distinct from interpretation. Truth only makes sense in context, there has to be background and narrative, there has to be dots to connect. But science also lacks the very thing that religion serves up better than anything intuitively understandable emotional appeal. Certainly, new pictures of Pluto may inspire off for a short time. But the beauty of two plus two equals four can't hold a candle to the miracle of a resurrection. Just about everybody longs to see the dead again. science tells them death as permanent. Religion only asked them to be patient. Science gets the rod deal. its greatest achievements. given over to religious experience, a baby being born, the most natural thing there is is called a miracle. And the astonishing achievement of a polio free world is dismissed. It's hard to glory in the ratification of a disease when half the living population has no memory of its effects. We don't wake up celebrating the lack of robotic plague either. But religion gets short shrift too. little attention is paid to the complex layers of critical thinking that is involved in interpreting scriptures, or the problem solving skills necessary to applying moral commands to everyday situation. Science requires or just as religion requires intellectual exploration, but we only allow certain emotions for certain subjects, sciences, a lot of discipline technical thought, while religion is granted passion. We have relegated our mental skills to their respective corners and as a result, we ask baffling questions. Can you prove that God exists seems as unremarkable a formulation to us is Do you believe in science, but one shouldn't have to believe what can be known and one shouldn't have to prove what is chosen for inspiration? Nevertheless, today's episode of why is asking why people don't believe science. It will explore why people with incontrovertibly evidence reject scientific conclusions Even when they themselves rely on them to do just about everything in their lives. We will start with the all too common premise that people simply don't know any better, but will discover that the answer is much more complex. Belief is political, sociological and contextual knowledge, it turns out is just as complicated. Maybe disbelief is religions fault. Maybe faith has blinded believers and pushed aside reason. But maybe disbelief comes from science, which only accepts answers on its own terms, relegating metaphor to the dreaded teaching tool or worse to literature. Or maybe the problem is democracy and pluralism, perhaps diversity and equality necessitate multiple answers in all areas of knowledge, not just the ones we choose for ourselves. The modern world likes to pretend the science is neutral and universal it isn't. It is a contextual tool that we use and discard when convenient, just like religion, just like politics. Maybe then our question shouldn't be why people don't believe science. But when do they Nothing can be all things to all people sciences mistake is to think it can but this is the same mistake religion makes. I'm not suggesting science is just a matter of faith that would miss the point. I am suggesting, however, that the two aren't as far apart as we'd like to think as complimentary accounts of the true nature of the universe, they may simply be two sides of the same coin.
And now our guest, Dan Kahan is the Elizabeth Kay dollard, professor of law and professor of psychology at Yale Law School, and a lead researcher for the cultural cognition project. Dan, welcome to why.
Thank you. Thank you so much, jack. We're live smart. I feel smart already. That was very interesting. opening remarks.
Oh, well, thank you very much. I'm
sure if the resurrection were broadcast, it would get very high ratings. But you know, the show that gets very high ratings, and much more higher than religious shows in this put in United States is Mythbusters. It's a show about these, you know, these guys, basically, who do experiments. Are you hearing me?
Me? I'm here.
Okay. A little bit of background. So, you know, the two guys and one says the other Oh, what happened if I dropped a penny at the Empire State Building? What it goes through somebody's skull? And I goes, wow, that's interesting question. I guess we can't do it. But, and then he comes up with some kind of device, a gun that shoots the penny out of the out of a, just the right speed from the distance from the watermelon, which is put situated. So it has the same kind of resistance as a human skull, and they figure it out. They're doing experiments, right. And people sit around, and they want to watch that. So they go, Oh, it's a show about people who are curious to figure out something. And they're going to use this technique where they can't observe the thing they want to know. But they can observe other things from which they can infer it. And they think that's entertainment. They sit there and they watch it. The people wouldn't know what the alternative to sciences way of knowing was, if it came up in lap them in the face United States. And there's no sciences one, you know, and it has achieved what you said, was the ambition in your opening that it failed to achieve it. Got it. This is a pro science aside.
So let me let me just observe that while Mythbusters is incredibly popular, so is the walking dead, a show about resurrection, although not the resurrection that we're talking to and in and of itself, these two comments are going to rile people up. So let me remind everyone that we are live that we'd love to hear the question comments, they should Email us at ask why@umd.edu that's asked why they should post it on our Facebook page@facebook.com slash why radio show tweet at why radio show and join the conversation with our intern Darren in our chat room at why Radio show.org now, you are already starting off by suggesting that the scientific viewpoint is inescapable. But at the same time, America at least Stan is a nation of people who believe in angels, a nation of churchgoers and synagogue and mosque goers, and it's described as a religious nation. So are we entrepreneurs, technologically minded science folk? Or are we religious people who just like to unmask a good rumor? Like in Mythbusters?
You know, jack, I actually missed a little bit of that because I'm having a little trouble here. Sometimes I'm missing parts of your audio, but that the the question about the contradiction or the tension between The status of United States as a pro Science Society in a religious society? Well, I mean, yeah, let's look at the at the premise. I mean that this is a fascinating question for me, because the question is, why is this a question people ask. But again, this, this society is about pro science, as you could imagine, um, they, you know, people go to church, they're gonna follow the directions that their, their GPS system gives them, they don't think all because Einstein, in his theory of relativity guide this machine, it doesn't work. They take the antibiotics that their doctor gives them, they get the vaccinations, there's no there's no correlation at all, between whether people say they believe in evolution, and whether they think vaccinations are great. And in fact, 9%, we've had 90% vaccination rates, public health standard, for well over a decade, we don't really have meaningful part of our public, that's anti vaccination. Now we have these people who are very religious. And, you know, they apparently still are able to live in a way that treats sciences way of knowing as authoritative. So you might think that, that that's somehow evidence that there isn't this great tension. But in a sense, we don't have the religion. That traditionally was what religion was, we don't cut people's heads off in the United States, if we don't agree with their religious principles. We're not like Afghanistan, where if a girl wants to go to school, he cut her nose off. Right? The kind of religious sensibilities we have have been so domesticated, by liberal institutions, they're there, and they're a meaningful part of people's lives. But they don't cause the kind of tension either between people and deciding and how to live, or the kind of obstacle to sciences way of knowing that they do that it does in parts of the world where people still treat religions way of knowing is authoritative. So the question to me is why? Why do we obsess with this question? How come we have this tension about science and artists? What exactly are they talking about?
Well, let me let me interrupt for just a second ask, though. If if it's, if it says marginalized, as you suggest, and I can understand the argument that it is, why is my Facebook feed filled with complaints about climate change pro life position? all the time? You know, where does that come from? Who are those people?
I mean, I don't I don't deny that the climate denier. I don't like the term denier. But I know of course, there's conflict about climate change. And I know 50% United States approximately say they don't believe in evolution. But the question is, what is that? exactly does that mean? Let's take evolution, that there's zero correlation, I mean, literally zero, between saying you believe in evolution, and being able to give an account of the modern synthesis, natural selection, genetic variants in random mutation, that would help you pass a high school biology exam, the people who say they believe in evolution very unlikely to know what that means. They think a giraffe was hungry for coconut, it stretched its neck up and a baby's neck was a little bit longer, and it's stretched, it's they don't know what they believe. The people who said they don't believe are just as likely to actually understand the modern synthesis. And you can teach people who say they don't believe evolution, the modern synthesis just as readily as you can teach people who say don't believe it. Afterwards, they won't say that they believe it. But they will in fact, know it, if they have any occasion to use it, which is unlikely because most of us have no occasion to use knowledge, but evolution, but if they should become a doctor, or scientist, they can use it and will, even though they say they don't believe in it, whereas the person who doesn't use it, if the person did manage to pass that high school exam, if he or she goes on to be a lawyer and accountant will forget the modern synthesis and still say he or she believes in evolution. This idea of believing evolution has very little to do with anything relating to the evidence about the natural history of human beings has everything to do with conveying that you're a certain kind of person in a society that and this is the this is the the puzzling part, has decided it wants to make what looks like a question of empirical fact, a kind of a marker of a tribal identity.
I want to hold off on the tribal identities part because it's incredibly interesting, and I think we'll need to unpack it, but I want to call attention to something that you've said Now a couple of times because it's so fascinating. There is no correlation between believing in something and knowing about something so I you know, I know a fair amount about Christianity because I'm a philosopher because I teach under Graduates, because I find it interesting, but I am not a Christian. And what you're suggesting is that the same is true about evolution about climate change about vaccinations, that in fact, there's just, there's no connection between what we choose to believe in and what information we have, or what we're even interested in knowing.
See, I don't know that I made, maybe you'll get me to make a claim that's strong. But I'm gonna start out with a claim that's a lot less Okay. That on, on certain issues on that admit, of scientific proof. People, people's beliefs are indicators of an identity, and have nothing to do with what they know about the evidence relating to that question. And, in fact, people people have to accept as known by science much, much more than they could possibly understand for themselves. I mean, there's just too much out there, you learn to recognize who knows what about what, right. So already, you know, you're relying on some kind of indicator, but the word or trust now on these issues where people disagree? I mean, it's not they're not disagreeing because they, they don't know as much about it as they do on the other issues. Right. They don't know anything more about about pasteurization of milk than they do about climate change. But they don't have the controversy about drinking raw milk in the United States. Right. So the controversies on these issues aren't about what people know. But I'm not sure if the question in general, how knowledge and belief are connected, or I think is more complicated. But on those issues, were confusing. Something that is, in fact, just a kind of an expression of identity, for some kind of engagement with evidence about how the world works.
So what you're leading up to is something that in your work you refer to as refuting the public or rationality thesis and and replacing it with the cultural cognition thesis, the public irrationality thesis is this notion that people don't believe in science, because they don't understand science. And if only we gave them good science education, if only we forced them to really understand science, they would then believe it's their ignorance that makes them reject these hot button topics. But But you say that's wrong, you say that, that, that that's not really what's going
wrong. And I think that's wrong based on evidence. And I think that I, you know, how people come to know what what's known by science is an issue that admits of scientific investigation. And that, in fact demands it because you can see the kind of problems we have if we don't kind of attend to those processes and prevent them from becoming disrupted on these kinds of issues. But yeah, here's so here's a hypothesis, of the reason we have the conflict that we do over climate change, has something to do with the public's inability to understand the the evidence, and the evidence is complicated. And most people don't know a lot of science. And so maybe they can be misled. People don't think the way scientists do this is the argument in a kind of dispassionate, logical way, they go with their, their gut, and the the prospect of the terrorist. Attacking the World Trade Center is so much more spectacular people will obsess about that and ignore the more remote, but but possibly more more dangerous risk, like the climate change. Now, if that's true, you should be able to present evidence of it. So my colleagues and I just wanted to investigate this. And in addition to figuring out asking people what their beliefs were about climate change, we measured their science literacy using the standard measures of that, that the National Science Foundation puts out. We also measured their critical reasoning proficiencies. With with scales, like the numeracy scale, which measures how well you can reason with quantitative information, and very important for thinking the way that a scientist does. And what we found is that there was, well, if you looked at the population, there was zero correlation between those kinds of measures of science comprehension, and what people said they believed about climate change. But that was a little bit misleading, because the thing that did explain that the division, people's cultural identities, actually did interact with their science, comprehension, and science comprehension matters. But But how it matters depends on who you are. So if you're the person who had the kind of cultural identity, that was associated with believing in climate change, then the higher you scored on all these measures science comprehension, the more likely you were to say you believed it. But if you were somebody who had the kind of cultural identity that's associated with being skeptical, then the higher you scored and all these measures, the less likely you were to say that you believe that. That's not the kind of pattern you'd predict. If your theory was the reason we have conflict over climate science is that people aren't doing well enough in science. Obviously, the people were the most science comprehending they're not converging, right? They're the most polarized. So we need another hypothesis.
So you're using the phrase cultural identity. But what you're referring to is the subgroups that people see themselves as so rather than this being a question of knowledge of science, this may be a question of whether you're a Democrat or Republican, whether you see yourself as a conservative Christian, whether you're a Baptist, whether you're a Hindu, whether you're a secular alternative kid from from some suburb who wants to be punked, right? These these Raiders fan, right, a Red Sox fan or something like that. I don't think the Cubs fans believe in science at all, I think they just want miracles.
But um, but you see, this is like this, because you know, the Red Sox and the Yankees, you know, 1978 playoff game, right? Bucky? dense homerun? Yes, that was foul. Okay. I'm telling you that. Because here's the phenomenon of motivated reasoning. And, and the classic study is called, they saw a game. And they it's done with a group of university students with up to two colleges, and they have them watch a tape of the football game between their school last weekend, they said, well, the referee made some controversial calls. And we want you to see if you think he got it right or wrong, I saw all the students from what wasn't North Dakota, it was it was it was some other Eastern University said, or the referee must have been in the pocket of a pen or something like that. So the Dartmouth students in the pen students, they always say, you know, it must be a Dartmouth alum. This has motivated reasoning, this tendency to fit evidence of all kinds, including what you take in with your own senses, to some interest or goal you have that's independent of just figuring out what the right answer is. There, the goal was to form experienced this sense of connection to other people who are fans of that team. And it was actually participating in conscripting their their, their sense perceptions, and they would see this. Now, you know, this is, this is the same dynamic, I want to suggest that's at work in these conflicts that we have about climate change and evolution. It's not at work in many times more issues, which is very important. But you see that the thing that's at issue is, people have a big stake in connecting with their group, the same way, it wouldn't be very good for you if you turn around the stands and said, No, no, you know, our guy really was out of bounds, everybody, maybe next year, we'll do better. Your life as a fan wouldn't go very well. If I leave this the studio, and I'm marching around the sign says climate change is a hoax. You know, even with tenure, my life here in New Haven wouldn't be so good, right? These kinds of issues become become markers of identity. Right. And you made a good point about what you said I should I should be clear about what that is. If I want to I'm going to pause right now and you might want to ask me the question,
it's a good time to pause because we have to take a break when we come back from the break. We'll look at this notion of perspective and what team you're on how it changes your notion. If you want a participant in the conversation, email us at ask why@umd.edu visit us@facebook.com slash why radio show tweet at why radio showed? And of course join us in our chat room at why Radio show.org you're listening to Dan Kahan and jack Russel Weinstein on why philosophical discussions about everyday life We'll be back right after this.
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You're back with jack Russel Weinstein and Dan Kahan, we're asking the question, why don't people believe in science? You're listening to why philosophical discussions about everyday life. You know, I was fiddling around the internet in the last couple days, and I came across a video that has repeated an image that's been going around for a while now. And it's a photo of Steven Spielberg sitting in front of a dead dinosaur. And they show people the dinosaur. And they ask, you know, what do you think of this and they're horrified. They think first they think it's a rhino, some of them others think it's a dinosaur. But even the ones who know it's a dinosaur upset that he hunts in in it clearly was revived after this whole Cecil the lion thing where people were very upset about the American dentist going and shooting a lion, and then and then doing stuff with it. And it is supposed to show that people don't know anything, that they can't figure out that it's a hoax, they can't figure out that it's special effects. But of course, what it reveals is whether or not you're a science fiction fan, it reveals whether or not you're willing to talk to a camera and make a fool of yourself. It reveals whether you're anti hunting or pro hunting, it reveals a whole host of yourself information about you, sociologically and psychologically, even if the only thing it may or may not reveal is can you identify a triceratops? And so I guess, then the question I want to ask,
just to be clear, it wasn't really a dead he hadn't really killed it.
No, right. It was it was it was No, I understand if there was a dinosaur and it was killed. That would be upsetting. You know, cuz we have at least one. But, but but does. Does the the man in the street thing? Or I should say the person in the street thing these days? Does the person in the street interview? When people don't know why you why we're celebrating July 4, or can identify a science fiction animal or can explain a climate change? Does that really give us any information about what people know and don't know?
I mean, it it kind of does. But it might be revealing that we don't know what it is that people need to know, in order to get the benefits of what's known by pi science. One of the questions on the National Science Foundation science literacy test is antibiotics kill bacteria and viruses true or false. And about 50% say it's true, I think it kills viruses. That's better than other countries, actually. But you know, it doesn't matter. Um, you don't have to get a medical degree to get the benefit of medical science, what you need to know is you go to the doctor when you're sick, and you take the erythromycin when she prescribes it. And it would be a waste of your time to actually try to figure out why what she knows is what she knows, you should be using your time to figure out well, who knows what about what, and people are extremely good at that. I mean, think about the amount of information that they're aligning themselves with properly, without having to understand all of it. That actually is is human reason, right? I mean, if you wouldn't, you wouldn't know it, we wouldn't know very much, right? If each one of us had to reinvent everything that's known on his or her own. It's only because we have this kind of division of intellectual, intellectual labor, that we're able to do this. So I think that those kinds of questions usually have mistaken premise that somehow people other people know the answer to that is a measure of whether they know anything.
Before the break, you suggested that belief in science is, in some sense, analogous to sports loyalty, that if you are in a certain subgroup, or you share a certain cultural identity, you are going to feel the pressure to either believe in climate change or evolution or vaccinations, or not believe in these things. And one of the examples you give. Well, let me let me ask you to talk a little bit more about that. And then I'm going to ask you about the Pakistani doctor, because the he's the example you use to suggest that what you're talking about isn't really a contradiction at all. But why don't you explain a little bit about how social identify identity works. And
so this, this is actually it brings us back to to the some of the themes you were raising earlier, right. So I said that that this dynamic, where people become polarized on these facts that admit of scientific investigation, is akin to the kind of conflict you see between the fans of the rival sports teams that have an identity with those sports teams with the other fans. In the kind of it, we want to know, do people it's not a sign of of people not knowing things, in a sense that the disagreement is that people are too rational and giving effect to the information that helps to connect them with the groups that they belong to. Right. And that person, a person who makes a mistake about climate change, it doesn't have any effect on climate change. And what you believe about climate change doesn't affect the climate, you don't matter enough as an individual your carbon consumption, to have an impact, or as a voter or somebody making an argument to change policy. But given what the issue has now come to signify within these kinds of groups, you make a mistake about that. And it could have huge consequences for you. And you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand these things. I mean, it's like, it's like knowing that you should cover your mouth when you cough or something like that social competence. But if you are really good at manipulating data and making logical arguments, well, you can use that kind of intelligence to do an even better job and forming and persisting in the beliefs that will convey to other people whose good opinion you depend on psychically and materially for your well being, that you have those beliefs, right. The problem is people, it's not that they're not rational, that they're being irrational, or what, it's not stupid people, it's a polluted science communication environment. It's stupid, that that there's something there. What is it that's made these kinds of facts come to have that significance? Because that's not true. Right about about cell phone radiation, that's not true about the magnetic waves from power lines, that's not true about fluoride in the water. You know, it's not true about orders of magnitude more things where these people are converging. So that's the that's the way to understand this, I think that there's a kind of a pollution in the science communication environment, these meanings, that attached to the facts and make them into badges of identity, at which point, it's perfectly rational for the individual to use his or her reasoning, to form those positions that'll connect them to the group. Even though if everybody does that at once, everybody will be worse off, because then we're not going to converge on the best evidence as a society. But that doesn't change, that doesn't change the situation for you. Right? So I think that that's what we should be trying to understand what are those processes that caused that?
So let's let's take an extreme example, let's let's look at the last election, when President Obama was running for reelection, and there was a large field of Republican candidates for the primary, although not as large as right now, there was a famous moment during the debate, when the candidates were asked how many of you believe in evolution or how many of you, I think, don't believe in evolution, and all of them raise their hand except one. Now, the general interpretation, certainly amongst democrats and liberals was that Oh, look at how stupid we're looking at how irrational these candidates were. But what you're saying is No, in fact, these candidates are incredibly irrational, because they weren't actually answering the question. Do you know about evolution? And do you believe in it, they were asking, do you want to be identified as a Republican, they felt perhaps rightly, that they could not win the Republican nomination if they believed in evolution. So they were, in essence answering a different question, or at least to take it more extreme. They have to not believe in evolution, because they have to see themselves as a Republican and they want everyone else to is that what you're suggest? Well,
yeah, although I, you know, I think that, um, I don't mean to, I'm trying to give an account of how ordinary people come to know what's known, and why we see these kinds of conflicts between ordinary members of society. Politicians, I don't think it generalizes necessarily to politicians. They're professionals using professional judgment. And the thing that they're best at is counting to the to 51%. And so I think the best answer is always, always going to be they're going to say what they think will get them elected. Now, then the question becomes, and then as you alluded to, why do they think they have to say that their right to believe they have to say that their their right to believe that they have to take a position on climate change, that matches the identity of the constituencies, they're depending on to be elected? Because otherwise, there'll be turned out as people were, basically are seen as traitors who don't have the right kinds of values. How did that happen is what I'm saying is is that the important question to ask, but we, you know, if we try to think about what the what it's like for the individual, right now, don't think the individual is like a politician on the stage saying, Well, I'm going to represent that I have this belief about climate change. I'm I mean, it happens much more unconsciously and naturally. Right? I think through the very same processes that that helped them to understand what any, any evidence is on anything, right? They just listen to the people around them who they think know what they're talking about.
So let's, let's take a slightly different example. And I'll pick on the democrats for a second, the democrats are largely against the Keystone pipeline, yet, I, for one, have no opinion on the matter if I'm being honest. And if I were to self identify as a Democrat, and I walked into a room of Democrats, I would be worried that if I said something about the Keystone pipeline, I'd get yelled at, I'd be ostracized. And that pressure is even made even more extreme if we're talking about family relationships, or neighborhood relationships, or religious relationships that form the foundation of our personal experience. And so really, part of what you're suggesting is that scientific belief or adherence to a scientific claim is much more about social pressures and comfort and anxiety that it is about evaluating the facts in and of themselves. And, and you give a whole bunch of examples, and we'll start with the Pakistani doctor of people who know the facts, but choose to almost be have multiple personalities about this. Can you explain the Pakistan doctor what that is?
I will, um, but I'll just hold off on that for one second. I mean, let's let's let's not make the mistake of kind of, of what it's a kind of bias, you know, kind of availability bias. You know, people don't stand by the highway watching all the cars that go by that don't crash, they come running, if there's a car crash, that the number of issues that have this quality, where people are polarized based on their identity, and the polarization gets even more intense as their science comprehension goes up, is tiny, compared to the number of issues that aren't like that, where that that could be where these people are converging. Right. So we all
believe in the internal combustion engine. We all believe that that warms us up, we all believe that sun will give a sunburn, right? These sorts of things, and even
things we don't even think about, you know, they're just so we just do it, we just live next to you know, the reverse osmosis plant. Number six, treats our water and don't give a second thought, because we see other people like us living there. Now, what we do there is just use the best information we have about what's known what other people who know what they're doing. Well, how are they aligning themselves with respect this issue and you do it, that's when you want to know what the best evidence is. I want to say, though, that what is happening when people form these positions on climate change, they're not trying to figure out what the best evidence is no, I don't say that they're doing this consciously. But I want to say that it's akin to a different kind of mental operation. Think about this, you go into a restaurant and you tip the waiter or waitress, you know, if I went to the restaurant with you and saw you not tipping that I would have a negative opinion of you. But I bet you do it even when you go out by yourself to do it. Why? Because you've just become the kind of person who knows that that's what you should do. That's just the it's not a belief. It's just a an attitude, or kind of disposition, that you formed, no doubt in relation to social cues about what you should be doing if you're a good person. That's exactly the kind of orientation that somebody has to this question evolution, or climate change. In most cases, they have nothing else to do with that belief, besides be the kind of person who has a position on it. Now I can I can, I can tell you about the Pakistani doctor because he had something else to do with it. I don't want to keep going on too long. Right? But here's the thing, this is a this is a somebody he featured in a brilliant study by a scholar in Psalm in a meet who goes to to Islamic countries and he he asked the science trained professionals, mainly doctors, how they deal with the tensions between religious tenants and, and their professional science knowledge. And so he really wonderfully does. He has a power script. He's saying to the doctor, so your Do you believe evolution? And the Pakistani doctor says no, I don't believe in evolution, we descend from monkeys. Allah created us. Okay, next question I have here I see. You're an oncologist. Is that right? Yes. Do you ever use evolutionary science in your practice as an oncologist Yes, yes, of course I do. Sometimes I have to know what the indicators are genetic indicators of cancer. And so I'm going to meet me the first time he was confused, but he's kind of this point. He's playing a role. Okay. Well, the next question I have here is, do you think that evolutionary science is relevant to medical research? And the doctor was? Yeah, of course it is. Do you know anything about stem cells? I'll explain it to you. He thinks he's a moron at that point. Yeah. And then Sam, you Okay, I understand. Oh, the next question I have here is, do you believe in evolution? And the fact is, you already asked me that question. I don't believe in evolution. And then someone says, Well, I don't understand. You said you don't believe it? And you do. And he says, You are very confused. Do you want to talk about my life as a doctor or my life as somebody who is a member of this community, and what I do at home? Because I'm not, I'll make it simple for you. I believe it at work, but I couldn't believe it at home. Now, he's not saying I have a split personality or anything like this. What he's saying is, what does it mean, to have a belief independently of what you do with it, he has a belief in evolution that's built into all the other kinds of mental routines he uses to be a doctor. That's that's suited for being a doctor. But he also has an orientation toward this issue of the the meaning of life and his religious community. That when he's in that setting, says, I don't believe in evolution. That's what he uses the disbelief for. How are they even it unless the things he's doing with these kinds of mental objects are inconsistent? Why would we think they were the same thing? Right. That's what I think he he understands the Pakistani doctor. And ironically, we don't, right, even though he has to contend, you know, with a lot more genuine religious opposition to scientific knowledge and tolerance of other people's lives than we do.
And this isn't exclusive to Pakistan. Right? You talk about the Kentucky farmer who this is a similar
climate change? Because the most I mean, if leaving partisanship aside, that the segment of society that's the most climate skeptical farmers, you asked me to believe in climate change, you know, they say something I couldn't say, a lot Al Gore, you know? Of course not. But But you see, ask them when they're riding their tractor, that they're the segment of society that uses climate science, consciously, subconsciously, more than any other. They engage in farming practices like no till farming, why do they do it? Because they've been told that as a result of climate change, the soil is going to be exposed to conditions that will like drought, that will make it less robust. And so no, till farming is actually a better way to be to preserve the fertility of the soil. They pay, they buy more crop and failure insurance, because they've been told there's going to be more variance because of climate change. Right? Monsanto, you know that they're very excited because Monsanto is making genetically modified seeds, that will, they currently can still grow the corn, I mean, they actually planting soybeans. Now, instead of corn, because they've been told that, that with the climate change, the growing season is going to change, they believe it. But Monsanto, in addition to making the new seeds, it also went out and bought a company called climate Corporation, which was synthesizing all the best evidence from universities and government agencies, all the stuff that goes into the the the IPCC report on climate change, and presenting it in a form where it could be custom tailored to your farm. Right, your iPad application, it tells you, here's what's gonna happen on your farm. And point is that the farmer wants that. Monsanto pays a billion dollars for that, because they know that that farmer is hungry for scientific information has always been using it. The Kentucky farmers calm the Kentucky farmer is like the Pakistani doctor. He's probably the Oklahoma farmer. He's represented by the enough the senator who brings the snowball into the Senate to show that that there's snow outside and you must be an idiot. And I'm sure that the farmer gets a good laugh out of that. But he does, he wouldn't be laughing if it wasn't also sponsoring the farm bill, which is going to send back 10s of millions of dollars, literally, to to Oklahoma universities to do research on climate change adaptation, because he knows that's happening. Right? There's two climate changes, the one he believes in or disbelieves, in in order to be a certain kind of person, when essentially he's engaged in an activity that's akin to rooting for the Yankees or the Red Sox. And he knows which what his position is to do that. But then there's a climate change that he believes in because he's a farmer. And when he's a farmer, he uses his knowledge of what science knows to do that now, you know, That's a contradiction. I mean, I see the tension, right. But here's the point, the people who say they believe in climate change. Um, they think things like, like, okay, carbon is a greenhouse gas. But carbon also kills plants in greenhouses, right? It interferes with photosynthesis, they don't really know anything about it. They just know they believe in it. They don't have any use for this information, aside from being the kind of person who they are.
What's the solution? Is, is there a problem that needs to be solved? And what's the solution? to get people to believe in science in their private lives when they believe in science in their professional lives? Or is it a non issue when we just go about our business? Well,
but it's not any good, obviously, when some issue of consequence, takes on this kind of character, and gives people who, obviously are competent at orienting themselves with respect to what's known by science, some alternative incentive to orient themselves toward these issues, that doesn't have anything to do with the truth. And we should be, we should be trying to figure out how things like that happen. And what we can do to prevent them from happening. Again, the number of issues that are like this a tiny in in relation to the number of issues that are, and nothing has to be this way these things happen, because of some, some set of events, actually, we should be using scientific understandings to essentially protect the science communication environment, from the kind of pollution, like these meanings that become connected to the facts that then generate this kind of, of dispute. But this idea that we must have a segment in our society that hates science, and can't reason it is stupid, that actually is a symptom of the very kind of disease we're talking about. It's not true, right? So it is part and parcel of that competition over things like climate change and evolution, that we keep thinking, the reason we have this problem is that, Oh, those guys are anti science or stupid.
So the name calling and the attitudes and the senses of superiority. This is actually part and parcel of the same political landscape that prevents people from ascribing to the truth in the first place.
Sure. And here's a, you mentioned vaccines. Now, the truth is, there's people wildly overstate how much resistance there is to vaccines in this country. There are people who are anti vaccine, but they're they're outliers in any of these groups are the same people who disagree about evolution. They overwhelmingly agree that you said vaccines, same people who disagree about climate change, overwhelmingly agree, you should have vaccines, right? So we overstate this. But here's a kind of trope that you see in the in common in the in the internet, right? All the anti science virus, it was kind of funny. Initially, the symptoms were the disbelief in evolution, but then more a little bit more alarmingly and mutated and people started to deny climate change. Well, now it's become so like mutated, this horrible, toxic form where people are denying that vaccines work. This is the anti science virus. Now, this is designed to kind of create this sense of contempt, right? Not only do these guys disagree with me about evolution and climate change, they don't even think vaccines work are good, they must be very bad. Well, that's actually not true. But if you if you fill up the science communication environment with the message, oh, you know, this is another issue on which this group has this position in that group has another position, you might very well make it into that kind of issue. So exactly that kind of, of use of the anti science kind of insult is a way that it risks pulling into to this kind of problem, we have more issues, scientific issues, so people should refrain from doing
so taking a step back. What does this tell us about democracy, right? If there are these competing notions of commitment to science or belief in science or knowledge applies in some areas and not areas, other areas? Does that mean that democracy is inherently fragmented? are we are we falling apart as as a participatory government? Well,
you know, that there's a bigger issue about polarization. And I accept, it's clearly true that we have a lot more division right now than we've had in recent years. I don't know what the mean and standard deviation though is like I can remember times at the Vietnam War where there's a lot of tension too. But here's the but I do think that this question about democracy and conflict over science is a really important one. You know, there's a there's a deep congeniality between liberal democracy and science. And Karl, this is a theme, Karl Popper stressed here. It's not an accident that he wrote both the logic of scientific discovery and the open society and its enemies, you can't have the kind of, of inquiry that that drives scientific knowledge except in a liberal society, not just because the the investigation by empirical means will get blocked by bureaucracy or interest. People won't develop the habits of mind by questioning and challenging, that are the essential kind of fuel, right in the in the engine of scientific discovery, conjecture, conjecture and reputation. And you in the same, the same things that make a democracy so congenial to acquiring knowledge, create a challenge for actually certifying what's known, right? Nobody can tell us what to believe it, you know, you know, the the model, the Royal Society nullius in verba, your take nobody's word for it, right? Which is kind of a, you know, it's inspiring, but it's silly. You know, don't tell me what Newton said about, you know, gravity, I'm gonna figure this out for myself. Don't tell me about relativity, I'm going to point my own telescope at the sun and figure that out. Well, you know, if you're that smart in 500 years, you'll figure it out. You know what we know right now. But you'll be 500 years behind you, you should not take the word of anybody who, whose knowledge isn't based on science, his way of knowing, which is observation, invalid inference from the, from what we can observe in the facts, not through authority. But here's the problem. Nobody can tell you what it is that science knows that's part of that's built into science. It's built into liberal democracies. Well, we have to trust the people who we know what's known by science. But the people we know, when people we trust, they're going to be people who have our kinds of cultural commitments. It can't be any authority figure that the number of certifiers is going to be multiplying at the same time that the knowledge is increasing. It's gonna There's bound just by by just sheer probability to be these occasions in which the groups that have this function of certifying what's known to their members will come into disagreement. And at that point, you can have this kind of conflict. Now that no, that's it, you know, I don't think that's an inherent contradiction. I just think that's a problem, a problem to be solved by scientific means. So I think there is there is a connection between the kind of science communication problem we're talking about and democracy. But it's the kind that that you can have only because democracy is itself so suited for scientific inquiry because of its pluralism.
How good are people at determining who is a reputable authority? And who isn't? I mean, where are our television commercials are full of sports figures telling us all these things, but we don't necessarily I in my head, one of my favorite sports stories is I think it's the the first bush election. And Charles Barkley, the basketball player who most of many of our younger listeners will not know who he is. But Charles Barkley is being interviewed. He says, I used to hate George Bush, because I thought he only cared about rich people. But then I thought, Hey, wait a minute, I'm rich. And then he got to talk show out of it. Right? How good are we at picking authorities?
Well, I mean, we're, we're obviously good at figuring out what's known by science, in the live period, much less to live well, you have to avail yourself of the collective knowledge we have. And it's way more as I said earlier, than, than any one of us is in a position even a scientist to figure out for him or herself. So we have to be come pretty good. become an expert at knowing who knows what about what. And people do a really good job at that they can do a child development, psychology will show you that they start to recognize pick up right away who are the experts, and usually they're not disagreeing when there's some kind of an issue, though, where the positions become these badges of identity. At that point, they're going to start to conform their understanding of who really is an expert to what their positions are on those issues. Right. But at that point, you've got a pathology on your hands. I mean, that's something that's unusual and bad. But in general, they're very good at it. Right? You talked earlier about you go on the internet, you can find all kinds of crazy things that are said. Well, very few of them are believed by people, right? How are they figuring out not to believe, all of the garbage that's on the internet, there is just as much about contrails as there is about climate change, not nearly as many people who think contrails are poisoning, let's go the CIA is think that climate change, had they figured out how to reject that. There's that being able to pick up the signal of what science knows through all the noise, you know, that takes a certain kind of reason. It's obvious people are very good at that.
You, you You seem much more optimistic about people's abilities, then I would have thought you would have been, especially when I first encountered your research, when I when I invited you on to the show, you have a lot of faith in people's intellects and their ability to see through the noise. So what's happening in people's private lives? When they reject evolution or climate change? Is this a form of self deception?
Um, well, I think what's happening is that people that the same kind of faculties that people normally use reliably to figure out what's going on, are now giving them feedback that misleads them, because they're exercising those faculties essentially, in a polluted science communication environment, where the kinds of the kinds of cues that they normally rely on and that bring these groups into convergence now are driving them apart. Right? They, they figure out what's known inside of these affinity groups, which are filled with people who know what's known by science, and they're good at transmitting it. I mean, if you had a group out there that was consistently misleading its members about what was known by science, it wouldn't last very long, right? And you can figure that out, even if you don't believe in evolution could be a selection problem there. But that when these kinds of issues become suffused with these meetings, then you have you have this kind of problem. The key is to figure out how, you know, how does something like that happen? How do you how do you avoid it? And that's something that requires scientific knowledge to we should be using, we should be using our reason to protect the conditions on which our reason depends. And I think that's something that people across all these groups, if they're not thinking about a particular issue in which they're polarized will agree that that's something that ought to be done. And nobody, everybody knows that these kinds of influences can can mislead them. They all know they have an interest in having a communication environment, it's really, you've used the phrase polluted science environment
several times. What is what does that mean? And what is a non polluted a pure science? What What is a good indication? I'll
just use it. Because you know, these are models, for sure, for reading. But here's the way you think about it. Here's the question, how do people align themselves with what's known by science? It can't be, you know, no, isn't verbal? Like, I'll figure it out for myself. With my own experiments, if there's too much to be known. They figured they become experts at knowing who knows what about what the science communication environment is just the sum total of influences and processes and cues that people normally consult, to good effect, to align themselves with the best information that's important for their decision making individual and collective, the place where they tend to do that are in these groups, right? I mean, he, your kid gets a puffy face, it's turning blue, and it smells bad. You know, a scientist doesn't come to your house and explain gangrene. Your neighbor says, Get that kid to the emergency room don't just give an aspirin or something like this. You're surrounded with all these people giving you this information and you're good at picking up on it. Well, normally is insular is that might be it leads these groups these these different, diverse cultural group to the same answer, right. It doesn't only win positions on some issue that admits of scientific investigation becomes entangled in these symbols that make them into to have badges of identity and loyalty in these groups. At that point, people will have a stake in using their reason to connect themselves to the group that's at odds with the stake they haven't figured out the right answer. That's the pollution in the science communication environment.
Would tryna try to formulate this question. Following popper and following john Stuart Mill, who in some sense, anticipated popper? Would we be better off? Would we be more scientifically sophisticated? If we weren't creating these enclaves of similarity on our social networks or lived amongst different people might might? We've had a couple different neighbors in the house next door To us, and we've been friends with all of them. But all of those neighbors have fundamentally different political points of view than we do and fundamentally different religious points of view than we do. Are we better off and more scientific literate, scientifically literate, because we encounter this difference, or just proximity is whatever is going on deeper or bigger than proximity?
You know, I clearly it mean that they're just as many in the groups are just as likely to be wrong as right. When this kind of thing happens if their group happens to have the view that's in line with scientific consensus, they're just lucky. I don't think there's one group out there that does better than all the others in figuring out what's known by science. So I don't think you'd be any better off without one of the groups. I think clearly you are better off when you have have diversity. Here's it, here's a concrete context, where this kind of dynamic plays out. If you're, if you're running a business, and you have to have a dynamic problem solving environment, you there are two kinds of, of considerations, or the two kinds of problem situations you should think of if you need to have an answer right away. Right? Then you should be putting people who are relatively like each other together. Because they understand each other better. They're not going to fight with each other, they're kind of good at reading each other. Right? They're going to be able to know who knows what within that group more reliably than one that's filled with diverse people. But if you have a problem, that's long term, you want to have those diverse people together? Because they'll learn through their interactions, who knows what about what and create for themselves, the kind of natural cues that they were otherwise relying on when they were with people like them? To understand who knows what about what, and they will know more, because they're gonna be more diverse. Right? Now. That's me, as a business manager, putting those people together, you're out in society, you're gonna hang out with your friends, that's the easiest way for you to get the information. So naturally, that's going to happen. But it probably isn't. It probably does constrain, to some extent, the proliferation of knowledge, except that now obviously, even though you're at differences with your neighbors, I assume they're not trying to kill you or anything like that.
Not yet.
I mean, they might be able to sell you something. Well, look why this is what we understand united states don't cut his head off, you might be able to sell him something, right? And so you're gonna find an opportunity for interactions, where actually you can you can get the knowledge because there's not going to be any experience that believing what that guy says is contrary to your group's identity.
is is this phenomenon limited to science? I have in mind, I am recalling that you are a law professor. And I know that there is tremendous debate about what the Second Amendment means that whether there's a right to privacy, what kind of speech should or shouldn't be protected? Is Is there a similar phenomenon in legal reasoning and and in casework that you're describing in science interesting
issue. And a lot of these dynamics play out in legal settings, in legal settings. For one thing, people have to make judgments about facts on the basis of evidence. And the same way you could have the kind of motivated reasoning, that dividing people who are on different teams, and they saw a game, you could have that in a legal setting. We did a study, we call it they saw a protest. And what we did was we show the videos of protesters, and we told the subjects in the study, you're on it, you're mad, and you're on the jury. And you have to decide, did these people engage in intimidation? Were they going to be violent? That's what the police said, or were they were their first amendment rights violated because people didn't like what they were saying. And the police interfered with them, even though they were just engaged in peaceful protesting. We told half the people that the protesters were anti abortion demonstrators at an abortion clinic, and the other half that they were the protesters who were against the exclusion of gays and lesbians from the military, again, the audience might be too young to remember this. We used to exclude openly gay in men and women from the military. And so they were protesting is don't ask don't tell at the military recruitment center. Then we saw that people who had different cultural outlooks, who thought they were watching the same protest, they would disagree with each other about whether somebody just hit somebody over the head with a sign and or was blocking the door to a building. But those same people were disagreeing with people who had the same values, but who thought they were watching a different kind of video, right? Those kinds of facts bear a certain kind of significance in the lives of people. They do. Determine whose suicide you're on. So that can easily dis that can easily prevent the law, not only from achieving the kind of accuracy that it wants to in facts, but also the kind of neutrality it should have in a liberal society between people who have different outlooks and cultural identities.
So what are the last the last question? What What do we walk away with from this? I mean, there's a lot of optimism and people's capabilities. There's a lot of pessimism. But what am I What do we want our listeners to take away? Obviously, people aren't as dumb as you think they are. And, and, and belief in science is the
way though is that there's something you can do about and I keep saying we should figure this out? And when what how do things become this way, and we should do something and I haven't been I know, I hadn't been concrete enough about that. But But you remember the HPV vaccine controversy A few years ago, and I have a daughter so Okay, so we have a country that there's only one state Virginia that has adopted the the mandatory vaccination, which is what the CDC says you should have for the, for teenage, teenage boys and girls at this point, the reason they adopted is because Merck, the company that makes the drugs, gave them a lot of money to open a plant there. But we were having political controversy about this. And you might think, Well, you know, it's obvious we're gonna have it because you know, somebody knocking on your door saying, Hey, you know, your daughter, the one the other while you're on the swing out there. So once we'll be having sex next year, the GST the STD shots, you know, venereal disease shot in case you don't that is or otherwise don't bring it to school. Now, of course, it's gonna be conflict over that. But at the very time that we're having this controversy, we have the HPV vaccine, which is the hepatitis B vaccine. And Hepatitis B is a sexually transmitted disease. The CDC said it should be given to all children. At the very time that we were fighting about the HPV vaccine. Almost every state put it on to its scheduled mandatory vaccinations, and the vaccination rate was 95%. And at that time was being given to middle school kids now it's now it's it's for, for instance, but there was a catch up period at that time. Why were the two different? Well, people learned about the HPV vaccine from fox news from msnbc. It was introduced to them as a political controversial issue because of decisions that were made by the manufacturer to try to get legislative mandates through before its competitor could enter the market. Normally, the public health administrators are not political. They've been assigned the task to figure out what should be on the vaccination list. Everybody agrees there should be mandatory vaccinations and they just do what the CDC says. They did that with the HPV HPV vaccine. And you learned about it instead, from your doctor, who you pick because you're an expert at figuring out who knows what about what, and that person told you love you? I'm gonna I'm gonna jab Jane or, or Johnny with it with the HPV vaccine. I don't care what are your soccer practice? Just hurry up, you know, you found out about it under the conditions that enable you to make a judgement about whether this is something that science knows, right? If I tell a parent, I tell you, we did an experiment like this, you know that if I can, I can simulate conditions where you learn about the HPV vaccine. And whether you think it's it's, it's dangerous for your daughter or healthy for your daughter, it'll depend, you'll be judging this in the same way that the sports fan like that I did about whether Bucky having dense homerun was fair foul, you wouldn't think that was funny. You'd be horrified. You don't you don't want to think that when you're deciding whether something's good for your daughter, that you're essentially being like a sports fan, making the foul ball call. You don't want that to be a decision, an environment in which that what you're doing, deciding whose team you're on. You want that to be an environment in which you're using information that's essential to the well being of your family. And it could have been that way for HPV vaccine. People knew this could happen. They set it at the time. We did studies that that simulated these conditions and showed it could happen. And it wasn't as if people said oh, you know, we disagree. Who are we talking to? Nobody. There's no agency. There's no science communication Environment Protection Agency. It's not the FDA his job to worry about this, that the AMA American Medical Association doesn't worry about this. We don't have the institutions and practices that would allow us to use the knowledge we have about how people come to know what's known to protect what we all have a stake in, which is a science communication environment where we won't be misled.
That is an intriguing idea to think about a science communication agency. And I wonder and we don't have time for this, but I wonder, would it be possible to have a deep politicized science communication agency when we don't even have a deep politicized school system, right? I mean, one would think that the science teachers would be a place to learn the good science without looking for a fight, which is what you get when you hear from msnbc or Fox News. But we're at a time where schools is incredibly politicized. Maybe this is why maybe this is why so that all of these groups can continue to have their partisan battles in the classroom. I don't know it's it's it's a really interesting place to be but the fact that we have to take science communication more seriously and deep politicize it and, and and disentangle it from this identity politics. I think that's an incredibly important message. Dan, thank you so much for joining us on ally.
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
We'll be back right after this.
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We're back with why philosophical discussions about everyday life. We've been talking about science and why people believe in science. And of course, we've been challenging the notion that people don't believe in science at all, we've been asked to reframe the question. You know, Plato's classical critique of democracy is that it was ruled by the ignorant, he saw democracy as a disastrous experiment of governance by people who didn't know any better. And ever since then, politics has been about telling other people that they are ignorant, it's about seeing your opposition as not knowing any better. The essence of this conversation is that that's simply not true. People are a lot smarter than we think they are. And they're a lot smarter than we want to claim they are, when we disagree with them. They have scientific knowledge when they need it, not when it is convenient, or not, when it is convenient for us. They have scientific knowledge, when it is useful for them, the same person can believe in climate change when he or she is in the harvest, and not believe in climate change when he or she is engaged in religious worship or what have you. That's an incredibly interesting and complicated notion of what it means to be a human being. It also means that scientific knowledge is a political problem. And like all political problems, the central debate is going to be is the solution from the people, or is the solution from the government. Dan suggested that we imagine an agency interested and focused on scientific communication. Is that a good solution? I don't know. But it's interesting. And it's worth thinking about. It wouldn't be the National Education Association. It wouldn't be the same people who pick our teachers, it would be the people who are interested in communicating truth. But that of course leads to the same question, whose truth and that as always, is the place where philosophy starts, whose truth? You've been listening to jack Russel Weinstein on why philosophical discussions about everyday life, as always, it's an honor to be with you.
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