
Scientific communication in a post-truth society - joeyespo
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/11/21/1805868115.short
======
buboard
Why does this crap get published in PNAS and our papers don't? Oh i guess we
ll never know , and i don't see a comment section. Apart from the suspicious
title and almost vulgar buzzword journo-lingo, the article doesn't add
citations for its their most controversial claims such as this:

> "Democrats are the party of the poor, city dwellers,women, nonwhites, and
> secularists. Republicans, in contrast, represent white males, rural areas,
> evangelicals, and the well off."

, they admit to invalid extrapolations of their own claims (ref 28) and their
analysis lacks any attempts at comparative analysis. Their entire message is
that "scientists have to put up with fake news". Yeah tough shit, this is
2018. So much more could be said about decades of promotic "scientific"
politics (technocracy) and its failures as well.

And apparently, this is an opinion piece which somehow got peer reviewed and
it dates from April.

~~~
EGreg
Because in postmodernism, rationality and logic is a tool of the patriarchy,
the (various types of) establishment, or otherwise a construct of those in
power, against those who are not in power. Thus we must balance it out

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3463968/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3463968/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair)

[https://everydayfeminism.com/2016/03/why-rationalism-is-
irra...](https://everydayfeminism.com/2016/03/why-rationalism-is-irrational/)

[http://www.indiana.edu/~koertge/rfemlog.html](http://www.indiana.edu/~koertge/rfemlog.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_wars)

 _A number of different philosophical and historical schools, often grouped
together as "postmodernism", began reinterpreting scientific achievements of
the past through the lens of the practitioners, often positing the influence
of politics and economics in the development of scientific theories in
addition to scientific observations. Rather than being presented as working
entirely from positivistic observations, many scientists of the past were
scrutinized for their connection to issues of gender, sexual orientation,
race, and class. Some more radical philosophers, such as Paul Feyerabend,
argued that scientific theories were themselves incoherent and that other
forms of knowledge production (such as those used in religion) served the
material and spiritual needs of their practitioners with equal validity as did
scientific explanations._

~~~
dang
Please don't do this here. Where by "this" I mean bringing in things you
consider dumb, just to kick at them. This is not how we gratify intellectual
curiosity.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
EGreg
Fair enough. That should be added to the official policies so it’s known in
advance.

However I do think it’s a major trend that needs to be ridiculed. It’s all
across the map. Many of my rightwing and libertarian leaning facebook friends
have increasingly become skeptical of the scientific establishment when it
comes to climate change, evolution etc. Many of my friends on the left are
likewise making these claims about GMOs or anti vaxxers (regardless of
political affiliation) often claim that the vaccines are population control
and any arguments are paid for by governments. People on both sides of the
Israel Palestine issue and so on are claiming that historical facts or context
is “just talking points”. And yes, some major proponents of third wave
feminism have espoused this as well.

To me these are all aspects of a weird “post modernist” approach to science,
and particularly frustrating with climate change deniers (because it affects
us all). It is a MINDSET where a rational argument is met with “oh well that’s
just the ESTABLISHMENT, you are a XYZ” where XYZ is the opposite political or
ideological identity.

Frankly now that I think about it, it is exactly an answer to the parent’s
question. I will even quote Encyclopedia.com to show that my comment is “not
just kicking at a position” but in fact simply stating it — and you are making
a value judgment yourself:

[https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/art-and-
arc...](https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/art-and-
architecture/architecture/postmodernism)

 _de-centered postmodern heterogeneity makes obsolete the Enlightenment ideal
of consensus, which all too frequently required the suppression of minority
dissent. Postmodernity, with its heterogeneous interests and worldviews,
allows previously oppressed or marginalized groups to make claims upon
justice, and upon a position of centrality, even in the absence of majority
consensus concerning such claims._

Here are other sources too:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3463968/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3463968/)

------
booleandilemma
I feel like anyone who uses the phrase “post-truth society” has an agenda.

~~~
DennisAleynikov
Yeah especially since that term is used to describe the Trump campaign and
fake news in one go.

More truthful analysis would reveal science was never objective and just a
collection of best guesses by all the scientists that contribute to the body
of work. Truth was never an easy to define concept so the fact we only now
realize that is almost scarier.

------
foolrush
Seems like the scientism in this paper neglected to historicise the notion of
“post truth”.

Sociologist and well studied scholar Nathan Jurgenson wrote a recent piece
regarding our collective willingness to subscribe to this belief:
[https://reallifemag.com/faked-out/](https://reallifemag.com/faked-out/)

> Kakutani misses how poststructural and postmodern thought has long been a
> response to science’s unwarranted claims of neutrality and objectivity. Yes,
> sometimes this work really is just a set of stylistic whims and nihilistic
> postures or arguments for full epistemic relativism. But the core of much of
> what was popular and is still taught — Foucault, Haraway, Harding, Latour,
> and so on — uses empirical evidence to show that objectivity is never as
> such. These theorists show how accepted notions of truth are deeply rooted
> in cultural contingencies, and that interrogating these notions helps better
> articulate reality than accepting false objectivism with blind faith. This
> work was not “post-truth,” but rather called for smaller, more local truths
> instead of absolute or universal claims made from a posture of neutrality.

Epistemology isn’t new, and lays below the foundation of “science”. This isn’t
a new concept, but one that we are sadly being forced to face in contemporary
culture.

~~~
tensor
I feel like this is the philosophical equivalent of "all sides are the same."
That is to say, it's a way to just dismiss the issues rather then try to fix
them and be more objective.

~~~
DennisAleynikov
Is that incorrect?

Is some science more correct than other science? All sides are the same in
this case, and communication in a climate of science where P values are eeked
out of questionable datasets who is truly agendaless?

Science used to carry this undeserved "objectivism" which has always been
informed opinion, subject to change by newer more compelling research. So I
don't understand what really changed. It's always been a post truth society.

~~~
tensor
All sides are not the same. First, science is a process with the goal of
objectively determining truths about the world. Already it is wildly different
from most other processes whose goals are things like building something,
making money, influencing people, etc. Just that different alone is huge. It's
like comparing runners to people who don't even enter the race and claiming
they are the same.

But what most people refer to when they talk about science is the results of
the process. There too, we have a wide spectrum of quality. It's rather
dishonest to throw all results into a single bucket and then cherry pick the
poor quality results and claim everything is the same. It is not.

On p-values, yes, there is currently a large problem _with some areas_ of
science not understanding statistics correctly. This is not a problem with the
theoretical process or goal, it is a problem with implementation that should
be addressed. But again, to compare even this with non-scientific information
which is literally made up to suite various non-scientific goals is very
dishonest. These bodies of information are not remotely "the same."

The whole post-truth this article refers to is more about the wider
dissemination of scientific knowledge to non-practitioners. While it's always
been a challenge to communicate sometimes complex information to the wider
public, what has changed in society today is arguably the amount of
"corrupted" versions of the data. When you have people taking the scientific
results and producing slightly distorted versions with the intention of
misleading or making it hard to discern what is original, it's a bigger
problem. This is what the article is referring to as "post-truth."

It's a wider societal problem that affects both scientific knowledge and other
information alike. Let's not dismissing the problem by saying "all sides are
the same." There is a very large range of quality of information, it is not
all the same. The amount of bias and ulterior agenda in information varies
hugely.

~~~
foolrush
You failed to understand that science is built atop of epistemology. That is,
there is no “post truth”, but rather that Foucault and all have long since
provided massive amounts of research to indicate the shifting floors of
epistemology, where science is wielded as power. More recently, Dr. Audra J
Wolfe has been exploring this complex tapestry.
[http://audrajwolfe.com/](http://audrajwolfe.com/)

> There is a very large range of quality of information, it is not all the
> same. The amount of bias and ulterior agenda in information varies hugely.

Again, you’ve lost the thread when you are grounding yourself in an “this is
information” and “this is not”. The question _before_ your presumption is an
epistemological one.

------
conistonwater
> _Distrust in the scientific enterprise and misperceptions of scientific
> knowledge increasingly stem less from problems of communication and more
> from the widespread dissemination of misleading and biased information._

What's interesting about this is that I think it directly contradicts what
people like Dan Kahan have been saying
([http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/](http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/)),
which is that motivated reasoning has _always_ been the key problem for
science communication, and that the only thing that really changes is not so
much the degree of political partisanship but the choice of _which_ scientific
issues are the ones that end up being linked to politics. (For example,
vaccinations have all the potential to be divisive but nevertheless have
almost no political partisanship about them apart from the occasional tweet by
Trump.)

It seems they put up the videos of the colloquium at
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGJm1x3XQeK2xwsj2vkRg...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGJm1x3XQeK2xwsj2vkRgovtvIWSNstex)

Also, I had to look this up, it's an Arthur M. Sackler Colloquium, which is
the Sackler that marketed Valium
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_M._Sackler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_M._Sackler)),
not one of the Sacklers responsible for Oxycontin.

------
nuguy
Assuming that this is a well known and trusted scientific website, this kind
of message just gives tons of ammo, very legitimate ammo, to political
entities that claim the scientific community has political bias. This article
is clearly left-wing, not neutral. It is absolutely imperative that science
and politics are kept separate so that there is no opportunity for people to
claim that a scientific insight is politically biased or motivated. For
example, the left leaning tone of this article could make it more difficult
for a right wing person to believe other scientific literature that claims
global warming is real. Anyone who advocates political messages in the
scientific community is an enemy of society.

