

The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science - tlb
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/denial-science-chris-mooney

======
mynameishere
The fact that the examples of disbelief given in such articles are _always_
lefty pop-topics (climate change, Obama's birth certificate, death panels) is
the real hint into why people don't examine things with pure rationality. I
could lead off a similar article with "Why don't people realize that human
races, to some degree, have different average intelligence stemming from
genetics?" _That would never be published in MotherJones_ , and honestly, if
they had their way, I would go to prison just from saying that.

So why don't people "believe" in climate change? Because they realize it's a
political, not a scientific, topic. It has winners and losers to the order of
trillions of dollars. Science can't compete. Sorry.

~~~
epistasis
>if they had their way, I would go to prison just from saying that.

Your post reminds me that this research seems to miss another way that people
delude themselves: persecution-complexes.

Once you believe that others want to do bad things to you for your beliefs,
you become far more entrenched. And ridiculous exaggerations such as yours
allow you to more fully insulate yourself from facts: because you're under
attack and your freedom is at risk, you have to protect yourself from these
terrible people, and therefore, their beliefs.

>So why don't people "believe" in climate change? Because they realize it's a
political, not a scientific, topic. It has winners and losers to the order of
trillions of dollars.

How can you possibly say it's 'not scientific' when it's entirely scientific.
The responses to climate change are political, but the topic itself is
minimally political.

But you do enforce the point that people will cut themselves off from
reasoning logically, if the conclusion is one they don't want to face. If your
political buddies may be hurt, one is much more likely to fight the truth.

~~~
csense
> persecution-complexes

My favorite example of this is how the left attacks and ostracizes those who
dare to oppose the gay rights agenda in any way (two examples which
immediately spring to mind are [1] [2], but there are many more).

It's not paranoia if they _really are_ out to get you.

I could go on at length about the importance of defending someone's right to
state unpopular opinions even (or perhaps especially) if you disagree with
them, but I hope HN'ers are smart enough to fill in the details of that
argument themselves.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick-fil-A_same-
sex_marriage_c...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick-fil-A_same-
sex_marriage_controversy)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_Scouts_of_America_membershi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_Scouts_of_America_membership_controversies)

------
Alex3917
If HN has taught me anything, it's that it's trivially easy to trick people
into taking the wrong side of any argument, at which point they'll continue to
defend their position indefinitely even if they had no strong prior beliefs on
the subject.

It's kind of sad that we live in a society where posting factually accurate
comments/information is the most effective form of trolling.

~~~
dlokshin
If Hacker News has taught me anything, it's that people try to masquerade a
lot of conclusions behind a wall of "Science" when in fact the process is
neither scientific nor conclusive.

~~~
lukifer
Not to mention how easy it is to forget the historical track record of science
being overturned by better science: [http://arbesman.net/the-half-life-of-
facts/](http://arbesman.net/the-half-life-of-facts/)

~~~
mathattack
I was thinking the same thing, though I didn't have a citation.

------
zwieback
Like probably most HN readers I think of myself as reasonably well educated in
science and engineering. However, when it comes to interpreting the vast
majority of scientific discoveries I have to rely on my sense of scientific
authority, not on firsthand knowledge.

Now put yourself in the average person's shoes: how can you trust anyone when
there's so much contradictory information and, frankly, so much bad science
around us?

Also, people love to argue so they will often take extreme positions just for
the heck of it.

------
coldtea
Why we don't believe in science?

Besides the illegitimate reasons, also because science is not some magic
oracle but a process.

A process that can be (and HAS been) falsified for profit, fame, ideology or
current fads.

A process which one can selectively take parts from, to push further agendas.

A process which lots of times, even in it's purest and well-intended form,
arrives at bullshit conclusions (like lobotomy, the cures for homosexuality,
thalidomide, etc).

And it gets worse: a lot of things that are political and ideological in
nature are also considered sciences (History, Sociology, Economics, etc).
Things which are not even close to "black/white" as hard sciences are.

One should not "believe" in science. One should EXAMINE and VERIFY science,
with the scientific method (which in itself is mostly: systematic
experimentation).

Merely "believing" or "trusting" science is no better than mediaval people
trusting the priests of yore.

~~~
Amadou
While I agree with much of what you wrote, I have to point out that it is
impossible to "examine and verify" anywhere near enough of the science that is
relevant to our daily lives. That's both a physical impossibility due to
resource constraints and a mental impossibility due to lack of domain
knowledge required to correctly interpret the data.

We have to choose which "shortcuts" to accept. One way or another we end up
trusting in something greater than ourselves -- the nebulous scientific
community, political analysts, priests, neighbors, etc -- to inform us. Unless
you disbelieve basically everything in life you put your faith in somebody or
something. Not necessarily 100% belief but some level of certainty is
necessary and that doesn't make it less a faith-based decision, for example
even priests have a tendency to doubt the existence of God.

------
rosser
I think William James summarized TFA's thesis most succinctly when he said, "A
great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging
their prejudices."

------
csense
> Somewhat oversimplifying, you can think of hierarchical individualists as
> akin to conservative Republicans, and egalitarian communitarians as liberal
> Democrats.

What about hierarchical communitarians or egalitarian individualists? What
about people who are near the middle of one or both scales?

Why even bother having two supposedly independent traits if you're really just
asking people about their political party?

The author may be distorting the study's methodology or results, in order to
support the narrative he wants to tell. (Or the researchers, but from the
information presented here, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.)

~~~
MaysonL
Well, at one time, not so long ago, there were such animals as moderate
Republicans and conservative Democrats (although an argument could be made
that the current Democrat party is somewhat more conservative than Nixon was).

------
js2
Funny how articles get traction on HN:

[https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=%22don...](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=%22don't+believe+science%22&start=0)

------
Torgo
This could have just as easily been applied to disputes inside science itself.

------
DanielBMarkham
So here's the secret you should learn by your 20s, but some people never do:
human beings are wonderful at rationalizing. Most of the time they do not know
they are doing this.

There is a bedrock falsehood that somehow wrapping the word "science" around
something prevents it from this problem. It does not. Science history has
taught us that for the most part, the _social_ part of science works just like
the social part of any other industry: there are cool people, there are
weirdos, there's folks who have amazing ideas, there are fads, there are
things the group feels strongly about, and so on. In other words, scientists,
like all of us, operate in clans and herds. (Their herds just have much better
names!)

Pay attention: I am not trying to trash the entire field of science. Far from
it. Science is the light we have in the darkness. It's mankind's only hope.
But what I'm trying to show is that reading articles like "the science of why
we don't believe in science" is bullshit. In it, the writer will just put his
own misconceptions, or popular opinion, in the place of what is right and show
the various ways people do not agree with him and how they are broken. The
subtext is clear: we, the cognoscenti, know the truth. It's those poor other
rubes that aren't getting it.

I've long said I do not know what the climate is going to do. Looking at some
of the models' performance and the lack of any other planet-sized biological
systems to study, I have my doubts that others do either, but that's just my
own bias. What I _can_ say is that the discussion around climate science is
full of horse shit so deep that you'd need an excavator working 24/7 for a
year to dig your way out. It has become politicized, and scientists have
crossed the line between telling us what _is_ and telling us _what we should
do_.

This politicization of science is not good for politics or for science,
because Average Joe Sixpack is going to start lumping in all information he
receives under the rubric "science" as being suspect. He doesn't have the time
nor inclination to sort out the different types of proofs we have for
Newtonian physics versus evolutionary psychology. To him, it's all just
"science". And when one of these sciences promotes something that later on
turns out to be highly-opinionated BS, it hurts the entire field. It's bad
enough when journalists do this with poor science stories, but when scientists
themselves start playing the game of "who's right and who's wrong" in the
world, it destroys the very thing they're supposed to be promoting. Very bad.

So when I read articles about how one political party has differently-
organized brains than the other one, or about various forms of cognitive bias
influencing politics, or how denialism and being a crank has a scientific
basis, I wince. This is not helpful. Please stop. You are not the scientific,
reasonable-minded judge of rationality you think you are. None of us are. If
you absolutely must say something, make the general point and move on.
Otherwise you are creating the very problem that you say you are just trying
to point out.

~~~
BlackDeath3
I wish that more people understood the difference between science and
scientists. It is a shame that so many people give a bad name to science and
the scientific method - the best way we know how to discover truth. It's
_engineered_ to discover truth. That's all that it's about, the only thing.
It's independent of (and unfortunately, quite possibly beyond) any one human
scientist's ability to correctly employ it.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Sometime back in the 70s, some scientists tried to popularize science by
becoming quasi-famous people themselves. Sagan comes to mind, but I'm not
trying to single him out.

I'm not so sure this was such a good move. Science is a wondrous thing and
amazing. Scientists are just a bunch of normal schmucks like the rest of us.
Once you start playing the hero-worship game, it's easy to start drifting from
science promotion to self-promotion. The lines get blurry. Likewise, it's easy
to start drifting from where the science is currently to what your opinion of
the science is currently. Most media consumers are not savvy enough to pick up
on that difference. Most science promoters are not so great at pointing out
the provisional nature of science and the humbleness required when addressing
the history of how science is actually carried out.

I saw one of these science promoter guys on the net the other day answering
questions. One question was something like "Is there a God?" Since I spent
some hours on epistemology and philosophy, especially around this topic, I was
intrigued.

I wasn't too impressed by his answer, but what really astounded me was the
fact that he was more than willing to answer a question like "Is there a God?"
right alongside one about the speed of light, without making any caveats about
the different kinds of information he was relating. This is not a good thing.

------
eeky
The main reason is that people don't understand science, but they will still
appeal to it as if it were the law of the universe. It's an appeal to
authority: Much like people used to say "X is true because God said it", it is
now "X is true because Science proved it". Science is a continual work in
progress towards an objective understanding of the universe. But it's so easy
to see a news story saying: "A new study shows that global warming will melt
the ice caps before 2012! More at 11". People have been lied to before and
don't trust these studies, because they may have faulty conclusions. We need
to look at the data and make our own conclusions, because we may all have
different perspectives on what caused a result.

Relevant reading:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Lie_with_Statistics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Lie_with_Statistics)

~~~
BlackDeath3
This is why I feel so uncertain about almost everything. How can one go
through life confident about _anything_ if they must not only research
everything for themselves, but also overcome their own biases? What makes
somebody qualified to evaluate or research anyway?

I feel like after over two decades of living, I don't know a damn thing, and I
don't mean that in a "I'm so young and naive" sense either.

~~~
Diederich
I have twice as many decades of living as you do, and my certainty has only
continued to decline, for all the reasons you mentioned.

