Facts are the reason science is losing during the current war on reason

With controversy about science communication, facts and alternative facts hitting the headlines recently, I’ve been having a number of conversations with colleagues from all over the world about why science seems to be losing in the current war on reason.

This isn’t in the usual fringe battle fronts like creationism or flat-Earthers. It’s on topics deep behind our lines, in areas like whether climate change exists or not, how many people were present at a given time at a given place and whether one man with a questionable grasp on reality should be the only source people get their news from.

We all knew that science would be in for a fight in the coming years but that’s going to be even more difficult when the staple defences such as evidence and not being suddenly censored have been spiked. How did this happen? Well, as anyone who had run-ins with keyboard warriors back in the forum days will know, it’s hard to argue with people who don’t even know the full extent of what they don’t know.

A controversial paper, When science becomes too easy: Science popularization inclines laypeople to underrate their dependence on experts published at the end of last year in the journal Public Understanding of Science, suggests that it’s the rise of science communication (or scicomm) that could be the cause of rising distrust in experts (Scharrer et al. 2016). Use of the word laypeople, aside, could it be that non-scientists, emboldened by easy-to-digest science stories in the media now have the confidence to reject what scientists say, or go with their gut feeling instead? As well as misunderstanding there’s also deliberate pig-headed ignorance for furthering political agendas to contend with too.

This is the disadvantage for science communication. Do you listen to the scientific analysis – which is full of probably, maybe, possibly, roughly, estimated, hypothesised – or do you just agree with someone who sounds convincing and shouts down/shuts down dissenting opinions? Media coverage and bad science communication sometimes gives the impression that scientists are always changing their minds on climate models, whether chocolate or wine will kill or cure you or whether Pluto is a planet or not. This wrongly creates the impression that scientists are a pretty fickle lot.

Despite the reputation for being about facts, there are very few hard facts in nature or science’s understanding of it. Take for example answering a simple question: when did the dinosaurs live? Easy, right? We must know that. We all kinda know that, so presumably the boffins have the proper technical answer.   

Courtesy of Guardian News & Media Ltd