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Toot

Written by Anthony Cowley on 2024-11-20 at 14:23

An article about scientific research being better received when the authors demonstrate intellectual humility leading to a comment section dominated by voices blaming the public is an interesting bit of self-commentary.

I worry a lot about anti-intellectualism trends that you see signs of whenever folks decry precision, rigor, or something that resembles a science experiment, but there is still room for self-awareness here.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/11/nearly-half-of-us-thinks-scientists-are-smug-study-finds-humility-helps/

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Descendants

Written by Jeezy on 2024-11-20 at 14:30

@acowley I am likely in the minority but after seeing how fast they were able to get vaccines developed for COVID and witnessing the transformative effects of Semaglutide across a range of ailments including alcoholism, my trust in scientists is at an all-time high right now

That being said, if the research shows that intellectual humility improves overall public reception it wouldn't kill us to all be a little more humble 💯

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Written by Anthony Cowley on 2024-11-20 at 14:54

@LGUG2Z Yeah, those are great examples of tremendous advances! I feel like the humility thing is kind of like the joke about climate change, "What if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?" Suppose you don't talk down to people and they still mistrust you, is that the worst thing in the world?

https://davidbent.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/attachment.png

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Written by Jon Sterling on 2024-11-20 at 14:49

@acowley It's so interesting... I don't think that the public's reaction is as hard to understand as many scientists are making it seem — what is happening is, scientists will say "Science says that XXX is true, believe Science" and then turn around and say "Science says that XXX is false, believe Science", and the public is rightly asking "what the hell? Couldn't you have told us that there was some uncertainty about the conclusion here?" And the answer is always something like "If we told you about the uncertainty, it would have impacted our ability to control your reaction", which is not a good look.

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Written by Anthony Cowley on 2024-11-20 at 15:04

@jonmsterling For the sake of clarity, you'd like to be able to differentiate a claim that you are 99.9% sure is false from one that you are 50% sure is false from one that you estimate to have a 1% chance of being false. But that kind of precision tends to be unavailable, so we discretize into "believe Science" as you say. Scientists should embrace the challenge of this genuinely hard problem -- communication -- and do what they can to improve interpretations of their results.

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Written by Jon Sterling on 2024-11-20 at 15:14

@acowley Agreed. But I think a big part of the problem is that people in this area have taken it upon themselves to be “responsible” for second-order effects — like whether telling the truth will help or impede public health goals, etc. This is a great responsibility that belongs to those the public has chosen to represent them — not to unelected researchers.

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Written by Anthony Cowley on 2024-11-20 at 15:19

@jonmsterling That's great nuance, thank you! You're right that convincing yourself that encouraging or allowing something you might characterize as a white lie, or harmless distortion, is where we tend to go astray. I think we should consider how different audiences will interpret what we're saying, but it can be a fine line between giving someone the info they need and deliberately manipulating them.

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Written by Jon Sterling on 2024-11-20 at 15:23

@acowley Yes... And now I think the questions are more difficult than they were in the past, because the public is "hyper-aware" of this kind of manipulation. Maybe it was less harmful in the past when people didn't really notice it, because it did not drive them to "misbehave".

Scientists are so concerned about whether or not the truth will lead people to misbehave, or will lead groups to be "stigmatised" that they continuously distort the science... When the science forces them to allow the possibility of other conclusions later on and people respond "I was saying that all along!" it is not exactly a comfort to be told "Yes, but your reasons for saying it were wrong! Now we have the right reasons!"

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Written by Anthony Cowley on 2024-11-20 at 15:30

@jonmsterling Oh boy, right for the wrong reasons is a whole thing, isn't it? Putting on my Joe Public hat, that feels crucial. I should understand how evidence can support my previously dubious hypothesis, and graciously accept it. From the other side of that conversation, we should prioritize setting the stage for that continuing relationship.

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Written by Philippa Cowderoy on 2024-11-20 at 16:20

@jonmsterling @acowley Scientists are, of course, also legitimately worried about how the media will paraphrase things...

We definitely need a line between eg the medical sciences and public health policy! But we can't reasonably expect the media to never talk to actual scientists because that requires trusting the politicians whose job is to use the most current science.

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Written by Jon Sterling on 2024-11-20 at 17:07

@flippac @acowley Yes... So I think that the media should definitely be talking to real scientists; and those scientists should be forthright about what they do and do not know, where there remain questions and possibilities that other hypotheses will "come back from the dead" depending on forthcoming data, etc...

It's definitely right to be concerned about how the media will paraphrase things, and I think the best way to mitigate that problem is to have continuous, honest, and trust-earning conversations between the public and the scientific community.

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Written by Philippa Cowderoy on 2024-11-20 at 17:09

@jonmsterling @acowley Too bad the place that happened most got bought out the other year, right?...

(this has been a Very Unusual decade for public science relations so far! The WHO's internal political BS about the definition of "airborne" seriously did not help)

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Written by Jon Sterling on 2024-11-20 at 17:13

@flippac @acowley Yeah LOL... With that said, Old Twitter was a mixed bag and I think that although a lot of earnest and productive scientific communication took place on there, there was also a LOT of the stuff that I was referring to before (the breathless "TRUST SCIENCE" gaslighting whose underlying facts changed every day), and it may even be that the amplification of this kind of communication on social media (which brought plenty of engagement from all sides) played a big role in the recent collapse of public confidence in being served rather than manipulated by the scientific community...

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Written by Jon Sterling on 2024-11-20 at 17:17

@flippac @acowley Anyway, I am feeling a little optimistic and hoping that the recent Unusual Decade will give way to a more cautious and trust-restorative approach to science communication. Surely many of the people who were so out of breath in the 2020s will have had a moment to think about the consequences of their actions, now that we have Trump again and a completed polarisation of support for important public health measures along political lines.

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Written by Philippa Cowderoy on 2024-11-20 at 18:12

@jonmsterling @acowley I guess I should add that "Old Twitter" is interestingly ambiguous: 2012 vs 2016 is almost as big a deal as 2016 vs just before the buyout, for example.

In 2012, the ratio of Actual Scientists Being Reasonably Honest : Authoritarian Blaggers Who Might Have Been Scientists Once was very different. The perceived need for dem-not-rep "left" authoritarians to lean on scientism was certainly there, but not as high either: you were a lot more likely to get linked to something close to the real paper trail or [where appropriate] a reasonable report of something that amounted to an existential proof than later on.

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Written by Jon Sterling on 2024-11-20 at 18:48

@flippac @acowley Great points!

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