sizable opinion gap exists between the general public and scientists on a range of science and technology topics,” and that “compared with five years ago, both citizens and scientists are less upbeat about the scientific enterprise.”[18] In The Workshop and the World: What Ten Thinkers Can Teach Us about Science and Authority, Robert Crease writes, “Some people, including many scientists, seem resigned to this. They hope that scientific authority is a natural thing that will shortly reassert itself, like a sturdy self-righting boat knocked over by a rogue wave.” He argues that this is not going to happen because the scientific process described earlier in this chapter is inherently vulnerable to attacks. “The fact that it is done by collectives, is abstract and always open to revision” provides fuel for science deniers. To change their minds, we can’t just explain the science over and over again; we have to learn how they think and why they are rejecting science.[19]
Many scientists and science supporters have rallied against the antiscience bias, climate denial, flat-earthers, and anti-vaxxers. For example, the first March for Science was held on April 22, 2017; many scientists ran for office in the 2018 elections; and there have been many initiatives to improve scientific outreach.
Fake News and Science
In an essay in the New York Times Magazine in 2016, Jonathan Mahler writes that people “are abandoning traditional sources of information, from the government to the institutional media, in favor of a D.I.Y. approach to fact‐finding” and are “forming a radical new relationship between citizen and truth.”[20] In addition, over the last decade science has been revolutionized by the development of new techniques that allow scientists to conduct experiments bordering on the fantastic, increasing the difficulty for the layperson to distinguish between fact, hyperbole, quackery, and fake news (chapters 9 and 11).
Fake news and pseudoscience occasionally get the better of scientific facts in Congress, too. Congress also struggles with the fact that the amount of scientific knowledge in the world is not only increasing but growing faster and faster. At the same time, science is becoming more complex thanks to a spike in interdisciplinary work between previously disparate fields, such as optics, electrical engineering, and neuroscience joining forces in optogenetics (chapter 8). This has resulted in an ever-widening gap between the scientific knowledge of legislators, religious leaders, and voters and the total available science knowledge.
In Congress, which is ultimately in charge of regulating and defining the direction of science research in the United States, these difficulties are amplified by the fact that there are only 3 scientists and 8 engineers in the 115th Congress of the United States, while there are 218 lawyers. The 7 radio talk show hosts, 26 farmers, and 8 ordained ministers all outnumber the scientists as well. Similarly low numbers are found in Australia and Canada, where scientists make up just 4 percent of each country’s parliament. The vast predominance of lawyers in the House of Representatives and Senate sets the tone of the debate in the U.S. Congress. Trial lawyers are trained to win debates, they use facts selectively, and they aren’t looking for the truth, nor are they interested in presenting the whole picture. In contrast, science relies on gathering evidence, weighing that evidence, and validating theories.[21] Scientists and science in general don’t do well in politics (Angela Merkel and Margaret Thatcher, both chemists, are obvious exceptions). Scientists believe in the importance of facts and think they can win public debates by using facts, despite empirical evidence that suggests passionate opinion will often overcome scientific facts. We can no longer rely on Congress to provide the leadership and guidelines for scientists and industries to deal with the problems and ethical dilemmas associated with gene editing (chapter 9), climate change (chapter 11), and quackery (chapter 12). Scientists have to become more media savvy. They have to learn how to interact with journalists, regulators, and politicians, and they need to have a larger presence on social media. Scientists make good administrators, and many are university presidents; it is time some make the transition into politics.
Having placed today’s science in a wider context, it is time to see the new science, contrast it with the old science, see all that good science can do, and lament how it can be abused as bad and pseudoscience. (In an earlier incarnation, this book was subtiitled “New Science, Old Science, Good Science, Bad Science.”)
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12.
Quoted in Yong, E. (2018). A controversial virus study reveals a critical flaw in how science is done: After researchers resurrected a long-dead pox, some critics argue that it’s too easy for scientists to make decisions of global consequence, The Atlantic, October 4.
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Environmental
