The scientific method: a hard discipline

Though science has helped humanity for centuries, it is not fully trusted. Part of the reason is that scientific knowledge is incomplete.

It is often resisted by a section of people, who don’t believe in vaccines, climate change, or the man-made genetic advancement in crops. As an example, many families believe vaccination causes autism in children, and no matter what is done to counter it, the belief is stuck in people’s brains.

Many people from all sections of society do not trust in science, as they don’t trust the authority of the scientific community. The Pseudo Scientists try to debunk science by:

• Arguing that the entire scientific consensus is a conspiracy.
• Getting fake experts to produce information that contradicts scientific findings.
• Argue using selective data, and using a small example to discredit the entire field.
• Deploying false analogies and other fallacies that appear logical.
• Setting impossible expectations and counter-arguments towards the scientists.

Studies prove that merely increasing science literacy straightforwardly is not going to change mindsets. Simply knowing more and lecturing about it is not going to convince the audience.

Scientists should consider how they are deploying knowledge. Facts aren't enough, and they need to tap into the emotions of the audience for fruitful interaction.

Strategy and rhetorician skills need to be deployed, as merely lecturing like a university professor isn't going to do any good: 

• Simply explaining science does not tell the audience why it matters to them, and doesn't 'hard sell' the purpose or the motivation of the right information.
• Communicating science without first gaining the audience's trust is bound to be a vain exercise.
• Trying to debunk a myth by repeating it and saying it's false, doesn't do any good, as the audience ends up remembering the myth only. A better way is to reframe the issue.

• It fails to take into consideration all the available information
• It presents information in a misleading way.
• It might lead to improper analysis and might cause someone to paint a misleading picture of a certain outcome.

Also referred to as Bernoulli’s maxim, it states that, when assessing the probability that a certain hypothesis is true, we must take into account all the available information.

Denial refers to the rejection or diminution of a phenomenon that has a large and even overwhelming body of supporting evidence.

Cognitive dissonance is a negative, tensed emotional state that is caused by holding beliefs or behaviors that are inconsistent with one another.

Because cognitive dissonance brings discomfort, we try to escape it. There are 2 options to get rid of it: to change a behavior or to change a belief. Most people choose the second option.

• Religious belief has seen a steady decline across the world.
• Close to 30% of people in Australia claim to have no religion, and countries like western Europe report low levels of religious commitment.
• Even in the U.S., the number of atheists has risen to 3%.

"There is no consistent relation between the degree of scientific advance and a reduced profile of religious influence, belief and practice.:

Hundreds of studies on plants and animal behavior in recent years reveal that living things, including humans, are in reality multispecies events of collaboration and interdependence.

This is seen in the way fungus helps nurture and connect trees, or the way algae and coral form a partnership to create colorful coral reefs.

Life is more complex and collaborative than previously thought.

The recent findings which prove that competition is not natural, at least not more than collaboration, pave the way to think about our relationship with the planet, and the millions of species inhabiting it.

Environmentalists are tackling the climate crisis assume that people are by nature bound to harm ecology, and will consume and plunder the natural resources. This leaves them with a narrow set of solutions to control the crisis.

The organic and unpredictable nature of conspiracy theories had led many researchers to investigate the cause of the phenomenon.

• Successful conspiracy theories always tend to invent a great villain, have a backdrop or a backstory, and a morality lesson that can be easily understood by most.
• Great stories are by nature more magnetic and appealing than the truth.
• Human beings think and understand in stories. For thousands of years, fairy tales, legends, anecdotes and mysteries have helped our brains make sense of the world.

Every society has its own, unique anxieties and obsessions, and the conspiracy theories that gain good mileage are the ones that tap into these primal fears.

Example: Many people fear vaccination of the children due to fears that the mass drive to vaccinate such a large population has some ulterior motive, like a mass medical experiment. The dodgy past record of the health care system, and the fact that the vaccination is free of charge, of course, adds fuel to the fire.

There is a fundamental paradigm shift in our relationship to knowledge from 'information age', moving towards the 'reputation age'.

This shift involves valuing information only if it has already been filtered, evaluated and commented upon by others. From this perspective, reputation has become a central pillar or gatekeeper of collective intelligence. We become reliant on biased judgments of other people.

If you are asked why you believe in, for instance, the big changes in climate, you might answer that:

• You trust the reputation of scientific research and believe that peer-review is a reasonable way of sifting out 'truths'. 
• You trust newspapers, magazines or TV channels that endorse a political view that supports scientific research to summarise its findings for you. (Here you are twice-removed from the source - you trust other people's trust in science.)

• keep emotions out of the exchange;
• discuss, don't attack;
• listen carefully and try to articulate the other position accurately;
• show respect'
• acknowledge that you understand why someone might hold that opinion;
• try to show how changing facts does not necessarily mean changing worldviews.