The public does not trust science, but the morality of scientists.

The public does not trust science, but the morality of scientists.

Written by John H. Evans

The Trump era and the coronavirus era have coincided, and public trust in scientists has declined quite sharply. About 1 in 10 Americans report that they have less support for science now than they did before COVID-19.

That was the finding of a November survey by the Pew Research Center. In addition to declining support from before the pandemic, the survey found that people who trust scientists “a lot” or “quite a lot” have remained largely unchanged in 2021 and beyond. The National Academy of Sciences said the study “gives us an opportunity to reconsider what we need to do to restore trust in science.”

However, the diagnosis made by scientific leaders in response to the survey about the causes of distrust is a variation on the old diagnosis that the public does not understand science. It is a comfortable diagnosis for scientists and is therefore unlikely to lend itself to trust. Rather, the scientific community needs to consider that the lack of trust stems not from the public’s view of scientists as fact-checkers, but rather from the public’s lack of trust in scientists’ moral values. .

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The reaction to this report suggests that the scientific community is trying hard not to see this. recent washington post News reports say the public doesn’t understand scientific claims about facts such as treatments for the coronavirus, the usefulness of masks, the origins of the virus, the effectiveness of social distancing, and whether vaccines prevent infection, so they can’t be trusted. He said he was losing. similar new york times According to the article, the chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science said that scientists have learned “hard lessons” from the coronavirus and are “better able to tell how data changes and evolves.” are. Yet another report declares that scientists need to be more humble about their ability to produce accurate scientific claims.

All of these answers reflect a long-held general belief among scientists that the lack of public support is a result of the public not understanding the science enough. This is known as the “knowledge deficit” model of science communication, but it is widely discredited as a factor supporting science.

It has long been clear that claims about scientific fact do not matter. Consider the conflict between religion and science in the United States, epitomized by the 1925 “Scopes Monkey Trial” and the 2005 “Intelligent Design” court case. Scientists primarily believe that this conflict stems from the fact that religious people use sacred texts to make claims about the natural world, whereas science uses reason and observation. While that was plausibly true before the 20th century, today it applies only to a minority of religious people in the United States, such as those who follow the conservative Protestant tradition. They also disagreed only on very specific areas, such as the origins of humanity. This was the situation at the Scopes trial.

In fact, sociological research shows that the modern conflict between science and religion is actually about morality rather than fact. For example, when it comes to discussing the study of human embryos, no one religiously objects that scientists do not understand how embryos develop. Rather, it gives the fetus a different moral status than the scientist.

Moreover, even when people express opposition to scientific claims, they are often motivated by concerns about morality. For example, fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan, who defended the creationist position in the Scopes trial, opposed scientific claims about human evolution because he wanted to “defend the Bible.” However, he also opposed the theory of evolution, believing that Darwin’s theory corrupted the morals of German youth and was partly responsible for the outbreak of World War I. The moral conflict between the public and science did not begin with the first Trump administration.

You can also see parts of the Pew study that weren’t investigated in the news article. The survey found that 36 percent of the public agreed that scientists do not pay attention to society’s moral values. When faced with the choice between “scientists should focus on establishing sound scientific facts and stay out of policy debates,” or “scientists should play an active role in public policy debates about scientific issues,” Opinions in the country are essentially divided 50-50. In other words, half of the population does not want scientists to do more than establish facts. I argue that this is because they perceive that scientists bring their own moral values ​​into policy discussions, and the public does not believe that they share those values.

But why do ordinary people think that scientists don’t share their moral values? The metaphor “Scientist” is reinforced by the fictional description of the scientist that remains. Dr. Frankenstein is probably the most famous scientist. The villagers were angry with him not because he had the wrong facts about how the monster was made, but because he ignored the villagers’ moral values ​​in creating the monster.

So I think scientists learned the wrong lesson from the coronavirus. The decline in trust is not primarily the result of public misunderstandings of science, but rather because scientists have become associated with a set of politicized moral choices that prioritize public health over commerce, education, and personal freedom. It is. Perhaps the association with these choices was unavoidable or even necessary, but it should be assumed that the loss of trust occurred because the public did not understand how the vaccine worked. Not.

One solution to building trust is for scientists to be trained to talk about their moral values. This is because staying silent makes it easier for scientists to have bad values ​​projected onto them. Although the moral values ​​of scientists do not completely match those of the general public, I believe that our shared values ​​outweigh our differences. To take an obvious example, scientists working on the coronavirus are motivated by the moral value of alleviating human suffering, which is as close to universal values ​​as we have in the United States. is.

It is understandable why the scientific community is reluctant to talk about moral values. Part of the canon of science is “value-free” and part of producing valid results is dispassionately examining the data. Scientists are generally not trained in academic discussion of morals, values, and ethics. However, it is ineffective for scientists to pretend that they only care about facts, placing moral issues above all else.

This is an opinion and analysis article and the views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of the author. scientific american.