Do you agree that science does not get the respect that it deserves these days? With all of the various theories being argued about on the internet and in other media, how can we know what is scientifically accurate? If scientists findings have an effect on public policy, how should science become involved in the democratic process? Should politicians be better informed about science? Should we try to limit the influence of big business on government and science?
Science has crept over years into our lives to claim its big importance in the modern world. Even if we did not want to admit it, it is inevitably the truth, we cannot argue about this. In fact, science has made our lives “longer” and so much easier. Everything we use nowadays is more or less connected to it. It would be therefore natural for us to be interested in it and to try to understand it. This is, however, not the case. It is the result of not paying attention to what is going on and not having an effort in keeping up with at least the basics of science which is currently done.
ReplyDeleteThe article has proposed many facts. I believe two of them stand out. The first is that the people in their convenience forgot what is responsible for their well-being. Sure, mainly they themselves, but secondly the science which gave us tools to do it. Unfortunately, the ignorance is still the better case when we compare it to active hostility to science. This all sums up and results in, what article calls, a dysfunctional relationship with science. A problem continues to grow and affect normal people as well as governments. Well, it should be clear this would eventually happen when we are trying to have a democracy and governments are elected by people. The question article asks, how do we want to have the democracy, is right on the spot in the light of the attempts to professionalize the people in power because of the huge gap between the state legislative power and the progressing science.
The second point is a role of medias and what share in that should scientists themselves have. We all well know that the majority opinion is enormously influenced, if not completely created, by medias. The article highlights the problem of creating “false balance” instead of “objective reality.” The difference is huge and it is in avoiding having a responsibility. Instead of properly digging up the information and writing critical articles with both sides presented but also with clearly stated own opinion, they only rewrite the pure facts and leave them raw, without further explanation. Common people are then overwhelmed without having an integral idea of what is going on. This is the point where scientists should step out of the darkness and present what are they doing, how, and what is the application. We need to intertwine these two areas and hope for the better future which will
True is, that many people don't listen to scientists, but to journalists who do listen to them, so public does not know what scientists say, but what they hear in media. How this works is shown pretty accurately in this cartoon (http://xkcd.com/882/). Problem is, that people don't even want to know what's behind the discoveries and want to see things simple.
ReplyDelete"Mobile phones causing cancer" is a great example. Probably some parent once told his teenage daughter to stop calling with her friends all day because it is bad for health, and we have a scientific fact! But it is pretty obvious that cell phones do NOT cause this problem, and I could talk about it for a long while, but that is not the point of this article (still, this cartoon expresses it really good: http://xkcd.com/925/).
So how could such things happen? Because people see only one opinion! They do not see what scientists say, because these don't know how to talk to public. Stem cells for example: their research doesn't have to involve "killing fetus", but yet, it is forbidden, because public is convinced it does. What can be done about this?
I think that scientists should have somebody who will talk on their behalf to public, because people are true source of power of every democratic nation. I bet that politicians DO know truth about the benefits of research projects because they must have both sides of wiew, but they care more about they popularity than about scientific progress (and allways will).
Therefore, if we want scientific progress, one side of wiew (journalist's one) is not enough. Public must know the word from scientists, and needs to understand it. Still, there will still be problem about choosing which point of wiew has better arguments: those which are true, or those which are what we want to hear? However, if scientists actually talk to public, they won't be that bad guys after all.
Part one:
ReplyDeleteFirst of all I want to state how incredible I find this topic, the article and all the comments above mine. In my comment I would like to focus on the topic of scientific hoaxes mentioned in the article, which is the greatest conflict zone between science and public media, and expand it. The problem of science is that it is complicated and people’s attention span is insufficient to enable a reader to understand the science in any scientific article, video or basically anything. To describe anything scientific, the readers have to either have some basis of scientific knowledge to build the new information on, or it has to be presented more widely explaining everything around it along with it, and of course people never read anything long due to their short attention span.
A hoax is a very simple thing that can be created by a psychological trick. If you want to make someone believe anything you tell them, make it sound convincing by adding as much details as possible. With a correct amount of scientific words put into a certain understandable order, you can present the reader with complete nonsense which you as the writer can explain in any way you want and make it point to and prove anything you want since the reader cannot figure out the real content of the aforementioned surrounding information around the unexplained facts you used to prove your perfectly reliably sounding bullshit. And the reason it is so easy to manipulate people into falling for it, is because they are uneducated in science? WRONG! Yes it is a part of the reason, but another significant fact, is the readers will to try to find the truth. There is the other side of the problem. They do not care about the truth. If they really cared even slightly, they could try to figure out if something was true or false on their own without scientific thinking which is not always accurate. Do you want an example? OK.
Let’s take a perfectly valid peace of information. “Once the icecaps melt, the water levels will rise and flood many of the nowadays dry areas”. True or false? Let me attempt to illustrate the trail of my own thoughts once I came across this piece of information a few years ago:
Part two:
ReplyDeleteFirst I tried to come up with a real life situation, where a similar phenomenon takes place. The example was a drink with ice cubes floating on the top. The ice cubes always melt in a drink and the drink never flows out of the glass as the ice does so. Have you ever seen something like that happen? No. So why would the water levels of oceans rise? The possible hoax states that it does, so let’s assume so. What factor could be different in the oceans than in the drink that would cause this? OK, the water is salty, creating a difference of density percentages and according to theory, the water levels should rise when the icecaps melt. But I could not visualize that. So I tried it out. I put salty water into a cup and put sweet water ice cubes on the surface. After the ice cubes melted by a half, the water level was still on the same place. Therefore the evidence would suggest something wrong with the laws of physics. So I started to investigate, and I found out an unexpected phenomenon. Once the ice cubes touched the water, they started to melt immediately on their entire surfaces, releasing sweet water all around the cubes. So when you look at the new situation, the ice cubes were really in a pocket of sweet water in the middle of salty water from the very beginning, eliminating the differences of densities suggesting that the water levels should not rise at all. So why is it, that theory states, that water levels should rise when the icecaps melt? That’s just something to think about. All my attempts to make it possible for the water levels to rise failed. I do not know how the simulation of water currents could have affected the glass, but I did not want to get into that.
Now a simple question. Who, when is told a simple statement such as the one with the water levels rising, launches a reasoning system of thoughts like in their heads? Almost no one. Even without the scientific knowledge, a person could come to the problem of the ice cube drink’s water level never rising and start asking questions, but you do not see anyone doing that. So what is the guarantee that understanding scientific principles could help you determine hoaxes from reality? Unless people start thinking, they will not be able to determine reality from hoax, and let’s face it. How many people in this world actually think?
Which leads us to a real problem. Imagine someone clever coming up with a nice hoax explaining why everyone in the world has to buy something completely useless from him. It is true that the best source of income is a source based on human stupidity. I seriously think there should be an organization focused on eliminating hoaxes from this world, because let’s face it. Hoaxes are unfair to all the billions of stupid people on this planet (myself included).
So as for the problem of science being pushed into the background zones of the attention of today’s population, is according to me based on a single sentence. People are not interested in anything that requires their complete and undivided attention because it is sucked up by the surrounding world. In the middle of this comment I asked a question about how many people in the world actually think. So, do you think?
As Rasťo puts it clearly and wise, I think that arguing about whether science is being dissed these days is of no point. It surely is. But what I would like to say is that it always was. Let's have the example of Illuminates. In the Medieval age when science started to evolve and the Christian church had its immense power over people, scientific knowledge was not welcome. Scientists were labeled as herretics. Well, there also were brighter periods for scientific research. And those were in the two world wars. To be honest with ourselves, we must admit that the greatest inventions were the product of army research. The most basic example are nuclear power plants which are now a crucial part of our modern, comfortable lives. From today's point of view, poeple may think that all this "evil science" involving inhuman experiments is to be better forgot, but the uncomforting feeling that science is bad and harmful remains. This may be the cause of current uninterest in science as such, which results in the general lack of knowledge and unawareness of the true contribution and benefits of science. And here I come to the point that both Michal and Milan stated, that people are therefore more prone to believe the media that usually give an exagerated and inconsistent reports. But how could this be regulated?
ReplyDelete@ Šimon
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with Šimon that people have nowadays lost their desire for critical thinking and have become increasingly dependent on having various pieces of information digested by someone else, such as the media, for them. Perhaps, they have simply become too lazy and find conducting research by themselves to be a rather tedious task. A good deal of people rarely draw conclusions for themselves and prefer to blindly following what has been presented to them without ever questioning it.
Speaking of hoaxes, it is worth looking into another aspect of hoaxes – the pseudo-scientific statement. The most notable example for me would be the advertising campaign for a product, called the Power Balance bracelet, for which it has been claimed that “scientific research has proven that the bracelet improves athletic performance, balance and strength.” The main problem with the statement is that it cannot be verified unless the band is bought, and at the same time, the supposed “scientific research” is nowhere to be found. This effectively strips the consumer of his ability to evaluate the product, and unless one is initially skeptical about such products, there is a good chance he would fall victim to this scam.
Last but not least, I would like to address Šimon’s example of the statement that “When the ice caps melt, the sea level would rise and dry areas would be flooded ”. While Šimon’s reasoning is perfectly correct, his attempt to deem the statement as a hoax is invalid for he has considered only a part of the problem. It is very true indeed that when floating ice melts, the water level remains the same as is the case with the North Pole ice cap, however, the statement refers to all ice caps in general by my understanding. Therefore, if we consider the ice cap at Antarctica and that in Greenland, both of which rest on the land rather than float on the water, I think it is very plausible that once they melt and enter the oceans, the sea level would rise.