Stop looking for specks of climate skepticism

Since it’s Sunday, I feel called to preach. My text:

Why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? (New Living Translation)

Here are some specks and logs that showed up in this week’s #scicomm stream of thought.

Should the existence of an “anti-vax” movement change what scientists can say in publications?

By a bare majority of its Board of Directors, the Cochrane Collaboration, a leading source of trustworthy, systematic reviews of health research, has expelled founding member and director Peter C. Gøtzsche. As always, a tangle of personal, professional and institutional factors are driving the dispute (see [1]-[3]); I’m in no position to comment on most of these. But one focus of controversy is Gøtzsche’s co-authorship of an article in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine critical of a Cochrane Review of the HPV vaccine, and this raises an important issue in science communication ethics.

Why do people (scientists) think there is a “war on science”?–Bibliography

Point 4 in my project “unilateral disarmament” considers why the story about beleaguered science is so prevalent. I will collect here scholarship potentially relevant to the issue, focusing on studies of science/environmental communication.

Post & Ramirez (2018): Scientists’ (mis)perceptions of press bias induce advocacy in response

In my overarching project Unilateral Disarmament in the “War on Science” I claim that (4) cognitive biases lead scientists to faulty perceptions of attacks on science, and that (3) in response, scientists adopt communication strategies which, far from alleviating, tend to exacerbate the “war.”

This study by Post & Ramirez of German climate scientists provides some intriguing evidence for these two claims.

Unilateral Disarmament in the “War on Science”

Here is the thesis that I’m nailing to the cathedral door.

Some scientists perceive themselves as an embattled minority, fending off attacks from a public whose declining trust in science has been manufactured by self-interested adversaries aided by an easily-duped press. This perception is largely unfounded. When scientists communicate to the public from this point of view, they don’t contribute usefully to public deliberations. In fact, they add more toxins to the already polluted science communication environment. There has to be a better way.

This is a story that the public is anti-science–I want to promote an anti-“anti-science” story. Or put dramatically, I want to promote unilateral disarmament in the so-called war against science.

To make a case for this thesis, I aim to advance discussion of the following questions:

1. What does the anti-science story look like, in detail? How frequent is it, who is telling it, for what purposes?

2. Which aspects of the anti-science story are largely true, which speculative, and which false? For example, a small number of scientists have been targeted for harassment–that is true, and reprehensible. But is there evidence for a decline in trust, a significant role for “denialists,” or misbehavior by the press?

3. How does the anti-science story influence scientists’ public communication? How does it influence the reception and impact of scientists’ public communication?

4. Why do scientists find the “anti-science” story so attractive?–especially the speculative/false bits? Are there psychological biases in play, e.g., the false polarization effect?

5. What are approaches to communicating in the face of deep disagreement and even hostility that aren’t based on the anti-science story?

6. How can scientists be engaged in reflection on and discussion of this topic?

Scientists: Don’t feed the trolls

We all know how internet trolling works. The troll writes something outrageous, which provokes the readers to respond with outrage, which amuses the troll and his cohorts. We also know the solution: don’t feed the trolls.

Yes, this applies to science communication, too.