This is a reasonable criticism. But it is primarily a criticism of science reporting and public health policy. Many people agree with what you are saying, but instead of deciding we need changes to the way the media and government handle science, they decide science is bullshit and we end up with a major and growing political movement based on proud ignorance.
I don't get why you're downvoted - you are completely correct in your analysis of public perception!
The key issue underlying all of the chaos is that scientific literacy isn't taught much in schools. Too many people think that "once scientists have declared something, this may be as irrevocable as the stone platters on which Moses wrote the 10 Commandments", whereas the reality rather is that scientific knowledge is always expanding, including retractions or corrections as more data becomes available!
Another part of the problem is that politicians - not just in the US but also in the rest of the Western world - have dropped their role of taking in scientific knowledge and distilling reasonable policy out of it. And to top that, media has been massively cutting down on their "science journalism" departments that could provide context and education to public debate.
Its a problem for the main narrative but that is because the main narrative is brittle and stupid. I don't see why scientific news ought to be forced to cater to a particular political narrative. Let the main narrative fold this in along with whatever caveats they wish, leave the science publications out of it.
I think that the root problem that needs to be addressed is that to a lot of people, scientists and the media appear to put politics before truth.
The recent hydroxychloroquine is an obvious example [1]; The Lancet should never have published something with data so obviously questionable, and the media should not have picked it up so immediately as political ammunition. But the result is that the media appears to be "once again" lying to the public.
The problem with science is that it's findings get exaggerated by the media and by politicians. People latch onto one positive result, and ignore all the negative results. The media reports on findings that haven't been replicated yet, and significantly distort and exaggerate them.
Even within science, there are problems like publication bias and political bias.
Criticising the media’s biased coverage of a scientific topic doesn’t seem politically motivated to me. The statements you highlight could just be ‘true’?
Never mind the massive debate that occurs within the scientific community itself on some new or controversial claims. When the press gets its hands on the views of one dissenter and one proponent, it makes it seem like there are only sides A and B. This is not as simplistic as politics, where politicians form into immutable groups Left vs Right. We are dealing with numerous camps, and within each scientific camp, there are numerous arguments made for/against an issue.
Take climate change, no doubt a controversial issue. To say it is "controversial" in the political sense would mean Left and Right (in the USA alone) have vociferously different stances on the issue. However, if viewed as a scientific controversy, we are now talking about detailed methodological concerns, like methods of data collection, analysis, kinds of statistical bias, and subtle changes in arbitrary parameters. Any scientist can tweak this or that in their model to make it conform more easily to their preconceived notions about climate change. Unfortunately, we also have some oil industry shills out there who got trotted out as an equally weighted side B to the side A of the dozens of scientists who would generally disagree. Then, you also have anti-science proponents who use the legitimate self-criticism of scientists to attack science as a whole.
It's a sad state of affairs. Science should be reported in the press, but it should also be reported much better than it is. In the USA in particular, STEM education is lagging behind: the average person can't delineate the good science coverage from the bad, and we have ridiculous notions and conspiracies that fail to become filtered out (anti vax, climate change deniers, flat earthers, moon landing was faked, etc.)
For me, reproducibility is one problem in a broader ecosystem of scientific problems, including science education generally, as well as misuse of statistics, and a saddening drive for incremental results at the expense of more broad-based thinking which might lead to fundamental breakthroughs. Our education systems must be reformed to deal with these problems, that's the only way out that I see.
As a fellow scientist (also very enthusiastic about science), the problem is that some factions are trying to bully through what are actually policy positions in the name of “science”, thereby hurting the credibility of the institution of scientific truth seeking. Articles like this one are definitely only hurting, from the longer term perspective.
Eg: However accurate/inaccurate/useful/useless epidemiology models might be, “science” can never answer questions about the recommended scale of our activities/lockdown/reopening. It’s ultimately a matter of values and judgement based on risk-tolerance given current situation and needs (which might also take into account model predictions and uncertainties). It is asinine to expect epidemiologists to make final policy recommendations (or for leaders to defer responsibility to them), since they understand only one piece of the puzzle. It is ultimately a judgment call to be made by political leaders elected exactly for that job.
I appreciate the intention, but this is the sort of approach that leads to a long-term distrust of what 'the scientists' say - if we let politicians dictate the scientific message and consensus, then there's no room to criticize when the scientific message gets politicized and ignored.
It is disgusting to see this in a major scientific journal. If science is subordinate to policy advocacy, it isn't science.
> Although many scientific champions did provide appropriate context, I watched several respected colleagues step into debates on when, or if, society would reach herd immunity without realizing that the discussion was not simply a scientific debate. Their too-narrow focus unintentionally helped to promote controversy and doubt, and that ultimately impeded an effective public-health response.
So we shouldn't talk about facts because they might interfere with your preferred agenda. Fantastic. "The Science", in bold, bright letters.
The author isn't talking about misinformation here -- she's saying that discussion of a fact is somehow dangerous.
> The same happened around mask use, vaccination and school policies. This helped to shift public opinion on which public-health measures were ‘acceptable’: the fewer the better.
The latter does not follow from the former. And "the same happened" is a huge leap from the previous paragraph, which is about herd immunity...a scientific fact if there ever was one.
I don’t think science journalism is the reason why anti-science themes have evolved in the public mindset. Science used to be culturally important in the 50s as a way to understand truth, explore the world, improve life, and create industry. It’s since been challenged by both religion and industry via politicians for viewpoints that go against some of their desires. Politicians have since used it as a tool for dividing, reinforcing the anti-science climate. I don’t think it’s fair to blame journalists here.
How much of this is actually criticism of actual science vs politics justified as "science?" I have seen very little of the former and a lot of the latter. And the massive jump in 2020 due to covid makes sense. Many decisions made by the government, and publicly justified as "science" were clearly politically motivated, and could not even be said to be scientifically supported. e.g. covid checks crossing borders when covid was rampant on both sides. And political leaders not only justified their decisions as scientific, but also implied that this made them unassailable by the public and even called for censorship of opposing views under the guise of "misinformation." e.g. the whole lab leak controversy. If our leaders continue to act like this, they can expect the "obsessive" criticism to continue.
It’s not that strange, that’s what happens when you forget if you are a scientist or a politician. If you try to be both at the same time the result is you’ll misrepresent your scientific data to make it fit your political goals.
In this case they keep mentioning uncertainty and the argument is that otherwise the public may behave in a way they don’t want. Whatever your opinion on the arguments, that’s not science and it is also poor politics because sooner or later they’ll lose credibility and really that’s all they have.
This is effectively a disconnect between science and public policy. Science teaches us to keep our minds open to new data, so we can make new conclusions as we go. People just seem to get pissed when public policy changes in light of new data, lending to the narrative that scientists don't know what they're talking about.
I agree a general lack of understanding of the scientific method is a large part of the issue. I think an additional issue is how some politicians/political individuals treat science--"Scientists say X, therefore X is now gospel, and anyone who even questions X is morally at fault and an uneducated idiot."
Those sorts of inflammatory, controversial statements get amplified far more loudly than the actual statements of scientists, which are generally, "We think X is the best method, so we're trying this for now. But we have limited data, and as we learn more, we may have to adjust things in the future."
If the public only hears the first kind of statement (which are the type that fill social media news feeds), they're quickly going to grow skeptical of "Scientists say X" statements. Which appears to be exactly what's happening for some people.
That is perhaps my largest issue with science. On controversial topics, the level of criticism is not equally applied.
It is even worse when we talk about what science filters down to the average voter, as even in cases where the scientists may be fair in their criticism, the public eye is still selective and given unequal weight to certain criticisms.
"As a vocal advocate of vaccinations for public health..."
That's a political manifesto.
Science is W = mg, F = ma, etc.
Politics is whether you mandate that every bridge has a 500% safety margin against gravity, wind, etc.
In my experience almost no-one has an issue with scientific research into things like climate change, effective pandemic damage control, nuclear power, etc.
But a lot of people get very upset when you tell them what to do, or spend their money on things without asking them.
The problem is that if you communicate to the public at the level of normal scientific certainty -- with all the methodological and statistical caveats -- it's very hard to generate the moral authority needed to push sweeping mandates on a population.
Political and scientific leaders knew this, and they made a decision to exaggerate the level of confidence they had or should have had in several of these matters. No one seriously expected leadership to have complete knowledge from day 1, but that's not the criticism. Nor is the criticism that facts change on the ground in fast-moving situations. Of course they do.
The criticism is that they knowingly overstated their factual case at the time so that they could implement their chosen strategies, even to the point of suppressing legitimate scientific dissent, and are now unconvincingly trying to use "facts on the ground change", "science learns over time", and "of course we couldn't have been expected to know everything" as excuses for those decisions.
The weakness of the approach is that if you repeatedly make assertions with very high confidence and then contradict yourself, even though you might get things done in the short term, people stop trusting you in the long-term.
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