Category: Opinion

From The Atlantic

On April 22, scientists and science enthusiasts will gather in Washington, D.C. and 480 other cities to march for science. Their numbers will likely be large and their signs will undoubtedly be nerdy. Much has been written about the march—whether it’s a good idea or a terrible one, whether it will rally people or distance them, whether it’s goals are acceptably varied or too diffuse, whether it cares too little or too much about matters of diversity, and whether it will be a cathartic flash-in-the-pan or the seed for something more.

But these are all empirical questions, and there are indeed scientists who study political movements. Hahrie Han at the University of California, Santa Barbara is one of them. She studies the ways in which civic organizations get people involved in activism and build power for political change—and she’s written three books on the subject. I talked to her about the March for Science and what might happen afterwards.

Ed Yong: How do you see the march?

Hahrie Han: In thinking about the science of activism or social movements, there are two categories of questions that interest me. One is what does science tell us about what strategies are most effective with engaging people in different forms of activism? The second is this: Even if the organizers are able to get the people out in large numbers, how do you translate that into political power? If we can get a million scientists out to D. C., how does that actually turn into a kind of political voice?

Yong: It seems like the march is successfully attracting large numbers, so I want to focus on that second question about what happens afterwards. What do we know about that?

From The Guardian

Science teacher Jackie Scott will be in the streets this Saturday in Little Rock, Arkansas. “I march because my middle school students deserve to have a better world,” she wrote. “They deserve to see what real research looks like and sounds like when it is communicated.”

From Oklahoma to Greenland, scientists and their champions will gather on April 22 for the much anticipated March for Science. And in many ways, the event is already a success: because thousands of scientists are speaking up, millions of people are considering how science actually matters to our lives.

We talk about how the government collects critical data to set air pollution standards. We discuss how investments in science have prevented pandemics. We examine how a physician helped expose the lead poisoning crisis in Flint, Michigan, and how a failure to collect data and ask the right questions made it worse.

The March for Science has started conversations within many families about scientists as public servants, my own included. My father’s cousin Barbara will march with me and other family to honor her late husband (and occasional scientific collaborator) Marvin, a renowned computational chemist.

It also brings visibility to other underrepresented groups in science. “I march to show that even a small town gay boy from Montana can become one badass inked astrochemist,” wrote Montana native Jay Kroll.

Sadly, the march also laments the collective failure of our politics to use science to address the grand challenges of our time. Ford Foundation president Darren Walker recently spoke of the poverty of imagination:

“It’s a poverty of imagination that diminishes our discourse, curtails curiosity, and makes our interactions petty and small. A poverty of imagination that breeds distrust for institutions and, increasingly, for information. A poverty of imagination that breeds distrust of other people who do not look or think like us. A poverty of imagination that shrinks our sense of self and our sense of a lofty and inspiring common purpose, luring us to the extremes rather than leading us towards the extraordinary.”

Science provides us with one essential tool to escape this quagmire. And in labs, schools, and businesses around the world, researchers are redefining their rightful role in society. Organizing, and demonstrating when necessary, has entered the scientific mainstream.

No longer are we simply debating whether experts should engage in public life because of an unsupported fear that science will be further politicized. Instead, scientists are exploring how they can best push back on actions that undermine the collection of data and development of independent analysis and, in turn, weaken our collective ability to address tough challenges. “We are a driving force across the entire planet for health and safety and reducing costs and reducing risk,” said University of Washington ocean scientist Sarah Mhyre.

Read the full story at The Guardian.

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By R. Bruce Hull

I explained why I’m not marching for science even though I’m “all-in” and support science with my heart, mind, and labor. Marching won’t change minds. Worse, because of Identity Protective Reasoning, marching will strengthen our critics’ resolve and weaken science’s influence. Every time we mention science or truth or climate or genes or funding or facts all we end up doing is triggering the critic’s internal dialog that blames loss of jobs, opportunity, and identity on liberal, global, elites (i.e., on scientists).  That is, marching for science is worse than preaching to the choir.

Marching on Earth Day will further reinforce the perception that science is captured by an elitist environmentalist agenda that promotes capitalism crushing government regulation.  Just imagine how Fox News will portray a scientist marching with a sign: CLIMATE SCIENCE MATTERS or EPA NEEDS SOUND SCIENCE.  The commentators will surely point out that the scientists are promoting an anti-business agenda and marching in support of stifling regulations and wasteful spending on more (unnecessary) research.  Further, if we expose our weaknesses (and there are many critiques of science that the March targets, including lack of diversity among scientists, politics of funding, and heavily defended silos), we just give our critics ammunition for their concerns about science as an institution.

I’m even more concerned that the March has no end game, so scientists will go back to their labs, books, and classrooms thinking they’ve done all they can or need to do.  WRONG!  We need to organize and expand our political power.  Education and agitation are important first steps, but they are wasted unless we organize for actions that win elections. Science must nurture and support a much bigger coalition.  We need to advance a narrative that supports liberalism and enlightenment.  We need to argue that poverty reduction and rising global middle class flows from global trade, that wellbeing and productivity comes from medicine and access to health care, that security depends upon ample food and clean water, that hope and opportunity comes from technology-driven economic development, and that all these things are supported by sound science.

Supporting a political agenda means scientists need to separate their careers from their citizenship.  We need to occasionally but explicitly leave our day jobs behind and engage in politics.  We need to speak from the heart about the values that define us, the reasons that motivate us, and the future we want to create.  That means advocacy.  Own it.

Scientists are thought leaders.  Our jobs give us the luxury of being paid to sit back and think about the world.  Share those thoughts.  Organize them and others in the support of political coalitions that win votes and steer the world towards the promise of the enlightenment instead of Trump’s anti-fact, anti-expertise, anti-science dark-ages that risk causing widespread pain and suffering.

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Dr. Bruce Hull is a Senior Fellow at Virginia Tech’s Center for Leadership in Global Sustainability (CLiGS), a professor in the College of Natural Resources and Environment (CNRE), and an affiliate faculty member in the Global Change Center.

By Dr. Bruce Hull

Do you want your science to influence global change? Don’t rely on facts.

Your facts are worthless because of something psychologists call the confirmation bias. The default psychological setting for most people is to search for and remember facts that confirm initial beliefs and ignore or forget unsupportive evidence. The web makes it easy for anyone to find the support they crave—alternative facts are just one click away from your scientific facts.

Worse, facts can be counterproductive because people are also wired to practice identity protecting reasoning–IPR. People use their reasoning prowess to protect their identity when they feel under threat. As soon as scientists start to explain climate change with facts, for example, they trigger a denier’s identity protective reasoning. We say carbon dioxide or albedo and their inner voice starts thinking: experts are out-of-touch elitists, God has dominion, government is the problem, free markets are good, and your climate hogwash is threatening not only who I am but my job and my children’s future. That is, we trigger an internal monologue that helps them rehearse their arguments and fuel their concern that their identity is under threat. Our rational, wonkish, scientific explanations are not just ignored, they are completely counterproductive.

George Lakoff has a distinguished track record of public service and scholarship excellence. He has written extensively on the topic of framing, values, and language that support progressive causes. The following tips are excerpted from a blog he wrote after Trump’s nomination. Here are few key take-homes for how scientists can influence the debate:

• Know the key triggers that activate IPR: guns, gays, god and increasingly climate, expertise, abortion, immigration, media, black lives matter, bathrooms, universities, …
• Don’t activate one of those triggers. It doesn’t matter if your are supporting or critiquing the topic (be it climate, immigration, expertise, media, or Trump more generally). Once you activate it, you end up reinforcing it. (Admittedly, following this advice greatly limits the opportunity for reasoned public discourse, which is the grave danger of Trump because he is pushing more and more issues into this frame-activating, identity-protecting-reasoning space.)
• Don’t mention or critique false claims or fake news. Doing so just activates a trigger.
• Give a positive truthful story based on values you cherish: Equity. Opportunity. Safety. Justice. Freedom. Dignity. Integrity. Children. Family. Love. Respect. Health. Faith. Even environment. Progressives have powerful values (I identify with them!), but we don’t mention them enough.
• Values come first, facts and policies follow in the service of values. Facts and science matter, but only as they support values.
• For example, reframe your discussion of climate change. Start with owning that you are concerned about the security of your community, the safety and health of your family and neighbors, and the declining opportunities for your children to live productive, dignified lives. Then tell a story about what you want us to do.
• Use repetition. The more it is heard or seen, the more it is believed, regardless of what it is.
• Stop defending “the government.” Talk about the public, the people, Americans, the American people, public servants, and protecting freedom. The contribution of public resources to our freedoms cannot be overstated. Government Regulations protect freedom from pollution, abuse, discrimination, poison, and so on. Start saying it.
• Go positive. Avoid nasty exchanges and attacks. Take the high ground. Be hard on principles and problems; be soft on people. Practice civility, good humor, and empathy. Don’t protest against free speech by others, even if you disagree with them. Don’t threaten to punch them in the face, that is fascism.
• Give up identity politics. No more women’s issues, black issues, Latino issues, LBGTQ issues, Muslim issues, Autism issues… Their issues are all real, and need public discussion. But they all fall under freedom, justice, safety, equity and other values and principles. Identity politics divides us and triggers them. We are weaker and more easily conquered when divided. Twigs are stronger when in a bundle.

Many scientists worry that abandoning their science and facts weakens their credibility. I think you can be a scientist and a citizen. I think the times demand it.

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Dr. Bruce Hull is a Senior Fellow at Virginia Tech’s Center for Leadership in Global Sustainability (CLiGS), a professor in the College of Natural Resources and Environment (CNRE), and an affiliate faculty member in the Global Change Center.

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By Dr. Bruce Hull

Two game-changing coattails that Trump road to the presidency are fake news and distrusted expertise. They also usher into mainstream governance an end to rationality, modernity, enlightened self-interest, and related strategies and hopes that we can think our way out of the challenges we face. These are deeply troubling trends for those of us concerned with the highly technical, enormously complex, wickedly interdependent sustainability challenges of meeting the needs of 2-5 billion new middle class consumers while sustaining a climate and habitat that nurtures human civilization.

Fake news gets traction because we are hard-wired to have a confirmation bias. Because of it, people search for and remember facts that confirm their initial beliefs and ignore or forget unsupportive evidence. The explosion of information made accessible by the web makes it easy for people to find the support they crave. The slow, difficult, testable, and transparent scientific method is an institution humans invented to help us overcome the confirmation bias.

If confirmation bias wasn’t enough of a threat to experts, expertise, and rationality, then its close cousin, identity protecting reasoning (IPR), is down right frightening.   IPR has the power to burn up democracy: and Trump is pouring fuel on the fire. With IPR, subsets of facts, ideas, and memes become associated with one’s identity. As a result, contrary facts, ideas, and memes are not just rejected (as the confirmation bias would have us do) but perceived as threats to be fought against, triggering a feedback loop that reinforces ones original beliefs and further polarizes opinions (Kahan et al 2012).

Climate change and gun control provide examples. Deniers immediately see any invocation of climate science as a threat to their identity, politics, culture, and heritage. Facts, science, and logic are irrelevant to the resulting discussion. The denier’s internal dialog and framing switches to defending one’s self and one’s people. Statistics, computer models, core samples, and historic trends fall on deaf ears that instead hear blasphemy, disrespect, and arrogance. Gun control arguments would be similar. Facts about accidental deaths or evidence of decreased school safety don’t matter when one only hears Bill of Rights, freedom, and rugged individualism. To invoke climate or guns in a conversation immediately reframes the discussion and triggers the defense of identity and politics. Most people would rather doubt science and experts than question their identity or politics.

The growing distrust of expertise has another troubling cause. As complexity and uncertainty of the world increase, most people struggle understanding their connection to it. How, for example, are one’s declining wages and health and identity and children’s prospects connected to distant and opaque global systems? Moreover, what can one do about it? Simple answers are seductive, especially if they reinforce stereotypes and blame someone else. Reality is more complicated and difficult to comprehend. It requires years of experience, networking, study, travel, and learning by doing.

Information of all types has never been easier to find. But the high quality, peer-reviewed, carefully produced arguments and facts tend to be less accessible, often disguised by jargon and hidden behind professional or disciplinary gates. And even if the information generated by experts is found, it is but one click away from half-baked, last minute, advocacy-driven drivel. People inexperienced with a topic have no way to know the difference between science and drivel. It is understandable that they instead accept the most frequently found, oft-repeated arguments that just so happen to confirm their initial beliefs and assumptions.

The impacts of confirmation bias, identity protecting reasoning, and information access are combining to undermine rationality, expertise, and ultimately threaten democracy. “Unless some sort of trust [of expertise] can be restored, public discourse will be polluted [by confirmation bias, IPR, and nefarious actors]…and in such an environment, anything and everything becomes possible, including the end of democracy…” (Nichols, p73) It certainly will make sustaining development more challenging.

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Dr. Bruce Hull is a Senior Fellow at Virginia Tech’s Center for Leadership in Global Sustainability (CLiGS), a professor in the College of Natural Resources and Environment (CNRE), and an affiliate faculty member in the Global Change Center.

• Nichols, T. 2017. How America lost faith in expertise: And why that is a giant problem. Foreign Affairs 96:60-73.
• Alternative Facts Presidency. Blog, http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2017/2/20/fake-news-enh-alternative-facts-presidency-watch-out-talk-su.html

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