LATELY, there has been a crisis in confidence in experts. To scientists’ dismay, a surprisingly large number of people today don’t believe that climate change is real and that human activity is causing it, that genetically modified foods are safe, that vaccinating children is advisable, that drug dependence is most effectively dealt with as a health issue rather than a criminal issue, and so on.
I understand how scientists and other experts feel. I experienced this dismay more than once. However, my experience with this lack of trust in scientific findings suggests the following antidote to the public misunderstanding of science—treating members of the public as indispensable partners in the process of science. More specifically, this can be done by explaining to the public how science actually works.
One time, after a planetarium show I was hosting ended, a member of the audience came up with what felt were leading questions that suggest he was hostile to the idea—the conspiracy, as he viewed it—that the Earth was round.
I gently explained to him, and the rest of the audience, that the best if not the only reasonable explanation for what we see when we look up into the night sky is that we’re looking out from a round planet. I even used the planetarium to virtually fly us to different parts of the world, to show how the sky looked from there.
He seemed to have been satisfied and convinced by my answer. He thanked me afterwards for my comprehensible explanation.
However, when I checked social media later, I discovered to my dismay that the man’s initially wrong opinion about the shape of the world is a fast-growing anomaly in the Philippines—there is an increasing number of so-called “flat Earthers”—people who think the Earth is in fact flat, in our country.
Why did that man initially doubt the reality that the Earth is round? Part of the explanation is that people like him lost their trust of the experts—the geologists, astronomers, astronauts, and others—who are all saying that the Earth is round.
This conspiratorial view of expertise seems to be on the rise.
For example, many British people who voted in favor of the United Kingdom exiting the European Union, what came to be known as Brexit, did so despite many experts warning them that such a decision is against their best interest.
During the debate over Brexit, former British Justice Secretary Michael Gove was quoted as saying that British people have “had enough of experts.” What he wanted to say was that they “had enough of experts from organizations with acronyms saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong,” but he was picked up mid-sentence by his interviewer, and his partial statement was held up to criticism by many people. Surprisingly, the said partial statement earned the support of many who felt that indeed, they had enough of experts.
Similarly, Donald Trump, with the support of many, including a lot of the Americans who voted for him, has decided to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement despite the strong advice of scientists, economists, politicians, and business leaders urging him against it. In other words, the President of the United States and his many supporters disagreed with the consensus of scientists and other experts—that climate change is a big problem, and that the Paris Agreement is a good start in tackling it.
How do scientists help members of the public distinguish between true experts and charlatans? And how will these experts regain the trust of the public? This circles back to my answer at the start of the piece—make the public understand how science works.
In other words, make the public understand that scientists are just people. They have biases and can make mistakes. However, because scientists are always skeptical of each other’s claims, especially if those claims are novel and radical, they always try to poke holes in each other’s ideas.
In this dog-eat-dog world of ideas, the only ones that survive are the ones supported enough by the evidence, at least so far, that a majority of people who have dedicated their lives and careers to studying were convinced.
Experts, scientists especially, sometimes risk their careers and professional reputation for the sake of their ideas. Many of their ideas turn out wrong. The very few that ends up convincing many other scientists are therefore the best we can do, at least so far.
The more the public understands the stringent requirements that an idea must pass in order to be considered a respectable scientific fact and the professional risks experts take in making public those ideas, the more they will appreciate experts and their ideas.
Pecier Decierdo is resident physicist and astronomer of The Mind Museum.
