The public distrusts the morals of scientists, not their science

The public distrusts the morals of scientists, not their science

By John H. Evans edited by Daniel Vergano

Our overlapping Trump and COVID eras have seen a pretty steep decline in public trust in scientists. Around one in 10 Americans report less support for science today than pre-COVID.

It was a Pew Research Center November Survey Results. In addition to this decline in support compared to pre-pandemic times, the survey found that people who trust scientists “a lot” or “somewhat” remain more or less the same since 2021. In response, the the president of the United States National Academy of Sciences said that the inquiry “gives us an opportunity to re-examine what we need to do to restore confidence in science”.

But the diagnoses about the cause of the lack of trust made by science leaders who responded to the survey are variations of the same old diagnoses: that the public doesn’t understand science. This is a comfortable diagnosis for scientists and is therefore unlikely to contribute to confidence. Rather, the scientific community must consider that the lack of trust does not come from the fact that the public views scientists as investigators, but rather because the public does not trust the moral values ​​of scientists.

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Reactions to the report suggest that the scientific community is trying hard to ignore it. A recent Washington Post press report said that the public lost confidence because they did not understand scientific claims about the facts– about cures for COVID, about the usefulness of masks, about the origin of the virus, about the effect of social distancing, about whether vaccines would prevent infection. In a similar New York Times article says CEO of American Association for the Advancement of Science scientists learned “hard lessons” from COVID and were “now better equipped to communicate how data changes and evolves.” Yet another report claims that scientists need to be more humble on their ability to generate precise scientific statements.

All of these responses reflect the long-held general belief among scientists that the lack of public support is the consequence of poor public understanding of science. This is called the “knowledge gap” model of science communication. widely discredited as a factor in supporting science.

It has long been clear that claims about scientific fact are not the problem. Consider the conflict in the United States between religion and science, epitomized by the 1925s: “Monkey Scopes Test» and the “Intelligent design” court case 2005. Scientists largely assume that such conflicts arise because religious people use sacred texts to make claims about the natural world, whereas science instead uses reason and observation. Although this was likely true before the 20th century, today it is only the case for a minority of religious people in the United States, such as those who follow the traditions of conservative Protestantism; and also only disagree on very specific areas, such as human origins. This was the situation in the Scopes trial.

In reality, sociological studies show this contemporary conflict between science and religion It’s actually a question of morals, not facts. For example, when it comes to debates about human embryo research, no religious opponent claims that scientists don’t understand how embryos develop. On the contrary, they grant embryos a moral status different from that of scientists.

Moreover, even stated opposition to scientific claims is often motivated by moral concerns. For example, fundamentalists William JenningsBryanthe defender of the creationist position in the Scopes trial, opposed scientific claims about human evolution because he wanted “defend the Bible”. But, he also opposed evolution because he believed that Darwinian theory had corrupted the morals of German youth. and was partly responsible for the outbreak of the First World War. The moral conflict between the public and science did not begin with the first Trump administration.

We can also examine parts of the Bench study which were not examined in the news reports. In the survey, 36 percent of the public believe that scientists do not pay attention to the moral values ​​of society. When given the choice between the idea that “scientists should focus on establishing solid scientific facts and stay out of political debates” or “take an active role in public policy debates about scientific questions,” the country is essentially split 50-50. In other words, half of the public doesn’t want scientists to go beyond fact-finding because, I would say, they perceive scientists who will insert their moral values ​​into the political debate, and the public doesn’t think that They share these values.

But why would the public think that scientists do not share their moral values? The idea that scientists are morally deficient goes back centuries and is reinforced today by fictional accounts of scientists where The “mad scientist” remains a trope. Dr. Frankenstein is probably the most famous scientist. The villagers were not angry with him because he was wrong about how to create a monster, but because he ignored the moral values ​​of the villagers in creating the monster.

So I think scientists learned the wrong lesson from COVID. The decline in trust is not primarily due to poor public understanding of science, but because scientists have been associated with a set of politicized moral choices of prioritizing public health over to commerce, education and individual freedom. Perhaps the association with these choices was inevitable or necessary, but we should not think that a loss of trust was generated by the public not understanding how vaccines work.

A solution because building trust is for scientists be trained has talk about their moral valuesbecause silence makes it easier to project bad values ​​onto scientists. The moral values ​​of scientists will not align perfectly with those of the public, but I believe that shared values ​​will transcend differences. To take an obvious example, scientists working on COVID were motivated by the moral value of reducing human suffering, and that’s about as close to a universal value as you can get in the United States.

I understand why the scientific community is reluctant to talk about its moral values. Part of the norms of science is being “valueless,” and part of what creates legitimate results is dispassionately examining data. Scientists generally have no training in academic debates about morals, values, and ethics. But pretending that scientists are only interested in facts – and beyond any moral questions – doesn’t work.

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the opinions expressed by the author(s) are not necessarily those of Scientific American.