The reasons that would explain the distrust of science

If, collectively, we trust scientists and the knowledge they produce, individually, certain factors can lead us to doubt the latter. What are they and what to do about it? Three Canadians, researchers in psychology, try to outline answers to these two questions.

The phenomenon is not new, but there is no shortage of examples today: denial of climate change of anthropic origin, anti-vaccinism, promotion of ineffective treatments… Distrust of scientific results is very present. However, this mistrust is not always justified. Most of the time, it is by using their personal theories or clues from their environment that individuals come to reject certain scientific results.

What signs make us doubt?

The authors of the article published in Proceeding National Academy of Science theorize an inclusive framework to try to understand this mistrust. They suggest that cues from our environment can cause us to doubt four distinct things: the source (or sender) of the scientific message, the receiver of that message (the challenging individual himself), the scientific message, and what philosophers and psychologists name the style epistemological.

The source of a scientific message is generally questioned when it is not trustworthy, expresses itself beyond its field of expertise or even if it seems biased or lacks credibility. The receiver, on the other hand, may doubt a scientific message for many reasons, including the protection of his social identity (for example, being part of a radically anti-science group or being part of a community neglected by scientific work). scientist) or even to preserve his freedom which he believes to be threatened — we are talking about reactance effect.

The scientific message in itself will generally be weakened because it calls into question the beliefs of individuals both on the epistemic level (what they believe to be true or not), on the behavioral level (if the evidence is presented as a benefit or as a risk) or morally (what they believe to be right or wrong). We then arrive at what is called cognitive dissonance in psychology, that is, a generally unpleasant state, where we have to resolve an internal conflict between contradictory information and what we believe.

Finally, mention is made of the fact that the epistemic styles of individuals can play a role in an anti-science attitude. The theory of epistemic styles is a theory that attempts to account for a problem: that of the variability with which we interact with scientific evidence. For example, some may represent certain evidence as theoretical constructs (typically climate change) considering the problem as relatively distant and abstract, others need knowledge with a very small margin of uncertainty (this is called the need for closure) or even low-complexity arguments (this is called the need for cognition).

What can we do against this?

Several solutions are mentioned by the authors to deal with each type of problem. First of all, in matter of communication, the pro-social aims of scientific activity should be felt and simple language should be used. Also, it is not necessary to elude the auxiliary hypotheses out of hand but to explain why an obvious fact is considered as such.

Regarding issues related to social identity, it is important to bring together through a higher identity to which scientific work connects us all, and to participate in including more and more marginalized minorities within the scientific work. Against cognitive dissonance, the proposed solutions are more modest, focusing on skills related to critical reasoning forgetting to mention the provisions to use them. Finally, delivering the scientific messages most in line with the epistemic style of the individuals we are addressing seems to be of particular importance, and this track still seems largely neglected in the communication of scientific methods and results.