How do we create a willing ear?

AV1611VET said:

It makes me wonder if Nebraska Man was one such endeavor, where scientists jumped on the bandwagon prematurely (but on purpose), then made brownie points with the public by settling the issue.

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Possibly, but who created a profit as a result.

timothyu said:

Possibly, but who created a profit as a result.

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I don't know who profited monetarily, but there are other ways of profiting.

Such as accumulating brownie points with the public.

timothyu said:

If you look to those who seek to profit from solving an issue you may usually find those same who created the problem for the same reasons.

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Are you referring to religious institutions?

AV1611VET said:

Such as accumulating brownie points with the public.

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You mean fuelling general ignorance?

TLK Valentine said:

Are you referring to religious institutions?

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Universally

timothyu said:

You mean fuelling general ignorance?

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Yes -- for five years, the ignorance flourished, until someone decided to point out it was a peccary, not a man.

Now -- guess how much ignorance flourished for 76 years?

AV1611VET said:

When I see tree huggers give up these:

1. gas powered cars
2. cement patios
3. glass windows
4. barbecue grills
5. fireplaces
6. pop
7. CO2 extinguishers

I'll consider taking them seriously.

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Then you can take me seriously. Hybrid car, so much greenery in my back yard (and everyone elses) that I can't see my neighbours, fireplace has been removed and a reverse cycle system will be installed later this year, my CO² extinguisher is powder and we're getting solar panels fitted.

'You would need to open a few hundred gallons of soda to release the amount of carbon dioxide that you add to the atmosphere when you burn a gallon of gas in your car.' Do Carbonated Beverages Contribute to Global Warming?.

Oh yeah....windows. Our house is orientated so we gain more heat from the sun than we lose do to energy transmission.

Some people treat this seriously. My grandkids thank you for whatever you are doing.

driewerf said:

This thread is slightly inspired –or is at least becoming more urgent due to Pitabread’s thread about the dangers of creationism.

Creationism is but the tip of the iceberg in terms of science denial. You have climate change denial, antivaxxers, body positivity movement that slides into denial of any health consequence of obesity. In the nineties of the previous century I remember people denying or mocking the existence of the ozone depletion above the Antarctic.

When the Obamas (especially Michelle Obama) launched a campaign for healthy nutrition for children there was a huge backlash. Somehow it is bad to care for healthy food for children. The argument? “Unelected experts don’t know what my kid needs”. Well, no. That’s exactly the very definition of being an expert. Someone who knows better.


And here we are at the core of the issue. Too many people seem to think that reading one or two Facebook posts equals years and years of study and practical experience and make someone an expert on whatever subject. Any idiot with a keyboard and an internet connection can produce whatever text he wants and is put on a par, if not higher, than leading experts and Nobel prize winners.


How do we restore the notion that no one knows everything? That experts are – yes people who know a lot more and better – about a subject that the layman?

How do we restore a willing ear again for knowledge science and expertise again? It’s not a fanciful question. It is a matter of life and death. Whether it is about obesity, climate change or vaccinations, taking the wrong decision implies taking huge risks.

Any thoughts?

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First.
"experts" need to stop speculating way beyond what they actually know. They have created a part of the problem by discrediting themselves.

In the UK for example, the official "projections" of COVID propagations by SAGE were way higher than actual figures often by order of magnitude, and way outside error bounds. Yet you became a "covid denier" by challenging outrageous statements on prognosis, or indeed noting real problems with vaccines. All "scientific" statements should be open to challenge.

Much of the "scientific rhetoric" in the UK was actually academia trying to assert itself, an opposition NHS and education service trying to abuse the crisis to gain power and win long term arguments on eg class size or NHS funding and trying to oust the government of the day using pseudoscientific cherry picked argument.. It was hard to discriminate either. The reality is nobody knew for certain what would happen. Scientists should have said so.

It goes way past science. Take "experts" we were supposed to listen to regarding such as brexit that made outlandish predictions.
Suffice to say the "experts" of IMF etc etc completely missed the inevitabiliy of 2007 in their annual reports. So why should we listen to any of them now?. That is why "experts" should go no further than they are certain, so they can build a track record of trust. And if they do not know, they should say so. Such people wreck the trust in "experts"

2/ "the right answer" is always nuanced in the real world.
It is time the "scientists" gave nuanced statements. When they mean "we dont know, we think based on evidence" That is what they should say. "for sure there are climate change problems but we cannot be sure how much of this is man made, we know it is some"

Some "projections" are similar to COVID projections. Deliberately alarmist.

3/ "dogma" should not be used for pseudoscientific statements on either side. Your remark on "creationism" is clearly trying to claim the imprimateur of science for what in YOUR case is also just a belief.

On abiogenesis nobody has evidence on when, how , what happened or where it happened. There is no structure for the first cell postulataed or process postulated for how it came to be, or process postulated from the first cell to present life. So there can be no valid hypothesis. All anyone has on start of life is belief, including you. ( I must admit to having no idea which flavour of creationism you refer to, but there are many wacky "scientific" views too)

4/ Governments and pressure group should stop steering the narrative. A statistics official in the USA was more or less hounded from office for noticing that the mortality rates in the so called best category for BMI were worse than for moderately overweight which was seemingly "off message"

That needed analysing, not removing from the record. The official should not have been gagged. Just as collecting true gun death and incident stats should be done without fear or favour. Not prevented from analysis by the NRA.

5/
"scientists" were paid a fortune by the tobacco industry and later corn industry for whitewashing. So "scientists" are not trustworthy just by virtue of being "experts"

Mountainmike said:

Much of the "scientific rhetoric" in the UK was actually academia trying to assert itself, an opposition NHS and education service trying to abuse the crisis to gain power and win long term arguments on eg class size or NHS funding and trying to oust the government of the day using pseudoscientific cherry picked argument..

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Not to mention private organizations trying to get a foothold in a non privatized medical industry

Boo scientists!

Bradskii said:

Boo scientists!

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Spooky?