It’s got to the point that, whenever we hear that people “fear science,” we expect self-righteous establishment platitudes and wagon-circling, oblivious to genuine reasons for doubt. This guy avoids those pitfalls. Summarizing a conference talk, he suggests, among other things,
Scientists need to be sure they have checked themselves, the data, and motivations before engaging with others.
Listen to those that challenge you and understand that their core values or stories may resonate more with them than a bunch of data and graphs.
Relevancy is key when talking beyond your science peer group. For example, climate change impacts on the price of cereal may resonate more than discussions about polar bears. Marshall Shepherd, “4 Reasons People Fear Science” at Forbes
It sounds so sensible, one wonders why he is allowed to express these views.
Of course, the price of cereal matters more to people on a limited budget than claims about polar bears, which they themselves never see outside a zoo. Most people in the world would not know that polar bears exist if no one told them so but they would know if food was getting scarce and cannot easily be fooled on the point. Good for him for understanding that.
See also: A study of the causes of science skepticism sails right by the most obvious cause of skepticism: Repeated untrustworthiness
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Simply raising the QUESTION “Whither the Polar bear?” means the questioner and his audience don’t have anything USEFUL to do. It’s the kind of thing one might do whilst sipping wine after dinner.
Food prices might be up, or down, right now, but the fact is that Somalia’s national response to FAMINE back in the ’70s and ’80s was to take rich white people’s money and spend it to DOUBLE their population in less than 40 years. And so the problem solving logic is related to the advertised World Crisis how?
All these Crises are toys for bored Liberals to talk about amongst themselves. But how does that make you FEEL?
Mahuna at 1, people are naturally suspicious about environment claims that focus on exotic far off stuff. Who can afford a trip to the high Arctic to check? I think Shepherd is right to focus on concrete differences a changing environment would make where we can see it happening. Or not. If rising water levels doomed a beachfront landmark somewhere, most city dwellers would understand the problem better than if they are told that polar bears don’t have big enough ice floes.
One reason he has missed, which might be the most important of all: science now (almost exclusively) makes claims that are far beyond what any one person, even with a science degree, could ever hope to personally verify. With all the examples of scientific fraud out there, replicability crises, and so on, it is only shrewd to be skeptical when scientists’ findings could have major implications for your life, and yet you know you cannot verify a single word of what they are claiming.
Apparently the author thinks that discussing the price of cereal will make people more accepting of the dire predictions of government paid climate scientists. I seriously don’t think being more open about how government imposed mandates are going to affect us personally is going to turn out how he thinks it will. Case in point, the Green New Deal
Moreover, the ‘science’ that we supposedly ‘fear’ is certainly not nearly as solid as it is cooked up to be:
Moreover, only one side of the debate receives massive grants from the federal government,
“yet you know you cannot verify a single word of what they are claiming”
Thus, Climate Science has pushed into Big Laughable Joke territory on its way to attempting to scare people.
Andrew