How much does Scientific Facts constitute our Realities
We are at a pinnacle of scientific discovery and knowledge that has given us an unprecedented view about the world we live in. Just 70 years ago we had no clue how fundamental process of biology worked in molecular terms and now we are advancing in developing portable gene-sequencers.
However, we are struggling with a world where, despite the liberation of education and readily available scientific information, different groups of people seems to have a very different perspective and realities about the world. Just last month, the Ontario science Centre published a survey that of staggering result: 43% of Canadians agree that scientific findings are just a matter of opinion.
We can loosely categorize three general sources of problems contributing to this finding.
1. The academic institution is a huge source of problem itself. The ultra-specialization of knowledge has solidified the rigidity of institutions and created impenetrable exclusiveness. Most advanced discoveries of today are tugged away in the minds of selective individuals. What’s worst, most scientists rely on complex arguments with sophisticated mechanisms and algorithms that do not speak to the public. On top of all this, the politics and bureaucracies of the institutions awards publications, leading to sever reproducibility issues in science that has been recently exposed to the public. Science has become more of a career for many, as opposed to a curious ground for understanding realities --- it is no wonder that public has raised so much scepticism over it.
2. False information reported as facts also affect our knowledge of the world. There have been well-documented studies detailing complicated and clever tactics used by industries to exploit psychological tendencies of the public. Historian at Stanford University Robert Proctor coined it “agnotology”: the study of how ignorance is deliberately produced. The first official studies were made based on the observation of the tobacco industry dates back to the 1950s. Now, these tactics are no longer restrained to the PR of major industries, they are readily found on the Internet. Internet has allowed the democratization of information exchange, but it has not made education and accurate information to be more popular than conspiracy theories. Before the Internet, we only had access to certified experts to speak in their perspective fields on the radio or TV shows. Today, anybody can publish their opinions. In contrast with the esoteric scientific papers in which we will have to go out of your way to find and pay for, conspiracy theories, freely spams major social media outlets to captivate our attention. Our access to facts versus fake news has undoubtedly contributed to a creations of alternative realities.
3. Our collective brain has fallen far behind the state of our collective knowledge and technology. Thanks to ultra-specializations, the accumulated human knowledge has become so vast and complicated that no single individual can acknowledge what is going on in any other fields we do not work in. We are physically incapable or simply do not have the time to prove and workout every knowledge we have taken for granted in our public education. In fact, before you laugh at the conspiracy group “Flat Earth” who advocate that our world is actually flat, test yourself whether you can explain on the spot to your friends why the earth is round without resorting to the satellite pictures.
We can try addressing all these problems, for example, to make education more attractive and sexy, use fact checkers, impose strict regulations on fake news, address scientific re-producibility issues, etc. However, studies done by psychology, the most notable Daniel Kahneman, Dan Kahan,etc) has shown that human that these are not enough. Surprisingly, improvings, Scientific literacy can actually further polarize political tribes on issues such as climate change, thanks to what we now call the cognitive biases. If you have observe an argument or been in one, you probably have notice that the more facts we present to people with motivated reasoning, facts are selectively amplified to what suits us, ignore what does not, and reinterpret whatever we can.
This perhaps comes not too surprising to those who understand the principle of scientific methods. Object facts are objective events, but they provide no explanations to why they happen. Human provides explanations with our intuitive/biases to make relationships and links between observations. In reality, there is infinite number of ways to explain facts and hence we can always fit to our perspective. Scientist also uses cognitive biases, but they differ from the public in that they actually go out and test these intuitively build theories. Scientific facts are only more durable than other realities because they have been and still are tested. Our scientific model rests on the backbone of empiricism: It is only by pragmatic approaches and empirical evidence that we gain confidence in the theories we proposed in describing our realities, and they can be replaced any moment the scientific community decides that new evidence falsify the model.
For those who still care about the truth, we should demand better: of the scientists, the institutions, and the news sources. But most importantly, it is crucial to be aware of our psychological minds, our motivations, This keeps us alert of our own biases; it keep us seek out the truth due to curiosity, not political or self interest motivations. It is also crucial for us to understand the fundamental philosophy of scientific method as a way to approach the truth. This not only keep us alarm and prevent us from rabbit whole of a different scientific paradigm, it will be the reminder to those who are dwelled in heated arguments of abstract ideas: go out and try it out, let the world tell you if you are right or wrong.
