War on Science By Adam Hatefi

The Question We Are Trying to Answer What factors could effect an individual’s denial of natural sciences and thus affecting the shared knowledge of the society?

Introduction In the last few years there has been an opposition against scientific concepts among non-scientists that has created a global issue by limiting the influence of science on society. Today we will look at the factors involved in this global issue.

Natural Sciences: a Quick Review Natural Sciences are the analyzed information that we (scientists) gather by relying on evidence and experiment from the world around us.

Skepticism and Pseudo Science: a Quick Review

Primary Source My primary source is the National Geographic article of the May 2015 issue of the magazine on War on Science. It’s a long article, wo we are not reading it here. However, all the topics that we go through have been mentioned in it.

What Topics Are Controversial? Climate Change Vaccines Evolution and Creation

Why? Because these concepts are the ones most affected by the factors discussed in this presentation. As we proceed, you will see the connections.

Main Factors: a List Religion, Culture and Tribal Values Media Consequences of Acceptance Trust Scientist Isolation Intuition Ignorance and Miseducation

Religion, Culture and Tribal Values Each of us, no matter what our origins, have lived and grown in a certain environment with certain people who have certain beliefs. We tend to adapt and agree most of the times, simply to not to be an outsider.

Religion, Culture and Tribal Values If people around us believe in certain cultural values or religion and it does not agree with certain scientific concepts, we tend to reject those concepts.

Religion, Culture and Tribal Values It is not only about what we learn, but also about fitting in. How would our “tribe” react if we reject its values? Probably not very well.

Media In today’s world, mass media like cable TV and internet is a great facto in what we learn and what we believe. Back in the days when science went through certain gateways before it reached people it wasn’t so easy to distribute false information.

Consequences of Acceptance In many cases, accepting a scientific concept (e.g. causation of global warming by human activities) does not pay off. If we accept it, it may have many consequences that may limit the free market, increase taxes and generally lead to more regulations of how we live our lives.

Trust Another important part is, how much do we trust these scientists? Many people think that scientific concepts just come out of a scientist’s lab or library when in fact they are examined by the entire scientific community who really like discrediting each other. Still we ask, whether we can trust them.

Scientist Isolation One of the most important causes if this distrust is the fact that scientists do not usually get involved in public affairs. For them, I is usually simply inconvenient to do so while heir isolation gives space to skeptics to say whatever they want.

Intuition It’s also important to remember that in many cases, people don’t believe because they can’t see or feel the concept that science is trying to show. We don’t fell that Earth is spinning, so we almost killed Galileo. People tend not to believe what is against their intuition.

Ignorance and Miseducation There are also things that are considered pseudo science, but accepted by many people as facts. These act both ways: makes them ignorant, and makes other people skeptical. Miseducation is a very important factor: most of these people do not really know what they are talking about.

How Do These All Relate/ How is our knowledge of natural sciences affected by these factors?

How Do These All Relate? If mass media and internet did not facilities distribution of false information, how would the problem with vaccines still exist? If it wasn’t for negative financial consequences, regulation for climate change control would have never been delayed so much.

How Do These All Relate? Ignorance and miseducation also allows more people to accept false information, since that is what they are initially told. We do not trust new concepts because we are more comfortable with the old ones and we don’t trust scientists maybe if

How Do These All Relate? they reached out and told us what we need to know instead of being a relatively isolated community, people wouldn’t have so much problem with science.

How Do These All Relate? Finally, if it was not because of the disagreement of scientific concepts with our intuition and tribal values we wouldn’t discredit them as easily. Revolution is a great example for this category: many people disagree with it because people around them do so.

Conclusion It is important to understand these factors and their relationship with what we consider controversial and try to minimize them in our community as much as possible because if we don’t, it may have catastrophic results. Before disagreeing with science, we must evaluate why we are skeptic of that concept.

Conclusion If it is any of the above, then it is the first kind of skepticism that we saw on the video. We have to remember that to deny or defy science, we have to come at it with logic and ration.