The science communication problem: one good explanation, four not so good ones, and a fitting solution

Dan Kahan: “I’m going to discuss the “science communication problem” – the failure of sound, widely disseminated science to settle public controversies over risks and other policy-relevant facts that admit of scientific investigation.

What makes this problem perplexing isn’t that we have no sensible explanation it. Rather it’s that we have too many.

There are always more plausible accounts of social phenomena than are actually true.  Empirical observation and measurement are necessary–not just to enlarge collective knowledge but also to steer people away from dead-ends as they search for effective solutions to the society’s problems.

In this evidence-based spirit, I’ll identify what I regard as one good explanation for the science communication problem and four plausible but not so good ones. Then I’ll identify a “fitting solution”—that is, a solution that fits the evidence that makes the good explanation better than the others.

One good explanation: identity-protective cognition

Identity-protective cognition (a species of motivated reasoning) reflects the tendency of individuals to form perceptions of fact that promote their connection to, and standing in, important groups.

There are lots of instances of this. Consider sports fans who genuinely see contentious officiating calls as correct or incorrect depending on whether those calls go for or against their favorite team.

The cultural cognition thesis posits that many contested issues of risk—from climate change to nuclear power, from gun control to the HPV vaccine—involve this same dynamic. The “teams,” in this setting, are the groups that subscribe to one or another of the cultural world-views associated with “hierarchy-egalitarianism” and “individualism-communitarianism.”

CCP has performed many studies to test this hypothesis. In one, we examined perceptions of scientific consensus. Like fans who see the disputed calls of a referee as correct depending on whether they favor their team or its opponent, the subjects in our study perceived scientists as credible experts depending on whether the scientists’conclusions supported the position favored by members of the subjects’ cultural group or the one favored by the members of a rival one on climate change, nuclear power, and gun control…”

Continues at www.culturalcognition.net – Cultural Cognition Blog – The science communication problem: one good explanation, four not so good ones, and a fitting solution:

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A fitting solution: The separation of meaning and fact

Identity-protective cognition is the problem. It affects liberals and conservatives, interferes with the judgement of even the most scientifically literate and reflective citizens, and feeds off even sound information as it creates an appetite for bad.

We need a solution, then, fitted to counteracting it. The one I propose is the formation of “science communication environment” protection capacity in our society.

Policy-consequential facts don’t inevitably become the source of cultural conflict. Indeed, they do only in the rare cases where they become suffused with highly charged and antagonistic cultural meanings.

These meanings are a kind of pollution in the science communication environment, one that interferes with the usually reliable faculty ordinary people employ to figure out who knows that about what.

The sources of such pollution are myriad. Strategic behavior is one. But simple miscalculation and misadventure also play a huge role.

The well-being of a democratic society requires protecting the science communication environment from toxic meanings. We thus need to use our knowledge to [inform] understanding [of] how such meanings are formed. And we need to devote our political resolve to developing procedures and norms that counteract the forms of behavior—intentional and inadvertent—that generate this form of pollution.

A wall of separation between cultural meaning and scientific fact is integral to the constitution of the Liberal Republic of Science.

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