When Science Becomes Embroiled in Conflict: Recognizing the Public’s Need for Debate while Combating Conspiracies and Misinformation

When scientists discover a planet in our Milky Way that is made of diamonds (Bailes et al. 2011), public fascination and admiration are virtually assured. Who would not revel in the idea that we might spot a particularly bright sparkle in the night sky? However, when scientists discover that burning fossil fuels causes climate change, or that a lethal airborne virus is best controlled through mask wearing and social distancing, then the public and political response is much less favorable, with scientists being verbally assaulted or having their reputations impugned (Lewandowsky, Mann et al. 2016; Mann 2012).

Scientists cannot escape those politically motivated conflicts. Daniel Kahneman has recommended that scientists should scrupulously avoid the political and that if science involves a matter “that anybody in Congress is going to be offended by, then it’s political” (cited in Basken 2016). Adherence to Kahneman’s recommendation would render entire scientific fields, such as evolutionary biology and climate science, off limits. Moreover, even if scientists abstain from providing policy advice, they can become targets of conspiracy theorists who frequently “blame the messenger” for inconvenient information, as has been apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been subject to extensive online abuse and hate speech.¹ If political conflict cannot be avoided, scientists must manage such conflicts, and the public must understand that such conflicts can be inevitable. Fortunately, both surveys (Pew Research Center 2009) and experimental studies (Kotcher et al. 2017) have shown that scientists can, in some circumstances, advocate policies without necessarily losing credibility or the public’s trust.

In this article, we explore the common attributes of political conflicts in which scientific findings take center stage, using the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study, but also drawing on knowledge of long-standing conflicts surrounding climate change and vaccinations. A core to all those conflicts is disinformation, mainly crafted by politically motivated actors, that distorts public perception of scientific evidence. Another core attribute of such conflicts in democratic societies is the public’s legitimate need to be involved in the surrounding policy debates and for dissenting voices to be heard. The fundamental question to be resolved, therefore, is how to differentiate between legitimate democratic critique of scientifically informed policies on one hand and motivated science denial on the other.