[jdw64]

Why do problems caused by anti scientific behavior occur in a country like the United States, which has so many outstanding scientists? From a third party perspective, I wonder if it's because, as stratification has progressed in the US, distrust of the social class that scientists belong to has led people to deny even their achievements.

Why does distrust arise toward the institutions and hierarchies that speak for science? There is distrust of the universities, government agencies, media, pharmaceutical companies, and big tech that those scientists belong to. And that distrust turns science from a matter of conclusion into a matter of identity, based on 'who said it' rather than what the evidence shows.

In fact, 42% of US graduate degree holders trust scientists, but only 21% of high school graduates do [1] But when you think about it, governments, state agencies, and even universities themselves are not actively trying to improve this. Maybe humans are beings who create hierarchies and live within identities regardless of the truth. Some people think humans built civilization because farming created a need for labor, but I sometimes wonder if instead, people gathered around a certain identity (whether religious or otherwise), and then farming began in order to feed that labor force. That ideal I always heard as a child, a world where all people become one, without class, race, or discrimination, might just be something that the human species can never truly possess.

[1]https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20244/public-perceptions-of-sc...

[coryrc]

> But when you think about it, governments, state agencies, and even universities themselves are not actively trying to improve this

They are, all the time, doing outreach. It's just as Isaac Asimov said:

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'

The origin story the government brainwashes everyone through public schools is partly to blame. There are people challenging it, but mostly they end up pushing for a different form of anti-intellectualism :(.

[jdw64]

I disagree with Isaac Asimov on that point. The reason is that professors and universities have failed to communicate that knowledge persuasively to the public. In other words, it's establishment science. They ignore opinions that oppose corporations, and they give grants to research that suits corporate tastes. This pattern keeps appearing in the United States. So it seems that public experience and word of mouth have created opposition to scientists. I know a few examples of this. The 'lead' crisis is one such case.

In fact, some academic societies are deeply tied to corporations and operate in alignment with their direct interests. I think the accumulation of such cases has led to public distrust. I don't think it's any single party's fault. Both sides are just doing what feels right within their own identities. Scientists resist corporations to fulfill their own self actualization and curiosity, and the public simply hates those corrupt corporations. I'm not saying that all scientists are on the side of corporations. It's just that when the achievements of certain scientists are publicized, the ones with the megaphone are the corporate scientists. It's a complicated issue

[coryrc]

The Scopes trial? What was "corporate" about evolution?

The Salem witch trials.

McCarthyism

And "Universities" are the mouthpieces of corporations? The people keep electing politicians who are anti-worker-protection laws. They're purposely choosing corporation-owner-friendly legislators. This is not the fault of universities.

Of course it's a complicated issue, but it's not my University friends doing public outreach for kids that's to blame for not doing enough. It's the authoritarian public school system, it's that we allow people to be shitty parents and pass on generational trauma/poverty, it's that the foundational mythos is you can do everything yourself (even though 99.999% of people don't live somewhere nor have the skills to be self-sufficient) because the government and rich owners like keeping people divided.

[jdw64]

In a society flooded with knowledge, we cannot know everything, so we construct our arguments from fragmented information. In that regard, an example that supplements my argument is the case of the Trump administration and Columbia University in 2025. Harvard resisted, but I don't think every university did.

[jdw64]

However, in the essence of your argument, I sometimes sense a hint of elitism. Your logic is very solid and rational. If I entered your area of expertise, I probably wouldn't even be able to engage with you on any logical level. And I'm not trying to win an argument in the first place, but I don't think you should frame things as 'the public was ignorant' using the witch trials as a pretext.

We all become 'the public' in some context.

Were the witch trials really a problem of the public? The church and judicial authorities monopolized the knowledge of the Bible and used it as a tool to maintain ruling order. Couldn't there be a perspective that sees it the other way around, that the elites used the public as a tool instead? When you study medieval European history, education was handled by the church. The authority to identify 'witches' ultimately rested with the church, and that actually makes me think that the public was the educated one.

Regarding the Scopes Trial, frankly, I don't know much about it. So I can't offer a lengthy rebuttal. I can't casually criticize something I don't know about.

But I think your comment shows how the problem of stratification that we're thinking about actually applies

[fluoridation]

Nah, I don't agree. I don't see how the US is special in this regard, yet anti-vaxers, flat earthers, fundies, conspiracy nutjobs, sovereign citizens, and every other flavor of anti-intellectual crank are a distinctly US phenomenon.

[coryrc]

And what's worse, like an infectious person, we're sending out that corruption into other countries. We're actively funding and sending people to stoke homophobia in Africa, our idiots are indoctrinating others online to work against their own interests.

[jdw64]

Very occasionally, I think I'm being rational, but they probably see me as just as irrational as I see them

[directevolve]

Since 1974, when science increasingly underwrote policy, it’s become entwined with politics through the EPA, climate change, treatment of gender and sexuality, public health, mandatory teaching of evolution, and “critical race theory.”

Conservatives don’t have as much of a problem with science when it avoids “impact science” and sticks to topics that don’t conflict with church teachings or business interests.

But trust in science has never been universal. Trust in institutions and experts had to be built painstakingly over generations. The Social Transformation of American Medicine is a great account of this process for American doctors.

[beowulfey]

There is active propaganda against scientists and institutions; and scientists are decent but not excellent communicators. They lost the communication war and now the general public is very distrusting of science.

[scwoodal]

My parents have been religiously listening to the likes of Rush Limbaugh since the early 90's on a daily basis. I recall listening to it on our drive into work together.

30+ years of hearing whatever the tv/radio host du jour says, without critical thinking, taking it at face value, 8+ hours every day. In the car to work, radio on while working, drive home, and then turn the TV on till bed time.

Then take a drive through rural America and see that education isn't an important pillar.

I went to college (neither of my parents did) and made it out with a different perspective, but my brother did not. He peddles in conspiracy theories and doesn't believe humans landed on the moon. My father regrets sending me to college.

[inigyou]

Dismantling the education system has been a political project decades in the making.

[doctorhandshake]

My personal theory is that many responsible for teaching science in the K-12 grades are not doing a great job of communicating that science is a process for finding truth. Definitely not laying this at teachers’ feet - standardized testing and curricula, overcrowded classrooms, underfunded schools etc all contribute I’m sure, but I get the impression from talking to even well educated people that they were taught science much like they were taught math: there is a right answer, your job is to regurgitate it.

Biology in particular but also chemistry is often taught with rote memorization at its heart, and it’s easy to lose sight while getting the current thinking jammed into working memory that in the bigger picture, science is a process. Fast forward to various stages of adulthood, and when ‘science’ (not actually a thing as a whole but presented as such in the media), in light of new information, changes course or updates its priors on something you’d accepted as fact, and you might perceive scientists, a group of whom you may know none, as condescending and overconfident. In fact scientists disagree over everything and doubt way more than the public would believe but that’s often a footnote to the way the story of the scientific process is presented.

[jdw64]

I deeply agree with your statement.

In fact, I think science teaches a specific methodology and a specific mental model for viewing the world. However, the scientific method is a shareable verification procedure, whereas scientists' mental models are fragmented depending on individuals or schools of thought.

So I think modern science is a collection of elaborately designed mental models for interpreting phenomena.

Those mental models differ from person to person, and when you read the writings of various scientists or prominent figures, you realize that even for the same theory, their interpretations are slightly different. Anyway, I've gone off on a tangent.

I am an uneducated person, so it's hard for me to speak carelessly, but as you said, we often tend to overlook the fact that when we talk about something being 'scientific,' it's spoken of as if there is a single correct answer. And as that standardized version gets talked about as if it were the 'truth,' the essence gets diluted. I think you have a point there.

Thanks for giving me a perspective I hadn't considered. So being a 'Doctor' really does make you different

[doctorhandshake]

Thanks I am not a doctor - that’s an old music nom de guerre

[convolvatron]

this is a huge point of frustration to me. the anti-science populist is resentful that science has claimed the mantle of authority to decide what is right. but all of the scientists I know personally, while they have a massive background context about phenomenon aren't claiming any such thing. they are struggling with methodological problems and just hoping to get an interesting glimpse about what's actually going on and show others. its basically forbidden in all the fields to use the word truth with a capital 'T'. I'm sure there are purely political and excessively egoistic scientists. but for the majority their relationship with the polity has been captured and twisted by .. I guess parasites?

[jdw64]

First, I'll give you an upvote. However, when we talk about things, we always look for the good people around us, and when we talk about our own identity or the people we admire, we tend to see only the good side. I understand your frustration and anger, and I believe that the vast majority of people are good. But aside from that, there have been cases where scientists acted because of corporate greed. There's DuPont's PFAS, and there's the tobacco industry. The moral corruption of a small number of such people affects the image of the vast majority to which that small number belongs, after all

[1auralynn]

We don't pay teachers enough to entice people who are really good at science to teach at the K-12 level. There are some who do of course, but to make it a viable career choice for a talented person, we just need to pay better salaries (and vastly improve working conditions)

[JumpCrisscross]

> Biology in particular but also chemistry is often taught with rote memorization

I’m guessing with high confidence none of the parents who are busy getting their kids sick got even this.

[doctorhandshake]

It may be a correlation - I don’t have data - but I have some experience with ivy educated adults rejecting modern medicine and science with scorn for the perceived arrogance of doctors and scientists.

[JumpCrisscross]

> I have some experience with ivy educated adults rejecting modern medicine

Could they answer basic, and by basic I mean high-school level, chemistry or biology questions? (More pointedly, were they admitted in the free and clear, or are they legacy?)

[cj]

I hate blaming things on social media, but I think that's at the center of it.

Once you start pausing on anything related to anti-vax or anti-science, you'll start seeing more and more people talking about alternative views.

And soon those alternative views are all you see, and those alternative views start feeling like mainstream views. And then you become confused when you're at a dinner party and no one agrees with your stance on vaccines.

I don't think it's any more complicated than that.

And it doesn't help that anti-vax views are spread with the support of bogus science. Anti-vaxxers don't view themselves as anti-science.

[ruicraveiro]

I don't hate putting a lot of blame on social media, just as much as I blame the tobacco companies for a lot of lung cancer. Put differently, social media companies are the tobacco companies of the mind.

[mpol]

In Europe we actively pushed the crazies to emigrate to the US. We had so many crazy religious people that we got tired of them. They went to the US and we thought we got rid of them, but now they are back with a vengeance.

[ruicraveiro]

I really can't tell if you are serious or just trolling. Assuming the latter, I'd be laughing out loud if the consequences weren't so tragic.

[ruicraveiro]

I won't answer your questions, but I think you'll find a lot of answers in Sapiens and Nexus, both books from Yuval Noah Harari. They explain a lot about the fantastic questions that you are posing.

[dessimus]

>Why do problems caused by anti scientific behavior occur in a country like the United States, which has so many outstanding scientists?

Simple answer, consider the normal distribution bell curve, the more outstanding scientists we have, means the bell curve shifts up to cover the larger population, not to the right. So if the US has a longer tail on high end of scientific reasoning, it also requires a longer tail on the low end, too.

Another way to think about it, the world's 1st trillionaire isn't bringing the bottom up, if anything, it's very much doing the opposite.

[thomastjeffery]

The fact that there are so many people standing for a pro-science position is precisely the right circumstance for this situation.

The GOP has fully adopted the alt-right playbook. Here's how it works:

1. Publicly announce that you hold an overtly bad position.

2. Reasonable people begin to argue with you.

3. Bicker with them about it instead of arguing.

4. Illustrate that your in-group is divided from their out-group along the axis of this position.

5. Profit from the increased engagement.

First, the politicians and talking heads start the cycle. Everyone who considers themselves part of that in-group copies the behavior. Because engagement drives voting, people in power hold overtly bad positions; guaranteeing that people from the out-group will argue with them. The cycle cannot be stopped.

[andrekandre]

that reminds me of the 'war on christmas'... what happened with that anyway, iirc it dropped off around the time of obama's birth certificate...

[lithos]

I would put some blame on medical billing, and the opiods pandemic also made some fertile ground for trolls (a work injury turning family member to an addict, followed by minimal fines and zero jail time for the conspirators that grew the pandemic). Basically a perfect setup to grow mistrust.

Just a couple of decades ago both sides of the US political aisles laughed at antivax style rhetoric, and didn't see forcing the issue further than it was as worth it (us religious grounds and similar).

[Lonestar1440]

You need a certain baseline of power and influence in order to inspire a backlash like what we're seeing in the US.

It happens because so many Scientists are influential, and in particular because of the way that influence was used during COVID.

(I enthusiastically take my vaccines)

[arjie]

Public health operations are hard because often when you reduce total life years lost you also redistribute the life years lost. Take the original Oral Polio Vaccine. I suspect that’s what I received as a child in India but it was also originally used here in the US. It had a small risk of causing paralytic polio. Until the ‘90s the US still had single digit cases of this. Would those people have gotten polio without being vaccinated? Since they lived in a mostly polio-free society probably not.

So “free rider” antivaxxers would find themselves at lower risk in that society because herd immunity would protect them.

My understanding (limited as it is) is that OPV was sold as a “we’re all in this together” thing while simultaneously there were far fewer sources of information and so governments were on a different scale of information distribution than individuals.

But trust in those who speak for science isn’t automatic. Most people could look out and see that claims from these institutions were calibrated to create outcomes and not strictly speak the truth. I sympathize with the institutions because many of the people present inherit a memory of a time when these institutions controlled information spread in a more systemic way.

As an example, it’s pretty well-established (from first person views) that the HHS and their governed orgs claimed that masks don’t work expressly in order to ensure that masks were available for healthcare providers. One could imagine they came from a tradition which praises allowing Coventry to be bombed for the greater good of hiding that we’d broken the German code.

But “we lied to you for the greater good” lands poorly these days because information spreads easier and from multiple sources.

Take the case of COVID-19. Some jurisdictions interpreted restrictions to disallow people from hanging out in groups in public. In Dolores Park (I think, but in some park in SF), we had these little circles you were supposed to stay in. Meanwhile, scientists signed letters endorsing large scale protests.

Stories like this abound. A scientist who wants to stop a dam finds an endangered species that would be destroyed and blocks the dam. Years later it is found to be not a distinct species but genetically identical to another species that is not at threat.

In the past, information control permitted suppression of these things or reframing of them in a different way - the people of Coventry were heroes, even if they were volunteered as sacrifice unknowingly. Today, I think that wouldn’t work so well.

Today, people see scientists as individuals as well. If you believe in disparate impact being the standard of discrimination, it is now worthwhile to ask whether the guys who vote a certain way would vote to sacrifice you for their people.

Anyway, as an aside, GCHQ says today that the Coventry story as told is a myth. Pretty interesting read: https://www.gchq.gov.uk/information/the-bombing-of-coventry-...