1 August
Dear Karen Douglas,
A few days ago, I was enjoying my morning latte at my local coffee shop when I overheard a conversation between four men at the table next to me. They were talking about climate change and government inaction. It was interesting stuff. (So I hope they’ll forgive me for eavesdropping.)
After a few exchanges, one of them raised a hairy question, which I paraphrase here: “Can we actually trust the climate models? After all, meteorologists are unable to forecast the weather beyond several weeks. And economists are always getting their predictions of growth and inflation wrong. Aren’t decadal-long models of the entire planet even more uncertain?”
To my surprise, the mood and debate suddenly soured. The man was quickly chastised by his friends. Insults and barbs were flung. And emotionally-charged words like “denialist”, “conspiracist”, “far-right”, and “fake-news” reared their heads. Yet none of the other three men had bothered to dignify the original question with a thoughtful response.
I was shocked because it seemed like an earnest question to me. Of course, there are important differences between weather prediction and climate modeling. The nuances are similar to that of studying coin flips. It is easier to speak about distributions and averages than of individual results. This distinction, however, is not obvious to people who do not spend their days inside these models.
But the conversation was symptomatic of broader societal problems. We are too quick to denigrate and ostracize those who do not agree with us. Flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, and other conspiracy theorists persist in part because governments, scientists, communities, and educators have not done their part in the communication problem. It doesn’t help either that public trust in institutions is poor. (And the fact that statisticians are still fighting against the misuse and abuse of p-values and statistical-significance is worrying.) [1]
Moreover, many communities remain fearful and resentful of governments, scientists, and doctors. And we need only look at history and the cumulative injustices to remember why. A McGill University article writes, for instance, that “many blame the [Tuskegee] study for impacting the willingness of black individuals to participate in medical research today.” If my grandparents and great-grandparents were deeply mistreated, I too would be distrusting. It is easy to forget the long, winding lines of history that shape our predispositions. [2]
Clearly, we have a lot of work ahead of us to nurture discourse, restore trust, and minimize conspiracy. But it seems to me a terribly difficult thing to achieve. It requires both a micro- and macro- approach. Everybody, from scientists to journalists to the layperson, has a role to play. Could it be that society is simply too large today to bridge the gap between people of different opinions and beliefs?
Kate, as I understand, you are the expert on social psychology and conspiracy theories. So I suspect you’ve thought about these broad issues most deeply. Is there anything we can draw from your field to fight these issues in a timely, meaningful, and cost-effective way? How do we mend the divide between the clusters of people that remain so polarized? What practical initiatives can we keep in mind?
Thanks for listening to my spill.
Warm regards,
Tobias
Footnotes:
[1] Statisticians issue warnings over misuse of P values. <https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2016.19503>
[2] 40 Years of Human Experimentation in America: The Tuskegee Study. <https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/history/40-years-human-experimentation-america-tuskegee-study>
Tobias Lim
Tobias Lim