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Public trust that scientists work for the good of society is growing
These days, it can seem as if science is under assault. Climatologists are routinely questioned about what's really causing global warming. Doctors can be disparaged for trying to vaccinate children against disease.
But for the U.S. public at large, scientists are generally seen as a trustworthy bunch. In fact, 86 percent of Americans hold at least "a fair amount" of confidence that scientists work for the public good, according to a survey released August 2 by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C.
That's far better than how respondents felt about what motivates politicians (only 35 percent said they were fairly confident that elected officials acted in the public interest), journalists (47 percent) or even religious leaders (57 percent). And that general trust in the goodwill of scientists has grown steadily over the last four years, from 76 percent in 2016.
But confidence falters on narrower questions of scientists' trustworthiness. For instance:
- The kind of scientist matters. Nearly half — 48 percent — thought doctors gave fair and accurate information, but only 32 percent thought the same of medical researchers. Dieticians also were considered trustworthy by 47 percent of respondents, while that number fell to 24 percent for nutrition scientists. Overall, scientists whose work involved engaging with the public tended to be more trusted than those focused on research;
- How research is funded matters. More than half of respondents — 58 percent — said they are less trusting of studies financed by industry. And there's skepticism that scientists reveal all of their industry ties: Fewer than 2 in 10 people thought scientists always disclosed conflicts of interest with industry, or faced stern consequences for failing to do so;
- Sometimes, who is being asked matters. On questions of scientific misconduct, black and Hispanic respondents were more likely than whites to see it as a "big problem." That could reflect wariness due to past cases of experiments being conducted without patients' consent, such as the decades-long Tuskegee Study in which hundreds of black men with syphilis were denied treatment (SN: 3/1/75, p. 134), the Pew report notes. Or it could reflect the fact that, when it comes to environmental justice, these communities are often more likely to be affected by unchecked pollution (SN: 12/6/97, p. 366).
"The issue of trust in scientists is part of a broader conversation that society is having on the role and value of experts," says Cary Funk, the director of Pew's science and society research. "What we wanted to do was get a look at the potential sources of mistrust."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Bot on Saturday August 03 2019, @10:01AM (8 children)
I mean, doubleplus good. We all know that opinion polls > peer review of repeatable experiments
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday August 03 2019, @01:17PM
Considering how the basis of *your* worldview came into being, the irony density in this comment of yours is somewhere between "neutron star" and "black hole with a binge-eating problem."
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday August 03 2019, @03:33PM (6 children)
'Zumi refers to irony in your post. If I may, I'll point out just one flavor of that irony. We've had multiple articles posted on SN, regarding worthlessness of many "research" papers. In various discussions, it has been pointed out that many published papers never do get a peer review - along with reasons for that. Additionally, time and time again, it has been shown that research is NOT repeatable.
As intangible as opinion poll results might be - yes, maybe they are > than peer reviewed research?
To be fair, if I were to kind of shift the emphasis around on the words in your post? Only considering experiments that are actually repeatable, and do get peer review? Yeah, that kind of research beats public opinion to hell and back.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03 2019, @06:50PM (5 children)
Look there is ZERO incentive in science to repeat others' work.
The funding goes to the shiniest and the most novel. It doesn't matter if it actually works, just make it SHINY. And FAST.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03 2019, @10:45PM (1 child)
Capitalism infecting academia. Oddly the capitalist apologists are the ones who bitch about that the most :O
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 04 2019, @04:46PM
No, you can clearly see science going along nicely until about the 1940s when the government got involved after the success of the Manhattan project. Then everything starts going to shit in every single field. The less advanced the field the earlier it devolved into pseudoscience.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03 2019, @10:51PM
Maybe just a little bit. New grad students may be tasked with repeating an experiment.
(Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Sunday August 04 2019, @07:00AM (1 child)
But to do something shiny and novel, you often have to build on other people's work. If a research direction is flawed due to long ago errors, that will reveal itself as lack of progress.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 04 2019, @04:44PM
Yes, it has been revealed. Look at what happened since the "war on cancer" started. After a trillion dollars and a generation of researchers they concluded "cancer is many diseases so there can be no cure". That is what lack of progress looks like, everything gets more difficult to understand vs finding universalities that make it easier to understand.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Saturday August 03 2019, @11:26AM (6 children)
I'm more surprised that about half the people still think journalists are somehow trustworthy and working for the good and betterment of society along with about 1/3 for the politicians.
For Scientists tho it's as noted probably in large dependent on what you do and whom you do it for. If you do research for big Tobacco or someone and conclude it's all great, healthy and cool then your credibility is around zero. That said "... said they are less trusting of studies financed by industry.", that is how a lot of money are coming into it now, via industry and various foundations that are usually started by wealthy industrialists and their families. If it wasn't for them there would be a lot less science and studies going around. As an example for about the last five years or so the projects I worked on have been paid for by a foundation that was started by industrialists (multinational packaging industry). That said none of the science worked on had anything to do with their core business (or even remotely related to their business), still it was industry money and without it things would probably not have gotten done. All they get out of it is their name and our "eternal" thanks, I guess they also get some big tax deductions or something on/in their end.
That people are still dragging up the Tuskegee experiments, etc, is unfortunate. It's not that it, by example, was not bad but it feeds into some form of eternal victimization. It was about 90 years ago since it started now and it's been over with for about 50 years or there about. But then I guess there are people that still feel entitled to slavery reparations to and that was even longer ago. When is the past the past? I guess most if not everyone can drag up some even in the past then as an excuse for victimization.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Saturday August 03 2019, @03:48PM (3 children)
90 years isn't all that long ago, really. I'm 62, and I remember my father's generation, my grandfather's generation, and my great grandfather's generation. That is, I distinctly remember real people who lived through those days. If I were black, if I were from Alabama, then, I may very well have personally known some of the people affected.
But, to add to that sense of victimhood you mention, https://www.thoughtco.com/u-s-governments-role-sterilizing-women-of-color-2834600 [thoughtco.com]
Further, the US, through various aid groups, has been a prime mover in the forced sterilization of women in Africa - and still is. https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/african-women-fight-back-against-forced-coerced-sterilizations [lifesitenews.com]
Reparations? No, I'm not into that. But, simple respect for human rights? I'm into that, sure enough!
(Score: 2) by looorg on Saturday August 03 2019, @05:06PM (2 children)
It could all be relative. 90 years is a fairly long time when it comes to science on/with people. It's about three human generations. Which is a fairly long time. That said it might not really be the core issue at hand here. It might be more about how long can you hold a grudge or have beef with something? Can you have it if you were not personally tested on (or denied treatment for your horrific (un-)diagnosed syphilis infection might be more accurate here). There is probably less then a handful of victims (or test subjects) alive today, the others are some kind of proxy victims? When should they so to speak "get over it".
It's also not a US specific issue really, more or less all of the western world sterilized, or experimented on, people left and right up until about 40-50 years ago for what can today be seen as quite flimsy reasons. But it was "science" at the time. From what I recall now (and it could be wrong) the people involved in the experiment acted as some kind of control group in what happens if you don't get penicillin and just let it run to it's natural conclusion, and the follow up autopsy. Most of them already had syphilis when they joined or got signed up -- so it's not like the doctors injected them with it or did they? More questionable and horrific if they did, but I don't recall that being the case -- but as noted I could be wrong.
Human rights and the respect that follows appear to have a tendency to evolve and change over time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03 2019, @08:25PM
Grudges can easily turn self reinforcing. Just look at how many people want reparations for slavery, or Ireland/North Ireland, or China/Korea/Japan, or Protestant vs Catholic, or Sunni vs. Shia.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday August 04 2019, @01:25AM
Wow.
I mean, I'm just a little astounded that someone could ask this question. Yes, I completely get that the argument over slavery reparations can seem quite distant, with people many generations removed from the situation arguing over its effects and who is culpable.
But the Tuskegee experiments were nowhere near so long ago. No, no subject is still alive. The last one died in 2004 [cdc.gov]. But I'm sure there are lots of people who are still alive who had fathers or uncles or grandfathers involved. Are you seriously questioning whether it's reasonable for such a person to have a bit of suspicion about doctors or researchers? If my uncle or grandfather had been systematically lied to and denied treatment by physicians, I certainly might be suspicious myself. That's not a "grudge." That's prudent and cautious behavior based on someone who was very close to you who had been treated like a human guinea pig.
Yes, though it's important to note that a lot of this experimentation decreased significantly after WWII and the revelations about the Nazis and their experiments. There were still experiments that were unethical by today's standards going on, of course. In any case, I think anyone who had a close relative involved in such a situation even 40 or 50 years ago might have good cause to maintain a bit of suspicion.
Wow, so you're really talking out of your ass here, huh? You are complaining about people holding a grudge, yet you don't even know the details of the study?? Okay, start at the FAQ I linked above. You are correct that men were not deliberately infected at the beginning of the study. That said, at least 50-60 people did subsequently become infected with syphilis, being the wives of the study participants (who were unaware they were married to someone who had been quietly diagnosed with an STD) and children (born with congenital syphilis).
Indeed. But that doesn't mean people who have very close personal relationships with people who were lied to or treated with great disrespect may not continue to have some suspicion. Forget "victimhood" -- we're talking about the fact that your father or uncle or grandfather may have died because of "research" that involved significant deception. It may not be rational, but it's reasonable.
Oh, and just a final note about the slavery issue -- keep in mind that some people have children very late in life. As of last year, the U.S. government was still paying a Civil War pension [reason.com] to a child of a Civil War veteran. I remember a few years back reading a story about the fact that there were several of those children still receiving benefits. And I remember reading an interview with some of them talking about their memories of their fathers. I doubt there are many (or any) children of slaves still remaining, but there are likely MANY who can remember their grandfathers talking about a first-hand experience.
I'm not arguing in favor of reparations by the way. But it's understandable that some wounds can still be very personal after a long time. And let's not forget the revival of serious racism/segregation/Jim Crow in early to mid 20th century. That stuff is well within memory of many people still alive. It may not be slavery, but I heard a story just a few months ago from a living person I was chatting with about how he had almost been lynched as a child. Seriously.
I'm not saying things haven't changed. But it's understandable why people might still have serious reservations accepting that everything suddenly is perfect and racism just dissipated magically into the ether.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03 2019, @05:48PM (1 child)
50% of people watch MSM where they constantly harp on how they are the fourth estate keeping government honest?
50% of people remember a different time when journalism was a somewhat respectable position (eg when Tintin and Superman came out)?
I've never lionized journalists, but there used to be a time when media competed on quality, and quality media had courageous journalists working for them. Now with the democratization of media, it's all about being shrill and playing to your filter bubbled audience, get the clicks, likes, retweets and ad views, avoid shit storms, and fuck the truth.
For example, I remember what CNN used to be, and its current state makes me sad, but unfortunately they are in the business of making money, not disseminating rational facts and encompassing analysis. Can't dwell upon the past.
(Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Sunday August 04 2019, @07:08AM
I remember their night vision and weapons footage from the first Gulf War. I'm sure they were lying to us then already. It was just a different kind of lying.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03 2019, @12:43PM (4 children)
Unfortunately most of the people calling themselves scientists these days are something else. I call them "researchers", and I do not trust them. What they do is some mix of cargo culting, p-hacking, and committing strings of logical fallacies so they can conclude whatever gets the most papers published.
This can't really be considered fraud, because those are the enforced standards they train each other to follow. Most don't even know there is anything wrong with their behavior, others do it " to survive". You simply can't compete publication-wise if you do real science. It is much more difficult and slow than just running a study no line will ever try to exactly replicate (that wouldn't be "novel") checking if two groups are different (they always are if you spend enough to get your sample size up) and then concluding you may have discovered they key to cancer or whatever.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 03 2019, @12:46PM (3 children)
I don't. That's the whole reason behind their results needing to be reproducible. Faith has no place in science.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03 2019, @01:17PM (2 children)
Yes, scientists reproduce each others work. That is not what is going on with this other practice I call "research". Doing direct replications is actively discouraged. In the rare cases they are done the results are only " reproduced" something like 25% of the time. And that is using a weak definition of reproduced that only considers whether the results are statistically significant (a BS concept to begin with) in the same direction.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03 2019, @10:56PM
Best thing is if you get a degree duplicating research that was done 35 years ago, but by this time your committee and their friends on the program committees have forgotten about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 04 2019, @08:20AM
My sole disagreement with your post would be in calling them "researchers". I would say that people doing research can still be honest.
Heinlein called them "bottle-washers and button counters", but that is a bit of a mouthful. "Quack" has the correct connotations, but belongs to the medical profession. We need another word. Best I can come up with is "pretenders".
(Score: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday August 03 2019, @04:38PM (10 children)
After looking over this (including the detailed results, which go on for many pages at the first link the in summary), I'm not sure that this says anything about "science" or "scientists." I'm not sure that the people who conducted this poll know what "science" even is, let alone the general public.
Look at these summary results:
Sorry, but WHAT?!?
Doctors are not "scientists." At least, the vast majority of them are not. They are medical practitioners, trained with a bunch of skills for a career in practice, not research. Many, many studies over the years show that the vast majority of doctors are not competent at interpreting even basic research results and statistics (certainly not doing their own). And dieticians are not "scientists," either. (Seriously?!) A carpenter may be very skilled, might even go to carpentry school -- that doesn't make him a "scientist." Or for an even better example, plenty of engineers have as much education and training as doctors, but most of them are not "scientists" either. (And -- sidenote -- what the hell is wrong with our culture when for no apparent reason doctors are assumed to be "scientists" but other people with more education and more scientific training like most engineers are not? Even dieticians?!)
What most actual scientists refer to as "scientists" are people who are active researchers/investigators in science. They aren't just "practicing medicine" or making up dietary plans based on some guidelines -- they are helping to create medicine or nutritional guidelines and test them using investigative techniques and scientific research technology.
So, when one of the critical findings of this study is that "scientists whose work involved engaging with the public tended to be more trusted than those focused on research" and their examples are that people trust doctors but not medical researchers, and they trust dieticians but not nutritional scientists, what this poll is actually clearly tell us is that the public does NOT trust actual scientists. Furthermore, they (and apparently the people running this poll) mostly don't know what a "scientist" is. And, not surprisingly, they probably don't trust "scientists" because they don't understand what scientists actually do.
Where did this poll ask people what their opinion was of -- oh, I don't know -- physicists? Chemists? Even engineering researchers? You know, actual scientists doing scientific research? Oh wait, it doesn't.
Meaningless.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03 2019, @05:18PM (5 children)
Doctors wear the white coat like scientists do in the movies.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday August 03 2019, @05:58PM (4 children)
They also frequently check a special box so they can be called "doctor" in social contexts, but most actual scientists with earned research doctorates are called "fake doctors" or pretenders if they attempt to do the same. (Note that I'm NOT saying that we should call researchers "doctor" in social contexts either -- to me, it seems silly to give anyone a title in a situation outside of contexts where their title is meaningful.)
And about the "white coat" thing -- yeah, doctors even have a ceremony thing [wikipedia.org] for it, treating it like a cult you joined. Weirdos. Actual scientists who still wear white lab coats do so for utilitarian purposes and don them without ceremony.
There's a lot of pretentiousness around the whole medical profession, which appears to seep into the general public's opinion that they must be "more important" than they are.
(And no, I'm not disparaging all doctors. And I'll freely admit the good ones are amazing and serve an incredibly important function in society. But the pretentious insistence on titling and silly things like white coat ceremonies actually makes me respect the overall profession less.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03 2019, @06:13PM (1 child)
The only thing smarter than a doctor is a doctor with grey hair and glasses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03 2019, @06:56PM
*male
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03 2019, @08:58PM (1 child)
Better a bit of pretentiousness than the heaps of self-deprecation in the IT field. Getting some of the respect lawyers and physicians get would be nice in reflection of our responsibilities and the education, formal and continuing, the field requires.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday August 04 2019, @02:43AM
I take your point, but this pretention is not without cost. It leads to overconfidence, something that can be disastrous in an emergency life-or-death situation. Decisiveness and reasonable confidence is fine and necessary for someone in that profession. Believing that you gain some sort of magical powers when you wear a white coat (or having your patients believe so) is probably a major contributor to the many preventable medical mistakes that happen.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday August 03 2019, @06:10PM
I call it scientism. It's the religion of a whole bunch of people who think they aren't religious.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday August 03 2019, @09:10PM (1 child)
It looks as if the survey treated the word "scientist" to mean "people in science-based professions". With this meaning, the article makes more sense.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday August 04 2019, @02:55AM
Except where are the physicists or chemists or engineers? Or biologists or virologists or epidemiologists, if we're going to talk about actual scientists who practice in the field of medicine?
Or for that matter, the carpenters? Most carpenters I know (and I actually know a few) are pretty diehard empiricists. They hit nails in ways that work. If they hit a nail in a way that doesn't work, they avoid that. They learn through experience and construction what works well and is durable vs. what isn't.
I'm not being facetious here. I literally believe that carpenters do as much and perhaps more practicing of the "scientific method" and using empirical results as doctors and dieticians. Given what I know of the inability of doctors to interpret study data (from repeated studies on this), I would trust a doctor's judgment about the same as a carpenter's in their ability to come to a novel empirical conclusion.
Why not accountants? They certainly have method to what they do. And math is the underpinning of science.
I'm not saying one can't have a broader conception of "scientist" than what one does in a lab, but medicine has provably been roughly 25% science and 75% lore for a lot of its recent history (even more lore prior to that), which is the reason behind the evidence-based medicine movement in recent decades.
So no, I'd say the entire field of medicine has only gradually been transforming into a science and still has a long way to go. And the doctors who practice is certainly are not generally scientists by any rational measure.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 04 2019, @02:11AM
Great write up.
My take was "People trust PR people more than they trust people who do stuff."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03 2019, @04:42PM (6 children)
True probably for the average farmer, teacher, civil engineer, doctor, nurse, firefighter, etc.
But I'm not sure I do for my IT job. I work to get paid. What I do does make some people's lives easier and save money for organizations but honestly I don't think my job really has that much to do with the good of society. Maybe very very slightly. Those organizations could save even more money by doing other things...
Well at least I'm not rowing backwards even if I'm not rowing forwards by much...
e.g. I'm not some HFT "frontrunning" trader or similar... Nor am I some research scientist who publishes crap just to get paid, increasing the amount of shit to signal ratio. Scientists may see far standing on shoulders of giants but they're not going to see far drowning under tons of shit research...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03 2019, @05:06PM (1 child)
As long as it is not destructive then it is for the good of society. If you don't feel enough civic fulfillment you can volunteer, go clean up trash, work on reducing your energy footprint. As techies maybe the best thing we can do is support freedom respecting software. Not only is it better for users but it usually will have less power hungry overhesd, another design goal people should consider.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 04 2019, @12:52AM
Which means that the people working for Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and other such companies are not working for the good of society, since they are working to build systems of mass surveillance that threaten individual freedoms and all of democracy and proprietary software that denies users their freedoms.
Many IT jobs are just like that, but especially so with things like facial recognition technology. The researchers working on that gladly give corporations and governments more and more power to conduct mass surveillance, but of course, they do not work to develop countermeasures to the surveillance. Thus, their actions are simply destructive.
That's right, but only a small amount of techies do so. The entire industry needs to be nuked from orbit.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03 2019, @06:41PM (3 children)
If what I work on works no one notices and life goes on. If what I work on did freeze up and die it would probably cause a global recession on at least the scale of what happened in 2008. No stress at all on that one....
A previous job I worked on if that system did not work correctly 911 calls would fail and people could die.
Another job I worked on if the system did not work correctly other businesses would go out of business and would affect thousands of peoples livelyhood.
Another job I worked on helped keep the roads safer and bugged drivers to get some sleep.
Do not underestimate the systems many people work on and what they do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03 2019, @07:31PM (2 children)
The only reason it could cause a recession is because the economic system is so fragile to begin with (it is basically ponzi scheme bubbles forming on prior ponzi scheme bubbles). Is your software one that is tending to one of these bubbles?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 04 2019, @12:33AM (1 child)
It would cause it because it funds thousands of businesses. It is called fractional reserve banking. The amounts that flow through that system would fund large countries governments. But it is not really 'the banks' money. It is other peoples money and they move it around to keep your bank account looking like it has money in it. In the US it is called the federal reserve rate.
Do not underestimate this system and how it has created and shapes our way of life. Collapse it, and it would be *chaos*. Remember too big to fail? They meant it. I thought they were being hyperbolic when I first heard that BS line. But now working inside the system. Holy molly guacamole. I personally think these mega banks should be sliced into thousands of smaller ones. The risk is just too big.
Without this system in place the place you work for would not be able to pay your salary. They just would not have the funds for it. It is a pity that most of this sort thing is not until you reach macro economics 4xx classes. It really would help people better understand the creature we created in 1913.
To call it a ponzi scheme is not quite the right word for it. That is just hyperbole but this system is subject to some interesting things. It has stabilized what we do in the world like nothing else. Just look to bitcoin for the wild gestations of what an unregulated currency looks like. Take for example deflation. If you have borrowed money for a car or a house or a credit card you should never want to see deflation. A unstable currency creates that all the time. Where cash hording is more profitable.
Fragile not the right word either. The system can withstand some serious pounding. But the system I work on if it did not work correctly would cause massive damage. But not at the bank level. At your pocketbook level. Your job or whoever you work for just would not be able to pay you. Why not the bank level? We have already given them all of our money... Then turn around as soon as we get any and give it right back to them somehow. EIther buy buying stuff from a store (who gives it to a bank). Or direct deposit (right into a bank). etc ect etc... They fart around with more money in a month than you and your entire family will ever play with. Even if your somehow related to someone like bill gates. Even that is off by a factor of 15x. That is just 1 bank and 1 division. There are a few dozen others just as big.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 04 2019, @01:04AM
What about "check kiting permitted by the government"?