The Center for American Progress reports:
A new study finds that scientists are seen as highly competent, and climate scientists in particular have the trust of Americans.
Unfortunately, that isn't seen as a very clickworthy finding—at least in our modern cynical age—so the authors of the study and the news release chose to spin the results as "Scientists Seen as Competent But Not Trusted by Americans." If you search that headline, you'll find thousands of results for articles on and links to this Princeton study.
You'd never guess from the headline or the news release, that when the researchers surveyed "public attitudes toward climate scientists" on a "seven-item scale of distrust," they found "distrust is low."
Frankly, the communication of the actual results of this entire study are abysmal, which is especially ironic since the title of the study is "Gaining trust as well as respect in communicating to motivated audiences about science topics." I'm afraid Princeton has gained neither here.
Related: Scientists Seen as Competent but Not Trusted by Americans
Related Stories
Phys.org reports:
If scientists want the public to trust their research suggestions, they may want to appear a bit "warmer," according to a new review published by Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
The review, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), shows that while Americans view scientists as competent, they are not entirely trusted. This may be because they are not perceived to be friendly or warm.
[...]
Focusing on scientific communication, Fiske and Dupree administered another online survey asking adults to describe public attitudes toward climate scientists specifically to provide a clearer picture of the public's seemingly mixed feelings. The researchers used a seven-scale item of distrust that included motives derived from pilot work on scientists' alleged motives. These included such motives as lying with statistics, complicating a story, showing superiority, gaining research money and pursuing a liberal agenda, among others.
The abstract for the paper can be found here.
Although distrust is low, the apparent motive to gain research money is distrusted. The literature on climate science communicators agrees that the public trusts impartiality, not persuasive agendas. Overall, communicator credibility needs to address both expertise and trustworthiness. Scientists have earned audiences’ respect, but not necessarily their trust. Discussing, teaching, and sharing information can earn trust to show scientists’ trustworthy intentions.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by lajos on Thursday September 25 2014, @09:37PM
as long as we can keep driving our suvs and minivans
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 26 2014, @04:41AM
I suck cock, might've had a sex change, and hate everything anyone could stand for.
-- Gewg_
(Score: 2) by gman003 on Thursday September 25 2014, @09:46PM
I actually skimmed the paper to see if "reporters" were one of the groups in their survey. Unfortunately, they were not.
I'd rate them as completely incompetent and untrustworthy, but maybe that's just me. Or maybe not.
They did include "politicians", "lawyers", "CEOs" and "salespeople", all of whom were ranked as very untrustworthy. I find it interesting that CEOs were actually around the middle for trustworthiness, and very high on competence. Again, if we drop the sample size to "just me", they'd be well below fast food workers and garbage collectors in both rankings.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by strattitarius on Thursday September 25 2014, @10:30PM
But you are judging them by a standard and set of goals that does not seem to be in line with their compensation. To be honest, I am not sure what the average CEO's pay is really based on because some are leading profitable companies and getting rich. Some are leading loser companies and getting rich. Some are breaking laws and tons of ethics and getting rich. Some are just getting by, but still getting rich.
The trend is that CEO's are getting rich no matter the input or output. That's why they are not incompetent. I have no issue with you calling them untrustworthy.
Slashdot Beta Sucks. Soylent Alpha Rules. News at 11.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 26 2014, @12:00AM
a millionaire
Many CxOs are just overpaid hired hands.
If they disappeared and were replaced by one of the many experienced workers, I doubt you'd notice the difference.
Competent?
Leo Apotheker immediately comes to mind.
He was a huge failure at SAP, so, of course, HP hired him and he was a huge failure there.
It goes without saying that he got a giant golden parachute both times.
Ballmer also comes to mind.
If IBM hadn't handed M$ a monopoly in 1981, Ballmer would have been a 2nd-tier bean counter somewhere.
Daryl McBride at SCO was competent?
Jonathan Schwartz at Sun Microsystems was competent?
I don't think so.
If it wasn't for inherited inertia, many CEOs would simply fall on their faces.
[1] Using an apostrophe to make a plural is almost always wrong.
-- gewg_
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Kell on Friday September 26 2014, @02:43AM
So... they're making tons of money while their companies fold? Seems to me like they're just optimising a value function that doesn't happen to include their companies or workers profiting.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 26 2014, @12:19PM
Way to make sociopathy sound like a good thing.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by dpp on Friday September 26 2014, @12:34AM
I suppose it depends on your definition of competent and what it is you're judging them to be "competent at".
Myself, I'd start with - CEO should be competent at performing their job of running the business with outcomes benefiting the company.
Your statement:
"The trend is that CEO's are getting rich no matter the input or output."
Using my example, I'd totally disagree with you that all those CEOs are "competent", rather I'd call many of them "incompetent".
It sounds like your metric to judge a CEO is - Is the CEO making himself money regardless of the outcomes or damage to the company.
So I'd say that there are a lot of incompetent and untrustworthy CEOs out there.
Re: "you don't become a millionaire while incompetent".
I disagree with this as well.
The vast majority of millionaires come from extreme wealth and many are "handed" their success - either directly taking over biz, tons of money/opp to keep trying til something works (surrounding oneself with others who do it), etc.
The fact that the vast majority of millionaires come from money - MANY become CEOs while incompetent. Some remain that way, some with intelligent/competent people around them gently set the incompetent ones aside ( "in title only" ) and let the talented/competent ones run things.
In many cases it's "who you know", "whose family you came from", "what school name was on your resume" - that lands CxOs their jobs.
Not saying they're all incompetent, most likely many are/become, but ... being a millionaire in no way guarantees ones competency got them there.
So I'd say that, as statistics/studies show, most millionaires were "born that way". They didn't "become that" because of their level of competency.
Then again, I don't agree with calling judging someone as "competent" just because they have a lot of money or a title.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday September 26 2014, @07:28PM
I rather think that competent means able to perform properly. It says nothing about intent.
Rather than judging the mentioned CEOs as incompetent, I would decide that the available evidence did not prove that they were competent. But we don't know what they were trying to do. If we did, then we could decide whether they were competent or not. If we were to presume that they were attempting to prosper the company, then many of them were clearly incompetent, but it's not at all clear that that was what they were attempting to do.
To be frank, I consider many of them as quite competent thieves. There is often scant evidence that they devoted much effort in attempting to prosper the company, and in the case of SCOX's Daryl, there's reasonable evidence that he intentionally destroyed the company. (Evidence is not proof, of course.) There's also evidence that he was hired to destroy the company by the Board of Directors. (This is basically the compensation package that he was signed on with, and is thus subject to more than one interpretation. But to my eyes...) So I have a very difficult time considering Daryl as incompetent. Merely as immoral and criminal (though I acknowledge that the last assertion is unproven).
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by dpp on Friday September 26 2014, @10:00PM
In this context, you'd assume the judgement of competency is based upon the job/role.
Since CEO does not equate to - "competent thief", that judgement would be relevant. However, I suppose there's a decent argument to be made that frequently CEO = thief.
Think of it this way. If someone asks, "Is he a competent race car driver?"
Knowing he never shows up at the track and when he does he crashes the car, I'd not answer - "Sure, he plays the flute very well."
The competency judgement is for the expected job/role.
However, I agree completely (per my previous comment) that many of them (CEOs, not race car drivers) are "quite competent thieves". :)
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday September 27 2014, @05:29PM
Indeed, if the question were phrased "Is x a competent CEO?", (assume x is a CEO from the above context) I'd answer "There's good reason to doubt it." My actual judgement would be that he seems to place his self interest above that of the company, and there's no reason to believe that he'd do the job if assigned it. OTOH, one often doesn't know what the actual instructions of the Board to the CEO are. Only what they say they are. There's reasonable evidence of enough corruption in various high places that I don't take the "official assigned role" to be a guaranteed description of the actual assigned role. And there's enough passing around of CEOs that have demonstrably failed in their ostensible role that I have strong doubts that it's their actual role.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 26 2014, @12:17PM
Competence has nothing to do with it. Most millionaires are simply born into it, and told to never touch the principal.
(Score: 2) by Ryuugami on Thursday September 25 2014, @10:14PM
Or as they say, "on a scale of one to ten, that was really stupid".
If you're giving a precise scale, for $DEITY's sake, don't report the result as 'high' or 'low'. Feels like you're telling a joke.
If a shit storm's on the horizon, it's good to know far enough ahead you can at least bring along an umbrella. - D.Weber
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday September 26 2014, @03:07PM
"On a seven item scale, distrust was found to be 2"
Is 2 high or low?
Perhaps the seven items were 'very low / low/ somewhat low / moderate / somewhat high / high / very high' in which case saying it was low would be exactly the same as giving a value of 2...but without the need to the explain what that 2 actually means.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 25 2014, @10:28PM
NO.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 25 2014, @10:45PM
Way of rephrasing that:
Are systemd advocates trusted by sane, competent people who have any SysAdmin experience at all?
NO!
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday September 26 2014, @02:35AM
Are you insane and incompetent? We have the right software for you it's called SystemD! :P
The next version will be renamed HairballcodeD spaghetti version ;-)
(Score: 2) by khallow on Friday September 26 2014, @01:37AM
The Center for American Progress chooses to spin this story as Americans have high trust for climate scientists. Apparently, that high level of trust doesn't extend to making decisions about what do with the SUV.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Friday September 26 2014, @01:50AM
I see that the original research singled out climate scientists for further questioning. But one thing they note, which the Center for American Progress neglects is that smaller groups are usually perceived in the study as more trustworthy than larger groups (all the way down to the individual level). So given that phenomenon, we should expect climate scientists to be viewed as more trustworthy than the larger superset of all scientists. My take is any similar grouping of scientists would also be viewed as more trustworthy than all scientists.