Why do some people completely reject science and how can we deal with this problem?

Q: Why do some people completely reject science and how can we deal with this problem?

Krishna: Yes, rejection of science is a problem, whether it is complete or partial.

We have to deal with all sorts of strange personalities in this world most of the time.

From vaccination refusal to climate change denial, antiscience views are threatening humanity. When different individuals are provided with the same piece of scientific evidence, why do some accept whereas others dismiss it? Psychologists are trying to answer these questions. 

Scientists have identified some of the reasons for this rejection and the main ones are: 

 1) when the information comes from a source science denialists perceive as non-credible 

2) they identify with groups that are anti-science 

3) the information contradicts what they believe is true, good or valuable and their ideology; when the scientific message itself contradicts what recipients consider true, favourable, valuable, or moral; or when there is a mismatch between the delivery of the scientific message and the epistemic style of the recipient. 

4) the information is delivered in a way that conflicts with how they think about things

5) if their favourite people (like parents, grand parents, siblings, partners, friends, or celebrities) do things against science, they too follow them

6) some science and tech people following strange anti-science things themselves giving others the impression that what they are doing is correct.

7)  the motivated rejection of science comes not so much from a lack of scientific literacy but rather from deep-rooted emotions and psychological needs of people.

8) all the above and several other factors influence information processing and the resultant positive or negative consequences.

Let me start with the 6th one first. Whenever I talk about superstitions, some people that oppose science condemning their irrational beliefs mention ISRO ``scientists" following some rituals before launching their rockets, satellites, missions etc. I feel very embarrassed to even think about it. Because I respect ISRO's work culture.

Then I tell the people who  mention these ISRO people, that most of the ISRO 'scientists are techies with BE/B. tech., ME/M.tech. degrees and not real 'trained scientists'.  My conscience pinches me whenever I do this. 

 Some people are anti-science because they don’t see scientists as credible. This happens when scientists’ expertise is questioned, when they are deemed untrustworthy and when they appear biased. Although debate among scientists is a healthy part of the scientific process, many lay people interpret legitimate scientific debate as a sign that those on either or both sides of the issue are not truly experts on the topic.

Scientists are often distrusted because they are seen as cold and unfeeling. Scientists control their emotions to a large extent and don't express them while dealing with people or their research work. Scientists’ objectivity has also been questioned several times, as they are seen as being biased against religion and conservative values like cultural, ritual and social.

Some don't find scientists interesting  because the latter don't do or say things that are familiar  to them and delights them. 

Let me give an example: Once while I was giving a lecture on a science topic, someone in the audience asked me whether I was a fan of the hero the person liked. When I replied in the negative, the person got agitated and started troubling me by abusing science, scientists and everything related to them! How can I appease the person by telling lies that I am his hero's fan too if I am not, to make the person listen to me?

 It is very difficult to deal with irrationality. What has science got to do with a film hero? How is  the person's interest in a film hero related to science? Why did the person connect one   to the other and  reject science? Need I support everybody's favourite film heroes and heroines to make people listen to science and me? Do I appear biased because I don't follow people's favourite heroes? 

I still didn't get  answers to these questions! Can anyone answer them?

Contradictions play a role in rejecting science. People often reject science because of their beliefs, attitudes and values. When scientific information contradicts what people believe is true or good, they feel uncomfortable. They resolve this discomfort by simply rejecting the science.

Some dismiss the abundant evidence for human evolution as incompatible with their faith. Some compromise by saying even evolution is directed by GOD.

For people who have smoked their entire lives, or eaten unhealthy roadside food for several years, the evidence that smoking kills is uncomfortable or the food they have eaten is harmful because it contradicts their behaviours. It is far easier to trivialize the science regarding smoking than to change a deeply ingrained habit.

 Often, scientific information contradicts existing beliefs due to widespread misinformation. Once misinformation has been spread, it is hard to correct, especially when it provides a causal explanation for the issue at hand.

One effective strategy to combat this is prebunking — which involves warning people that they are about to receive a dose of misinformation — and then refuting it so that people will be better at resisting misinformation when they encounter it.

Scientific evidence can also be rejected for reasons beyond the content of the message. Specifically, when science is delivered in ways that are at odds with how people think about things, they might reject the message. For example, some people find uncertainty hard to tolerate. For those people, when science is communicated in uncertain terms (as it often is), they tend to reject it.

Science communicators should therefore try to figure out how their audiences approach information and then match their style. They can use the logic of targeted advertising to try and frame scientific messages in different ways to be persuasive for different audiences.

Debate among scientists is a healthy part of the scientific process, many lay people interpret legitimate scientific debate as a sign that those on either or both sides of the issue are not truly experts on the topic. 

People who don't trust science are people who really don't understand it and its ways of working. This means that distrust in science is necessarily just down to a deficit of knowledge or misunderstanding it in the first place. Recent evidence has revealed that people who reject or distrust science are not especially well informed about it, but more importantly, they typically believe that they do understand the science. Recent work also found that overconfident people who dislike science tend to have a misguided belief that theirs is the common viewpoint and hence that many others agree with them.

Some experts explain the psychology of science rejection by using a tree metaphor. The antiscientific attitudes that the person expresses are like the branches of the tree, as these are what we can readily observe. Education then is like pruning. You can cut off the anti-vax or flat-earth branch with the right arguments, but it will just grow back. That’s because the above-ground branches are nourished and supported by the underground roots, which are deep emotional and psychological needs that the person may not even be fully aware of.

Vested interests also play an important role in climate-science skepticism. Obviously, those involved in the fossil-fuel industry are highly motivated to reject climate change. Likewise, Industrialists desire to maintain the status quo—are resistant to the lifestyle changes required to address global warming. Pundits who benefit from people's ignorance make them believe them by telling false and compelling stories. 

Fears and phobias too paly a role. Going back to  tree metaphor, it’s likely that anxiety is the taproot that anchors the whole tree of attitudes in place. For instance, research suggests that antivax attitudes draw on a deep well of anxiety and disgust regarding hospitals and medical procedures.

While personal identity defines who you are as an individual, social identity defines who you are in terms of what groups you belong to. Thus, another motivation to reject science is to signal group membership.

The advent of social media has seen the rise of online communities that promote all sorts of science denying positions, from the Flat Earth Society to several others. Thus, while expressing belief in conspiracy theories can bolster one’s personal identity, it can also provide a social identity, as a member of an elite group with inside knowledge that others cannot or will not understand.

People vary in how interested and willing they are to listen to different types of information. A powerful force that shapes the types of information individuals expose themselves to or actively seek out is their social identities. Substantial research on social identity theory has found that the social groups to which individuals belong or feel a connection exert strong influences on their response to information perceived to be identity relevant. If a group interested in movies  is bombarded with science information, without making the right connections between the two, will totally reject science because it is against their group's interests.

Social identities play a role in antiscience attitudes and behaviours. Those who have been underrepresented in science or who have historically been exploited in scientific experiments [e.g., Black and Indigenous individuals]  are more skeptical of science.

In addition to demographic groups, people can identify with interest groups that shape antiscience attitudes. For example, those who strongly identify as video gamers are more likely to reject scientific evidence regarding the harms of playing video games . These findings are broadly consistent with research and models in science communication that describe how people tend to reject scientific information incompatible with their identities. Work on cultural cognition has highlighted how people contort scientific findings to fit with values that matter to their cultural identities . Relatedly, work on identity-protective cognition shows that people selectively dismiss scientifically determined risk assessments that threaten their identity.

Some people don't even know what scientific method is, what evidence is and it s importance and think it is just a type of opinion of scientists!

When scientific information contradicts people’s existing beliefs about what is factually true, they can reject even the strongest scientific evidence, because harbouring conflicting cognitions is aversive. This phenomenon is known as cognitive dissonance.  Dissonance elicits discomfort. Given this aversive feeling, people are motivated to resolve the contradiction and eliminate the discomfort in a number of ways, such as rejecting the new information, trivializing the topic, rationalizing that there is no contradiction, or revising their existing thought. People tend to resolve dissonance using the path of least resistance. 

It is easier to reject a piece of scientific information than to revise an entire system of existing beliefs one has accumulated and integrated into a worldview over the years, often reinforced by social consensus. One’s existing beliefs can be based on valid scientific information, previously accepted but now outdated scientific information, or scientific misinformation. As an example of dissonance arising from believing outdated scientific information, for thousands of years, it was a widespread belief that Earth was the center of the universe and that the Sun orbited Earth . To a person who had always believed the Sun revolved around Earth, it was far easier to reject the notion of Copernican heliocentrism than to overhaul the geocentric model of the universe, which was previously accepted and felt subjectively coherent enough, and thus in no obvious need for revision.

In addition to rejecting new information from scientific progress and updates, individuals might possess beliefs that contradict scientific evidence due to the spread of misinformation. The last few years have witnessed a proliferation of fake news which confuses people a lot. Once misinformation has spread, it is difficult to correct, and there is often a continued influence of the misinformation even after it has been retracted. No amount of right explanations can correct previously held wrong notions.

 Not only do people possess beliefs about whether things are true or false, they also evaluate things as desirable or undesirable (attitudes) , important or unimportant (values) , and right or wrong (morals) . Some moral views are at odds with particular kinds of scientific information, resulting in morally fueled rejection. For example, people who endorse the moral significance of naturalness and purity are prone to resisting scientific technologies and innovations seen as tampering with nature. Vaccines and genetically modified food , despite their documented benefits, are often rejected due to perceptions that they are unnatural. 

And  can we ignore the politics played in science education?

People reject science despite using medical science, agriculture, and all technology derived from science.

Science vastly improved the quality of life for humans today. Yet, there are many people who adamantly reject some aspects of science, despite enjoying the fruits of scientific progress in their daily lives.

Strange!

But, given the emotional basis for motivated science rejection, it’s clear that an attempt to educate true believers about the errors in their ways are doomed to fail. Instead, experts say that we need to be sensitive to psychological motivations for rejecting science and instead frame our communication in ways that work around the emotional roots for their beliefs.

Scientists lack credibility when they are perceived as inexpert, untrustworthy, or biased. To tackle emerging concerns about the quality of scientists’ work and their perceived expertise, trustworthiness, and objectivity, scientists need to improve the validity of their research.

Scientists also need to communicate to the public that substantive debate and disagreement are inherent to the scientific process and signal a healthy scientific landscape, a point often missed by lay people who expect a given scientific finding to be absolute.

Communicators need to integrate culture and other things people associate themselves with   into science education strategies. People also tend to reject scientific information when it is delivered in ways that mismatch their epistemic styles. This basic principle has theoretically straightforward implications for what counteractive strategies to use: Identify the recipient’s style, and match it. 

To reduce distrust in scientists due to their perceived coldness , when scientists communicate their findings and recommendations, they should improve the unfavourable impressions by intentionally conveying interpersonal warmth and highlighting the communal nature of science.

Well, I am trying all this in my own way. You yourself can understand how much hard work goes into this. And even after putting great effort, some people are extremely difficult to deal with and drain all your energy and resources to the extent that you feel the inadequacy of the present tactics and feel the need for more!

What is that 'more'? Can someone provide me with that magical 'more'?