Science, Art, Litt, Science based Art & Science Communication

Why do people deny evidence based facts?

Yesterday a strange thing happened. I was telling some people on a social media site that street food is not safe when somebody is having it. Most of the people that were with me were youngsters. But both youngsters and adults alike dismissed it by saying that they themselves eat street food regularly or their grandfathers were eating it for the past 20 years and nothing serious happened to them. They said what I said was an alarmist statement and not true.

Not true? I gave them lots and lots of evidence. Showed them research papers, media reports, but most of them said they would stick to their belief that street food 's safe because it was their own experience that it 's safe!

Hmmm!

What ignorance brings is total devastation. It misleads people. But we should not use the word ignorance while dealing with people!

Doesn't media say .... some of these street tea vendors use synthetic milk? Research says synthetic milk is not milk but it is entirely a different component with a high degree of adulteration to increase the volume of milk and thereby the profit. Generally it is a mixture of water, pulverized detergent or soap, sodium hydroxide, vegetable oil, salt and urea. The adulterants like detergents in milk, synthetic components, urea, caustic soda, formalin leads to catastrophic effects on health if taken for a long time as it can cause severe health problems like food poisoning, gastrointestinal complications, impairments, heart problems, cancer or even death.

Even other things people eat might contain several contaminants. People get wide food borne diseases with them (1).

Let us see some of the hazards now (2)

Examples of biological hazards include:

Bacteria, e.g. salmonella, E. coli, listeria and campylobacter.
Fungi, e.g. yeasts and moulds.
Viruses, e.g. norovirus.

These microorganisms can cause foodborne illnesses, including food poisoning and intoxication.

Chemical

Chemical hazards occur when naturally occurring or human-made substances contaminate food. In a street food business, chemical hazards may occur due to cross-contamination, i.e. storing or spraying cleaning products near food and preparing food on surfaces where chemicals have been.

Examples of chemical hazards include:

Toxins produced by animals, plants and microorganisms, e.g. mycotoxins (produced by fungi).
Unintentionally added chemicals, e.g. cleaning chemicals.
Intentionally added chemicals to food but could be hazardous if used in excess quantities, e.g. flavourings and colourings. There is also a risk of deliberate contamination at public events.

Eating food contaminated with chemicals can result in immediate harm to the consumer. It can also cause long-term health effects if exposed to the hazard over time.

Physical

Physical hazards are foreign materials, objects and extraneous matter that can enter food during preparation, cooking and serving but may also be in raw ingredients. In street food businesses, these may occur due to poor personal hygiene but can also come from packaging, poorly maintained equipment and pests.

Examples of physical hazards include:

Natural hazards – Occur naturally in food, e.g. fruit pips and stones, bones in meat and fish and shells from nuts.
Unnatural hazards – Should not be present in food, e.g. stones, human hair, fingernails (including false fingernails), jewellery, plastic, glass, animal droppings, metal and wood.

These types of hazards can cause injuries to the mouth, teeth and gums. In some cases, physical contaminants can even result in choking, especially in the very young and the elderly. Some can be generally unpleasant to find in food, i.e. a hair or plaster.

Allergenic

Allergens are proteins that occur naturally in some foods but can contaminate other foods by cross-contact. These types of hazards can cause allergic reactions in food allergy sufferers. In some cases, there is a risk of anaphylaxis in those with severe allergies.

In a street food business, allergenic hazards may result from using and storing allergen products where non-allergen products are. It can be difficult keeping them separate during the preparation, cooking, display and serving of foods in a relatively small working space.

There are 14 recognised allergens, which include:

Eggs.
Fish.
Milk.
Peanuts (groundnuts).
Celery (all of the plant, including the root celeriac).
Mustard (liquid, powder and seeds).
Tree nuts (almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts etc.).
Sesame (seeds).
Lupin (flower and seeds).
Soybeans.
Cereals (gluten) (oats, rye and barley).
Molluscs (oysters, snails and mussels).
Sulphur dioxide and sulphites.
Crustaceans (crab, prawns and lobster).

The type of allergenic hazards present will depend on the food sold.

There is potential for all types of food hazards in a street food business, depending on the situation, location and food produced.

We might not see these results immediately sometimes - if we consume street food regularly we can get several ailments after several years. But then after a long time you won't even be able to connect your health problems to the street food you consumed years back.

That is what ignorance and denialism does to you.

According to a survey (Executive Summary on National Survey on Milk Adulteration, India 2018) conducted by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), it was highlighted that, in India, approximately 68.7% of milk and milk products marketed do not fulfill the acceptable quality criteria. More than two-thirds of Indian milk is adulterated with items ranging from salt to detergent and may be unsafe to drink, a government watchdog says. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India conducted a survey in 33 states and found that 68.4% of 1,791 milk samples was contaminated. Among the substances found in milk were milk powder, fat, glucose water, apart from harmful chemicals. In urban India, nearly 70% of samples were found to be contaminated, compared with 31% of samples in rural areas. This is what BBC, Indian media, research , surveys say.

Nobody, no street vender will tell you they are using cheap adulterated items to prepare food.

Research outlets, control agencies do tests and try to announce the results through media outlets to educate people. People, atleast the educated ones, should try to consider these things and become cautious.

But ....

For many people, a challenge to their worldview feels like an attack on their personal identity and can cause them to harden their position.

In the psychology of human behaviour, denialism is a person's choice to deny reality as a way to avoid a psychologically uncomfortable truth. Denialism is an essentially irrational action that withholds the validation of a historical experience or event when a person refuses to accept an empirically verifiable reality.

Denial is defined as a cognitive and emotional process by which a person avoids facing aspects of reality, especially when it is difficult to assimilate the details of reality into one's current thinking.

bias, unwillingness to face challenges, uncertainty about what the facts are, tradition, and ritual can all encourage us to ignore reality. One of the biggest barriers to facts is passion, innovation, pride, and intuition.

“Once facts are established, opinions can be formed.” The problem is that while it sounds logical, this appealing assertion is a fallacy not supported by research.

Cognitive psychology and neuroscience studies have found that the exact opposite is often true.

People form opinions based on emotions, such as fear, contempt and anger, rather than relying on facts. New facts often do not change people’s minds.

It is very hard to change someone’s mind and behaviours when they encounter new information that runs counter to their beliefs.

Your worldview, including beliefs and opinions, starts to form during childhood as you’re socialized within a particular cultural context. It gets reinforced over time by the social groups you keep, the media you consume, even how your brain functions. It influences how you think of yourself and how you interact with the world.

For many people, a challenge to their worldview feels like an attack on their personal identity and can cause them to harden their position.

Rejecting What Contradicts Your Beliefs

In an ideal world, rational people who encounter new evidence that contradicts their beliefs would evaluate the facts and change their views accordingly. But that’s generally not how things go in the real world.

Partly to blame is a cognitive bias that can kick in when people encounter evidence that runs counter to their beliefs. Instead of reevaluating what they’ve believed up until now, people tend to reject the incompatible evidence. Psychologists call this phenomenon belief perseverance. Everyone can fall prey to this ingrained way of thinking.

Being presented with facts – whether via the news, social media or one-on-one conversations – that suggest their current beliefs are wrong causes people to feel threatened. This reaction is particularly strong when the beliefs in question are aligned with your political and personal, and group identities. It can feel like an attack on you if one of your strongly held beliefs is challenged.

Confronting facts that don’t line up with your worldview may trigger a “backfire effect,” which can end up strengthening your original position and beliefs, particularly with politically charged issues. Researchers have identified this phenomenon in a number of studies, including ones about opinions toward climate change mitigation policies and attitudes toward childhood vaccinations.

Focusing on What Confirms Your Beliefs

There’s another cognitive bias that can get in the way of changing your mind, called confirmation bias. It’s the natural tendency to seek out information or interpret things in a way that supports your existing beliefs. Interacting with like-minded people and media reinforces confirmation bias. The problem with confirmation bias is that it can lead to errors in judgment because it keeps you from looking at a situation objectively from multiple angles.

A 2016 Gallup poll provides a great example of this bias. In just one two-week period spanning the 2016 election, both Republicans and Democrats drastically changed their opinions about the state of the economy – in opposite directions (3).

Cognitive biases are predictable patterns in the way people think that can keep you from objectively weighing evidence and changing your mind. Some of the basic ways your brain works can also work against you on this front.

Your brain is hard-wired to protect you – which can lead to reinforcing your opinions and beliefs, even when they’re misguided. Winning a debate or an argument triggers a flood of hormones, including dopamine and adrenaline. In your brain, they contribute to the feeling of pleasure you get during sex, eating, roller-coaster rides – and yes, winning an argument. That rush makes you feel good, maybe even invulnerable. It’s a feeling many people want to have more often.

Moreover, in situations of high stress or distrust, your body releases another hormone, cortisol. It can hijack your advanced thought processes, reason and logic – what psychologists call the executive functions of your brain. Your brain’s amygdala becomes more active, which controls your innate fight-or-flight reaction when you feel under threat.

In the context of communication, people tend to raise their voice, push back and stop listening when these chemicals are coursing through their bodies. Once you’re in that mindset, it’s hard to hear another viewpoint. The desire to be right combined with the brain’s protective mechanisms make it that much harder to change opinions and beliefs, even in the presence of new information.

We all need confidence, belief, enthusiasm, energy, persistence, and support to succeed. Adding facts to those motivations can simply disappoint us.

Bias is a critical factor in ignoring facts and its impact is compounded by our tendency to ignore it. Almost no one objectively assesses sports teams, our kids are viewed as more accomplished than reality, and self-assessments are usually higher than actual. Much market research has an in-built positive bias that tries to support its position. If we are not careful, we can go in with a favored option and try to build a case for it. We may deny it, but we all do it, even if unconsciously.

How to overcome this .... if you want to ....

You Can Train Yourself to Keep an Open Mind

In spite of the cognitive biases and brain biology that make it hard to change minds, there are ways to short-circuit these natural habits.

Work to keep an open mind. Allow yourself to learn new things. Search out perspectives from multiple sides of an issue. Try to form, and modify, your opinions based on evidence that is accurate, objective and verified.

Don’t let yourself be swayed by outliers. For example, give more weight to the numerous doctors and public health officials who describe the preponderance of evidence that vaccines are safe and effective than what you give to one fringe doctor on a podcast who suggests the opposite.

Be wary of repetition, as repeated statements are often perceived as more truthful than new information, no matter how false the claim may be. Social media manipulators and politicians know this all too well.

Presenting things in a nonconfrontational way allows people to evaluate new information without feeling attacked. Insulting others and suggesting someone is ignorant or misinformed, no matter how misguided their beliefs may be, will cause the people you are trying to influence to reject your argument. Instead, try asking questions that lead the person to question what they believe. While opinions may not ultimately change, the chance of success is greater.

Recognize we all have these tendencies and respectfully listen to other opinions. Take a deep breath and pause when you feel your body ramping up for a fight. Remember, it’s OK to be wrong at times. Life can be a process of growth (4).

Ufff. Now I will have to follow all this and reconsider my strategy. A science communicator 's work is extremely hard. I will go take a walk in the park for now.

Footnotes:

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3209856/

2. https://cpdonline.co.uk/food-safety-guides/street-food-businesses/#....

3. https://today.uconn.edu/2022/08/cognitive-biases-and-brain-biology-...

4. https://theconversation.com/cognitive-biases-and-brain-biology-help...

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