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Science Denial

Science Denialism is popping up in various social classes regarding different topics: climate change, the coronavirus and vaccines, evolution, medicine (homeopathy, quantum healing and other alternative medicine), and many other. It is often interwoven with conspiracy theories and pseudo sciences.

How to effectively respond to science denialism, however, is an issue that scientists and science advocates are still grappling with. In general not responding to denialism does more harm than good. Allowing false scientific claims, no matter how absurd, to float unchallenged by evidence or logic, is worse than engaging with them. [P1]

How to Talk to a Science Denier

In this article I summarize stements from Gleb Tsipursky (see [A1]) and Lee McIntyre (see [V1]).

Adjust Expectations

You cannot convince someone with evidence, who doesn’t belive in evidence. Lee McIntyre [V1]

Existing belive systems are often stronger than evidence. Due to the confirmation bias we tend to look for and interpret information in ways that conforms to our beliefs.

In general, we need empathy to understand the other people’s emotions, to determine what emotional blocks might cause them to keep their irrational believe system. The key to convincing someone is trust!

Building Trust Before Sharing Information

The Method Gleb Tsipurski describes in is article EGRIP is short for Emotions, (Shared) Goals, Rapport, Information and Positive Reinforcement.

Therefore, after understanding the persons emotions / fears, it’s important to talk about shared goals, which creates a common ground. Rapport means reflecting the other persons’ view that one understood through empathic listening. After that, one can share some (scientific) information about the topic and reinforce the positive change in the other persons’ thinking.

Methods of Rebuttal

In older studies the Backfire Effect was ‘observed’, meaning that people confronted with evidence hold their wrong believs even stronger afterwords. It was shown that this effect does occur only in very special cases or not at all. Therefore, talking to scince deniers never makes things worse - the worst thing to do is not talking to science deniers at all.

First empirical evidence that one can fight back against science deniers and how to do it was published by Schmidt & Betsch in 2019, see reference [2]. As argued in the paper, there are two ways: topic rebuttal & technique rebuttal.

Technique Rebuttal

To debunk misinformation, it is not necessary to be an expert in the field. Knowing and showing the techniques of science denial can help. Therefore it is important to know the main techniques of science denialsim. A nice overview can be found in reference [3] and in this course about Science Denial from Columbia College online

Denialism mainly based onf five techniques:

  • Fake Experts
  • Logical Fallacies
  • Impossible Expectations
  • Cherry Picking Evidence
  • Conspiracy Theories

Content Rebuttal

When you know something about the field, you can provide some scientific information and debunk the misinformation

Misinfomation Cannot be Undone

Using the techniques can only mitigate disinformation, they cannot overturn it. Once people are exposed to (mis)information, one cannot undo it.

The best thing is not allow the science denier to spread their information.

Example: If you’re invited to have a public discussion with a science denier: if it will be cancelled when you go - don’t- if it isn’t - go!

It’s not only about the hard-core leading scince deniers, it’s about (their) audience.

References

Papers

  • [P1] Debunking science denialism. Nat Hum Behav 3, 887 (2019). online
  • [P2] Schmid, P., & Betsch, C. (2019). Effective strategies for rebutting science denialism in public discussions. Nature Human Behaviour, 3(9), 931-939. online
  • [P3] Cook, J. (2017, January). Understanding and countering climate science denial. In Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales (Vol. 150, No. 465/466, pp. 207-219). online
  • [P4]van der Linden, S. Countering science denial. Nat Hum Behav 3, 889–890 (2019). online
  • Niels Haase, Philipp Schmid & Cornelia Betsch (2020) Impact of disease risk on the narrative bias in vaccination risk perceptions, Psychology & Health, 35:3, 346-365, DOI: 10.1080/08870446.2019.1630561 online
  • Rosenau, J. (2012). Science denial: A guide for scientists. Trends in microbiology, 20(12), 567-569. online

Articles

  • [A1] How to Talk to a Science Denier without Arguing online
  • [A2] Science denial: Why it happens and 5 things you can do about it, The Conversation, 22.07.2021 online
  • To Understand How Science Denial Works, Look to History, Scientific American, 22.07.2021 online
  • I Used to Be An Anti-Vaxxer. Here’s What Changed My Mind. online

Books

  • The Misinformation Age by Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall online
  • The Debunking Handbook online
  • The Truth-Seeker’s Handbook: A Science-Based Guide, Gleb Tsipursky on Amazon

Videos

  • [V1] Lee McIntyre - How to Talk to a Science Denier Watch on YT

People / Other

  • Lee McIntyre wrote about the nature of scientific knowledge generation and validation. A new book will be published in August 2021, with the title How to Talk to a Science Denier.
  • John Cook, Ullrich Ecker, Stephan Lewandowsky
  • Charlie Warzel at New York Times online
  • Bruce Sherwoods 3D model of Flat Earth online.