Speaker on Public Distrust of Science

Distrust of scientific experts is widespread in the United States. It fuels the anti-vaccine, climate change denial and creationist movements, to name only a few of its most noticeable consequences. Why is there pervasive distrust,  when is it justified and what can scientists do to combat it? The George Nye and Anne Walker Boardman Professor of Mental and Moral Science Heidi Grasswick explored these questions on Wednesday, Jan. 13 in a lecture titled “In Science We Trust! – Or Not? Developing a situated account of responsible trust in scientific experts.”

Grasswick began by exploring a number of cases of scientific distrust. A growing number of parents in the United States have stopped vaccinating their children after a now discredited report linked the MMR vaccine to autism, despite the reassurances of the medical and scientific communities. Close to 25 percent of Americans do not believe that global warming is real.

“Scientists are often surprised or dismayed when their work is met with distrust or rejection by members of the general public,” Grasswick said. “As far as they are concerned, they are engaged in the most robust form of knowledge generation available. They are the experts on their topics, and it seems to follow that non-experts should follow what they have to say. Furthermore, since sound policy making needs to based on sound science, it’s deeply worrisome that trust in science is not widespread.”

However, because the scientific community sometimes makes mistakes or acts irresponsibly, distrust can be warranted. For instance, during the Tuskegee syphilis experiment from 1932 to 1972, scientists studied the effects of untreated syphilis on hundreds of black men even after penicillin was discovered as a viable treatment. Thalidomide, a morning sickness drug, was given to tens of thousands of women during the 1950s, causing thousands of infants to be born with malformed limbs. Even the people most trusting of the scientific community often roll their eyes at trending diets and seemingly arbitrary nutrition suggestions.

“While widespread distrust in science is worrisome, what’s perhaps more worrisome is that epistemologically distrust in science can be understood to be well grounded,” Grasswick said. “Although scientists are rightly concerned about scientific distrust, they should be even more concerned that despite their best intentions, scientists are not always as trustworthy as they suppose. There may be times when people are too trusting. This is where my interest lies as an epistemologist.”

Grasswick then made a case for developing a better understanding of responsible trust and when and why the public should trust scientific experts. She explained that ideally, trust should match the trustworthiness of the provider, and that it is important to focus on what makes a provider trustworthy.

Some scientists and philosophers believe that the solution is the information deficient model, which claims that distrust will decrease when we increase scientific literacy, either by teaching people about specific scientific issues or about the scientific method. This way, the theory goes, people have enough knowledge to judge data and evidence and determine the trustworthiness of a source for themselves.

While Grasswick agreed that increasing scientific literacy is important, she noted that other forces are at play. Psychologists have long known about motivated reasoning, the idea that, given the same information, people with opposing ideologies will interpret data differently, searching for evidence that reaffirms their preexisting beliefs. Grasswick also pointed out that lack of knowledge does not necessarily cause distrust; rather, distrust can occur when the scientific community does not understand a group’s concerns.
Grasswick placed more importance on understanding the idea of a trustworthy testimony, and defined a few components of trustworthiness.

“Someone listening to a testimony will judge whether or not the expert is competent and sincere,” she said. “The sincerity requirement indicates a relationship between the speaker and the hearer, and an attitude toward the person with information. When the knowledge in question is significant to the hearer, the relationship must be more robust to support the depth and breadth of the person making themselves vulnerable.”

The idea of trustworthiness being interpersonal opens up the possibility that different populations could have varying levels of distrust based on their historical interactions with the scientific community. The experience of being marginalized or subordinated could contribute to the warranted distrust of a community. Therefore, it is the character  of institutions, and not necessarily the quality of the knowledge they generate, that inspires trust from people.
Emphasizing that the purpose of her presentation was to raise important questions, Grasswick stressed that every issue differed from one another.

“It’s obvious to me that scientific literacy is not the simple solution, because trust in the information is not all that is required,” Grasswick said. “More attention needs to be paid to differences in situation, and whom we are trustworthy to. We need to think about the legacy of the injustices in the history of science. And we definitely need to make sure there are no more failures of trust, or keep their numbers down because they can do huge damage. It gives us one more reason why racism and sexism and other forms of prejudice need to be eliminated from the practice of science.”