Social science “denial”

In my presentation at the AAAS conference on Sunday, I talked a bit about “denialism,” a term often used to describe people who reject mainstream scientific conclusions on topics like climate change, human evolution, genetically modified food, or vaccines.

According to a recent survey, for example, when asked whether global warming is happening, 70 percent of Americans said “yes,” but 12 percent said “no.” And when asked whether, assuming it’s happening, global warming is caused mostly by human activities or by natural changes in the environment, 54 percent said human activities and 30 percent said natural changes.

Now, if I had gotten 70 percent of the American public to agree with one of my research conclusions, I’d be pretty happy, and you might think climate scientists could just declare victory and close up shop. Public ignorance about climate science is certainly not the primary obstacle to improved climate policy. But it’s also understandable that climate scientists wish the number were even higher, and it’s ridiculous how often politicians get away with making false statements about established science.

Nonetheless, “denialism” is a terrible term, as many people have pointed out. It polemically evokes Holocaust deniers, it polarizes the discussion, and people often apply it indiscriminately to anyone who questions the role of science in society and politics. Also, most people who accept mainstream science do so without any more critical investigation than those who reject it. And with regard to climate change, even people who fully accept mainstream climate science remain largely “in denial” about it, insofar as they are unwilling or unable to take action appropriate to the magnitude of the problem. (See Kari Norgaard’s excellent book Living in Denial.)

Another reason “denialism” is a bad term is that one can easily apply it to many scientists and science communicators themselves. Social scientists have reached some fairly robust conclusions on how to foster better relations between science and the public, but many natural scientists continue to ignore or “deny” their findings.

Among other things, social scientists have found that the catastrophic imagery often used to try to shock the public into confronting climate change tends to backfire, creating “catastrophe fatigue” and making people less likely to engage with the issue. Social scientists have shown how top-down science communication efforts tend to undermine public trust in science, because they treat lay citizens as passive and ignorant. And social scientists have convincingly argued that the “politicization” of science, so often deplored by natural scientists, probably results in part from attempts to justify policy decisions with science, because that creates an incentive for opponents of the policy to challenge the science.

My panel was organized by people from the Union of Concerned Scientists, and they were very sympathetic to these kinds of social science findings. But several studies have found that most scientists’ public outreach efforts remain poorly informed by research on science communication and science policy.

Part of the fault probably lies with social scientists themselves, since we also tend to do a poor job of communicating our research to people in other disciplines and to the broader public.