Public Perception of Science

I was informed today that, thanks to the power of Google, an 8th grade class is learning from my blog—Hi kiddos, welcome to Danparktica!! ... so if I seem stilted in tone, forgive me; I am afraid. I’m sure I’ve done more than enough irreparable harm. Sorry, kiddos.

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The closer we get to the Equator, the more Internet access we have... so I’ve been doing a little reading up on papers and stuff. As you know, reading leads to thinking, and thinking leads to blogging. Here we go:

What makes us believe what we believe? Do you believe in global warming? Do you believe in God? Well, do you believe in your neighbors? I wouldn’t say that I believe in Gaurav, my former roommate, but I can say with at least 95% certainty that he exists, or did exist. Let’s say I were to find a current phonebook from Tucson, AZ, a place I’ve never been to, and in it I found an entry about an Ernie MacTaggart. Would I be right in believing that such a person existed and lived in Tucson? What if, instead of personally seeing the phonebook, I was separately told by 20 people that they had found similar phonebooks and that each of them had come to the conclusion that Ernie MacTaggart really did exist and that he lived in Arizona? And then what if on top of those 20 accounts, I was then approached by 1 other person who told me that they had seen the phonebook and that they had concluded that no such person existed? What if those people, including the 1 dissenter, all held PhDs as evidence of their competence in gathering and interpreting data? Who would you believe? How much certainty is required of belief?

According to a 2005 survey in a paper by Jon Miller (“Public understanding of, and attitudes toward, scientific research: what we know and what we need to know”), scientific literacy, as defined by knowledge of basic terms and understanding of the nature of scientific inquiry, among Americans is under 20%. I personally wish this number were higher, but it’s also understandable: the average person is busy, so he or she directly or indirectly hires specialists to take care of gathering and interpreting scientific data. For example, by paying your taxes, you assume that the government will provide grants for relevant scientific research. But then you see a statistic like this, found in a 2006 ABC poll: “64% of Americans perceive ‘a lot of disagreement among scientists’” regarding the existence of global warming.

I can say from personal experience that the existence of global warming is not a point of contention among the majority of scientists; it’s rare that you’ll even find anyone on the Revelle even casually mentioning it in conversation. It’s a moot point. One of Al Gore’s favorite statistics—a statistic which is now undisputed—is from Naomi Oreskes’s 2004 paper that found that of 928 reviewed scientific articles, none were in disagreement about the existence of global warming. The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, released in February, is the official document representing the opinion of thousands of leading scientists, as approved by 113 countries before its release, and it reiterates that agreement. Some simplified conclusions from the report (with some of my added notes):
1. Global warming is unequivocal. Temperatures have been rising. Even so-called “GW Skeptics” admit that this is happening.
2. The large majority of the scientific community is at least 90% certain that the recent trend in global warming since the 1950s is due to man-made greenhouse gas output.
3. Human influences are now visible in other climatic aspects, notably temperature extremes and wind patterns.
4. Ramifications of global warming include a rise in sea level, melting ice cover, increased intensity of tropical cyclones, and acidification of the ocean.
(This is an extremely brief summary of what already is a summary for policy-makers, so I’d recommend checking out the PDF file yourself, it’s quite interesting.)

The point I’m making is that the scientific community as a whole sees data that points to a troubling situation, and yet they are faced with a dilemma: how do they get the word out? The natural instinct is to turn to the media; after all, people watch TV! People read newspapers, they listen to the radio, they listen to people who watched TV. It should stand to reason that if the scientific community is largely aligned in its opinion then the public, as informed through the media, should also be aligned in its opinion, or at least aligned in thinking that the scientific community is mostly in agreement.

There are a few skeptics out there, however, whose main claims are that global warming, while evident, is due to natural causes such as fluctuations in solar radiation and cosmic rays. Then there are a few scientists who contend that global warming will have consequences that are mostly beneficial for mankind. Frankly, their opinions have been refuted by the larger scientific community, and yet they receive special media attention. Why? Because they’re the stubborn underdogs, and underdogs sell. The media attempts to present a ‘balanced’ opinion of global warming by giving equal coverage to the skeptics, thereby overrepresenting a minority. Just open up the Drudge Report and chances are you'll find a few main-page articles about global warming skeptics, and none about affirmers.

But not only is coverage ‘balanced,’ it’s also being reported by a media replete with journalists who don’t have clear knowledge of global warming. A study of 249 environmental reporters found that only 30% correctly identified nitrous oxide as one of the most important greenhouse gases. Only 14% knew of the almost total agreement that precipitation would increase due to global warming (Kris Wilson, “Drought, debate, and uncertainty: measuring reporters’ knowledge and ignorance about climate change”).

It’s no wonder that the public is so confused. You even have 12% of the American population seeing ozone depletion as the main negative consequence of global warming (Anthony Leiserowitz, “American Risk Perceptions: Is Climate Change Dangerous?”). CFCs are indeed a greenhouse gas, but their role in creating the ozone hole above Antarctica is not directly related to their heat trapping effect. Relating the two is like making a false link between Iraq and Afghanistan.

What can be done about this? Clearly Al Gore is making some headway through film, but even then he may just be preaching to the already-converted. And then you have sites like The Drudge Report that, immediately after An Inconvenient Truth won its Oscars, reported to the effect that Al Gore was a hypocrite and spending too much on his utility bills, or that he should eat less meat if he’s really environmentally conscious; they’re shooting the messenger to kill the message.

I was talking to a post doc here on the Revelle about what he thought was an ideal situation for scientists and public policy, and he said off-handedly that scientists should be making environmental policy; they know the most, after all. In a way, this is already happening: scientists are finding themselves in the difficult position where the public is not listening, or is not able to listen due to media blocks, and where they are standing witness to some pretty scary things. Scientists are human beings too, with families and concerns for their society. Some of them might do something simple like tell their families to move to higher ground, but many are finding that they are feeling obligated to take an advocacy approach. Some in the scientific community are struggling to find a political voice in order to inform the public directly of some of the dangers we will likely be facing.

This is scary. In an ideal world, science is apolitical. In an ideal world, the enlightened policy-makers listen to the scientists and then make judgments based on the given information... hard to imagine such a world, but that’s no reason to abandon the ideal. Politics and science must be separated. Scientists who are actively performing research should not be politically motivated. Why? Because of the basic nature of scientific inquiry. One of the important tenets is that a hypothesis must be discarded if it is contradicted by evidence, and a scientist-advocate whose career has become staked on their hypotheses can no longer make objective measurements and deductions. In the unlikely event that evidence is found proving that global warming is not man-made, we should rest assured that the IPCC would report its new findings.

Shortly after the release of the IPCC summary, reporters interviewed Dr. Susan Solomon, one of its two lead editors and one of the scientists famed for linking synthetic chemicals to the ozone hole. The New York Times reported on this:

When a reporter asked Dr. Solomon “to sum up what kind of urgency this sort of report should convey to policy makers,” she gave the furthest thing from a convenient sound bite.
“I can only give you something that’s going to disappoint you, sir, and that is that it’s my personal scientific approach to say it’s not my role to try to communicate what should be done,” Dr. Solomon said. “I believe that is a societal choice. I believe science is one input to that choice, and I also believe that science can best serve society by refraining from going beyond its expertise.
“In my view, that’s what the I.P.C.C. also is all about, namely not trying to make policy-prescriptive statements, but policy-relevant statements.”

I’ll close here. I’m no Dr. Solomon, so I will present you with a prescriptive statement: read the IPCC report because that comes directly from scientists, read but beware media reports that do not provide citations, read but beware scientists who are also advocates, and form an educated opinion. And then do something about it. Watch for informed politicians, and watch for politicians who make vague or moralistic statements about global warming. And find out what you can do to reduce your carbon imprint. After all, as the mandatory Scripps vessel safety video morbidly informed us last Sunday, “The alternative to being prepared is to panic.” Oh, and don’t watch and worry about the movie The Day After Tomorrow, as the IPCC report states that such a situation is “very unlikely.”