- [Man] It is beautiful to be with people today that are awake awake and [mumbles]. Thank you very much. [crowd cheers]

- We didn't land on the Moon, evolution is a lie, climate change is a hoax, vaccines aren't effective. We love science. And yet we're surrounded by so many anti-science sentiments. What's going on? [gentle music] All beliefs in science are provisional, they're subject to change, and as scientists we're used to that. In fact, we celebrate that because that's what drives us forward 'cause we're not locked into one way of thinking and perceiving the world. We change our beliefs in accordance with the evidence and that's not simply how most people act or believe or form their own beliefs. And actually scientists outside of science they believe all sorts of things that aren't based on the evidence. Science plays a critical role in modern society and yet there are these edges, these shadows that we carry with us. And I personally believe we are breaking down the relationship between science and society. I'm an astrophysicist. I study stars blowing up or the evolution of the universe. And yeah, when I write an article or do a YouTube video or a show for Ars Technica, or I talk about some cool astrophysics thing, I guarantee down in the comments section there'll be somebody saying, "That's not true, that doesn't exist, I think you're wrong." Someone disagreeing with something in my field, it doesn't matter, there are no consequences. But my colleagues in other fields they don't have that luxury. When a climate scientist says, "Hey, our Earth is getting warmer "and it's due to the release of green house gases "and we should really figure out how to solve this," when people say, "I don't believe that," that matters, that's important. When an epidemiologist says, "Hey everyone, there's a deadly virus that is killing us "and I have a solution for it," and people say, "Well, no, I don't think it's a big deal," that's important, that's literal lives on the line. When science intersects society, when it intersects policy, when we need to make decisions based on what science says about the world around us, that's where the friction happens. And the source of this friction comes from all sorts of places. Not all scientists act in good faith. Not all scientists are good scientists. Sometimes these results become headlines and the headlines are used to reinforce beliefs. Sometimes scientists get caught up in political machinations that they don't fully understand and they don't fully anticipate. I think scientists should have a voice, I think scientists should participate in the political process, and I think scientists should communicate with the public, and I think scientists need to meet people where they are. When was the last time you went up to someone and you just said, "You are wrong," and they said, "You're right"? That doesn't happen. It's hard to meet people where they are because that requires empathy, radical empathy. The relationship between science and society and the source of mistrust of scientists is a complex topic, maybe the most complex topic we've ever tackled on this show. So there's not gonna be any chalkboard today, there's not gonna be any silly or fun demos. Let's talk to some scientists and science writers and science communicators to see how they have dealt with this and how they think we can do better. And by we I mean all of us.

- My research is about planetary habitability. I think about what has allowed life to evolve and survive and thrive on Earth.

- Why do you think people don't trust scientists?

- I think a lot of people don't trust scientists because scientists are not willing to speak from their scientific convictions and often get caught up in either bandwagon thinking or you can get sometimes dogmatic or publicly more often you just get very narrowly focused on a very specific topic.

- Have you personally encountered people not trusting your work? How have you dealt with that?

- I'll give you a fun story about this very briefly. There's a friend, he was a flat-Earther, and he had seen all the stuff online and he was convinced that the Earth was flat and we would chat about it but he wasn't really interested in hearing my explanation and taking it to heart, and that's fine, you know, we could still hang out and that was his thing. And he came up to me years later, he was really excited to tell me that "Hey, Jacob, "I thought it through, I figured it out, "that flat Earth stuff is totally wrong. "Of course it's a round Earth." And he was very happy not only to explain that he agreed with me but how he came to that conclusion. Among scientists, you know, the disagreement is just part of the fun. If I'm asking good questions and making provocative points and other scientists are pushing back, then I've done job, I'm happy with that.

- People do sort of see scientists as trustworthy, more so than maybe business leaders or government officials, but when it comes to solving real world problems they might look to someone who has more practical or seems to have more practical knowledge about how to go about solving a problem.

- What role do scientists have in public policy making and decision making?

- The problem that comes down to is how do you translate science into good policy making, who are the scientists you should listen to. So there's some psychology about, psychology research about, you know, how we perceive expertise and how our own values and biases kind of determine who we see as experts and scientists that should be making the decisions.

- How do people generate their opinions and beliefs?

- You know, we all have our world experience and the people around us that we can relate to, people who have similar experiences than us, and our beliefs kind of are rooted in those shared experiences.

- What happens when we have a belief or a preconceived notion and then it runs right up against the evidence to the contrary?

- Research seems to suggest that people will sort of gravitate towards people who have credentials, experts who may be fringe experts if they reinforce a value someone already has.

- And how does the structure of science itself enable that, because science itself is contentious, there are arguments that everything is provisional, so how does that feed into this system?

- Science is definitely an incremental and iterative process, so you get to do experiments, you learn a little bit about something, maybe you find results, and that pushes the knowledge a little bit forward. It can be very difficult for people who are not steeped in a specific scientific field to sort of weigh those caveats and see that stream of research over time and how it's evolving.

- Let's focus on the Covid-19 pandemic. What are the big threads of misinformation you've seen emerge throughout the pandemic?

- Just from the very nature of the virus, a lot of people think it's either, you know, nothing more than the flu or potentially this bio-engineered weapon that was released. There's a ton of misinformation about Covid-19 the disease and how best to treat it, lots of people think that it's not something you need a vaccination for but then also would maybe go towards treatments that are not proven to be effective or known to be potentially harmful. Generally, people want to protect their own health and the health of the people around them, but the decisions people are making based on this really polarized climate are not reflecting that.

- What do we do when we look to science to provide an answer and we do the studies and we have some evidence to back a certain policy but the policy is untenable or conflicts with other priorities?

- This is the part that, you know, it's really hard to look to just scientists to answer. I think a lot of public infectious disease experts would say everybody just stay inside for a long time and you'll be fine. There's gonna be tough decisions. Sometimes scientists can't make that on their own.

- Why do people, some people believe really really weird things? Like some people honestly believe that the Earth is flat or that we never landed on the Moon. What are motivating people like these to have these kinds of extreme positions?

- In my experience as a health reporter, it's often people who have a distrust of the medical establishment. That can just sort of snowball and lead people to feel like they can dig into a subject enough, they can become their own experts, thinking that they have figured something out that medical experts have not. Especially in these current times with social media and online communities, there is a lot of reinforcement of this idea.

- What is the deficit model?

- The idea that if you just give people, hand people over knowledge, they will suddenly know, understand your perspective, they will agree with you on the right course of action. It's not necessarily that people lack knowledge that is leading them to a decision that conflicts with the scientific consensus, it's these other cultural aspects that are playing a role in that.

- What role and responsibility does the media play in comparison to the role and responsibility the scientists themselves have?

- Certainly headlines that sensationalize certain things or emphasize certain things that may or may not be trends can be really damaging. Sensationalizing scary things can turn people off to paying attention to that kind of news but also create other kinds of backlash. There are fine lines to walk and we can always be better at walking them.

- Are there any stories or examples from the articles you've written or edited or your experience with Ars where you see this anti-science sentiment coming up to the surface?

- It's rare I go for a month without some irate email about, you know, something I've written about. But it's important to say that these aren't necessarily what I'd call anti-science. The people who object to scientists' conclusions still have a respect for evidence. If you listen to the anti-vaccine people, they're all saying do your own research. And so they are focused on evidence in their own way. We tend to have a set of beliefs and we tend to be very willing to accept evidence that conforms to those beliefs or supports them in some way. Science in many ways is the process of determining what is good evidence regardless of what we wanna hear.

- You're a space geek, you talk about all this cool stuff. Have you encountered anti-science sentiments or people who disagree with some of the basic things you say?

- My eyes were really opened to this when "An Inconvenient Truth" came out, and I thought it would be interesting to take some readers to that movie and so I tried to get three people who, you know, believed in climate change, three people who were against it, and then three people who were sort of on the fence. And then we sort of went for coffee afterward and had a discussion and just sort of being surprised at sort of the just unwillingness to accept scientific reality. It seems like the politicization of science has gotten so much worse. It's just such a peril situation for scientific communication.

- What do you think is the role for journalists and the media in mediating this?

- We just need to be really careful, right? We need to make sure that we're getting things right. And people may use that information for nefarious ends, the views or stories we write, but we are responsible for making sure that the information that we put out there is correct.

- Have you seen firsthand any examples of mistrust in science, either in the things you say or what other scientists say, and how has it affected you?

- The field that I'm in, I'm so far away. Most of the distrust for science is around self-obsession. Like how does it affect me and my health? Am I gonna live forever, how do I live longer, how do I get thinner? And my subject isn't really in that space so it doesn't attract it as much. What I love personally about science, as somebody who is also a human being and can also worry about my health, is that I'm not looking at myself. And that I'm looking out in those moments, I think we could all really benefit from not being so self-obsessed.

- I grew up with people who didn't really believe science, 'cause I'm from a very small rural town in Pennsylvania. I remember one time in chemistry class one of my friends told the teacher, "I don't believe science, I don't believe in this." And I try to be as empathetic and generous in my interpretation of their denial of science as I can possibly be, but I think if we got better at explaining how we got to the results instead of just showing the flashy result on a news show, I think that would help a lot. Because then, like a couple months later when the result changes, which is what you want, that means the science is working when you can make progress, a couple months later when the result changes if they know how we got to that result I think they might be more willing to accept the change. Which is why science communicators are so valuable, it's why stuff that you do and stuff that I do and other science communicators do is really important.

- I think it's very important to explore the scientific method with people because you hear people going, "Oh, they changed their mind. "Scientists change their minds all the time, "they don't know what's right "and they don't know what's wrong." But when the reality of it is as scientists our job is to constantly attempt to prove ourselves wrong. We are looking constantly for the evidence of something that will change our worldview and update our view of the world. You really need those people who can be a direct connection between the public and scientists, and we often, I think it's really important to as scientists make the effort to write lay summaries for our papers, get connected in activism and talk to people about what we do. So personally some of the things that I get involved in especially are reaching out to youth, giving them the tools for scientific creativity and just letting them know that they do belong in science and science isn't this kind of separate removed thing for old white men where you wear a crazy lab coat and you make chemicals explode. In particular, one of the things that I'm really interested in is getting Black youth connected to data science, because when I found out that I could program that was one of the most exciting times of my life. And I think data especially is something that is really pertinent to equity because, for example, we have all of these algorithms out there that make decisions about things like immigration and policing, et cetera, et cetera, and I think involving Black folk and Indigenous folk and other people of color in those sorts of decisions and letting them be informed, letting them be passionate about that topic is something that I think is life-changing.

- One of the most critical tasks facing scientists of the next generation isn't to just go out into the universe and discover and learn, but to share that with the public and communicate it in a way that the public can understand and appreciate and enjoy. And we need to do the work of communicating that science with empathy and compassion and storytelling and with listening. Compared to the work we have in science, this should be relatively easy and it should become a part of regular science training. Scientists need to accept that we can't just change minds. That's just not how it works. But we can change attitudes. If we can get people on board with the process, knowing that this is what we know now but it's provisional and it might change tomorrow, but there is a reason it changes tomorrow and that's because we have better evidence, if we can get people on board with that process, I believe change can happen. [gentle music]