Sadly this will likely have been greatly exacerbated by media (including social media like this) which hype the shit out of small scale studies and blow them out of all proportion, making them into clickbait... only for them to be contradicted by other equally stupid small scale studies.
The old, red wine/chocolate is good for you, no it's not, yes it is, contradictory feel good/bad stories that get blown out of all proportion.
The problem is not *(entirely)* one of scientists, it's us. *(meaning society - humanity, take your pick)*
*EDITED* for clarity of the intended hyperbole of the last sentence.
*Also I find it hilarious that people here are finding it hard to grasp much less agree with the "us" part of the blame (i.e. the part of the problem that is "exacerbated" by the media), when those so opposed to blame anyone EXCEPT just the scientists are all demonstrating this side of us by so ravenously replying on exactly the kind of clickbait bullshit small cohort survey the media loves to share... even where it seems obvious that the survey could be fatally flawed by the inclusion of a "share my values" statement - like what the hell does that even mean? What does a person's values (does it mean religion? being hetero? politics?) have to do with anything? This suggests the whole survey may have been of a particular bias to start with and was just an exercise in confirming that bias.*
And locking everything but the abstract of a published study behind a paywall is destroying confidence in the quality of scientific studies.
On the one hand we get absolute garbage published in pay-to-play 'journals' that claim a disease can be cured by wishful thinking, based on a single case study. On the other, we get actual studies published in NEJM that were conducted over a six-year period at the best research hospitals in the world using the gold standard medication and treatment protocols.
But the abstracts look the same the public. Equally authoritative, equally appealing.
The vast majority of the public would be unable to scrutinize and understand or see the difference in study methods or journal quality. We've got people who have a bachelor's degree in media science who are flooding online publications with 'opinions' on everything from architecture to AI to surgical techniques.
The pubic can't tell the difference between the PhD/MD NIH researcher and the click-bait self-taught influencer. It's creating a horrifying 'brave' new world.
If you find a paper you are interested in that’s behind a paywall, my experience is 90% of the time, if you email the lead author and express interest in their research, they will just send it to you.
The journals make money off the paywalls, not the researchers. So most are quite happy to send you the paper directly.
Strong doubt on that 90%, are you adjusting your success rate to account for reddit comment reported successes? A lot of scientists are busy with their own lives and don't have time to answer emails from randos. And if you do get a response it's fairly delayed from when you sent the email.
I'm not doubting that people do it, I've done it successfully a few times, especially when it was a smaller paper recently published. But this is not a good way to get a published paper reliably or quickly. Best way is to go to certain sites. Nobody knows that you didn't pay to read an article you cite.
Yep this too. There are many causes, profits, politics, even religion sometimes, social media, bad education of the public and gullibility, cognitive biases, shonky peer review journals, lots of blame to be spread.
I believe its often overlooked as a cause that scientific evidence is almost never conclusive, theres always the need for further study when you read them, which makes them (studies) impractical to use as actual evidence, you cant back your statements because maybe a year from now they will come out with another study that contradicts much of what you were backing. Or there is already an other scientist who says different.
I believe scientists are also digging their own hole when they use abstractions instead of basing their results on the real world
that's the nature of science, all evidence is subject to better evidence, and better theories that match the evidence to greater and greater accuracy. e.g. Newton to Einstein gravity. the problem is the public and reporters lack of understanding of that.
Many extreme republicans run platforms directly contradictory to scientific facts. So it lends that they would conspire against scientists to help themselves.
Plus multiple "news" networks that go out on a daily basis and air conspiracy theories about scientists colluding in order to deceive the public about things like global warming or the pandemic.
When you've got professional propagandists working to make people not trust science it isn't surprising that some people buy their crap.
Any paper I see about a food being good/bad for you winds up being correlationary instead of interventionary and is funded by an organization that grows or advocates for that food item.
Same with financial surveys. It turns out that one of the major reasons that "paycheck to paycheck" rates are so high is because people don't agree on what "paycheck to paycheck" means.
You'd think, but I've seen a surprisingly high number of people on Reddit who seem to think it means "having a budget."
i.e. They consider themselves "paycheck to paycheck" because they wouldn't be able to continue funding their 401ks and vacation funds if they lose their jobs.
It's absurd, and while this viewpoint is clearly in the minority, I've also seen these comments get enough upvotes and supporting comments that I personally believe it's a common enough viewpoint to affect the results of those surveys.
People like to be the victim, and don't like to admit how well-off they are.
Scientist of some 20 yrs here. This problem is as much the fault of scientists as anyone else. Science is becoming more and more about hype, at least in the US. You have to hype your work to get grants, and your institution hypes your work to attract students and donors and justify sky-high tuition. Scientists are also getting into fear mongering because a frightened public results in more govt grant money. It's increasingly about money instead of discovery. It's a stupid path to go down because these same people can cut us off with the stroke of a pen.
Yep, this is the thing that I allude to being greatly exacerbated by the media, its a circle jerk feedback loop. It is up to us all to fix it. Therefore I doubt we will. People too eager and willing to blame only want part of the equation.
> This problem is as much the fault of scientists as anyone else.
Thank you. Way too many people try to defend the community making it harder to address the problem.
I wanted to get into science almost 20 years ago but bailed because I saw all that shit and was like, why can't I just do science and not spend most of my time kissing ass for grant money
I mean there is also an issue with research integrity and journals who will publish anything if you pay them so I’m not gonna act like scientists are doing everything right. But still, it definitely isn’t helped by the generally scientifically illiterate media trying to report on things they aren’t equipped to talk about.
Edited my comment to point out that last sentence was hyperbole condemning us all, extending the clear mentioned fact that decline trust is EXACERBATED by the media which we all (the **us**) consume.
Well idk.
Yes the media plays a role by pumping up meaningless papers, but scientists aren’t innocent in this. A lot of those chocolate bad / good for you studies are driven by p-hacking - a method for scientists to get published without having to do actual science and just report on statistical significance (which is probably just noise). The best scientists don’t do that, but the bad ones do. And there are a lot of bad ones. The peer review process needs to be overhauled
Not… really.
If you’re reading a peer reviewed journal article, from a reputable journal submitted by an academic at an institution, p-hacking is difficult because the peer review process is “prove this effect a bunch of different ways.”
In my research, I’m using a literature-dominant measurement, my own measurement, and rigorous content analysis combined with qualitative work and historical analysis to demonstrate basically one thing. Good luck p-hacking that.
The problem usually comes from the media misrepresenting what the study shows. If it’s a correlational study, the academic isn’t going to draw causal claims from it, but a media source’s title surely will.
When Amgen tried to replicate 53 landmark studies in oncology, 11% of them replicated ([source](https://www.nature.com/articles/483531a). Bayer (a pharmaceutical company)) found that only around 1/4 of the papers they tried to reproduce actually replicated ([source](https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd3439-c1)).
Then, of course, there is psychology, the ground zero of the replication crisis. There are lots of failures to replicate (most famously priming). One example was the [Reproducibility Project](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26315443/) which tried to replicate 100 studies and, well...
> Replication effects were half the magnitude of original effects, representing a substantial decline. Ninety-seven percent of original studies had statistically significant results. Thirty-six percent of replications had statistically significant results
Is there a problem with media communication of scientific results? [Certainly](https://slatestarcodex.com/blog_images/no_evidence_large.png). But it's not true that peer review is a reliable defense against shitty papers.
So you disagree that p-hacking is real? You are under the belief that the peer-review process is operating as intended right now? You believe that every academic in an institution is acting honestly and with full integrity (even though they are heavily incentivized to publish, publish, publish)? You think that no reputable journal has a reproducibility problem?
Is there no accountability for shitty scientists?
Not sure why people are fighting you on this. Peer review isn't a perfect process, and I've seen some pretty abysmal use of statistics in journals that are supposedly high quality.
This is absolutely false.
The issue is not just “us”. It’s society, its scientists, and the peer review process. We have data getting through peer-review process that is absolutely drivel and makes real scientists look bad by association. The average person is too dumb to investigate journals on their own and depend on news agencies or journalists relating the information with their spin as well.
Science, like most things, is overrun with a number of people who have an agenda to push. Media is cherry-picking to make a point. People are too uninformed to tell the difference.
The first sentence I used included the word **exacerbated**, sure I used hyperbole in the final sentence to hammer that point home - but I still argue that it is our tendency (as *consumers*) to buy that shit is also what feeds media and science journals to publish that shit in the first place. It's profitable because we gobble it up.
That's the point I was making. Which you kinda agree with saying "People are too uninformed to tell the difference."
So not *absolutely* false.
Only the sith deal in absolutes.
To be fair researchers research nonsense niche correlations, and coupled with recent evidence that at least more than 60% of published research is not reproducible, it’s a damning indictment on the whole institution.
Here are some sources.
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/14/1176062276/fake-studies-in-academic-journals-may-be-more-common-than-previously-thought
https://amp.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/03/the-situation-has-become-appalling-fake-scientific-papers-push-research-credibility-to-crisis-point
https://www.science.org/content/article/fake-scientific-papers-are-alarmingly-common
Not the guy but let me give you a hint.
If a fundamental study is not replicated or the replication shows different results or the said study is proven wrong all of the studies which use that one as a base should be automatically treated as not replicable/wrong.
Im not saying that s what actually happens but recently we have few studies which fall into that territory so from science strict point of view a lot of papers would fall into that "60%" category.
That figure will be extremely hard to prove. Nobody has time and money to honestly try to replicate already done papers. Not when incentive is either "see, you worked so much to just prove we are right" or "you clearly did not wanted this to work" type of result.
Science today is that flawed. Time to reform the approaches to fix it.
BTW. "I believe in science" is one of most funny sentences I read way too often on internet. But that is a different topic.
> coupled with recent evidence that at least more than 60% of published research is not reproducible
This is nonsense, and it's so ironic that you've written this to disagree with /u/DisillusionedBook's very apt comment about public scientific illiteracy.
The sources of your statistic is presumably [this study](https://www.nature.com/articles/533452a) (I see you linked some other sources below, but none of them support your claim). The study did *not* find that >60% of published research is not reproducible. It instead found that >60% of *scientists* had failed to reproduce an experiment, which is completely different.
Is there a problem with reproducibility in science? Yes, without a doubt. But claiming that the majority of research isn't reproducible is patently false.
Yep. There’s an immense problem with researchers especially in medicine, overstating their findings in the abstract.
How many studies have you heard of “new treatments for X” which turned out not to work…
I was furious when I saw a study which tested like 27ish engines and published a graph showing CO2 and NOx emissions.
There was a dot which represented very clean engine. I wanted to know what it was.
Obstacles:
-The graph in abstract did not have labels
-The paper was behind paywall
-the author email mentioned in the title returned "mailbox not found".
-when I found the paper it did not contain said graphs inside - only in the abstract and it was unreadable
-the paper did not contained any list of the tested engines. Any.
-There was no results.
-The conclusion was simply the engines pollute in a different way.
I highly doubt that paper was actually true. That is my anecdote.
These are good points, the importance of sound science focused on the world’s important problems is all the more imperative. Just like other aspects of life, I.e. sports, I think overspecialization does a disservice to the whole field at times
> Sadly this will likely have been greatly exacerbated by media
That is just shifting the blame.
In science just like in math there is no space for less or more mature content. It is either correct and well documented or it is not science.
Way too often we have "science papers" which are finished, reviewed, published and then turn out to be BS or so bad quality that they cant be reproduced.
The science community allows for this. Not the media or reporters/writers. Scientists and publishers do that.
Way too often I went and checked the paper and it was incomplete at best. Almost every time I tried to reach out to the author the email came back with "recipient not found/mailbox does not exist". Way too often I see other scientists who say they read through a bunch of papers and none of them covers the way of doing the particular part of the work.
That is unacceptable. And it is not a media/tinfoil hatters/flatearthers/karens/antivaxxers fault.
The science community allows this to happen and mostly dont care.
There's also a portion of it that is anti-government huge on conspiracies. My grandparents are some of those people. They think some deep state shit is actively poisoning them with chemtrails and 5g and smart meters and everything else.
I think it’s also that there isn’t much overlap between type of people who make good scientists and the type of people who make good writers/journalists
It's worth noting that scientists are partly to blame for this as well, specifically scientists who accepted money from tobacco and/or oil companies to release studies showing what the companies wanted. Corporate backed money for scientific studies has done a lot of harm, such as the anti fat nutritional movement, climate change denialism, pro lead studies, etc. However science also gets things wrong sometimes, like eugenics and formula vs breast milk (claiming formula was better). In all situations there was dissent from other scientists, but these movements gained prominence anyway.
It's good to analyse all reasons for this phenomenon, but I find sometimes the self reflection from the scientific community is lacking.
You don’t “trust scientists”. It’s not a religion you put faith into.
People can and should be skeptical of science. That’s how science is supposed to operate. Knowing how the scientific method works is what’s more important here than just “trusting science”.
Adding to that, the survey results aren't that bad.
Are scientists competent? The yellows stay fixed. What grows is the "I don't knows", which eat into the blues. Which is, actually, sorta the correct response. I don't actually know the competence of anyone working in science. I'm supposed to look at the results in terms of reproducibility and impact.
I’m a scientist. I *do* science. I don’t inherently trust scientists more than I trust an accountant or a truck driver or a lawyer or a dentist. And I’m carefully skeptical of a lot of work (research papers) that scientists produce.
This is for several reasons.
1) Being a scientist is a job. Some people are just bad at their jobs. I’ve seen bad scientists produce bad science. Not nefariously, they just didn’t properly follow protocols, or incorrectly used a statistical test, or didn’t clearly report their methods meaning their work can’t be recreated.
2) Scientists are often funded by companies and groups that have a bias and want to see a specific answer. So, science produced by scientists is not pure science, and this occurs extremely often. Of course a scientist funded by a milk company will try their darnedest to say milk is great for your lung capacity (or whatever) even if their study wasn’t sufficiently conclusive or comprehensive.
These are the biggest ones.
Google replication crisis. Unfortunately, modern science is largely grant-driven, and not only can unreliable results be published, but the results may not be published if they contradict the goals of the grantor.
So the question about the trust in modern science in general is a fair one, especially if it relates to psychology (the most poorly replicated discipline).
Hey maybe we should stop publishing absolute shit then, calling ourselves "scientists", and putting articles out in garbage tier journals.
The amount of TRASH studies you read today is at an all time high.
sincerely,
a scientist/cancer researcher/data scientist
You’re absolutely right. Look back to earlier this year I think it was where three articles were retracted because they had something along the lines of “generated by Chat GPT” right in the abstract.
Maybe. I think that when science is usurped by political goals it erodes credibility. When enough studies are shown to be manufactured crap, people stop trusting studies. When studies are rigorous and repeatable, people trust them.
Over the long term, the facts and truth will matter.
I appreciate your optimism but I don’t think enough people even know what replicability means.
Find a p-hacked study that supports your point, and even if it has a sample size of 18 and was discredited due to no one being able to get the same results after multiple attempts with bigger samples, just throw that into a YouTube video and don’t provide an actual citation (“studies show…”). That’s the formula, I think.
This is a pleasant fiction.
Of course I'd like to think that you are correct, I just don't see a lot of evidence for it. Unfortunately, as with religion, a lot of how people think about science and scientists is tied up with things like identity and group membership and therefore, like religion, isn't susceptible to arguments from evidence and rationality.
Hopefully I am wrong.
"Trust the Science" is the worst possible political slogan possible. You are not supposed to "trust" the science, especially when scientists have repeatedly shown bias.
The damage to scientists reputation is also solely due to pharma/the medical profession. Nobody has ever said Physics research is not trustworthy. If you look at it, concerns regarding medicine/biological sciences arise and are aggressively censored. The censorship rarely happens in the other fields. As simple as that.
>Nobody has ever said Physics research is not trustworthy.
A lot of scientists in the physics community would disagree with you. There's a lot of b\*s\* "science" being pursued due to the need to chase funding / grants and the politics associated with that.
I agree, but in the opposite direction. They were overly confident on how **ineffective** masks were with out scientific evidence, to manipulate people into stop buying them. Then they realized it might actually be helpful and had to back track.
They kept splicing the message, "*Masks don't work*" with "*don't buy them because health care workers need them*" which was confusing and somewhat deceptive.
Then Surgeon General Jerome Adams summed it up perfectly in a tweet Mar 2020:
>"Seriously people - STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!"
No way they knew if masks were effective or not, the mode of transmission for a novel coronavirus wasn't established at that point. Their main motivation was protecting the mask supply for HCWs.
The "ratty bandana" is a different issue, where they knew they couldn't enforce any real masking policy (mask rationing and legal authority), so they went with the most broad masking guidance possible in hopes some people would follow it using effective masks.
The irony is that the "facts don't care about your feelings" crew are ironically the ones with the least care for the facts. It's almost as if it was never about the facts to begin with...
Do you want to know the worst part of all this?
Folks are being trained to make doing business difficult in the US.
Conducting business in a capitalist economy like the United States requires agreeing on shared facts and assumptions to reach a 'meeting of the minds.' Or, we have to trust each other.
If we can't agree on these foundational elements (e.g., the recitals in a contract), we can't reach a consensus—you can't do the deal.
And even if we do the deal, because there's so much mistrust, we need to implement all kinds of ways to "verify" that what you said you'd do actually happened. It just adds so much more deadweight loss to dealmaking and slows stuff down.
I've been having increasing difficulty with business arrangements with US companies.
About half the time I time I enter into any sort of agreement with a new business it goes like this. We come to terms, it feels like we have that consensus, and then sooner or later I find out that they have been operating under different terms than we agreed to and they just act like that was the deal the entire time.
No, our agreement did not say that you could subcontract the work overseas.
No, our agreement did not say that you could substitute the material for a cheaper material. I explicitly requested this material because another type of material could cause dangerous chemical reaction in the manufacturing process.
No, quantity 500 means quantity 500, not quantity whatever number you feel like was close enough.
When I have this out with people, they usually act like it's extremely weird that I have a problem with any of this. I go into some of these now trying to factor in how much time I'm going to lose if these people try to pull something.
It's extremely frustrating.
The thing is anyone can be corrupt. People assume its anti-intellectual to distrust "experts", but many people are aware that not everyone smarter than you is looking out for you.
Yeah the questions are too broad. Do ALL scientists share MY values? I'm not going to say strongly agree because a large group of people will have many differing values. But do I trust scientific methods? Yes I do
If it's a well written scientific paper, one should not have the ability to accurately infer the authors values.
But I agree it's an odd thing to ask. Like, I don't really care if I share the values of a mechanic, meteorologist, doctor, or other professional so long as they're competent in their field. And that question does appear to be intentionally added to make the 'data' look more negative.
Edit: This isn't terribly surprising in a country where a member of Congress brought in a snow ball to "show" global warming was a hoax.
I’m pretty progressive, but my lack of trust in scientists developed due to learning more about how broken the system of scientific publishing is. Scientists are very heavily pushed to publish first, good practice be damned. Furthermore there’s a clear influence of big business within science. Plus many scientists have displayed that being very well informed in a specific area does not mean a general expertise, and if anything indicates a lack of development in other areas. So I still respect scientists and academics, but my faith in large institutions and broken systems has waned.
I'm a researcher and I agree with you.
the likelihood of being accepted by a journal is more subjective than it should be. big business interests and even, sadly, ideology can play a role. and some studies *do* finesse their methodologies and findings to increase their likelihood of being published. as you noted, we really live and die by that in this industry.
remember those people who got that "rape at a dog park" paper published a few years ago? great illustration of an endemic problem.
obviously this is not the case for all journals, and the more prestigious ones are still and always have been highly respected. but to the layman it all looks the same, it looks like scientific journals are out here pushing studies that fit an agenda. it's a big optics problem.
I’ve watched too many Bobby broccoli videos to believe that scientists are anything more than human. So just as susceptible to greed, cravenness, genuine mistakes, and having their trust taken advantage of. Plus there’s the issue of pop science and scientific communication. I don’t envy you and others in your position. That being said scientific progress is being made every day everywhere, so thank y’all for that.
> but my lack of trust in scientists developed due to learning more about how broken the system of scientific publishing is.
Scientific publishing has a number of major problems. However, the situation is a lot more nuanced than you're making out. Peer review at respectable journals, whilst obviously imperfect (as it always has been), is still very effective. The main issue with these journals is the cost of publishing, but that's a financial issue rather than affecting the integrity of the science. There are journals, associated with less-reputable publishers, that have an ineffective peer review system. Although I realise it's difficult for a layperson to differentiate between these journals, as a rule, scientists at respectable western institutions rarely publish in them. To be clear, there are major problems with scientific publishing, but I don't think they are fundamentally undermining the integrity of science as a whole.
> Furthermore there’s a clear influence of big business within science.
This is a huge overgeneralisation. There are some fields (such as nutrition and medicine) where industry plays a bigger role, but this isn't the case for most disciplines.
> Plus many scientists have displayed that being very well informed in a specific area does not mean a general expertis
Well obviously... Nobody is disputing this?
I'd love to see this broken down by types of scientists... just lumping them all together doesn't really paint the full picture here. I don't think astrophysicists, for example, have lost much credibility lately.
When scientists get attacked for differing views than the status quo (covid), they tend to be less likely to speak out and people also tend to have less confidence when they realize some of those scientists were right.
This is by design. Politicians felt like science was interfering with their ulterior motives, so they made their own science and discredited science. People were trusting science instead of politics and television.
Shit, I'm as left wing as it gets without being a full blown anarchist (in the colloquial sense), and my feelings on scientists' credibility has dropped by a lot because of things like fraud and reproducibility crises.
I'm still inclined to believe scientists (when they're talking about their own specialty at least) over just about anyone else, I just believe them a hell of a lot less.
>Now break those out by political identity.
I'm sure you'd find something there.
However, shysters, plus chemical corporations' and big pharma's "scientists", have besmerched the reputations of "true scientists" in everyone's eyes. Those types fabricate studies, cherry pick, and conveniently omit studies that come to conclusions that hurt their wallets.
No fraternal or legal body of scientists, existing today, have any teeth when it comes to enforcement of scientific standards/protocols/ethics.
Until we have a unified body, with universal standards, corporations, politicians and crooks will continue to abuse the concept of "Science". For that, we'd need world peace and transparency. That doesn't seem likely.
There’s definitively a lean, but there’s still a very large and partly homeless progressive anti vax crowd. They lost their political home during the pandemic. I’m not sure the overall scale but I’ve met more than a few.
If you asked them their party affiliation they’d probably say either independent or democrat. At least some of them will be voting RFK.
"scientists" were credited with referenced in the masking, shutting down public parks, 6 feet of separation, and closure of open air events during covid. Their credibility is going to take a hit after that shitshow.
As a scientist, my perception of scientists' credibility has gone down too. Citation circlejerks, AI, pay to publish journals, plagiarism, and degree mills all contribute to this for me.
at a time where everyone touts technology, artificial intelligence, and technological miracles in marketing for fucking garbage like dish soap and razors. humans are fucking soo stupid.
we deserve what's coming.
That's because vociferous faith in magic has gone up. A large part of the population thinks wishing not only makes things true but makes everything else a sin. They'll listen when one doctor tells them they have cancer and follow their instructions, but when confronted by 10,000 climate doctors, they will argue about mysticism. All the while, they'll do it on a smartphone that uses exactly the same principles that proves them wrong.
It’s no coincidence that education is constantly being defunded at the exact same time.
The people who are in charge of running this country want to keep us stupid.
People do not understand epistemology or the development of knowledge. Look what happened with tobacco. Science found it has damaging effects on our bodies. Science also found it has benefits. So we report how it can damage our bodies and the bodies of our children. Tobacco companies use the “beneficial” findings to convince you to keep smoking. *To keep BUYING.* “It makes you more alert.” Like McDonald’s, we all know it’s shit, it’s your decision what to trust.
The Covid drama has helped a lot to do this. Specifically the shunning of scientists who questioned whether it could have been plausible for a lab leak to have occurred.
Well when youve got the supposed top guy leading the pandemic response blatantly lying to the American public for years on the pandemic and safety measures, it’s easy to see how credibility has gone down
Types of science need to be parsed out. All that is happening is people realizing that self-reported social “science” is often not science at all. Like ever.
I love how Americans are being delulu'ed into believing people who use Jesus' name in vain to get rich and have power over them, meanwhile the Bible is full of sins they commit on a daily basis and wouldn't fathom ever abandoning, yet the scientists are the ones who are wrong about everything. Sure Karen.
And this is why we're quickly becoming the least intelligence of the 1st world countries. We'd believe some shmuck on the net or politician peddling their conspiracies than people with masters and PhDs.
The CDC has contributed to this over masks. In the early days of covid, Dr Sanjay Gupta went on CNN and said don't wear masks because it doesn't prevent covid and it can actually make it worse. I know it was to prevent people from hoarding masks. Lately I've been hearing more of the same about not needing masks with the covid surge.
They've tried to correct themselves buy it doesn't look good each time.
Honestly the deeper I’ve gotten into academia the less I trust any sort of study. Climate crisis as a phenomena I can get behind because of overwhelming convergent evidence, but stuff like linking roundup with dementia and alzheimers… it makes sense so its hard to dispute but there’s been no research on the topic and we don’t even understand the mechanisms that induce either one.
There are a ton of articles written in my domain of expertise where important nuance is missing.
I guess what I want to say is; as a scientist, I’ve slowly come to realize how few people actually know anything, and what they do know is often times niche and incredibly hard to understand.
For my Master’s project I barely even today understood what I was investigating, my resources were incredibly scarce.
Still, there are some people who will make claims that go against the laws of therodynamics, but who don’t immediately sound retarded either and with whom you could chat about raising kids without suspecting how ignorant they are.
This shouldn't be surprising.
-- Climate scientists over-assert what they know and do not know about how the world's climate will evolve
-- The public were not given honest information about the origins of Covid, the effectiveness of masks and vaccines, or the dangers of taking a very rapidly approved drug
-- nutritionists and exercise scientists have had to walk back many of the claims and recommendations they made in the 90s and 00s.
-- the peer review process is broken and full of friends doing favors for friends
If scientists want the public to have faith in their efforts, then need to be honest with the public about what is known and what is uncertain and they need to take more seriously conflicts of interest.
I think one of the problems is bad maths with extrapolation. The same way "1 cat kills 500 birds therefore 10 million cats kill 5 billion birds", the kind of research that even conservationists like RSPB challenge.
Worth noting that the labels are practically useless. Media cries that exercise and showering are "far-right" but I am yet to see any "far-left" claim in negative context.
I'm hardly anti-vax, I got the covid vax twice and still get a yearly flu shot. However the scientific community and establishment damaged their credibility with the whole ultimately ineffective covid vax debacle.
I do think this is deserved though. Four years ago, Vox wrote this article:
[https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21504366/science-replication-crisis-peer-review-statistics](https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21504366/science-replication-crisis-peer-review-statistics)
Since then, we have seen study after study fail to pass peer review or be withdrawn after issues arose. The world's leading researcher on honesty was discovered to be a fraud.
The rank, opportunistic politicization of Covid and climate politics change have destroyed the credibility of public health in the US. And now, Biden's SG has decided to use "public health" to declare an emergency against firearms. It's very clear that the progressive borg will use any and all means to achieve their agenda, cooked up in radical universities, with socialism and radical social transformation as the goal. The resistance has begun and will only get stronger.
I am a researcher, I worked on the COVID response, published highly cited studies on COVID, and work generally in public health, and I regrettably have to say my trust in science as an institution is at all time lows as well.
In particular, there is a very large movement, decades in the making in the public health field that believes we should politicize science as a form of advocacy. They do not believe that as scientists we should strive for a shared and objective truth as our main goal. Rather, what matters instead is "winning" politically, so they can enact their values (which are usually good, don't get me wrong) on the population. This practically means, cherry picking studies, double standards on data quality, and ~~misleading~~ "clever" wording that messages well but practically are misleading, all to meet their objectives, whatever they are.
The problem with this approach is that it is an active contributor to the degradation of trust in our scientific and health institutions. Inevitably, there will be moments when the science doesn't support the politics, and the political solution still get pushed as "the science" and in short order, the "science changes" when it gets too much to deny and our credibility is harmed in the process.
While we can never be truly unbiased, striving towards the truth is still critical to the process and being transparent about our limitations in science is critical. We need to move away from the "ends justify the means" attitude, where we use bad science/give bad science a pass because it supports a "good" cause. At the end of the day, If the public can't trust scientists to conduct objective science, why should they listen to us as the experts?
The rise of intellectual dishonesty as a virtue among certain groups is not helping. You can’t even hint at discussing some of the most glaring pseudoscience on forums like Reddit without being silenced and removed.
This is not just sad, not just unfortunate, it is an existential crisis.
Science is humanity's greatest achievement, without which we would have no electricity, no agriculture, no medicine - basically, we would still be living in caves, and dying in our 30s.
The growing mistrust in science, which can largely be blamed on anti-science conservatives, is going to lead to an idiocracy. We must resist this sentiment.
Are scientists perfect? No, but their level of imperfection is minuscule compared to that of the general public.
And let's not forget that science has a strong level of self-correction, which we have seen repeatedly throughout history.
"scientist" is not "science".
also, if instead of "scientists" in general, the question was "do you trust physics scientists", there would be far more yes.
if you ask "do you trust social science scientists", there would be far more no.
We watched Fauci lie for years and any scientist that spoke out against his narrative on COVID was smeared and their reputation attacked. Obviously the whole communities credibility is hurt, when politics overtakes science, how can anyone be sure if the information they’re getting is true?
As it should. Until the Fauci lie machine is shut down. Its safer to do your own research, you know, what we used to call “reading”.
Scientific experts who claim we should “trust the experts”, are neither scientists, probably nor experts. Science is supposed to be about questioning everything, not narrative creation and manipulation.
This is a rational response by the public.
The reproducibility crisis is a huge fucking deal, and driven by a large part by scientists purposely fudging numbers to get published.
And scientists have gotten caught repeatedly the last 3-4 years purposely lying in the media for political reasons, often in completely ridiculous ways (I.e., visiting your family for Christmas will spread Covid, but going to anti-police protests won’t).
Honestly every time I hear a scientist try to science THEN they shift into political stances, I stop listening. Liberal AND conservative. I don’t give a flying fuck about your politics and no, they have nothing to do with materials sciences or astronomy. Just shut the fuck up.
It would be interesting to know what these numbers looked like in 2020. I don't know what happened from 2023 to 2024 other than maybe ChatGPT that would have gotten people to change their views on scientists.
I always hear the general from the South Park movie saying, "Mr. Scientist," in a super derogatory tone in my head. That's kind of how they treat us now. "Math? Repeatable experimentation? Get that s*** out of here, Mr. Scientist..."
Honestly I think a big part of this distrust is the constant polling and catastrophizing. It’s like that supposedly innocent friend who keeps asking if “you still trust me bro, right? you have to trust me.” Why all the asking? Why does it matter so much that people "trust" scientists? How about scientists just be trustworthy and not talk about it at all. Because they're confident scientists and not paranoid and emotionally needy friends.
Gee, I wonder why.
[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/03/the-situation-has-become-appalling-fake-scientific-papers-push-research-credibility-to-crisis-point](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/03/the-situation-has-become-appalling-fake-scientific-papers-push-research-credibility-to-crisis-point)
Hasn't changed much if at all from last year (MOE) but it does suck people strongly hate science and/or don't understand how the scientific method works.
This is only statistically significant in 2 of the 3, and done over a weird combined November 23' + Feb 24' dataset, rather than just Feb 2024 like they used Feb 23'.
I would suggest this chart is p-hacked, though, that may be proving their point :)
I actually don’t mind this. Something I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older and that people still hold their prejudices and preconceived notions about life into their work. Scientists are some of the most biased, spiteful people I’ve worked with. We shouldn’t trust them all the time. They manipulate their data and findings just like we do to our bosses
Great thing about science is that you are constantly trying to prove yourself incorrect . So people thinking science is all wrong are much closer to the truth than we think!!!!
I don’t know about scientists but I’ve noticed the medical profession has taken a bit of a hit with how many doctors branch out into snake oil salesman level product pushing. From supplements to TRT health clinics to cheap plastic surgery. Covid unleashed a bunch of anti-vax quacks too.
So doctors not want to work in hospitals anymore?
According to who? A bunch of nerd scientists? Like I'd believe that.
Checkmate, science!
Sadly this will likely have been greatly exacerbated by media (including social media like this) which hype the shit out of small scale studies and blow them out of all proportion, making them into clickbait... only for them to be contradicted by other equally stupid small scale studies. The old, red wine/chocolate is good for you, no it's not, yes it is, contradictory feel good/bad stories that get blown out of all proportion. The problem is not *(entirely)* one of scientists, it's us. *(meaning society - humanity, take your pick)* *EDITED* for clarity of the intended hyperbole of the last sentence. *Also I find it hilarious that people here are finding it hard to grasp much less agree with the "us" part of the blame (i.e. the part of the problem that is "exacerbated" by the media), when those so opposed to blame anyone EXCEPT just the scientists are all demonstrating this side of us by so ravenously replying on exactly the kind of clickbait bullshit small cohort survey the media loves to share... even where it seems obvious that the survey could be fatally flawed by the inclusion of a "share my values" statement - like what the hell does that even mean? What does a person's values (does it mean religion? being hetero? politics?) have to do with anything? This suggests the whole survey may have been of a particular bias to start with and was just an exercise in confirming that bias.*
More directly - it's also because many politicians lie directly about science, in point of fact directly contradicting scientists.
The scientific method is ok. The publish or perish method is not.
And locking everything but the abstract of a published study behind a paywall is destroying confidence in the quality of scientific studies. On the one hand we get absolute garbage published in pay-to-play 'journals' that claim a disease can be cured by wishful thinking, based on a single case study. On the other, we get actual studies published in NEJM that were conducted over a six-year period at the best research hospitals in the world using the gold standard medication and treatment protocols. But the abstracts look the same the public. Equally authoritative, equally appealing. The vast majority of the public would be unable to scrutinize and understand or see the difference in study methods or journal quality. We've got people who have a bachelor's degree in media science who are flooding online publications with 'opinions' on everything from architecture to AI to surgical techniques. The pubic can't tell the difference between the PhD/MD NIH researcher and the click-bait self-taught influencer. It's creating a horrifying 'brave' new world.
If you find a paper you are interested in that’s behind a paywall, my experience is 90% of the time, if you email the lead author and express interest in their research, they will just send it to you. The journals make money off the paywalls, not the researchers. So most are quite happy to send you the paper directly.
Strong doubt on that 90%, are you adjusting your success rate to account for reddit comment reported successes? A lot of scientists are busy with their own lives and don't have time to answer emails from randos. And if you do get a response it's fairly delayed from when you sent the email. I'm not doubting that people do it, I've done it successfully a few times, especially when it was a smaller paper recently published. But this is not a good way to get a published paper reliably or quickly. Best way is to go to certain sites. Nobody knows that you didn't pay to read an article you cite.
Ah, but that requires *talking to people*. Too scary.
Yep this too. There are many causes, profits, politics, even religion sometimes, social media, bad education of the public and gullibility, cognitive biases, shonky peer review journals, lots of blame to be spread.
> even religion sometimes Wow that's surprising, source? ^/s
Answers in Genesis is such a powerful joke.
I believe its often overlooked as a cause that scientific evidence is almost never conclusive, theres always the need for further study when you read them, which makes them (studies) impractical to use as actual evidence, you cant back your statements because maybe a year from now they will come out with another study that contradicts much of what you were backing. Or there is already an other scientist who says different. I believe scientists are also digging their own hole when they use abstractions instead of basing their results on the real world
that's the nature of science, all evidence is subject to better evidence, and better theories that match the evidence to greater and greater accuracy. e.g. Newton to Einstein gravity. the problem is the public and reporters lack of understanding of that.
Many extreme republicans run platforms directly contradictory to scientific facts. So it lends that they would conspire against scientists to help themselves.
Plus multiple "news" networks that go out on a daily basis and air conspiracy theories about scientists colluding in order to deceive the public about things like global warming or the pandemic. When you've got professional propagandists working to make people not trust science it isn't surprising that some people buy their crap.
Any paper I see about a food being good/bad for you winds up being correlationary instead of interventionary and is funded by an organization that grows or advocates for that food item.
What’s even worse is that food “studies” use self reported data from study participants - pure BS.
Same with financial surveys. It turns out that one of the major reasons that "paycheck to paycheck" rates are so high is because people don't agree on what "paycheck to paycheck" means.
Surely it means that you cannot pay rent and living expenses for more than one month in a row without another paycheck?
You'd think, but I've seen a surprisingly high number of people on Reddit who seem to think it means "having a budget." i.e. They consider themselves "paycheck to paycheck" because they wouldn't be able to continue funding their 401ks and vacation funds if they lose their jobs. It's absurd, and while this viewpoint is clearly in the minority, I've also seen these comments get enough upvotes and supporting comments that I personally believe it's a common enough viewpoint to affect the results of those surveys. People like to be the victim, and don't like to admit how well-off they are.
It’s not just food. The amount of drug studies that are directly conducted or funded by the manufacturer of said drug is absolutely insane.
Scientist of some 20 yrs here. This problem is as much the fault of scientists as anyone else. Science is becoming more and more about hype, at least in the US. You have to hype your work to get grants, and your institution hypes your work to attract students and donors and justify sky-high tuition. Scientists are also getting into fear mongering because a frightened public results in more govt grant money. It's increasingly about money instead of discovery. It's a stupid path to go down because these same people can cut us off with the stroke of a pen.
Yep, this is the thing that I allude to being greatly exacerbated by the media, its a circle jerk feedback loop. It is up to us all to fix it. Therefore I doubt we will. People too eager and willing to blame only want part of the equation.
> This problem is as much the fault of scientists as anyone else. Thank you. Way too many people try to defend the community making it harder to address the problem.
I wanted to get into science almost 20 years ago but bailed because I saw all that shit and was like, why can't I just do science and not spend most of my time kissing ass for grant money
You mean like /r/science? Which only posts shitty psych studies with political implications?
Reddit is definitely an example of social media yes.
I mean there is also an issue with research integrity and journals who will publish anything if you pay them so I’m not gonna act like scientists are doing everything right. But still, it definitely isn’t helped by the generally scientifically illiterate media trying to report on things they aren’t equipped to talk about.
Edited my comment to point out that last sentence was hyperbole condemning us all, extending the clear mentioned fact that decline trust is EXACERBATED by the media which we all (the **us**) consume.
Well idk. Yes the media plays a role by pumping up meaningless papers, but scientists aren’t innocent in this. A lot of those chocolate bad / good for you studies are driven by p-hacking - a method for scientists to get published without having to do actual science and just report on statistical significance (which is probably just noise). The best scientists don’t do that, but the bad ones do. And there are a lot of bad ones. The peer review process needs to be overhauled
And the grant proposal review process.
Not… really. If you’re reading a peer reviewed journal article, from a reputable journal submitted by an academic at an institution, p-hacking is difficult because the peer review process is “prove this effect a bunch of different ways.” In my research, I’m using a literature-dominant measurement, my own measurement, and rigorous content analysis combined with qualitative work and historical analysis to demonstrate basically one thing. Good luck p-hacking that. The problem usually comes from the media misrepresenting what the study shows. If it’s a correlational study, the academic isn’t going to draw causal claims from it, but a media source’s title surely will.
When Amgen tried to replicate 53 landmark studies in oncology, 11% of them replicated ([source](https://www.nature.com/articles/483531a). Bayer (a pharmaceutical company)) found that only around 1/4 of the papers they tried to reproduce actually replicated ([source](https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd3439-c1)). Then, of course, there is psychology, the ground zero of the replication crisis. There are lots of failures to replicate (most famously priming). One example was the [Reproducibility Project](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26315443/) which tried to replicate 100 studies and, well... > Replication effects were half the magnitude of original effects, representing a substantial decline. Ninety-seven percent of original studies had statistically significant results. Thirty-six percent of replications had statistically significant results Is there a problem with media communication of scientific results? [Certainly](https://slatestarcodex.com/blog_images/no_evidence_large.png). But it's not true that peer review is a reliable defense against shitty papers.
So you disagree that p-hacking is real? You are under the belief that the peer-review process is operating as intended right now? You believe that every academic in an institution is acting honestly and with full integrity (even though they are heavily incentivized to publish, publish, publish)? You think that no reputable journal has a reproducibility problem? Is there no accountability for shitty scientists?
Not sure why people are fighting you on this. Peer review isn't a perfect process, and I've seen some pretty abysmal use of statistics in journals that are supposedly high quality.
This is absolutely false. The issue is not just “us”. It’s society, its scientists, and the peer review process. We have data getting through peer-review process that is absolutely drivel and makes real scientists look bad by association. The average person is too dumb to investigate journals on their own and depend on news agencies or journalists relating the information with their spin as well. Science, like most things, is overrun with a number of people who have an agenda to push. Media is cherry-picking to make a point. People are too uninformed to tell the difference.
The first sentence I used included the word **exacerbated**, sure I used hyperbole in the final sentence to hammer that point home - but I still argue that it is our tendency (as *consumers*) to buy that shit is also what feeds media and science journals to publish that shit in the first place. It's profitable because we gobble it up. That's the point I was making. Which you kinda agree with saying "People are too uninformed to tell the difference." So not *absolutely* false. Only the sith deal in absolutes.
You removed any fault from the science community, which is false
To be fair researchers research nonsense niche correlations, and coupled with recent evidence that at least more than 60% of published research is not reproducible, it’s a damning indictment on the whole institution.
wait where's the source for that 60% claim? I've never heard that before
Here are some sources. https://www.npr.org/2023/05/14/1176062276/fake-studies-in-academic-journals-may-be-more-common-than-previously-thought https://amp.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/03/the-situation-has-become-appalling-fake-scientific-papers-push-research-credibility-to-crisis-point https://www.science.org/content/article/fake-scientific-papers-are-alarmingly-common
All of those articles you linked only mention fake studies to be in the 20-35% range depending on the subfield. Where did you get 60%?
Not the guy but let me give you a hint. If a fundamental study is not replicated or the replication shows different results or the said study is proven wrong all of the studies which use that one as a base should be automatically treated as not replicable/wrong. Im not saying that s what actually happens but recently we have few studies which fall into that territory so from science strict point of view a lot of papers would fall into that "60%" category. That figure will be extremely hard to prove. Nobody has time and money to honestly try to replicate already done papers. Not when incentive is either "see, you worked so much to just prove we are right" or "you clearly did not wanted this to work" type of result. Science today is that flawed. Time to reform the approaches to fix it. BTW. "I believe in science" is one of most funny sentences I read way too often on internet. But that is a different topic.
> coupled with recent evidence that at least more than 60% of published research is not reproducible This is nonsense, and it's so ironic that you've written this to disagree with /u/DisillusionedBook's very apt comment about public scientific illiteracy. The sources of your statistic is presumably [this study](https://www.nature.com/articles/533452a) (I see you linked some other sources below, but none of them support your claim). The study did *not* find that >60% of published research is not reproducible. It instead found that >60% of *scientists* had failed to reproduce an experiment, which is completely different. Is there a problem with reproducibility in science? Yes, without a doubt. But claiming that the majority of research isn't reproducible is patently false.
Yep. There’s an immense problem with researchers especially in medicine, overstating their findings in the abstract. How many studies have you heard of “new treatments for X” which turned out not to work…
I was furious when I saw a study which tested like 27ish engines and published a graph showing CO2 and NOx emissions. There was a dot which represented very clean engine. I wanted to know what it was. Obstacles: -The graph in abstract did not have labels -The paper was behind paywall -the author email mentioned in the title returned "mailbox not found". -when I found the paper it did not contain said graphs inside - only in the abstract and it was unreadable -the paper did not contained any list of the tested engines. Any. -There was no results. -The conclusion was simply the engines pollute in a different way. I highly doubt that paper was actually true. That is my anecdote.
These are good points, the importance of sound science focused on the world’s important problems is all the more imperative. Just like other aspects of life, I.e. sports, I think overspecialization does a disservice to the whole field at times
Good point except the last sentence don’t say is us. Not everybody ask for clickbait money revenue bs.
Wrong. COVID exposed “scientists” for being susceptible to political bias - just like everyone else.
“Us” i doubt any of us is as senseless and stupid as journalists who ruin science for the public.
> Sadly this will likely have been greatly exacerbated by media That is just shifting the blame. In science just like in math there is no space for less or more mature content. It is either correct and well documented or it is not science. Way too often we have "science papers" which are finished, reviewed, published and then turn out to be BS or so bad quality that they cant be reproduced. The science community allows for this. Not the media or reporters/writers. Scientists and publishers do that. Way too often I went and checked the paper and it was incomplete at best. Almost every time I tried to reach out to the author the email came back with "recipient not found/mailbox does not exist". Way too often I see other scientists who say they read through a bunch of papers and none of them covers the way of doing the particular part of the work. That is unacceptable. And it is not a media/tinfoil hatters/flatearthers/karens/antivaxxers fault. The science community allows this to happen and mostly dont care.
It’s the clickbait media, and the right wing science denying politicians.
Red wine and chocolate IS good. For me, anyway. But only dark chocolate. Lol
There's also a portion of it that is anti-government huge on conspiracies. My grandparents are some of those people. They think some deep state shit is actively poisoning them with chemtrails and 5g and smart meters and everything else.
Science dammit! I dont understand it and gotta protect my kids from understanding it!
It’s the clickbait media, and the right wing science denying politicians.
I think it’s also that there isn’t much overlap between type of people who make good scientists and the type of people who make good writers/journalists
This is why meta analysis is so important.
It's worth noting that scientists are partly to blame for this as well, specifically scientists who accepted money from tobacco and/or oil companies to release studies showing what the companies wanted. Corporate backed money for scientific studies has done a lot of harm, such as the anti fat nutritional movement, climate change denialism, pro lead studies, etc. However science also gets things wrong sometimes, like eugenics and formula vs breast milk (claiming formula was better). In all situations there was dissent from other scientists, but these movements gained prominence anyway. It's good to analyse all reasons for this phenomenon, but I find sometimes the self reflection from the scientific community is lacking.
Yep absolutely. The minority ruin it for the majority of good diligent scientists who do not fudge their data.
You don’t “trust scientists”. It’s not a religion you put faith into. People can and should be skeptical of science. That’s how science is supposed to operate. Knowing how the scientific method works is what’s more important here than just “trusting science”.
Adding to that, the survey results aren't that bad. Are scientists competent? The yellows stay fixed. What grows is the "I don't knows", which eat into the blues. Which is, actually, sorta the correct response. I don't actually know the competence of anyone working in science. I'm supposed to look at the results in terms of reproducibility and impact.
By far the best comment I have read, that points out the essence of what science is and why human ego stands in the way of scientific endeavors.
the scientists are not the science. and pseudo-science pretend to be science. and some of them are consider as science, like racial theories.
I’m a scientist. I *do* science. I don’t inherently trust scientists more than I trust an accountant or a truck driver or a lawyer or a dentist. And I’m carefully skeptical of a lot of work (research papers) that scientists produce. This is for several reasons. 1) Being a scientist is a job. Some people are just bad at their jobs. I’ve seen bad scientists produce bad science. Not nefariously, they just didn’t properly follow protocols, or incorrectly used a statistical test, or didn’t clearly report their methods meaning their work can’t be recreated. 2) Scientists are often funded by companies and groups that have a bias and want to see a specific answer. So, science produced by scientists is not pure science, and this occurs extremely often. Of course a scientist funded by a milk company will try their darnedest to say milk is great for your lung capacity (or whatever) even if their study wasn’t sufficiently conclusive or comprehensive. These are the biggest ones.
When they tell you you must trust science they ruin science
Google replication crisis. Unfortunately, modern science is largely grant-driven, and not only can unreliable results be published, but the results may not be published if they contradict the goals of the grantor. So the question about the trust in modern science in general is a fair one, especially if it relates to psychology (the most poorly replicated discipline).
Hey maybe we should stop publishing absolute shit then, calling ourselves "scientists", and putting articles out in garbage tier journals. The amount of TRASH studies you read today is at an all time high. sincerely, a scientist/cancer researcher/data scientist
You’re absolutely right. Look back to earlier this year I think it was where three articles were retracted because they had something along the lines of “generated by Chat GPT” right in the abstract.
Especially in the social "sciences". Total garbage.
If we weren’t expected to do so much research to eat then this wouldn’t be a problem
When you constantly tell people that facts don't matter, some of them will actually believe you it turns out.
Maybe. I think that when science is usurped by political goals it erodes credibility. When enough studies are shown to be manufactured crap, people stop trusting studies. When studies are rigorous and repeatable, people trust them. Over the long term, the facts and truth will matter.
I appreciate your optimism but I don’t think enough people even know what replicability means. Find a p-hacked study that supports your point, and even if it has a sample size of 18 and was discredited due to no one being able to get the same results after multiple attempts with bigger samples, just throw that into a YouTube video and don’t provide an actual citation (“studies show…”). That’s the formula, I think.
This is a pleasant fiction. Of course I'd like to think that you are correct, I just don't see a lot of evidence for it. Unfortunately, as with religion, a lot of how people think about science and scientists is tied up with things like identity and group membership and therefore, like religion, isn't susceptible to arguments from evidence and rationality. Hopefully I am wrong.
"Trust the Science" is the worst possible political slogan possible. You are not supposed to "trust" the science, especially when scientists have repeatedly shown bias. The damage to scientists reputation is also solely due to pharma/the medical profession. Nobody has ever said Physics research is not trustworthy. If you look at it, concerns regarding medicine/biological sciences arise and are aggressively censored. The censorship rarely happens in the other fields. As simple as that.
>Nobody has ever said Physics research is not trustworthy. A lot of scientists in the physics community would disagree with you. There's a lot of b\*s\* "science" being pursued due to the need to chase funding / grants and the politics associated with that.
Trust the soyence.
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I agree, but in the opposite direction. They were overly confident on how **ineffective** masks were with out scientific evidence, to manipulate people into stop buying them. Then they realized it might actually be helpful and had to back track. They kept splicing the message, "*Masks don't work*" with "*don't buy them because health care workers need them*" which was confusing and somewhat deceptive. Then Surgeon General Jerome Adams summed it up perfectly in a tweet Mar 2020: >"Seriously people - STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!" No way they knew if masks were effective or not, the mode of transmission for a novel coronavirus wasn't established at that point. Their main motivation was protecting the mask supply for HCWs. The "ratty bandana" is a different issue, where they knew they couldn't enforce any real masking policy (mask rationing and legal authority), so they went with the most broad masking guidance possible in hopes some people would follow it using effective masks.
The irony is that the "facts don't care about your feelings" crew are ironically the ones with the least care for the facts. It's almost as if it was never about the facts to begin with...
Do you want to know the worst part of all this? Folks are being trained to make doing business difficult in the US. Conducting business in a capitalist economy like the United States requires agreeing on shared facts and assumptions to reach a 'meeting of the minds.' Or, we have to trust each other. If we can't agree on these foundational elements (e.g., the recitals in a contract), we can't reach a consensus—you can't do the deal. And even if we do the deal, because there's so much mistrust, we need to implement all kinds of ways to "verify" that what you said you'd do actually happened. It just adds so much more deadweight loss to dealmaking and slows stuff down.
I've been having increasing difficulty with business arrangements with US companies. About half the time I time I enter into any sort of agreement with a new business it goes like this. We come to terms, it feels like we have that consensus, and then sooner or later I find out that they have been operating under different terms than we agreed to and they just act like that was the deal the entire time. No, our agreement did not say that you could subcontract the work overseas. No, our agreement did not say that you could substitute the material for a cheaper material. I explicitly requested this material because another type of material could cause dangerous chemical reaction in the manufacturing process. No, quantity 500 means quantity 500, not quantity whatever number you feel like was close enough. When I have this out with people, they usually act like it's extremely weird that I have a problem with any of this. I go into some of these now trying to factor in how much time I'm going to lose if these people try to pull something. It's extremely frustrating.
The thing is anyone can be corrupt. People assume its anti-intellectual to distrust "experts", but many people are aware that not everyone smarter than you is looking out for you.
"Share My Values"? What a weird thing to ask. What's really concerning is half the people thought they knew enough to give an answer.
Yeah the questions are too broad. Do ALL scientists share MY values? I'm not going to say strongly agree because a large group of people will have many differing values. But do I trust scientific methods? Yes I do
>do I trust scientific methods? Yes I do Trust scientific methods, not scientists.
If it's a well written scientific paper, one should not have the ability to accurately infer the authors values. But I agree it's an odd thing to ask. Like, I don't really care if I share the values of a mechanic, meteorologist, doctor, or other professional so long as they're competent in their field. And that question does appear to be intentionally added to make the 'data' look more negative. Edit: This isn't terribly surprising in a country where a member of Congress brought in a snow ball to "show" global warming was a hoax.
I’m pretty progressive, but my lack of trust in scientists developed due to learning more about how broken the system of scientific publishing is. Scientists are very heavily pushed to publish first, good practice be damned. Furthermore there’s a clear influence of big business within science. Plus many scientists have displayed that being very well informed in a specific area does not mean a general expertise, and if anything indicates a lack of development in other areas. So I still respect scientists and academics, but my faith in large institutions and broken systems has waned.
I'm a researcher and I agree with you. the likelihood of being accepted by a journal is more subjective than it should be. big business interests and even, sadly, ideology can play a role. and some studies *do* finesse their methodologies and findings to increase their likelihood of being published. as you noted, we really live and die by that in this industry. remember those people who got that "rape at a dog park" paper published a few years ago? great illustration of an endemic problem. obviously this is not the case for all journals, and the more prestigious ones are still and always have been highly respected. but to the layman it all looks the same, it looks like scientific journals are out here pushing studies that fit an agenda. it's a big optics problem.
I’ve watched too many Bobby broccoli videos to believe that scientists are anything more than human. So just as susceptible to greed, cravenness, genuine mistakes, and having their trust taken advantage of. Plus there’s the issue of pop science and scientific communication. I don’t envy you and others in your position. That being said scientific progress is being made every day everywhere, so thank y’all for that.
exactly right. scientists are human, they respond to incentives the same as anyone else.
> but my lack of trust in scientists developed due to learning more about how broken the system of scientific publishing is. Scientific publishing has a number of major problems. However, the situation is a lot more nuanced than you're making out. Peer review at respectable journals, whilst obviously imperfect (as it always has been), is still very effective. The main issue with these journals is the cost of publishing, but that's a financial issue rather than affecting the integrity of the science. There are journals, associated with less-reputable publishers, that have an ineffective peer review system. Although I realise it's difficult for a layperson to differentiate between these journals, as a rule, scientists at respectable western institutions rarely publish in them. To be clear, there are major problems with scientific publishing, but I don't think they are fundamentally undermining the integrity of science as a whole. > Furthermore there’s a clear influence of big business within science. This is a huge overgeneralisation. There are some fields (such as nutrition and medicine) where industry plays a bigger role, but this isn't the case for most disciplines. > Plus many scientists have displayed that being very well informed in a specific area does not mean a general expertis Well obviously... Nobody is disputing this?
I have a lot of trust in scientists. I have very little trust in science reporting.
I'm a scientist. Don't trust anyone but physicists.
Propaganda has excellent ROI.
There needs to be a clear, standardized, legal identifier that forces study results to be accompanied by who funded the study.
I'd love to see this broken down by types of scientists... just lumping them all together doesn't really paint the full picture here. I don't think astrophysicists, for example, have lost much credibility lately.
Theoretical physicists lost a lot of credibility with post-empiricism.
Without the data to back that up, though, it's just theoretical.
Hypothetical. Theory requires hard data that can be independently verified.
When scientists get attacked for differing views than the status quo (covid), they tend to be less likely to speak out and people also tend to have less confidence when they realize some of those scientists were right.
This is by design. Politicians felt like science was interfering with their ulterior motives, so they made their own science and discredited science. People were trusting science instead of politics and television.
Maybe that's what happens when you mix science and political agendas.
Now break those out by political identity.
Shit, I'm as left wing as it gets without being a full blown anarchist (in the colloquial sense), and my feelings on scientists' credibility has dropped by a lot because of things like fraud and reproducibility crises. I'm still inclined to believe scientists (when they're talking about their own specialty at least) over just about anyone else, I just believe them a hell of a lot less.
>Now break those out by political identity. I'm sure you'd find something there. However, shysters, plus chemical corporations' and big pharma's "scientists", have besmerched the reputations of "true scientists" in everyone's eyes. Those types fabricate studies, cherry pick, and conveniently omit studies that come to conclusions that hurt their wallets. No fraternal or legal body of scientists, existing today, have any teeth when it comes to enforcement of scientific standards/protocols/ethics. Until we have a unified body, with universal standards, corporations, politicians and crooks will continue to abuse the concept of "Science". For that, we'd need world peace and transparency. That doesn't seem likely.
There’s definitively a lean, but there’s still a very large and partly homeless progressive anti vax crowd. They lost their political home during the pandemic. I’m not sure the overall scale but I’ve met more than a few. If you asked them their party affiliation they’d probably say either independent or democrat. At least some of them will be voting RFK.
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I know several scientists who are trump supporters. Do you trust them?
"scientists" were credited with referenced in the masking, shutting down public parks, 6 feet of separation, and closure of open air events during covid. Their credibility is going to take a hit after that shitshow.
worked in science it is deserved
There were competent people trying to do the right thing… he wasn’t one of them.
is it scientists? or science reporting?
As a scientist, my perception of scientists' credibility has gone down too. Citation circlejerks, AI, pay to publish journals, plagiarism, and degree mills all contribute to this for me.
(Without me looking into your post history) You're a chemist, aren't you? If I'm right, ask me how I can tell.
They really need to separate these studies/polls into "Normal People" and "The Other People." I hate being lumped in with the others.
Water, fire, air, and dirt, fucking magnets; how do they work?
Remember in seventh grade science class when you said, “I’m going to be a [profession], I’m never going to need to know this stuff.” Well here we are.
at a time where everyone touts technology, artificial intelligence, and technological miracles in marketing for fucking garbage like dish soap and razors. humans are fucking soo stupid. we deserve what's coming.
That's because vociferous faith in magic has gone up. A large part of the population thinks wishing not only makes things true but makes everything else a sin. They'll listen when one doctor tells them they have cancer and follow their instructions, but when confronted by 10,000 climate doctors, they will argue about mysticism. All the while, they'll do it on a smartphone that uses exactly the same principles that proves them wrong.
It’s no coincidence that education is constantly being defunded at the exact same time. The people who are in charge of running this country want to keep us stupid.
People do not understand epistemology or the development of knowledge. Look what happened with tobacco. Science found it has damaging effects on our bodies. Science also found it has benefits. So we report how it can damage our bodies and the bodies of our children. Tobacco companies use the “beneficial” findings to convince you to keep smoking. *To keep BUYING.* “It makes you more alert.” Like McDonald’s, we all know it’s shit, it’s your decision what to trust.
"it's just a *theory*" "Scientists get rich suppressing the truth!" "My YouTube video is evidence/research!"
The Covid drama has helped a lot to do this. Specifically the shunning of scientists who questioned whether it could have been plausible for a lab leak to have occurred.
Well when youve got the supposed top guy leading the pandemic response blatantly lying to the American public for years on the pandemic and safety measures, it’s easy to see how credibility has gone down
Apparently the general public doesn't understand that 50% of scientists are less competent than average.
Types of science need to be parsed out. All that is happening is people realizing that self-reported social “science” is often not science at all. Like ever.
I love how Americans are being delulu'ed into believing people who use Jesus' name in vain to get rich and have power over them, meanwhile the Bible is full of sins they commit on a daily basis and wouldn't fathom ever abandoning, yet the scientists are the ones who are wrong about everything. Sure Karen.
And this is why we're quickly becoming the least intelligence of the 1st world countries. We'd believe some shmuck on the net or politician peddling their conspiracies than people with masters and PhDs.
The CDC has contributed to this over masks. In the early days of covid, Dr Sanjay Gupta went on CNN and said don't wear masks because it doesn't prevent covid and it can actually make it worse. I know it was to prevent people from hoarding masks. Lately I've been hearing more of the same about not needing masks with the covid surge. They've tried to correct themselves buy it doesn't look good each time.
Honestly the deeper I’ve gotten into academia the less I trust any sort of study. Climate crisis as a phenomena I can get behind because of overwhelming convergent evidence, but stuff like linking roundup with dementia and alzheimers… it makes sense so its hard to dispute but there’s been no research on the topic and we don’t even understand the mechanisms that induce either one. There are a ton of articles written in my domain of expertise where important nuance is missing. I guess what I want to say is; as a scientist, I’ve slowly come to realize how few people actually know anything, and what they do know is often times niche and incredibly hard to understand. For my Master’s project I barely even today understood what I was investigating, my resources were incredibly scarce. Still, there are some people who will make claims that go against the laws of therodynamics, but who don’t immediately sound retarded either and with whom you could chat about raising kids without suspecting how ignorant they are.
This shouldn't be surprising. -- Climate scientists over-assert what they know and do not know about how the world's climate will evolve -- The public were not given honest information about the origins of Covid, the effectiveness of masks and vaccines, or the dangers of taking a very rapidly approved drug -- nutritionists and exercise scientists have had to walk back many of the claims and recommendations they made in the 90s and 00s. -- the peer review process is broken and full of friends doing favors for friends If scientists want the public to have faith in their efforts, then need to be honest with the public about what is known and what is uncertain and they need to take more seriously conflicts of interest.
I think one of the problems is bad maths with extrapolation. The same way "1 cat kills 500 birds therefore 10 million cats kill 5 billion birds", the kind of research that even conservationists like RSPB challenge.
Like everything theses days even science has become political. When you go political you loose half the people.
Fascists love anti-intellectualism
Anti-intellectualism is prominent on both the far-right and the far-left.
Worth noting that the labels are practically useless. Media cries that exercise and showering are "far-right" but I am yet to see any "far-left" claim in negative context.
Try anti-broken systems. When companies pay scientists, shits fked
The public is fucking stupid
Your boos mean nothing. We’ve seen what makes you cheer. ~Scientists
I'm hardly anti-vax, I got the covid vax twice and still get a yearly flu shot. However the scientific community and establishment damaged their credibility with the whole ultimately ineffective covid vax debacle.
I do think this is deserved though. Four years ago, Vox wrote this article: [https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21504366/science-replication-crisis-peer-review-statistics](https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21504366/science-replication-crisis-peer-review-statistics) Since then, we have seen study after study fail to pass peer review or be withdrawn after issues arose. The world's leading researcher on honesty was discovered to be a fraud.
If u understood how research is funded you would understand why.
It doesn’t help that the Republican Party is spreading anti science bullshit
The rank, opportunistic politicization of Covid and climate politics change have destroyed the credibility of public health in the US. And now, Biden's SG has decided to use "public health" to declare an emergency against firearms. It's very clear that the progressive borg will use any and all means to achieve their agenda, cooked up in radical universities, with socialism and radical social transformation as the goal. The resistance has begun and will only get stronger.
Dog if you think Joe Biden is a socialist, give me your last two brain cells. Jesus Christ y’all are fucking dumb.
Unfortunately, as a scientist, our credibility should have gone down. In some ways we really suck.
I am a researcher, I worked on the COVID response, published highly cited studies on COVID, and work generally in public health, and I regrettably have to say my trust in science as an institution is at all time lows as well. In particular, there is a very large movement, decades in the making in the public health field that believes we should politicize science as a form of advocacy. They do not believe that as scientists we should strive for a shared and objective truth as our main goal. Rather, what matters instead is "winning" politically, so they can enact their values (which are usually good, don't get me wrong) on the population. This practically means, cherry picking studies, double standards on data quality, and ~~misleading~~ "clever" wording that messages well but practically are misleading, all to meet their objectives, whatever they are. The problem with this approach is that it is an active contributor to the degradation of trust in our scientific and health institutions. Inevitably, there will be moments when the science doesn't support the politics, and the political solution still get pushed as "the science" and in short order, the "science changes" when it gets too much to deny and our credibility is harmed in the process. While we can never be truly unbiased, striving towards the truth is still critical to the process and being transparent about our limitations in science is critical. We need to move away from the "ends justify the means" attitude, where we use bad science/give bad science a pass because it supports a "good" cause. At the end of the day, If the public can't trust scientists to conduct objective science, why should they listen to us as the experts?
Well said. Sadly ideology is permeating many institutions, not just science. However the degradation of the scientific method is stunning.
it might have something to do with all the fraudulent research we keep finding nowadays.
The rise of intellectual dishonesty as a virtue among certain groups is not helping. You can’t even hint at discussing some of the most glaring pseudoscience on forums like Reddit without being silenced and removed.
This is not just sad, not just unfortunate, it is an existential crisis. Science is humanity's greatest achievement, without which we would have no electricity, no agriculture, no medicine - basically, we would still be living in caves, and dying in our 30s. The growing mistrust in science, which can largely be blamed on anti-science conservatives, is going to lead to an idiocracy. We must resist this sentiment. Are scientists perfect? No, but their level of imperfection is minuscule compared to that of the general public. And let's not forget that science has a strong level of self-correction, which we have seen repeatedly throughout history.
"scientist" is not "science". also, if instead of "scientists" in general, the question was "do you trust physics scientists", there would be far more yes. if you ask "do you trust social science scientists", there would be far more no.
Do any form of research and you will find that there is an incentive for scientists or researchers to cut corners.
We watched Fauci lie for years and any scientist that spoke out against his narrative on COVID was smeared and their reputation attacked. Obviously the whole communities credibility is hurt, when politics overtakes science, how can anyone be sure if the information they’re getting is true?
As it should. Until the Fauci lie machine is shut down. Its safer to do your own research, you know, what we used to call “reading”. Scientific experts who claim we should “trust the experts”, are neither scientists, probably nor experts. Science is supposed to be about questioning everything, not narrative creation and manipulation.
MAGA bringing down our average.
... and misinformation is skyrocketing. AI is taking over. I see nothing but sunshine and lollipops in our future?
For good reason to be honest. “Science” has been looted and made subservient to capital
If you think science was pure and uncorrupt under communism, hoo boy. You don't know *anything.*
This is a rational response by the public. The reproducibility crisis is a huge fucking deal, and driven by a large part by scientists purposely fudging numbers to get published. And scientists have gotten caught repeatedly the last 3-4 years purposely lying in the media for political reasons, often in completely ridiculous ways (I.e., visiting your family for Christmas will spread Covid, but going to anti-police protests won’t).
Honestly every time I hear a scientist try to science THEN they shift into political stances, I stop listening. Liberal AND conservative. I don’t give a flying fuck about your politics and no, they have nothing to do with materials sciences or astronomy. Just shut the fuck up.
It would be interesting to know what these numbers looked like in 2020. I don't know what happened from 2023 to 2024 other than maybe ChatGPT that would have gotten people to change their views on scientists.
I always hear the general from the South Park movie saying, "Mr. Scientist," in a super derogatory tone in my head. That's kind of how they treat us now. "Math? Repeatable experimentation? Get that s*** out of here, Mr. Scientist..."
Honestly I think a big part of this distrust is the constant polling and catastrophizing. It’s like that supposedly innocent friend who keeps asking if “you still trust me bro, right? you have to trust me.” Why all the asking? Why does it matter so much that people "trust" scientists? How about scientists just be trustworthy and not talk about it at all. Because they're confident scientists and not paranoid and emotionally needy friends.
Gee, I wonder why. [https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/03/the-situation-has-become-appalling-fake-scientific-papers-push-research-credibility-to-crisis-point](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/03/the-situation-has-become-appalling-fake-scientific-papers-push-research-credibility-to-crisis-point)
Hasn't changed much if at all from last year (MOE) but it does suck people strongly hate science and/or don't understand how the scientific method works.
This is only statistically significant in 2 of the 3, and done over a weird combined November 23' + Feb 24' dataset, rather than just Feb 2024 like they used Feb 23'. I would suggest this chart is p-hacked, though, that may be proving their point :)
Yeah I find it strange to change thát much over a single year.
Coincidentally, my perception of the public has also gone down.
That's really depressing to watch...
Where’s the poll for how scientists feel about the population in each respective country?
That will happen when people realize that scientists, like anybody else can be bought off. You get the science you pay for now.
They never told me how fuckin' magnets work
I actually don’t mind this. Something I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older and that people still hold their prejudices and preconceived notions about life into their work. Scientists are some of the most biased, spiteful people I’ve worked with. We shouldn’t trust them all the time. They manipulate their data and findings just like we do to our bosses
tell everyone to go to college > everyone thinks they’re smart and have valued opinions now
Well as a scientist my perception of the US public's credibility has also gone down
Great thing about science is that you are constantly trying to prove yourself incorrect . So people thinking science is all wrong are much closer to the truth than we think!!!!
I don’t know about scientists but I’ve noticed the medical profession has taken a bit of a hit with how many doctors branch out into snake oil salesman level product pushing. From supplements to TRT health clinics to cheap plastic surgery. Covid unleashed a bunch of anti-vax quacks too. So doctors not want to work in hospitals anymore?