Among scientists and believers of science alike, there’s a frustration with all the voices out there who question science. From conspiracy theorists to pseudoscientists, anyone with an idea to share (and occasionally attribution to offer) can find an audience of believers. Many of them have profited from it. Often, this is presented as a problem of manipulation. “Those people” are telling lies to advance their own agendas despite contradictory evidence. In Undark magazine, Yale professor C. Brandon Ogbunu offers a different perspective. Rather than casting blame, he suggests the problem may really come from how scientists communicate and the scientific method itself.
“While different issues have contributed to Trump’s low approval ratings, there is little evidence that attacks on science are among them. We can illustrate this with a fictional scenario: Take away college football tomorrow and watch college towns descend into chaos. But when they came for our pipettes and microscopes, almost nothing happened … Science has gaping holes that have already been exploited by the ill-intentioned. We’ve run out of options, and there is nowhere to hide. It’s time to stop grieving over an imaginary golden age that never existed.”
The more scientists argue among each other for attribution or funding or reproducibility, the more of a void builds that can be filled with whomever shouts their own theory the loudest. After all, the easiest theory to prove is one where you can make up the proof yourself or selectively pick the most convenient data to showcase. So what’s the solution? It seems to start with scientists banding together to find more unity against the forces that aim to discredit them.