The article, “Motivated Rejection of Science” stood out to me because the vast amount of scientific research to back up findings and the vast majority of the population that rejects it. Lewandowsky and Oberauer discuss the prevalence of false beliefs in the general population. They bring up the popular conspiracy theories that have either false or no scientific research, plaguing the minds of many. When the majority of the general population believe in a certain theory – like the vaccines that are ‘linked’ to measles, Autism, mumps, and rubella – the effects can be detrimental. The vaccine craze was felt worldwide and is the best example of misinformation. When the public was misinformed with this misleading information, spread by the unhinged …show more content…
When this finding infringes on someone’s lifestyle or corporate interests, the reaction to the discovery becomes unfavorable. A contributing factor to the rejection of scientific findings is directly related to political affiliation. Since the 1970s, conservatives have experienced a continuous decay of trust in the scientific community. By 2010, the contrasting trust in the scientific community has become more evident, with liberals retaining more trust in them and conservatives reducing theirs. Climate science has contributed greatly to this conflict. The authors point out that the greater education a person has, the more likely they are to accept scientific …show more content…
Scientific research is constantly being battled in politics. The point of communication in science is to try and get across a proven theory to the public. Under the scrutiny of political agendas, these efforts face many hurdles. Informing the public of climate changes has had a positive impact on the acceptance of science. There are several techniques the scientific community communicates their findings to the public. Many people’s opinions are influenced by political leaders and their beliefs, which can have a negative effect on science’s efforts. Mere word changes have shown to make a difference in people’s willingness to pay for taxes that they don’t necessarily support or are even aware of. The use of storytelling has shown to be a powerful means in communicating science to the public as well. Although education and science understanding are not directly correlated with the acceptance of climate science, there is evidence that shows that a brief explanation of greenhouse effects “enhance acceptance across the political spectrum”. Researching source credibility has also boosted the political acceptance of certain scientific information. The most successful approaches to the public’s acceptance of scientific information are the cues from political leaders, persuasive syntax, the use of narratives, and research into a scientific source’s
He includes references from scientists with different backgrounds and public statements from government officials to support the claims that he made. Not only that, Scranton is a doctoral candidate in English at Princeton University, and he has written for The New York Times, Boston Review, and Theory & Event. Also, Scranton has published a novel about the Iraq war. His achievements and academic background certainly increase his credibility. His scientific and political sources add to his credibility even more so. The examples included in the logos paragraph is only a representation of the evidence featured in his article hence the use of the plural version of scientists and government officials in this essay. Even though Dr. Scranton has credible sources, he does fail to consider a portion of UTA readers. He mentions that the “question is no longer whether global warming exists” but instead questions how we are going to deal with it (par. 9). As a result, Scranton ignores the readers that might not believe in global warming; he does not recognize this small audience in his article, and as a consequence, readers might find Scranton to be slightly arrogant. Despite the failure to acknowledge this alternate view, Scranton does have the public’s interests at heart. The purpose of the article is to convince readers to take action and help save humanity
Arthur L. Caplan, in his news article, “Distinguishing Science from Nonsense,” warns the audience about the uncertain economic future of the United States of America due to the abandonment of science within society. Further, Caplan’s purpose is to inform the audience how the dwindling importance of science in children is not only due to schools, but also due to American culture. Therefore, Caplan uses a combination of rhetorical devices to not only warn and inform the public about the importance of science, but to also engage them to an extent that persuades the audience to take action.
The Fear of Science To live in the today's world is to be surrounded by the products of science. For it is science that gave our society color television, the bottle of aspirin, and the polyester shirt. Thus, science has greatly enhanced our society; yet, our society is still afraid of the effects of science. This fear of science can be traced back to the nineteenth century, where scientists had to be secretive in experimenting with science. Although science did wonders in the nineteenth century, many people feared science and its effects because of the uncertainty of the results of science.
Interestingly, Carl Sagan holds up science and democracy as mutually supporting concepts. He cites Frederick Douglass, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson as examples of literacy, and science literacy in particular, for supporting democracy. Sagan devotes an excellent chapter in the middle of his book to the basic toolkit that one should use to analyze an argument for intellectual integrity, describing the most common fallacies that can sidestep the basic requirements of argument and cause an argument to seem much more convincing than it actually is. He discusses the modern trend to distrust science, and he discusses some of its causes.
Therefore, because pseudoscience spreads so much doubt and misinformation, legit science is only able to slightly reshape the political debate. This is significant because the introduction of new climate science to the
Essay: Popular science has been widely integrated into our lives that we see and hear them every day on different media platforms. People supporting popular science have exclaimed that popular science is essential for education. The opposition argued that popular science is just a mixture of lies and exaggeration fed to us by deceptive parties. Supporters however fail to understand that articles on popular science are written by journalists that may have no prior knowledge to such theories. Therefore, popular science articles are indeed a little more
Adding a scientific theory to a public discourse contributes a whole new layer of complication to the agency of those receiving the message. Think Galileo-- he was ostracized for proving, and then advocating for, the fact that the Earth rotates around the sun. Eventually though, science prevailed and the world came around (in it’s opinion, not another orbit around the sun). Although it takes time, science can be supported and proven by other scientists, who then have an obligation to persuade the people through the spread of information.
So, when the scientific community came to a majority consensus that humanity was to blame for global climate change, it was not met with understanding, but skepticism. It exploded into controversy, becoming the center of political debates and a cop-out for mass media. Facts were thrown out the window as they became unreliable in the eyes of many Americans (Eshelem). Politicians took hold of the situation, overlooking staggering amounts of scientific data, and instead became full of excuses worrying
Conclusion: The article recommends that a significant change portrays science today that appears to be more similar to a pushing, entrepreneurial business than a pensive, unbiased attempt. In this paper, we give a general review of the urgent part of the scholarly publishing in encouraging this change and its upsides and downsides associated with the peculiar exchange between social standards and business sector positions.
Survey and polls has been widely used in the U.S to understand public opinion on controversial matters. One of the issues that has become more prevalent over the years is environmental issues. Through recent global initiatives, many Americans have turned their attention towards the issue of climate change. Researchers have found a general concern among the population towards the effect of climate change. There is a popular belief that this problem is real, requiring combative actions, but many also deny its imminent consequences while supporting environmentally damaging activities such as fossil fuel.
Climate change is a worldwide phenomenon that threatens to destroy the delicate ecological balance of our planet, a predicament far more imminent than most humans would prefer to acknowledge. Our influence over the Earth’s climate, however, may be the only thing capable of limiting the destruction of global warming and ultimately preserving the biosphere as we know it. An issue as prevalent as climate change should prompt humanity to come together and find solutions, yet the debate over reality is unabated. The effects of climate change are upon us, but in order to fully implement humanity’s resources in a coordinated effort against climate change, we must first educate the population about the importance of this issue by distributing statistics,
“Most of the last 10,000 years were warmer” “Sea level rise is decelerating” “CO2 is not increasing” “Scientists can't even predict weather” “We believe Al Gore deserves an ‘F’ in science and an ‘A’ in creative writing.” - Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Republican of Washington) “-- Very proposal that has come out of this administration to deal with climate change involves hurting our economy and killing American jobs” - Congressman John Boehner (Republican of Ohio) “Animals and plants can adapt” “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it.” - Senator Marco Rubio (Republican of Florida) “What are we going to do about, at what cost?” - Senator John
Narrative in the Right Direction is the Solution In “Challenges in Communicating Environmental Science”, Andrew C. Revkin specifically explain why the complexity of climate change and the nature of media generate a series of challenges for public to understand the severity of climate change. On the other hand, from a different perspective, in “The Missing Climate Change Narrative”, Michael Segal criticizes the fact that current media focuses too much on the breadth of narratives in climate change, including political, economic and cultural narratives, but ignores the basic conversation between science itself and readers, which is the exact key to evoke readers’ actual response. Such interactive conversation can be achieved by a supra-scientific narrative, which introduces some detailed background explanation of science as well as addresses some common scientific confusions, like telling a story to readers instead of just stating pure scientific facts. From where I stand, although climate
Public understanding of science is considered to be one of the most important issues facing educators in today’s technological world. It is see...
As Bishop mentions in his article "Enemies of Promise", there are many people who are ignorant when it comes to science and, yet these ignorant individuals still have opinions that mislead other people who are less educated and less informed; what greater reason should there be for us in knowing more about science. Under all the scrutiny science has gone through by their adversarie...