cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/10673163
Evidence shows that shoving data in peoplesā faces doesnāt work to change minds.
As a scientist heavily engaged in science communication, Iāve seen it all.
People have come to my public talks to argue with me that the Big Bang never happened. People have sent me handwritten letters explaining how dark matter means that ghosts are real. People have asked me for my scientific opinion about homeopathyāand scoffed when they didnāt like my answer. People have told me, to my face, that what they just learned on a TV show proves that aliens built the pyramids and that I didnāt understand the science.
People have left comments on my YouTube videos sayingā¦ well, letās not even go there.
I encounter pseudoscience everywhere I go. And I have to admit, it can be frustrating. But in all my years of working with the public, Iāve found a potential strategy. And that strategy doesnāt involve confronting pseudoscience head-on but rather empathizing with why people have pseudoscientific beliefs and finding ways to get them to understand and appreciate the scientific method.
A lot of pseudoscience has a material basis in privatized healthcare - real scientific medicine is fuckin expensive, so people get sucked in to woo-woo scam bullshit to try and avoid medical debt
A lot of it is also tied up with religion. Flat Earthers, for example, started by trying to reconcile biblical explanations of the Earth and the universe and it spiraled from there.
Religion, itself, has a material basis. Real scientific medicine is expensive, going to church is free.
Clearly the thumbnail is implying that the correct way to deal with people is to use static electricity to shock them
This is the best summary I could come up with:
People have told me, to my face, that what they just learned on a TV show proves that aliens built the pyramids and that I didnāt understand the science.
And that strategy doesnāt involve confronting pseudoscience head-on but rather empathizing with why people have pseudoscientific beliefs and finding ways to get them to understand and appreciate the scientific method.
To get things started, letās figure out what we mean by āpseudoscience.ā Unfortunately, thereās no universally agreed-upon definition for us to turn to, and the lines between science and pseudoscience can get a little blurry.
That skin usually involves some combination of advanced jargon thatās generally indecipherable, the wielding of sophisticated mathematical tools for describing nature, and, of course, the fancy technical gear for making measurements and observations.
Science is characterized by a spirit of openness, by requiring that methods and techniques be shared and publicized so that others can critique and extend them, and connectedness, which is a sense that statements we make must connect with the broader collection of scientific knowledge.
And while any individual scientist will fall short at one or more of these qualities for at least someāor, sadly, the entiretyāof their careers, the practice of science is to always strive for these noble goals.
The original article contains 654 words, the summary contains 208 words. Saved 68%. Iām a bot and Iām open source!
No its not. Making fun and ridicule is the only method. The people who believe that shit are plain stupid. The smart ones will get the hint and move on. Empathy for it is allowing them to become victims. Fuck pseudoscience. Shut them down every chance you get.
Or yāknow, go with what works rather than what satisfies our frustration on the topic.
I canāt comment on which strategies work best, but if research came to demonstrate that empathy works better than ridicule, continuing to use ridicule would in itself be a pseudo-scientific approach.
Make people afraid to look stupid again!
Ridicule and ostracizism are foundational to the social contract.
