Is There A General Distrust Of Science And Scientists?

[jim360]

And if so, why, and what should be done about it?

I asked having just watched Thursday's Question time where once again the MMR row raised its ugly head, but the media representative defended the story as "reporting the facts". This is not even close to the truth, and the way media reports science is something that seriously should be made far better.

But the scandal itself is part of something more general. By and large the public went along with the story, despite just about every other scientist or expert who was asked going against it, and presumably doctors continued to advise taking the vaccine. So why did this turn into something so large? Is it because people distrust Scientists?

[woofgang]

so to the lay understanding, its the same circumstance with MMR as it was with thalidomide? Science undertakes the testing that government prescribes?

[jim360]

I think you probably get two scenarios. There's the ones where Governments don't care so much, fewer short-term consequences so less politically important. In those cases scientific research is going to be in general more rigorous. But if governments start proscribing minimum standards it's likely that scientists will start slipping back to meet just those standards, particularly larger companies. It's human nature to be a bit greedy when money gets involved.

Perhaps I'm just being cynical, of course, but perhaps this explains partially why so much of the "bad research" that Ben Goldacre is condemning comes from medical and pharmaceutical science. Medicine is hard anyway, because the human body is too complicated. But also there's an incentive to cut corners more.

In answer to my own question, then -- I would hope that there are few people, if any, who have a serious distrust of Science as a whole. It can be wrong, but it is self-correcting, and when it is right it is spectacularly so -- how else, for example, could we have this conversation so easily? Or reach the moon, or send a satellite so far it's almost leaving the Solar System, or probe the insides of the Sun? There is no reason to distrust Science, because it demonstrably works, and is based in the sensible reasoning of observation, testing, and refining theories to fit experiment.

Any individual Scientist, or even a particular group of them, should perhaps be "distrusted", or at least met with some scepticism, as far as is necessary for people to do research into the matter themselves, to check to see that there are no vested interests that might have led to what that scientist has said. There's always a case for rational doubt. The problem is, as happened in MMR, when the doubt is irrational, based on ignoring the majority over the one, and on research that could be scientifically discredited very easily.

TlDR - be wary of any one voice in Science, but not the scheme itself.