EAST LANSING, Mich. — With the increased politicization of science, more and more people continue to be skeptical of research, especially when it comes to hot-button topics such as climate change and vaccines.
Michigan State University researchers wondered whether it would be better for scientists to acknowledge some of their personal or social values up front when reporting on their studies in order to gain trust. Turns out, not so much in certain situations.
Their findings, now published in PLOS ONE, suggest there is less benefit for scientists to be transparent in their views. In fact, by being up front, such transparency could make people trust the research even less.
“It would seem like being more forthcoming would be a very responsible thing for scientists to do,” said Kevin Elliott, lead author of the study, who specializes in the ethics of science at MSU.
“But our research suggests that in many cases, fully disclosing personal beliefs actually decreases people’s trust depending on the circumstances.”
The study used two different scenarios focused on the controversial additive Bisphenol A, or BPA, which is often found in plastic water bottles. Each introduced a fictional scientist who presented various scientific conclusions about whether the substance was harmful or if it should be regulated. In both test cases, there were situations where the scientist made a statement about something he deemed important in society before presenting a conclusion and other instances where this kind of expressed value was left out.
Elliott and his research team found that in both experiments – each surveying close to 500 people – when the scientist disclosed a value, survey respondents tended not to trust him as much. Results were based on a scale from one to seven ranging from “completely distrust” to “completely trust.” In fact, many participant scores dropped a full point when it came to trust level.
“However, this didn’t happen across the board,” Elliott said. “People didn’t mind so much when the scientist made claims about regulating BPA versus when a claim was made about BPA being harmful or not.”
Results also showed that participants were less likely to distrust a scientist if a conclusion was drawn that seemed to be opposite of an expressed value. For example, if the scientist said public health should be a top priority, but concluded that BPA was not harmful, people’s trust was less likely to decrease.
Elliott said that even though his study indicates that being transparent doesn’t always garner trust, scientists should still be open about their values and continue to manage them more responsibly especially when presenting controversial science.
“We all know that scientists aren’t automatons who go about their work with no personal, social or ideological perspectives,” Elliott said. “We wouldn’t want scientists to be like that. Scientists need to find ways to handle their values appropriately so that they don’t destroy objectivity or harm public trust in their work.”
As for the public, he said that rather than dismissing scientists who discuss their values and deeming them untrustworthy, encouraging them to have open, thoughtful discussions about how values influence research could be a good start to promoting socially responsible science.
“Whether it’s science, media or politicians, we’re all concerned about the role values play in reporting findings and the facts,” Elliott said. “Trying to figure out how to handle it all responsibly is the hurdle and this study could help with that broader effort.”
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“Can open and honest scientists win public trust?” Yes, as soon as they stop taking money from governments and stop prattling on with the lies governments tell them to use. Yea, that will about do it, after 20-30 years of not taking money from governments and not prattling on with the lies governments tell them to use. Pretty simple and easy, really.
I’m a scientist, trust me…
With about 50% of the population now going to university compared with 5% fifty years ago, I’m sure standards have dropped and with them the sense of responsibility that was once associated with the profession. It is now just another job.
There are three conspiracies I absolutely believe in.
1. Feed the kids
2. Cover your ass
3. Spreadsheet man.
People like putting food on the table to feed their kids. If they don’t have kids, they feed their pets. If they don’t have pets, they feed their habits.
People like to keep their jobs to make 1 happen. They cover their ass to make sure it doesn’t get hit.
Spreadsheet man likes to maximize his profit margin. Things that don’t make money slip to the sidelines. I
Dead or Alive,
I think that you have touched on one of the significant problems of our times. There is not only the issue of grade inflation, which probably started during the Viet Nam War, but reduced standards to accommodate those above the 50th percentile, instead of the 95th percentile. I suspect that my parents, who dropped out of high school during the Great Depression, were better educated than most college graduates today.
The only thing I find directly comparable is the math, and I have to vehemently disagree. My parent’s high schools didn’t even offer anything equivalent to Algebra 2, while I took Calculus my senior year. My grandparents didn’t even get that. Everything else, you can argue about quality and topics sacrificed, but that’s clear and unambiguous progress. The only thing that has really be sacrificed in exchange for this breadth of topics is mental math, as the rise of calculators has made it increasingly less important.
I would not say most college grads of today, just a substantial majority. For far too long far too many people have gone to college simply to “punch a ticket”, so to speak. Just to get that piece of paper, no real concern for getting an advanced education, just pick up enough this&that to get a job and move on with their lives. They would be far better served by getting a technical education, that is just not happening. Your parents generation, my grandparents, were far more focused on getting a technical education. May have quit high school, they continued to learn in order to advance themselves, even if advancing themselves simply meant not starving and keeping a roof over their heads. That entire mindset has been changed, and not for the better. I see some hope in parts of the millennial generation, I interact with a varied group of them and they are seeming to be becoming more focused on “what I need to do to build a life” than the Xers. I know quite a few of them, and they are un-hire-able. And strangely happy in that status, those of them not killing themselves with pills or meth or fentanyl.
Clyde, My father was born on a homestead in western Manitoba and he and his brother rode a number of miles on horseback to a one room 1-8 grade school. I remember him helping my sister with her grade 9 Latin. I took Latin a few years after her and it then disappeared from the standard curriculum. Yeah, things have come down a lot (amo, amas, amat, amamas, amatis, amant – love y’all).
Gary,
Since at least about the 1950s, it has been typical to require the mapping of a 1:24,000 quadrangle to obtain a PhD in geology. I remember once stumbling upon a list of dissertations from the University of California. It was one of the earliest, from sometime in the late-1800s. There were like 8 different titles (all the same individual!), that were fairly trivial, like “The Geology of Northern California.” /sarc This was before there was even any infrastructure to allow one to get around easily. I would say that the standards have declined through the decades.
Sen. Collins offers failed logic; she tries to tie the fact that “We have spent $35 billion on disaster assistance and flood and crop insurance over the last decade” which of course is made up of funds for disasters that have ALWAYS occurred naturally, to “the Federal government cannot afford to spend additional funds…”.
The assumption that disasters will get WORSE is buried in her second assertion (begging the question) and has nothing to do with her opening premise.
As others have predicted, the fraudulent “13 Agency Report” issued by the GAO is a boon to the “believers” from the last administration, and having a GOP Senator jump on their bandwagon is disheartening.
I can’t believe her staff is that ignorant; it is more likely Susan is trying to walk a tightrope appealing to both sides to get re-elected. I hope that strategy backfires.
There will be huge repercussions if the global temperature stops rising and there are more hurricanes, floods, and so forth. People will be furious they were lied to and are still getting towns wiped out, wiht weather damage everywhere as it has always been. I suspect this is why the “outcome” of global warming is worse weather and the time scale for “fixing it” is decades out. This makes the preachers safe if they turn out to have been very, very wrong and things get worse as the temperatures cool.
There will always be more hurricanes, floods and such. It is called weather and there is absolutely nothing humans can do to stop or alter it.
I believe the error bars on this survey might be quite large.
It is time to substitute `specialist` for `expert`. Then qualify the former with evidence of specialism on what.
I am fed up with the media pandering to so-called, often self-styled, `experts`. For instance, there are too many of them in the ranks of the civil service or on committees advising governments.
Damn it, BPA is not an additive in polycarbonate, It is residual monomer and is difficult to remove completely in a condensition polymer. Additives have purposes, what is the intentional purpose of residual monomer in polycarbonate?
TG
Indeed.
One thing that is appalling, to me, is the extremely poor knowledge of chemistry. Everything material is a mixture of chemicals. All chemicals are harmless and all chemicals are harmful. The conditions that determine this are related to what chemical, in what concentration, and what are the results to what chemical reactions. IOW, dose and route make the medicine and dose and route make the poison. Or, IOW the solution to pollution is dilution. Then there is the fact that all biological life forms are subject to bodily death. It is only a matter of when and how. The death of one form feeds another. Are there limits? Sure. What should these be? Determine the costs and the benefits. Shouting “toxic” doesn’t make it so, necessarily; and given the robustness of biological life, the LNT theory is false. Look up dose response curves and their logical consequences for LD 50s or 90s or whatever cutoff you want. For biological systems, there are always thresholds, even though they’re variable.
good on you Your knowledge of chemistry is not extremely poor.
TG
Right on!
My understanding of what constitutes “food grade” plastics is removal of monomers. The issue, then, is what the proper standards for residual monomers should be. Depolymerization is also a concern for “food grade” plastics.
Are we all here chemists. Good reply.
TG
In God we Trust, but when it comes to Science, Public Policy and Justice, please show me the evidence (and be prepared to replicate it).
So these guys cooked up fake papers, let it all hang out in public and were surprised when they weren’t trusted? This experiment was already done in climate science and got the same results. What is wrong with the neo-left. Things aren’t right just because they fit your world view and global plan. Science isn’t a malleable medium for supporting ideologues.
I’d trust a used car salesman more than anyone who claimed to be a climate scientist
Trust is earned.
When you earn my trust, you will have my trust.
When they start a statement with “what we know is that” I get suspicious …..so much of what “we have known” on diet and climate and health has been proven to be wrong that it has lost its effect
Objective science IS socially responsible science. The person posing these questions is nuts.
To a start they could minimise the use of “can” and “maybe”. Are they scientists or fortune tellers. They should investigate untill they could tell that it is so, and not only that it could be.