Dtknuckles
Well-Known Member
I think Government and Religion only give us guidance in how to respond to the issues. There are scientists, the media and others that help us understand the issues. One of the problems we face is that with the wealth of information available we have to personally vet the information more than ever. Although, even in the past, history and other materials needed to understand are written with, if not an actual agenda, the bias of the writer. True clean information has never been truely available but is less possible now.
As a scientist this is something I think about a lot. It's something that weighs on me as and individual and on my profession. It's my feeling and experience that science isn't valued highly. There's a web of reasons why.
For instance, in most organizations that contain both scientists and engineers, engineers earn 10-20% at the same professional level and with less education. Most environmental consultants are not scientist, but engineers. I think there is strong evidence that there has been a societal discrediting of science and scientists that has accelerated over recent decades; particularly post the Environmental Protection Act. Discrediting of science has always been a thing, but was mostly left to religious zealots. Religion, specifically evangelical Christianity, has been able to greatly influence political decisions in the U.S.
There are other factors. Americans now have a basic distrust in their government that (I think) is stronger post-Vietnam, post-Nixon, post-Iran Contra, post-etc. etc. Science is also viewed as inherently socialist. A better way to say it is anti-capitalist because it tends to cost money upfront; long before profits can be made off of what is learned / the knowledge that is gained.
Science has also become for-profit and because of the way academic thought has failed the average person. Science has not dedicated itself to using the language and energy necessary to speak to people outside of their disciplines.
Now, if you want to suggest that scientists are motivated by things other than science. I would agree with that statement. The fact is that scientist need to compete for very limited grant dollars, which are often very limited tax dollars. Most of us work on this "soft" money. It's just accepted and expected that scientists have this impermanence as a part of their lives. Some governments and some states value science more than others and those places tend to be where innovation and advancement of knowledge occur. To me these are ultimately societal choices and have everything to do with the policies put forth by our local and national governments.
Personally, I'm working in a place that I have some freedom to try and address the communication issue, and I'm trying to do so (as are many others). We are getting better at it, but we are scientists not graphic designers, not speech writers, not facilitators. We do all of those things but it's often not our natural state of being. So we need help. We need people in office who spend money efficiently and build important funding foundations. We need people with other expertise to be willing to work with us even though we don't have very much money. We also need the public to make the choice to keep their religion in the home, their politics in the booth, and be willing to interact with people and information they might not easily understand.
I mean just with the Biden situation. I have to trust that all those world leaders were doing the right thing by putting pressure on the Ukraine to dismiss the prosecutor. What proof do I really have?
With Global Warming, yea I have listed to a bit of information, but don't really the grasp of everything. My information is really basic. Even when the data is there I still have to trust myself and others to get behind it.
With the school data. It struck me that they were all excited about being the top school. In my head I was like of course you are. It's one of a hand full of schools in the area that are upper middle class. Then they were praising margins of 2-3% percent. I mean that is within normal variance. It's not even a significant difference.
Things can get really complex and even on simple things we have to be able to be convinced. The reason that I brought up Religion and Government is that has typically been ways that have been used to generate a common identity to regardless of what data and reality tell us. It seems like identity is more of a motivating factor when people have low information regarding issues and even when they have high information for that matter.