Trust, contingent thinking, and the moral posture of science

Like all applied fields of science and technology that are critical to shaping the modern world, the environmental health sciences are facing a crisis of trust and acceptance. Decisions on environmental integrity and quality and on human health risk depend on action taken on the findings and often advice of scientists. Our credibility is eroding alarmingly at a time when our scientific powers and capabilities have never been higher. In both politics and public acceptance, this is most obvious in the United States, which (together with China) is one of the few countries about which it can be fairly said that local decisions inevitably affect the world.

Liberal democracies place responsibility on the citizen to decide what is true. Much has been written in these turbulent months on how science has lost its primacy as the public knowledge on which we can all agree for decision making. Science is rapidly losing its standing as the source of “public knowledge” (knowledge used to establish the facts) for resolving disputes and making decisions. Quite apart from specific conflicts over climate change, evolution, and conception, science in general is becoming less and less influential in informing policy choices. This is primarily an American phenomenon but appears to be growing in other developed countries as well. Science denial is a global threat, however, because it blocks rational governance and management of global problems.

The crisis of confidence in science is manifested most clearly by the failure to accept climate change as a human-made catastrophe, which is forcing an exceedingly dangerous delay in coming to grips with the problem. This may have the predictable effect of forcing the world to use uncertain and tricky technologies with unintended consequences to avoid global catastrophe.

There are two dimensions of this disintegration of trust: decline of confidence in the scientific enterprise and lack of confidence in science as a way of knowing. (The two are distinct. An analogy is that it is possible to abjure the church while embracing the religion.) The first attitude reflects skepticism of the objectivity of scientists and ultimately reflects the sentiment that scientists are self-serving and an interest group like any other in politics. The second reflects distrust, or ignorance, of science itself. For most people, science literacy is about the role of science in finding facts and finding a purpose for discoveries. Science stories are about the next big thing, not piecing together a picture of how the world works. As a consequence, the media, the decision makers, and the public expect science to move ahead by giant leaps, technological innovation, and blockbuster discoveries (Sometimes, it does). That science usually advances step by step (and often by trip or skip) by a process of ruling out what is not true, rather than proving what is, is not particularly interesting to most people. The essential nature of the scientific method (falsification and all that) is of so little interest that even scientists' eyes glaze over when one talks about it. Some of this is inadequate education in science, but in a country as saturated with science entertainment and learning opportunities as the United States, low science literacy cannot be the whole answer.

Simply put, the public is far less willing to accept scientific standards of knowledge and validity in making critical decisions because a substantial proportion of the contemporary public does not trust science. Or, perhaps more accurately, at any one time on a given topic, enough people, thinking alike and constituting an inconstant swing faction within the broader “public,” do not trust science to provide guidance. This is mostly apparent for the most important decisions facing humankind and our communities, not the small stuff. These same people (mostly) use mobile phones, depend on health care, fly in autopiloted airplanes, and function in a world dependent on computers. They are entirely accepting of science when the stakes are low, useful, and entertaining. This key but shifting constituency reliably applauds progress when science and technology produce a cornucopia of economic benefits, innovate with marketable products, and stay content with the elaboration of safe ideas. However, there is an aversion to thinking about the deeper principles and method that underlie this progress (perhaps watching the fascinating wildlife on Animal Planet but never reflecting on evolution).

A critical reason for this neglect of principle is that the principles do not conform to values they hold. This constituency is values-driven and may be fact-conscious but is unaccepting of principles and integrative frameworks in science. Fundamental principles, even those that make these wonderful applications possible, are suspect to many people of faith or conviction, especially when they are insecure in their faith.

The result is not a complete rejection of science but adoption of a contingent way of thinking. The thought process starts from a different place, not where the idea came from. The genome is separated from evolutionary biology; the fossil record is experienced as a test of faith; and climate change is redefined as weather instability. Deductive thought is cut off from premises. Explanatory science is reduced to phenomenology. Causes are not examined too closely.

As scientists, we do need to respect the limits of science. Science is about the material world, not morality or values, with one big exception. Science is not value free: It places the highest value on demonstrable truth, in which demonstrable means reproducible, literal, accurate, and above all, falsifiable but never falsified by experiment or observation. This is more than a defining characteristic. In this sense, science is itself a moral compass, a secular lodestone that binds every scientist in the same mission of seeking objective, verifiable reality.

Science literacy, by itself, will not change this form of contingent thinking because the fundamental problem is not ignorance. Contingent thinking about science arises from a moral crisis, present in many societies but perhaps most vivid in the United States because of the large proportion of people with strong doctrinal religious conviction. For such people, on many critical issues, science forces a choice between received wisdom from trusted sources, carrying the certainty of moral authority, and difficult, uncertain, tentative, dense, arcane interpretations of the material world expressed by science that lacks the subjective certainty of belief. Scientific knowledge about everything that matters is beyond the capacity of any individual. Faith and moral teaching, on the other hand, are available to all and do not even require comprehension, if one believes.

Criticism of values-based thinking will not get the scientific enterprise very far. The fastest way to harden an adversary and the surest way to wander into hypocrisy is to attack an adversary's beliefs. After all, science exercises its own form of contingent thinking: No theory is final, and every explanation is subject to falsification and elaboration. It also rests on a form of authority, derived from consensus among the informed scientific community

The root problem will not be bridged by education, either, because it involves values. However, in values there may be room for reconciliation. Faith and moral purpose have many values. Science has but one: the primacy of demonstrable truth. This value constitutes a North Star that keeps every scientist pointed correctly in pursuit of the same mission, a search for truth.

Science and technology empower values by guiding action on things that we can agree matter, such as health, decent living conditions, and the proper use of power. Science cannot address conscience, values beyond demonstrable truth, and compassion. It can only through awareness and application fulfill or thwart them. But social and moral empowerment begins with demonstrable truth, and that is the core value of science and its moral purpose.