Naked Science Forum
General Science => General Science => Topic started by: ncrna on 22/04/2017 12:39:12
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I was curious about the psychology behind collective action, so I had a dig around on the paper+patent discovery engine sparrho.com (disclaimer: I work there!)
There aren't that many free-to-access papers on this topic, and I'm no psychology expert (my PhD's in biochemistry), but I summarised 4 interesting papers here: https://www.sparrho.com/pinboard/marching-for-science-research-behind-protests/164012/landing/
I'd love to hear your thoughts and personal experiences from the March, and any expert opinion would be much appreciated!
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A helpful, well-meant tip for you:
It would be a good idea to provide a summary of the texts here too, rather than just refer people off-site to another resource. Also, you're links are non-functional until you have a stronger track-record, which makes people less likely to follow them.
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I have been on the "march" in my city (it was actually a gathering on the marketplace) and it was rather disappointing.
I am located in a quite small city in the north of Germany were about 1/3 of all inhabitants are somehow affiliated with the university. Considering that, it is amazing how few people were there. However, they presented a mixure of light music and talks mainly from scientist from our region. They started of with a talk from a philosophy professor of our university which was in my opinion already the first huge mistake. I guess there are philiosphers out there that are quite good at talking and are able to explain their thoughts in a way that even my mom would understand. Well, this guy was not one of them. He is one of those philosophers that just always feel a bit .. off.. detached from the people. He had his talk on a bunch of pages and just read it for 15 minutes. I guess there were som good thoughts in there, but not only for me it was hard to stay attentive. If any non-scientist happened to be there to see what was going on, I bet they immediately fled with the feeling that "science stuff" is for "science people" only. That was not what I would have liked to communicate to people listening - scientists like non-scientists.
In the end it was a lot of preaching science to scientists, which does not help to promote science less as an elite craft but as an important tool for decision making and understanding of the world for everyone. I did not like that.
A big issue is, that science is often very difficult to approach by not scientifically trained people, which of course raises distrust and scepticism. And even for scientists this can be hard. I for example just recently tried to get an unbiased view on glyphosate (as there is a EU voting coming up by the end of this year), but in a very heated discussion this is extremely difficult and required a lot of digging. And I am still not sure what to think of certain issues. For a non-scientific person it is basically impossible to try to read the results and make up an own mind. That makes some of them very susceptible for fearmongering and emotional discussions. Unfortunately I am in contact with some people that have a very deep general distrust in scientists and I think it is because they just do not understand what scientists do. Talking in a way, that even other scientists barely understand does not help much. In genereal the communication between science and the people is a big issue that needs to be solved. I somehow hoped there would be a bigger focus on that issue. Maybe it was on other marches..
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Really interesting contrast with the London event, which was pretty powerful. We have a piece on it in the programme this week. What is the German perspective of science? Is it one of support, or scepticism?
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I guess the "march" in my town was maybe not the best example for how the marches in Germany went. I live in a quite remote area of Germany where a city is already "big" with 50.000 inhabitants and there are not much of those around. As I said, the University is a main economic factor and surely the reason, why this town belongs to the "big" cities here. I saw footage of other cities in Germany that looked a bit more convincing (in Berlin 10.000 attented the walk, which is cool and I know(love!) for example the host of the march there and know that he is very good at communicating science to the people).
In general, the situation in Germany is not comparable with for example what is happening in the US since years. Most popular politicians do not really challenge scientific consensus. Germany has a long history in science and politicians like other people are generally quite proud of I think.
However, that said, the distrust in science is rising here as well and I think it would be a big mistake to just ignore this fact... that is what happened elsewhere. Surveys showed that up to 1/3 of people believe that we trust in science to much and should rely much more on our beliefs and gut feelings. That is alarming I think! Other than in America, but maybe similar to the UK, the denialism is not so much religion based (e.g.. ID, flat earth ..) but more lifestyle driven (e.g. alternative medicine, GMOs..). Although the south of Germany (mainly Bavaria) is much more religious and naturally there is some creationism movements there.
For example it was really difficult for me to find doctors that do not promote homeopathy, as even many health insurances do cover the costs nowadays .. an argument for many people, that there must be some truth about this, as otherwise the healt insurances would not pay. There is a lot of people believing in this nonsense and even more that at least do not dismiss the possibility that it might work and would go for it. This is increasing at the moment. I find it super puzzling that trained medics support this just because people ask for it.
Also the notion that GMOs are a risk for health and environment is very common. Up to 80% of people distrust GMOs and I have to admit until quite recently I was one of them. Its just what you kind of grow up with. Just a few month ago I started to challenge my own beliefs and tried to find objective information on this. It is diffcult to admit that science does not really support this subliminal fear I still kind of feel in my guts thinking about it. So I get that it is even more diffciult for people not trained in scientific thinking.
Another big topic in the population is the climate debate. None of the big political parties deny the human made climate change and address it in their agendas. Our quite young far rightwinged party AfD is the only one denying it. However, there is a increasing number of deniers in the population, basically as a counterpart to all this uncritical environmental thinkers that are so popular here.