In Physics Today‘s Science controversies past and present, Steven Sherwood compares the current public response to anthropogenic climate change to the historical responses to heliocentrism and relativity. Even though theories of climate change pale in comparison to the others on the scale of scientific revolutions, he notes many fundamental similarities in their effects on people’s conception of the world. Here are some choice quotes that capture important scientific principles which tend to escape lay understanding and which may make acceptance of scientific theories more difficult. On scientific elegance and parsimony in model comparison:
Surely, the need for a new tweak to the model each time more accurate observations came along should have been a tip-off that something fundamental was wrong.
On deduction vs. observation:
the worked-out consequences of evident physical principles rather than direct observation
A common refrain is the disparagement of new paradigms as mere theories with too little observational basis.
On the backfire effect:
Instead of quelling the debate, the confirmation of the theory and acclaim for its author had sparked an organized opposition dedicated to discrediting both theory and author.
As [confirmatory] evidence continues to accumulate… skepticism seem[s] to be growing rather than shrinking…
provocative ideas… have shattered notions that make us feel safe. That kind of change can turn people away from reason and toward emotion, especially when the ideas are pressed on them with great force.
why the backlash happens: the frailty of human reason and supremacy of emotional concerns that we humans all share but do not always acknowledge
On communicating scientific uncertainty:
“All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike—and yet it is the most precious thing we have.” (Einstein)
One of the most difficult yet fundamental principles of science is that we don’t and can’t know if we’re right. We can only get closer to what is probably right. Yet science is seldom conveyed or perceived that way. And what makes science so precious is its ability to show us, through inference and deduction, that which seems to contradict our casual observation and which most surprises us. This suggests caution both when employing discovery learning, as we cannot always trust ourselves to discover accurately, and when employing lecture-based instruction, as we are also unlikely to trust authoritarian telling that threatens our preferences for and sense of security about our world. Understanding the relationship between our flawed tools of reason—through cognitive science—and our imperfect tools of science—probabilistic inference, mathematical proof, model comparison—can help us learn better from both. — Sherwood, S. (2011). Science controversies past and present. Physics Today, 64(10), 39-44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.1295