(Mis)Information Wars: The Friction Between Science and Ideology in Modern America

 Sarah Geiselhart

“You know, the Democrats created the idea of global warming to try and demonize the Republicans…” If this sounds like a conspiracy theory, that’s because it is. This and other choice tidbits of misinformation are all that seem to come out of my father’s mouth since he discovered YouTube. One day it’s “Dr. X told me masks don’t work,” and the next “Dr. Y said the COVID vaccine is made from aborted fetal cells.” If a statement fits his favored politician’s agenda and is uttered by someone with a hint of a scientific background, it’s cemented in his mind as the truth – regardless of how outlandish it may seem.

When my father first started spouting these “revelations” I had assumed he was anti-science and accused him of such. He denied this with great offense. After all, how could he be anti-science if all his information comes from scientists?

According to Yale law and psychology professor Daniel Kahan, Americans (like my father) are not anti-science and place a great amount of trust in scientists. After all, the general population doesn’t have the time or qualifications to go out and perform their own experiments or gather their own data. Kahan conducted a study in 2014, which found that regardless of political affiliation, people know that scientists agree that carbon dioxide causes global warming and that humans evolved from other animals. However, when similar statements were presented without the phrasing “according to scientists,” conservatives were more inclined to say they were false. Liberals also falsely marked the statement, “Nuclear power generation causes global warming,” as true, but marked it false when it was preceded by the statement, “Scientists believe.”

These results, alongside Kahan’s statement about American pro-science attitudes, confused me. Americans don’t see themselves as anti-science, yet don’t completely trust scientists. So what exactly is happening?

Rather than admitting to being anti-science or risk saying the “wrong” thing, many people would rather find scientists who agree with them. This way they’ll at least have the comfort of knowing that “science” has their back. When one scientist says something they don’t agree with, they simply find another that supports their ideology. 

Columnist Faye Flam points out that the more controversy surrounding an issue, the more scientists on either side. With scientists on both sides of these contentious debates, how is the public supposed to distinguish the “truth”? Steven Shapin, a professor of sociology and science studies at the University of California, San Diego, states that the way to distinguish the real “truth” hinges on three factors: what we already know about the world, what the source of the information is, and what the motives of the scientists are.

To determine the accuracy of Steven Shapin’s method of distinguishing the real from the fake, I read the article “The Phony War on CO2,” referenced in Faye Flam’s article, “Question Authority, But Trust Science.” My goal was to test the truth of the article’s claim: that CO2 emitted by humans is beneficial. For step one, I already know that increased CO2 in the atmosphere causes the greenhouse effect, trapping in the sun’s heat and causing the planet’s temperature to rise. This leads to global warming, which the article fails to address in any way. The next two factors can be tied together; a large portion of the article’s data is sourced from a group called the CO2 Coalition. A quick Google will inform you that this group was founded in part by Rodney Nichols and has continually asserted that there is “no climate crisis” and that CO2 emissions are beneficial for the planet. Harrison Schmitt is also a former Republican senator and has been extremely outspoken against climate change.

Through this analytical process, I can conclude that the claim of “The Phony War on CO2” is not true. Although Harrison and Schmitt have strong educational backgrounds, my own knowledge of CO2 emissions and global warming gives reason to doubt their assertions. This line of reasoning was easy to follow and required minimal effort. We may not be able to go out into the field and track down the data ourselves, but we can vet our sources and hold the people giving us the data responsible, preventing the loop of conspiracy theories and misinformation we seem to find ourselves trapped in. 

Works Cited

Flam, F.D. (2016, Nov. 6). Question Authority, But Trust Science. Bloomberg. 

Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on the Social and Ethical Impacts of Developments in Biomedicine; Bulger RE, Meyer Bobby E, Fineberg HV, editors. Society's Choices: Social and Ethical Decision Making in Biomedicine. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 1995. Trust, Honesty, and the Authority of Science. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK231971/

Nichols, Rodney W. & Schmitt, Harrison H. (2016, Oct. 31). The Phony War On CO2. The Wall Street Journal. https://via.hypothes.is/https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-phony-war-against-co2-1477955418

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