Galileo Galilei Wikimedia Commons
Recent resistance by some people who refuse to believe the science that predicts the course of covid 19 through a population, reminded me of a post I wrote several years ago that bears revisiting.
When Galileo discovered the moons of Jupiter in his telescope, he couldn’t wait to share it with the world. So, in 1610 he hurriedly rushed The Starry Messenger, the story of his discovery, into print. Now in those days they didn’t have talk shows. So, to promote his book, Galileo took his telescope to dinner parties and invited the guests to see Jupiter’s moons for themselves. Many refused to look claiming that the telescope was an instrument of the devil. They accused Galileo of trying to trick them, painting the moons of Jupiter on the end of the telescope. Galileo’s response was that if that were the case they would see the moons no matter where they looked when actually they could see them only if they looked where he told them to look. But the main objection was that there was nothing in the Bible about this phenomenon. Galileo’s famous response: “The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go.”
Galileo is considered the father of modern science, now a huge body of knowledge that has been accumulated incrementally by thousands of people. Each tiny bit of information can be challenged by asking, “How do you know?” And each contributing scientist can answer as Galileo did to the dinner party guests, “This is what I did. If you do what I did, then you’ll know what I know.” In other words, scientific information is verifiable, replicable human experience. Science has grown exponentially since Galileo. It is a body of knowledge built on an enormous quantity of data. And its power shows up in technology. The principles that are used to make a light go on were learned in the same meticulous way we’ve come to understand how the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have risen over the past 100 years leading to ominous climate change or that Darwin was right, and living species are interconnected “islands in a sea of death.”
Yet there are many who cherry pick science—only believing its findings when they agree with them.
(Documented proof doesn’t fare much better. Despite the publication of President Obama’s much questioned birth certificate, there is still a percentage of the population that refuses to believe he was born in the USA.)
Nonfiction authors take pride in the rigors with which we verify the accuracy of the content we write about. We enjoy the satisfaction of knowing we are dealing with facts and when the facts are in dispute, we are careful to mention that that, too, is a fact. Yet, there are still those who are not convinced.
What’s going on here? Believe it or not, science has taken a look at so-called “motivated reasoning” where people rationalize evidence that is not in keeping with deeply held beliefs. Here are some of the findings:
And finally the conclusion: “If you want someone to accept new evidence, make sure to present it to it in a context that doesn't trigger a defensive, emotional reaction.”
In other words, sometimes a direct approach to the facts is NOT the way to go.
So keep an open mind about this.
When Galileo discovered the moons of Jupiter in his telescope, he couldn’t wait to share it with the world. So, in 1610 he hurriedly rushed The Starry Messenger, the story of his discovery, into print. Now in those days they didn’t have talk shows. So, to promote his book, Galileo took his telescope to dinner parties and invited the guests to see Jupiter’s moons for themselves. Many refused to look claiming that the telescope was an instrument of the devil. They accused Galileo of trying to trick them, painting the moons of Jupiter on the end of the telescope. Galileo’s response was that if that were the case they would see the moons no matter where they looked when actually they could see them only if they looked where he told them to look. But the main objection was that there was nothing in the Bible about this phenomenon. Galileo’s famous response: “The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go.”
Galileo is considered the father of modern science, now a huge body of knowledge that has been accumulated incrementally by thousands of people. Each tiny bit of information can be challenged by asking, “How do you know?” And each contributing scientist can answer as Galileo did to the dinner party guests, “This is what I did. If you do what I did, then you’ll know what I know.” In other words, scientific information is verifiable, replicable human experience. Science has grown exponentially since Galileo. It is a body of knowledge built on an enormous quantity of data. And its power shows up in technology. The principles that are used to make a light go on were learned in the same meticulous way we’ve come to understand how the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have risen over the past 100 years leading to ominous climate change or that Darwin was right, and living species are interconnected “islands in a sea of death.”
Yet there are many who cherry pick science—only believing its findings when they agree with them.
(Documented proof doesn’t fare much better. Despite the publication of President Obama’s much questioned birth certificate, there is still a percentage of the population that refuses to believe he was born in the USA.)
Nonfiction authors take pride in the rigors with which we verify the accuracy of the content we write about. We enjoy the satisfaction of knowing we are dealing with facts and when the facts are in dispute, we are careful to mention that that, too, is a fact. Yet, there are still those who are not convinced.
What’s going on here? Believe it or not, science has taken a look at so-called “motivated reasoning” where people rationalize evidence that is not in keeping with deeply held beliefs. Here are some of the findings:
- A large number of psychological studies have shown that people respond to scientific or technical evidence in ways that justify their preexisting beliefs.
- Many people rejected the validity of a scientific source because its conclusion contradicted their deeply held views.
- Head-on attempts to persuade can sometimes trigger a backfire effect, where people not only fail to change their minds when confronted with the facts—they may hold their wrong views more tenaciously than ever.
- The problem is arguably growing more acute, given the way we now consume information—through the Facebook links of friends, or tweets that lack nuance or context, or “narrowcast” and often highly ideological media that have relatively small, like-minded audiences. Those basic human survival skills of ours, says Michigan’s Arthur Lupia, are “not well-adapted to our information age.”
And finally the conclusion: “If you want someone to accept new evidence, make sure to present it to it in a context that doesn't trigger a defensive, emotional reaction.”
In other words, sometimes a direct approach to the facts is NOT the way to go.
So keep an open mind about this.
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