Former Contributor to the Huffington Post
Vicki Cobb's Blog
  • Vicki Cobb's Blog
  • About
  • Contact

Just Because It’s a Proven Fact, Doesn’t Mean They’ll Believe It

4/4/2020

 
Picture
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:  
 
  1. A large number of psychological studies have shown that people respond to scientific or technical evidence in ways that justify their preexisting beliefs.
  2. Many people rejected the validity of a scientific source because its conclusion contradicted their deeply held views.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
marlene targ brill link
4/4/2020 10:59:05 am

Thoughtful article about parts of our great, and sad, national divide. Perhaps that's why I got hate emails when Obamacare passed, simply because I wrote a children's biography about Barack Obama. Too many say, "Don't bother me with facts."

Jan Adkins link
4/4/2020 02:33:26 pm

Folks don't become nay-sayers without a reason. It's up to us, the advocates and explainers of science, to explore their reasons and build bridges.

Citizens who feel left behind by the rush of "progress" and change can feel diminished, left out of the big rush of society. The primary beliefs they held as young people have been questioned. They're worried. Of course. When you're wondering why things are changing too rapidly around you, when the nation is more concerned about computer science than about manufacturing refrigerators, a big part of our population will be antsy and angry. What they DON'T want is fancy science people telling them what they should believe, how they should act, and how the future will change even more.

For us, folks accustomed to gathering and prioritizing scientific data, a peer-reviewed, technically accepted truth is enough. "A fact is a fact," we say, as if this surety on our part should settle the matter. It doesn't settle a blurring, changing world for citizens without a close connection to science. Their understanding is human interaction, not data points, and they are resentful of "elite" bodies that dictate a world that doesn't embrace them, their lost jobs, their family values, and their vanished hope for a better life. They were promised the American Dream, and it became a knotted, opaque nightmare. Of course they doubt academia, science, PC social change. It does us no credit when we dismiss them as ignorant ostriches with their heads in the sand (do ostriches really do that?).

How can we, as nonfiction explainers, acquaint a significant percentage of the electorate with the realities of a world that may, in our children's lifetime, change catastrophically? How can we build a bridge between anger and resentment of "elite eggheads"(understand it, don't despise it), and earnest, concerned citizen scientists?

Let me suggest, as an aside, that many nuclear physicists and astrophysicists have done us all a disservice by hyping the deepest parts of quantum mechanics as near-magical and unknowable. Academia and sad attempts to gather publicity for "pure" science have floated "the God Particle" and relativistic improbabilities that exist only in distant theory. In the hope of getting more ink, our theoretical scientists have made themselves more distant. We need Bill Nye the Science Guy and the venerable Mr. Wizard to disentangle "popular" science from the elite barbed wire around it. And we must be gentle, respectful explainers to our audience of children AND to their frustrated, frightened, socially bewildered parents.

Science should warn us, yes. Science should also comfort us in demonstrating our understanding of ground-level principles and proximal causes. Global warming isn't a hoax: it's a suddenly apparent tipping point we've only recently discovered. Banks and businesses are desperately afraid of its effects on "next quarter," and it's up to us to soften and redirect that fear into solidarity.

Vicki Cobb
4/4/2020 05:21:30 pm

Thanks, Adkins for your thoughtful insights. I just ran into an neighbor, as I was taking a walk. I asked her how she was and she was angry. Came at me with a pointed finger and told me this whole thing is a hoax. Mindful of this post, I said,"I won't argue with you." She is old and frightened and angry and deprived of her favorite sports team.

Howard Brady
13/4/2020 10:55:53 am

The central overriding element of stress is the feeling that one lacks control over their destiny--lack of autonomy. Studies a few years ago pointed out the intimate relationship between this stress due to lack of autonomy and the acceptance of conspiracy theories. For many people, I'm sure the unwillingness to accept solid scientific fact likely falls into this same stress-related phenomenon. This dovetails well with Ms. Cobb's discussion.


Comments are closed.

     Vicki Cobb

    *Award-winning author of more than 90 nonfiction books for children, mostly in science.
    *Former Contributor to the Huffington Post
    *Founder/President of iNK Think Tank, Inc.
    *Passionate advocate for the joy of learning for every child and teacher.


    Disclaimer: All opinions, typos, and grammatical errors are my own,  especially small word omissions which I often don't notice in my fervor.  

    RSS Feed

    ​​​​Archives

    October 2020
    September 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018

    ​Categories

    All
    Abuse
    Achievement Gap
    Adkins Jan
    Albee Sarah
    Anti Bullying
    Anti-bullying
    Art
    Author Driven Nonfiction
    Author-driven Nonfiction
    Authors On Call
    Biology
    Birds
    Black History
    BLC2018
    Book Review
    Child Abuse
    Children As Political Pawns
    Children's Nonfiction
    Citizenship
    Civics
    Civil Rights
    Class ACTS
    Climate Change
    Clinton Chelsea
    Collard III Sneed B.
    Common Core State Standards
    Conversation
    Coronavirus
    Costaldo Nancy F.
    Covid-19
    Critical Thinking
    Data-driven
    Definition
    Democracy
    Dewey John
    Dogs
    Dunphy Madeleine
    Ecology
    Education
    Educational Standards
    Electron Microscope
    Empowerment For Children
    Endangered Species
    Excellence
    Extinction
    Fact-checking
    Fleming Candace
    "flow"
    Galileo
    Girls' Education
    Global Warming
    Greenberg Jan
    Grit
    Gun Violence
    History
    History Of "school Reform"
    Home Libraries
    Hurricanes
    INK Database
    INK Database Of Books
    Insects
    Interactive Video Conferencing
    Isaac Sally
    Jeopardy Winner
    Learning
    Lesser Carolyn
    Leveled Reading
    Levinson Cynthia
    Lexiles
    Listening
    Literacy
    Literature
    Liu Eric
    March For Our Lives
    McClafferty Carla
    Mentor Texts
    Montgomery Heather L.
    Montgomery Sy
    Motivated Reasoning
    Motivation
    Munro Roxie
    Nathan Amy
    Nonfiction
    Nonfiction Minute
    Nonprofit And Education
    Opening Schools
    Patent Dorothy Hinshaw
    Pedagogy
    Picture Books
    Podcasts
    Primary Source
    Pringle Laurence
    Pundits Of The Pandemic
    Rap Music
    Reading
    Rules
    Rusch Elizabeth
    School Choice
    SchoolTube
    School Visits
    Science Experiments You Can Eat
    Science Teaching
    Semple Heidi E.Y.
    Social Skills
    Socrates
    Speaking
    Spring Fling
    Standardized Testing
    STEM
    Studies On Education
    Swanson Jennifer
    Teaching
    Technology And Children
    Thomas Peggy
    Trump
    Truth
    Voting
    Warren Andrea
    Washington George
    Weatherford Carole Boston
    Webinars
    Work With Us
    World War II
    Writing

    RSS Feed

Links

The Nonfiction Minute
​

​iNK Think Tank website

​Vicki Cobb's Kids' Fun Page

We Dare You Videos


Company

iNK Think Tank, Inc. is a nonprofit with the mission of using nonfiction children's literature in classrooms

Contact

vicki@inkthinktank.org
​

© 2019


© COPYRIGHT 2019. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.