Science-Is-Hard-To-Understand-And-We-Should-Accept-That

Why is there so much resistance to science? Is it inherent in science, or does it have to do with the way science is communicated?

Likely, it’s a little of both, but the nature of science itself plays a leading role.

Science is relatively new, philosophically speaking. Sure, thinkers around the world have toyed with and used scientific concepts (falsification, reliance on empirical evidence, peer review, the works) since time immemorial. But these ideas weren’t collected together into a unified framework – and applied with anything resembling vigor – until at least the 1600’s. And what we currently view as “science” has, like all schools of thought, evolved and changed in those short centuries.

Science took so long to come into the scene because it’s so dang alien. We’re not naturally wired to think scientifically. Indeed, the entire enterprise of science is centered around combatting our natural human biases to get to a closer approximation of what’s really going on in nature. That’s not an easy thing to do. Even professional scientists with decades of experience fall prey to very human tendencies, but the structures of science are in place to prevent any inaccuracies (generated from simple mishaps to outright falsehoods) from spreading further. In general, the procedure works, but only after exhaustive effort from the entire community over the course of years or even decades.

So if science is hard to practice for actual scientists, should there be any surprise that non-scientists can be resistant to it?

It’s hard to communicate the nuances and complexities and subtleties of a scientific result. It’s hard to communicate the laborious process that went into that result. When people are busy leading their lives – filled with all the mundane concerns that we all share – is it any wonder that they might have a hard time conceiving of a worldview that is explicitly designed to be against our human nature?

Science takes patience, which means that science communication – getting people to understand not only results, but also methods – should take patience too.

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