A version of this, co-authored with Dietram Scheufele, was originally published at the Breakthrough Journal.

September 2012 — If President Obama is reelected in November, he will almost certainly face a Congress that is more divided along ideological lines than at any period in more than a century. Extreme polarization also extends to the states, where vicious battles over budgets and union rights have led to recall votes, legislative walkouts, and intense protests.

Increasingly, the art of governing and compromise has been replaced by a culture of constant campaigning and relentless negativity as political leaders prioritize short-term electoral ambitions and small-scale policy fights. Meanwhile, public confidence in government sinks ever lower.

Progressives tell a one-sided story about the complex causes of America's political dysfunction. They blame the conservative movement, Fox News, libertarian billionaires, and the "do nothing" Republicans in Congress. Much of this story is true. Though both parties have moved toward their ideological poles — the extreme rightward shift of the GOP accounts for much of the increase in polarization.

How could the Left be expected to embrace compromise and moderation when no one was left to compromise? By 2003, progressive leaders believed they had no choice but to “fight fire with fire,” beating conservatives at their own game. Over the next decade, they built a vast ideological infrastructure of mega-donor networks, think tanks, news watchdogs, and media echo chambers.

The strategy has been dangerously misguided. Extreme polarization has served conservatives very well, driving moderate leaders from politics and promoting feelings of cynicism, inefficacy, and distrust among the public. Instead of going to war against the Right, progressives would have better served their social and political objectives by joining with moderates to rebuild America’s institutions and civic culture.

The outrage industry

In general, higher levels of education and political engagement are no defense against ideological tribalism. Indeed, the opposite is the case. The best-educated Americans tend to be the most partisan and polarized.

When elected officials, candidates, and activists define every policy issue as part of a broader ideological struggle, party labels become brand names, each standing for a distinct set of conservative or liberal positions.

The highly educated and politically attentive are the most polarized because they are better at recognizing these ideological labels, more likely to react to these cues in ideologically consistent ways, and more skilled at offering arguments to support their initial gut responses.

The implication, warns social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, is that the best-educated partisans excel at "my side" reasoning but often fail at critical self-reflection. "Smart people make really good lawyers and press secretaries, but they are no better than others at finding reasons on the other side," he notes.

Polarization has been further strengthened by dramatic changes in the media system over the past decade. In the 24-hour news cycle era, commentators and bloggers rely on the latest poll result, insider strategy, negative attack, or embarrassing gaffe to appeal to ideologically motivated audiences.

The hypercompetitive battle to win audience attention incentivizes “brawling, aggressive outreach by bloggers, organizations, and smaller publications to keep viewers, listeners, readers, and donors agitated,” write Tufts University scholars Sarah Sobieraj and Jeffrey Berry.

This “outrage industry” specializes in provoking emotional responses from audiences, trading in exaggerations, insults, name-calling, and partial truths about opponents —reducing complex issues to “ad hominem attacks, overgeneralizations, mockery, and dire forecasts of impending doom.”

Based on an analysis of ten weeks of television, radio, blog, and newspaper commentary in 2009, the researchers concluded that elements of outrage are most prevalent among right-wing pundits and the conservative media but are also a staple of liberal outlets and commentators.

On TV, they estimate that elements of outrage appear every 90 to 100 seconds, with Fox News’s Glenn Beck Show and MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann leading among the programs analyzed.

“We have created a system in the media in which the pure malevolent glee and demonization and dirty tricks and kinetic heat of the horrible last days of particularly brutal elections can happen all year round now,” noted MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in a 2010 Harvard University speech. What is bad for democracy, she admitted, is good for her ratings:

Yet, as news organizations and commentators consistently define politics in terms of cynical and deceitful strategies, losing an election or a policy battle becomes especially divisive for the politically engaged.

“A belief that one’s side has experienced an illegitimate loss … prompts the losing partisans to become increasingly angry,” writes political scientist Diana Mutz. “At this point, it is no longer about differing political philosophies; it is about right versus wrong, truth versus deceit, good versus evil.”

When asked in 2012 to reflect on the factors promoting political gridlock, retiring Democratic congressman Barney Frank offered a similar conclusion:

Indeed, the evidence suggests that today’s media enables a spiral of political polarization and mobilization among the most politically engaged, according to communication researchers Wolfgang Donsbach and Cornelia Mothes. They also suggest a parallel spiral of political disengagement and demobilization for moderates and those lacking a strong interest in politics.

For these groups, which disproportionately include young people and non-white voters, it is increasingly easy to trade out media coverage of public affairs for entertainment and celebrity news.

Primary pressures

Over the past 30 years, the best educated have also been the most geographically mobile, settling in areas that match their lifestyle preferences and political outlook. This geographic sorting has contributed to a rise in noncompetitive general elections, with many Congressional seats determined by the much smaller proportion of ideologically motivated voters who turn out for primaries.

Meanwhile, the relative lack of moderate voters and centrist sources of campaign funds and volunteer activity limits the ability of moderate candidates to run and win in primary races.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission has likely worsened this dynamic by enhancing the ability of ideologically driven donors to tip the scales of election races in favor of strongly liberal or conservative candidates. Consequently, the parties may be more closely aligning themselves with the priorities of super-wealthy partisans.

Political scientists Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein write that changes in leadership and legislative rules have further strengthened the divide between the two parties. Increased pressure in Congress to produce legislative results has driven both parties to boost the power of House leadership to steer legislation, reduce input at the committee level, and reduce the chance of amendments by the opposing party.

Since the 2008 election, the GOP strategy of opposing any legislation favoring Democratic electoral chances — combined with the disciplining pressures of primary races — has made a difficult compromise process virtually impossible.

Agents of dysfunction

The roots of our increasingly polarized politics are long-standing and run deep, but three conservative leaders have played an outsized role in spreading dysfunction.

The first, Newt Gingrich, came to the House of Representatives in 1979 determined to unseat the decades-old Democratic majority. Initially lacking resources and power within his party, Gingrich brought ethics charges and exploited scandals that provoked Democratic leaders “into overreactions that enraged Republicans and united them to vote against Democratic initiatives,” Mann and Ornstein write.

The second, Grover Norquist, turned anti-tax pledges into a powerful weapon for maintaining party discipline, limiting the ability of Republican moderates and others to work across party lines. Republicans must sign the pledge to win primary elections and uphold the pledge to keep getting reelected.

The third, Karl Rove, used the George W. Bush presidency to align White House leadership with the conservative polarization strategy. Rove positioned the president as a “national clarifier,” standing “forthrightly on one side of a grand argument” and then winning the argument by “sharpening the differences and rallying his most intense supporters.” He believed that an election won by even a single vote could shape history by leading the country in a new ideological direction, regardless of whether a proposed agenda held majority public support.

According to Rove, the prime objective was to mobilize the conservative base and force moderate voters to choose a side by sharpening the ideological differences between the parties. This bitterly negative campaigning style, he believed, would also depress turnout among young adults and non-white voters. Republicans didn’t need majority support among these Democratic-leaning groups to win elections — they just needed them not to participate.

To execute this new theory of change, Rove reshaped the practice of politics in three other important ways. First, during the 2002 and 2004 elections, Rove and his GOP allies pioneered using “big data” techniques that combined expansive voter information with micro-targeting strategies. Few Americans were considered swing voters in this new precision approach to campaigning. Instead, elections were won by identifying, registering, and turning out at a high rate those voters who were already inclined to support Republicans.

Second, Rove and his conservative allies aimed to create and reinforce communities of like-minded others. These echo chambers — led by Fox News, political talk radio, and the Drudge Report — reinterpreted every issue and event through an ideological lens and with political ends in mind.

Third, the goal of politics was not just to win but to destroy the legitimacy of the other side by persuading “voters (and donors and viewers and readers) that an opponent lacks the character and credibility even to deserve a place in the contest,” Halperin and Harris write.

Progressive message machine

Their decisive defeat in the 2002 midterm elections convinced Democratic strategists that they needed to be more like their conservative opponents—rebuilding the party around a tightly controlled, ideological power base.

Rob Stein, a Clinton-era political appointee, was a major catalyst behind liberals’ embrace of a new style of politics. Stein researched the conservative movement’s network of donors, think tanks, and media outlets and started showing progres­sive activists and donors a PowerPoint presentation detailing the “Conservative Message Machine’s Money Matrix.”

The “money matrix,” Stein explained, was composed of roughly 200 mega-donors whose first loyalty was not to the GOP but to a radical conservative ideology. Think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute served as the “conservative message makers,” cultivating ideologically consistent ideas, experts, and talking points, which were then funneled to conservative magazines, talk radio hosts, and Fox News. During the 1990s, the conservative message machine had spent an estimated $1 billion on generating and promoting conservative ideas.

“This is perhaps the most potent, independent, institutionalized apparatus ever assembled in a democracy to promote one belief system,” an admiring Stein told Matt Bai of the New York Times. In comparison, liberals had come to the battle largely unarmed, Stein explained, spending substantial amounts of money without a coordinated strategy, shared policy agenda, or ideological narrative.

In 2003 — around the same time Stein began recruiting donors to support a new liberal message machine — former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta launched the Center for American Progress (CAP). According to Podesta, despite the many environmental, civil rights, and other single-issue groups flourishing on the left, policy strategy and messaging were uncoordinated, and few could deliver in elections. CAP’s primary mission would be to address these flaws, developing and coordinating a consistent progressive vision across issues and elections.

Podesta collected an impressive roster of scholars and former Clinton administration appointees to burnish its image as a serious think tank. Yet, at its core, CAP would operate less like the prestigious Brookings Institution and more like a campaign-style war room. “Others strive to be objective, we don’t,” Jennifer Palmieri, former CAP vice president for communications, told Bloomberg News.

By 2010, CAP and its affiliated CAP Action Fund were a $40-million-a-year operation, employing 250 people and spending more than a third of its budget on communications and grassroots campaigning. The organization’s blog, Think Progress, is the heart of its messaging operation. There, a collection of intensely partisan bloggers and journalists churn out opposition research and strategic interpretations of news and events, relentlessly reframing every policy issue as part of a broader ideological struggle for the country's future.

In 2004, Media Matters for America joined CAP at the center of the new liberal message machine. The media watchdog was founded by David Brock, who had begun his career as a conservative writer for the American Spectator, famously labeling Anita Hill as “a little bit nutty and a bit slutty” in one article and investigating Bill Clinton’s alleged sexual exploits in others.

In 1997, Brock publicly broke with the conservative movement, and in 2002 he published the mea culpa memoir Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative.38 In 2004, he followed with The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy,39 which he concluded by outlining his vision for a new liberal counterweight to the conservative movement.40

As of 2010, Media Matters was a $15-million-a-year organization, employing 90 staff who monitor Fox News, talk radio, and other media outlets, publishing 20,000 pieces of content annually. Media Matters claims credit for campaigns that forced the conservative pundits Laura Schlessinger, Don Imus, and Glenn Beck off the air. Yet, much of its daily output is aimed at countering any perceived conservative slant from the 24-hour news cycle.

“This is our Pearl Harbor”

Following the 2004 election, all the major elements were in place to remake Democratic politics in the image of the Right. With liberals reeling in the aftermath of John Kerry’s loss, Rob Stein gathered prospective donors at a strategy meeting in Washington. “The US didn’t enter World War II until Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. We just had our Pearl Harbor,” a co-organizer told those gathered.

Stein and the other organizers warned that progressive donors needed to make long-term investments in a new progressive infrastructure if the Democratic Party survived. In 2005, they formed the Democracy Alliance to serve as an investment club for about a hundred mega-donors, with the initial goal of raising $200 million.

The network gave away over $50 million in its first nine months, selecting 25 organizations out of more than 600 applicants. Among the most influential Democracy Alliance donors were a small group of liberal billionaires who have become familiar names in political circles. George Soros, Peter Lewis, and the Hollywood producer Steve Bing have poured tens of millions into the liberal message machine. According to news reports, CAP’s founding owed much to Soros, who would donate an estimated $15 to $25 million to the organization over its first five years.

By 2008, nearly half of Democracy Alliance’s members had donated to CAP or its affiliated CAP Action Fund. Independent of the Democracy Alliance, CAP also benefitted from an estimated $20 million in support from billionaires Herb and Marion Sandler.

The same group of liberal mega-donors was instrumental in creating the prototype for today’s super PACs. In 2004, Soros, Lewis, Bing, and the Sandlers donated a combined $73.7 million to independent expenditure groups, with nearly $60 million of this total supporting groups affiliated with MoveOn.org, Americans Coming Together, and the Media Fund. The latter two groups coordinated voter turnout and advertising in battleground states, collecting $196.4 million in donations, mostly from wealthy individuals and labor unions.

The apparent goal of these billionaires, and that of the Democracy Alliance, was not just to help Democrats win elections but also to break with Clinton-era centrist politics, which they criticized for being too accommodating and for failing to articulate a clear progressive vision for the country. This, as much as winning elections, was what the Democracy Alliance and liberal mega-donors sought to change.

For many progressives, Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign represented the evolution of their efforts to surpass Republicans in campaign sophistication and remake the Democratic Party as a liberal force.

To win the Democratic nomination and general election, the Obama campaign adopted strategies from the 2004 Howard Dean campaign. The former Vermont governor used the Web to recruit thousands of “Deaniacs,” organize face-to-face gatherings of his supporters, and raise more than $25 million for his campaign through smaller online donations.

Building on these strategies, the 2008 Obama campaign team sent an estimated one billion emails and generated a list of 13.5 million supporters. The campaign website and e-mail strategy was a powerful pro-Obama echo chamber, directly engaging voters and bypassing the news media. These tactics effectively increased participation and turnout by minorities, young people, and other groups likely to vote for a Democratic candidate.

Yet Obama’s victory ultimately depended on his success in appealing to moderate voters, thereby expanding his support base. In doing so, Obama displayed more of Bill Clinton's “national synthesizer” style than Bush's “national clarifier” style.

Clinton had sought to blur, disrupt, and ultimately bridge partisan differences, not to clarify them. As journalists Halperin and Harris describe, Clinton selected “the best ideas from all parts of the ideological spectrum.” He assembled them in ways that served the needs of an electorate motivated more by results rather than ideology.

Obama went to painstaking lengths to indicate his willingness to compromise and cross partisan lines. In his speeches, he used a “post-partisan” moral vocabulary to transcend ideological boundaries, showing “himself to be a liberal who understood conservative arguments about the need for order and the value of tradition,” Haidt argues.

Obama also strove to distance himself from deeply partisan political strategies. As early as 2005, in a post to the Daily Kos community, he challenged the liberal narrative about the need to create a rival infrastructure and a disciplined message machine, perceptively warning of the effects on political discourse and culture:

As the 2008 general election launched, David Brock, John Podesta, and George Soros each planned independent expenditure campaigns on behalf of Obama. Yet Obama publicly and privately discouraged the efforts on his behalf. This was, no doubt, mainly because he didn’t need them. Obama’s campaign was so flush with cash that independent efforts, at best, were redundant and, at worst, risked becoming counterproductive. Obama raised $745 million across the primary and general election campaigns, doubling the $368 million raised by McCain.

But Obama also understood that the liberal donors and activists spearheading the independent efforts had differing ideas about liberalism and the Democratic agenda. The wealthy donors of the Democracy Alliance, for example, tended to favor progressive groups over more centrist organizations like the Democratic Leadership Council and the Truman National Security Project, a preference that did not, in many circumstances, help Democrats actually win elections or govern effectively.

Driving the message

After Obama’s victory, the liberal message machine went to work in an unfamiliar context. In 2009, for the first time since the earliest years of the Clinton presidency, Democrats controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress.

Led by CAP and Media Matters, the machine featured a heavily staffed war room focused on “driving the White House’s message and agenda,” reported Greg Sargent at the Plum Line blog. The strategy was to coordinate messaging among liberal groups and reduce complex policy questions to “talking points and narratives that play well in the media and build public support for the White House’s policy goals.”

MSNBC bolstered these efforts, fully embracing its position as the prime-time ideological counterweight to Fox News — thereby adding a cable news platform to the liberal message machine.

Faced with an opponent in Obama who had surpassed them in both money and sophistication, conservatives now had to rally in response, escalate their spending and strategies, and “take back their country.” But whatever Republicans may have lacked in terms of money and infrastructure, they more than made up for by way of ideological coherence.

Conservatives had worked to drive moderates from the party, a dynamic further reinforced by GOP electoral losses in Senate states and House districts over the previous two election cycles. As a result, Republicans were able to quickly coalesce around a strategy of determined opposition to the Obama agenda.

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and other conservative leaders realized that the fate of the struggling American economy, which Democrats had inherited mainly from their Republican predecessors, would largely determine Democratic electoral fortunes over the subsequent several cycles, mainly if Republicans stayed united.

By refusing to cooperate with the Democratic agenda, Republicans successfully limited the scope of the stimulus package. During the 2010 mid-terms, Democrats were forced to run on the success or failure of economic measures that Republicans had watered down and unanimously opposed.

The Republican strategy received a massive boost from the unexpected rise of the Tea Party, which provided a master narrative about big government and a genuine grassroots base to pressure Congress and enforce party discipline.

Fox News helped create a “community of meaning” for the movement by providing Tea Party supporters with shared discourse about national politics and events and branding the movement as an extension of the “Fox Nation.” To mobilize participation, viewers were invited to go to the network’s website, where they could find Tea Party-related events in their local area.

These efforts culminated in August 2009 with protests against “Obamacare” and “socialism” at congressional town meetings. With the loss of Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat to Republican Scott Brown several months later, Democrats no longer held a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. This forced them to enact Obama’s top policy priority, health care reform, through a budget reconciliation measure. Brown’s victory also hindered the effort to pass legislation to cap US carbon emissions and presaged the heavy losses that Democrats would suffer in the 2010 midterm elections.

By 2011, it had become clear that creating a liberal message machine to match conservatives had not heralded the dawn of a new age of progressive policies and governance. Instead, the machine had contributed to political trench warfare. Despite the massive political spending by ultra-wealthy progressive donors, Obama’s victories could be reversed with the next turn of electoral fortune.

Forever war

As the 2012 election approaches, the escalation appears to be endless. Liberals and conservatives speculate endlessly about the other side's fundraising prowess, each warning of dramatic disparities to mobilize their respective donors and activists.

Based on Obama’s 2008 totals, conservatives argue that Obama may raise more than $1 billion for his campaign. Liberals counter that the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision has opened the door to $500 million in spending by Karl Rove’s American Crossroads and groups supported by libertarian billionaires Charles and David Koch.

Future election cycles promise even more spending by the liberal and conservative message machines — which will strengthen their ability to apply ever more advanced technological tools to mobilize their bases and demonize their opponents.

Yet, by defining almost everything in politics as “us versus the radical fringe” and centralizing resources within a handful of organizations, liberals have institutionalized a bunker mentality that rewards groupthink and substantially reduces opportunities for developing innovative ideas and practical approaches to governing.

Liberals who break with conventional perspectives or attempt to cross the fault lines that polarization has etched into our political culture are too often “debunked” as misinformers, labeled contrarians, or accused of aiding the enemy.

Extreme polarization has also led to public disgust with politics, government, and "Washington." The resulting damage to our civic culture disproportionately harms liberals, whose core social and political objectives almost always entail government services, investments, and interventions in private markets.

The ideological arms race with conservatives also risks putting Democrats at an inherent electoral disadvantage. Over the past decade, surveys of the general public show that conservatives consistently outnumber liberals by almost 2 to 1 — and this advantage decreases only slightly among those Americans who vote on election day.

This means that Democrats have to appeal to a much broader coalition of voters than Republicans and must rely on support from a substantial majority of moderates. Protesting limits on Plan B contraception access or fighting the approval of the tar sands oil pipeline are admirable actions that inspire wealthy liberal donors and core constituencies. Yet, they are either uninspiring or problematic for moderates, the voters liberals need to win over to prevail in elections.

Similarly, Democrats have increasingly come to depend upon young people and minorities, who comprise a growing proportion of eligible voters. However, among these potential supporters, intense negativity and extreme polarization promote feelings of cynicism and inefficacy, likely adding to the propensity to tune out the news. To mobilize young people and minorities, Democrats are therefore forced to spend ever-greater resources each election cycle on canvassing, texting, social media, celebrities, and narrowly targeted appeals.

A time to build

In the aftermath of a 2012 election that is likely to be among the most brutal campaigns in history, liberals would be well served to turn more attention and resources to rebuilding our civic culture and reconstructing a vital center in American politics rather than investing ever more heavily in the liberal message machine.

Liberals should prioritize reforming our civic and political institutions to allow for moderation, deliberation, and crosscutting discourse. They must recognize that progressive governance cannot exist without a functioning civic culture.

A place to start is the primary system, which remains a central mechanism creating pressures against compromise. How both parties choose candidates must be reformed so incentives favor candidates who appeal to a more diverse cross-section of voters instead of a narrow, ideologically consistent constituency. California and Washington, for example, are experimenting with “top two” primary models. These and other innovations merit careful consideration.

Specific to presidential elections, Harvard University political scientist Thomas Patterson has proposed shortening the primary season, moving the primaries closer to the party conventions, and giving every state a meaningful say in candidate selection. A shortened campaign season could also benefit efforts at campaign finance reform by reducing the demand for fundraising.

But fixing our electoral system is not enough. Our most critical need is to rebuild our civic infrastructure, investing in institutional reforms that enable interaction with people who are politically different from us.

In particular, strong regional newspapers have historically helped citizens identify and understand important regional interests that cut across partisan and ideological agendas, serving as a partial counterweight to partisanship in Congress. With the decline of our regional newspapers, Americans’ capacity to confront problems, make informed political choices, participate in decision-making, and forge compromise has been dramatically weakened.

Former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie and Columbia University communication scholar Michael Schudson have suggested several methods for supporting local news reporting, restoring the function once played by our great regional newspapers.

These include allowing newspapers to shift to a nonprofit or low-profit designation, creating university-based news organizations, and increasing local reporting by public media organizations. Further, they call for a shift in outlook from mega-donors and philanthropists, who “should consider news reporting of public affairs to be a continuous public good rather than a series of specific projects under their control or a way of generating interest and action around causes and issues of special interest to them.”

As a complement, we must increase investments in civic education that address the effects of our like-minded social enclaves and our addiction to ideologically congenial media. Most promising is the prospect of a national civil service program for high school graduates that would send them to work with others from various political and social backgrounds and live and engage with communities unlike theirs.

We would also do well to encourage greater ideological diversity in our intellectual institutions. Haidt, for instance, has observed that the lack of ideological diversity among social psychologists means that certain research questions about politics and moral reasoning are pursued over others and that results are selectively interpreted and translated. He has called for increasing the number of conservatives among university-affiliated social psychologists over the next decade, and we would extend his critique to other social science fields, including communication, political science, and sociology.

Our studies among engineers, chemists, and physicists show that even after controlling for experts’ professional judgments, personal ideologies influence how they interpret the policy implications of their work.

There is no reason to believe things are different in the social sciences, especiall­y when analyzing ideologically divisive policy debates. In our expe­rience, peer review is an imperfect safeguard against groupthink and ideological bias. Increasing the ideological diversity within our ranks can only benefit our research.

Similar principles should define the convening of forums and meetings among think tank intellectuals, civil society leaders, philanthropists, journalists, and creative professionals at the national level and across states and regions.

TED meetings, Aspen Institute events, SXSW, and Sundance are billed as “‘thought-leader gatherings’ where ‘rock stars’ emerge from their ‘silos’ to learn about ‘disruptive’ ideas that have been carefully ‘curated,’” as New York magazine recently described.84 Yet most of these forums are sponsored and populated by the very same donors, leaders, and voices that fund, organize, and benefit from the liberal message machine.

Ultimately, the policies and actions we might adopt to address polarization are probably less important than our posture toward the problem. In questioning progressives' reaction to our increasingly polarized politics, we offer no defense of conservative leaders who appear to be deliberately promoting dysfunction as a way to boost the influence of a mostly white Republican base.

But for better or worse, as the party of government, progressives have a greater incentive than conservatives to reach across the aisle and pursue pragmatic solutions to America’s problems. But progressives need not do so passively. Compromise and reasonableness can be every bit as potent a weapon for progressives as polarization has been for conservatives.

Progressives must reach out to conservatives by addressing legitimate issues with current liberal policy preferences and programs. This also means collaborating on pathways toward achieving legitimate conservative policy objectives. Yet as progressives do so, they must also sig­ni­ficantly raise the political costs of obstructionism.

Progressives would do well to consider the lessons that the United States, like other powers before it, has learned when challenged by foes in asymmetrical conflicts. By this, we mean that even though conservatives have great resources to expend on behalf of their political objectives, they still must fight an uphill battle. Conservatism’s central political project has arguably been to delegitimize the welfare state in the face of a public that still, even after forty years of guerrilla warfare and efforts to “starve the beast,” remains deeply supportive of it.

When political scientists Mann and Ornstein identify the beginnings of our dysfunctional politics and government with Gingrich, they describe a classic asymmetrical strategy. Gingrich’s objective was to delegitimize the Democratic leadership that had controlled the House for almost fifty years and, in the process, delegitimize the government and welfare state they presided over.

Where once Gingrich was a marginal player in the Republican caucus, conservatives in the brand of Gingrich now control the GOP and often the government. Yet they have proved unable to dismantle the welfare state, even when controlling all three branches of government.

If progressives respond to the provocations of the Right with rigidity, vitriol, outrage, and a growing unwillingness to compromise, they only strengthen the hand of their opponents, contribute to the gridlock of our political institutions, provide Republicans with an easy justification for obstruction, and ultimately make the unthinkable — the dismantling of the postwar welfare state — thinkable.

In this sense, Conservatives are playing a long game, happy to starve the beast and delighted by dysfunction, even when they control the government. For this reason, as progressives unwittingly conspire to turn American politics into a zero-sum game, conservatives win even when they lose.

CITATION | PDF

Nisbet, M. C., & Scheufele, D. A. (2013, Winter). The Polarization Paradox: Why Hyper-Partisanship Strengthens Conservatism and Undermines Liberalism. The Breakthrough Journal, 55–69.

Updated 1.29.24

Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma may be best known today for its picturesque lakes and trails, but for three weeks in 1954, the park was also the setting for one of the most famous experiments in social psychology.

In the Robbers Cave experiment, Muzafer Sherif and his colleagues at the University of Oklahoma recruited twenty-two boys, all fifth graders from similar social backgrounds, to attend what they billed as a specially designed summer camp.1

The boys were immediately split into two groups: the Eagles and the Rattlers. For the first week, the teams were kept on separate ends of the camp as they participated in a variety of bonding activities. The boys didn’t find out about the other team’s existence until the start of the second week.

Having never met each other, the boys quickly began to refer to the other team as “outsiders” and “intruders.” Following a series of competitive games, the boys’ rivalry grew more intense. They started hurling insults, calling each other “pigs,” “sissies,” and “cheaters.” Their perception of reality shifted.

Fueled by competition and social isolation, the teams raided their rival’s cabins late at night. The Eagles burned the Rattlers’ flag. Some boys started collecting rocks to throw at the others. Worried about physical injury, the experimenters called off the competitions.

More than sixty years later, the Robbers Cave parable is a useful metaphor for today’s hyper-partisan politics. Seemingly every policy debate has become a competition between two intensely hostile teams.

In this new culture of sectarian partisanship, the right and left oppose compromise by their political leaders, view the other party as extreme and uncivil, and believe that their side should benefit the most from any decision.

Research shows that the most well-informed partisans are quick to endorse their party’s policy positions — not as a matter of principle but “as a public act designed to signal their tribal loyalty as a Democrat or Republican” writes New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall.2

On no other issue are such animosities, prejudices, and biases more prevalent — and more problematic — than on climate change.

Finding comfort in tribalism

For those of us who advocate for action to address climate change, we are often told to be more like how we perceive our political opponents: more ruthless, more cunning, more aggressive, more willing to bend facts to our side, and more committed to the most audacious and ambitious policies regardless of their flaws.

We are all too quick to rally around the banner of those voices that emphasize “us versus them,” “good versus bad,” and “winning versus losing.”

We view those opposed to action on climate change as extreme but seldom apply the same label to those on our side.

For example, Green New Deal advocates have framed the choice for Americans in starkly binary terms: Either join us in a Utopian quest to transform the United States into a social democracy or face the catastrophic consequences of a dystopian climate future.3

There are no other choices. Their battle is equally against moderates and pragmatists as it is against conservatives.

As a community of advocates, we have become obsessed with the psychology and communication strategies of conservative “deniers,” with many scholars striving to expose the faults in conservative psychology, the duplicitous nature of fossil fuel companies, and the many ways in which Fox News and right-wing think tanks seed “denial” and engage in a “war on science.”

This research has in turn infected mainstream journalism and commentary, in which readers at outlets such as The Guardian and The Washington Post are consistently left with the impression that “anti-science,” “denier” Republicans may be cognitively incapable of reason or compromise on behalf of clean energy policy, similar to Holocaust deniers.

Those specializing in the dark arts of social media engagement have used these platforms to hack our brains — training our focus on conservatives and the evil doings of the fossil fuel industry as the end times loom.

Only seven years ago, scholars debated the wisdom of calling those who oppose action on climate change “deniers.”

Geographers Saffron O’Neill and Max Boykoff in a letter to the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences (PNAS) raised concerns about an earlier study at the journal that had divided experts into “convinced” and “unconvinced” camps, interchangeably using the terms deniers, skeptics, and contrarians to refer to the unconvinced.

“Continued indiscriminate use of the terms will further polarize views on climate change,” warned O’Neill and Boykoff, “reduce media coverage to tit-for-tat finger-pointing, and do little to advance the unsteady relationship among climate science, society, and policy.”4

Their warnings, however, had little impact on the direction of scholarship, strategy, or journalistic coverage. Today’s ubiquitous branding of Republicans as the party of “denial” greatly exaggerates the intensity of opposition to climate and clean energy solutions among those on the center-right, creating a self-reinforcing spiral of false perceptions.

For nearly a decade, polling conducted by Yale / George Mason University has consistently shown that a majority of registered voters nationwide believe that global warming is mostly caused by human activities and that they support climate regulations and clean energy policies.

Beyond national voter sentiment, according to estimates by the Yale Climate Opinion Maps project, as of 2023 a majority of adults across every U.S. state support fossil fuel companies paying a carbon tax, regulating CO2 as a pollutant, providing tax rebates for people purchasing energy-efficient vehicles and solar panels, and that citizens should do more to address global warming.

But research also indicates that many Republicans who privately support solutions to climate change refrain from publicly doing so out of an exaggerated fear of retaliation from their peers, a fear that has been magnified by efforts among some scholars and journalists to stigmatize the supposedly mass number of deniers among their ranks.5

The dark arts of moral outrage

The more we become angry and the more we catastrophize about the future, the less likely we are to find common ground or even be able to treat our political opponents as human beings. And social media is only making everything worse.

Playing to the most basic elements of human nature, social media has done great damage to the climate change movement, destroying our ability to think collectively and discuss productively across lines of difference.

Artificial intelligence-driven platforms serve up a constant stream of news and commentary that reflects our existing biases and beliefs rather than content that might challenge them.

Those specializing in the dark arts of social media “engagement” have used these platforms to hack our brains, training our focus on conservatives and the evil doings of the fossil fuel industry while the end times loom.

Because it kidnaps our attention, the most inflammatory, most outrageous, and most catastrophic content is rewarded by social media algorithms, ensuring that it travels the furthest. Since social media is a place where we find comfort in our tribal identity, posting, liking, and spreading ideologically affirming content generates social value, regardless of the source, quality, or veracity of the content we may be sharing.6

When claims are challenged, such as the viability of a 100 percent path to renewables or the political feasibility of the Green New Deal, climate advocates often respond by digging in their heels and attacking the critic, further demonstrating their loyalty.

In doing so, they follow the lead of a climate blogger or “Twitter celebrity,” who through their commentary makes it easy for us to remain loyal to ideas or policies that have come to symbolize what it means to be a “climate hawk” or activist.

More thoughtful conversations

“Moderation is not an ideology; it is a way of being. It stands for humility of the head and ardor in the heart,” writes New York Times columnist David Brooks.

“When you listen to your neighbor, you see how many perspectives there are and you’re intellectually humble in the face of that pluralism. When you listen to your neighbor, you see that deep down we’re the same and you hunger to deepen that connection.”7

There can be no progress on climate change until we rebuild our civic capacity to discuss, debate, and disagree in ways that do not turn every aspect of climate politics into an identity-driven tribal war between good and evil.

We must harness our organizational resources and personal gifts to serve not as partisan persuaders but as partners in face-to-face dialogue with other Americans and decision-makers, embracing our common humanity.

But to embrace our common humanity, we must adopt and encourage the practice of what Georgetown University’s Cal Newport calls “digital minimalism,” a philosophy that helps you question what digital communication tools (and behaviors surrounding these tools) add the most value to your life.8

It is impossible to resist the siren song of climate tribalism if, like the average American, you spend several hours a day on your smartphone swiping, scrolling, skimming, liking, hearting, retweeting, forwarding, and responding to other people’s thoughts, especially if they apply to climate change politics.

When a new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report is released or the proposed Green New Deal is announced, your first thought in today’s news feed culture of righteousness is not your original idea but almost inevitably someone else’s appealing to your worst biases.

Spending less time on social media and your smartphone will free up mental energy for contemplation and deep reading of a diversity of high-quality sources. Alone with your thoughts, you can wrestle with uncertainties and complexities, scrutinizing your assumptions and beliefs.9

Minimizing social media usage will also enable you to be more present and less judgmental during face-to-face discussions.

The initial focus of a conversation about a contentious topic such as climate change with a neighbor, community member, or elected official should be to simply recognize and affirm shared identities, ideals, and beliefs. Reframing climate change in terms of public health or religious duty, for example, may help foster a more thoughtful conversation.

Still, there are no magic messages capable of overcoming false beliefs or converting someone to your side. Yet, with trust and relationships established, further dialogue can focus on working together toward common goals related to energy decarbonization and societal resilience.10

If common goals on a specific topic may not exist, investing in more thoughtful conversations and the forums to engage in those conversations can at least help reestablish the norms of civility that have been lost in our society, enabling climate change advocates and those we disagree with to come to respect the nature and reasons for our differences.

*This article is adapted from a speech given at the 2019 U.S. Climate Leadership Summit held in Washington, D.C. A version was also published previously in Skeptical Inquirer magazine.11

CITATION | PDF

Nisbet, M.C. (2020). Against climate change tribalism: We gamble with the future by dehumanizing our opponents. Skeptical Inquirer, 44 (1), 26-28.

In July, Harvard University student wrote at the newsletter about an informal experiment in which she asked her first-year instructors to grade seven essays.

The instructors were told that either Bodnick had written the assignment or that the AI-powered ChatGPT-4 platform had. In fact, all seven had been written by the platform. The grades assigned by the instructors were A, A, A, A minus, B, B minus, and Pass. “That’s a solid report card for a freshman in college, a respectable 3.57 GPA,” she wrote.

Her informal experiment, Brodnick concluded, meant that students using ChatGPT could generate a writing assignment that requires little editing or sourcing — and they didn’t need to worry much about getting caught. In contrast to plagiarism, professors currently lack reliable software for detecting AI-generated content.

Earlier this week, I attended a faculty meeting on adapting courses and assignments to the new world of generative AI language models and their applications. Several colleagues said they may integrate tools like ChatGPT into their writing assignments. The reasons included:

• ChatGPT-like tools can be opportunities for students to improve upon exclusively student-written initial drafts of writing assignments and to enhance [rather than replace] the learning process.

• Preventing students from using them is nearly impossible, given the lack of detection tools like those used for plagiarism.

• Generative AI allows students to learn about emerging technologies' social implications and ethical governance.

Listening to my colleagues, I found merit in each argument. Yet, I also explained why I am hesitant to allow generative AI tools to be used by students in my courses.

Writing as a civic art

Writing is inseparable from the learning process. It is among the best ways to gain deeper knowledge, understand and communicate with others, and critically reflect on values, emotions, and beliefs. For these reasons, learning to write is a civic art essential to the active life.

We should, therefore, be deeply cautious about allowing emerging technologies to alter how we teach students to write. Instead of allowing ChatGPT3 into courses, the strategy I argued for at my faculty meeting was to “AI proof” assignments.

Consider that the three Harvard assignments instructors graded as “A” level work were tailor-made for AI platforms like ChatGPT to be able to answer:

• Explain an economic concept creatively.

• What has caused the many presidential crises in Latin America in recent decades?

• Pick a modern president and identify his three greatest successes and three greatest failures.

I was confident that my current writing assignments (or with a few modifications) were more resistant to ChatGPT than those from the Harvard classes.

In two upper-level undergraduate seminars I teach on Political Communication and Environmental Communication, I use a series of progressively more challenging assignments to help students develop their dialectical thinking and writing skills as applied to complex course topics.

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Below is how I define dialectical thinking for students and why it is important — a definition I developed by way of related resources at the HeterodoxAcademy website:

Dialectical thinkers seek out multiple perspectives — exploring their tensions and uncertainties, recognizing what each might offer of value. Dialectical thinkers do not see the world in black and white but in shades of gray. They also tend to be more mindful of the limits to their knowledge. For these reasons, dialectical thinkers are often skilled communicators who can build relationships that span political boundaries.

Manichean (“either / or”) thinking is the opposite of dialectical thinking. Manichean thinkers view the world as a battle of “good versus evil,” pitting the “powerless versus the all-powerful.” They view the motivations of opposing sides as either completely altruistic or self-serving. For the Manichean thinker, the stakes in a decision are “all-pro” or “all-con,” resulting in clear winners and losers.

Unfortunately, it is much easier to be a Manichean thinker than a dialectical thinker in today’s world of complex problems, polarized politics, and social media-driven outrage. Even though dialectical thinking might be difficult, research suggests that this style of reasoning has many benefits that include:

• Facilitating dialogue.

• Promoting learning and understanding of others.

• Boosting our emotional stability.

• Helping identify more effective solutions that can gain broader-based support.

• Helping people get along and to recognize their shared interests.

• Promoting inclusion, empathy, and justice.

• Being more persuasive

Below is an excerpted description of the first in a series of progressively more challenging dialectical writing assignments that I use in my course on Political Communication.

You will be writing four short papers to improve your ability to reason dialectically.

Per assignment, you will be writing 9 total arguments/statements:

→Three “steel man” arguments for both the pro/con positions (6 total arguments)

→Three genuine “uncertainty” statements (3 uncertainty statements).

Across the 9 arguments/statements, you must integrate and cite the relevant readings provided as sources.

→This does not mean that each reading needs to be integrated into each specific argument/statement.

→Instead, each specified reading should be cited at least once across your entire assignment.

A “pro” argument supports the statement, and a “con” argues against it.

→Avoid making “straw man” arguments (weak arguments you can easily defeat).

→Instead, make “steel man” (strong and challenging) arguments.

For the uncertainty statements, provide genuine uncertainties about the issue instead of “it may not go far enough” arguments.

→A genuine uncertainty statement reflects the complexity of the issue, weighing and assessing benefits/trade-offs or, for example, the technical/political plausibility of implementing a decision.

How did ChatGPT3 perform on the assignments?

To test how well a student would do on these dialectical writing assignments if they relied on generative AI platforms, I provided prompts that paralleled those I used in my Political Communication course. I entered these assignments/prompts at ChatGPT3 and a similar platform Perplexity.

• The PDF below contains the complete assignment descriptions that students are provided and the related grading rubric.

  

  Dialectical Writing Assignments — Political Communication

  68.8KB ∙ PDF file

  Download

  A detailed description of the four writing assignments provided students and the related grading rubric. The prompts given ChatGBT3 and Perplexity were adapted from these assignment descriptions.

  Download

• Below are the links to the prompts and answers provided to each assignment by ChatGPT3 and Perplexity and my summary evaluation of the answers.

Dialectical Paper 1.0: “Ownership of U.S. National Park land should be returned to Native American tribes.”

• ChatGPT3 prompt & answer

• Perplexity prompt & answer

Perplexity

• The written response lacked depth across the arguments/uncertainty statements. It also did not explicitly integrate and cite the four course-related readings students were to include in their answers.

• If students were to rely on the Perplexity response as their “assignment,” per the related grading rubric, they would score a 7 or below out of 10 points.

• Perplexity could provide students with ideas per each argument/statement, but students would need to do engage deeply with the related readings and do the tough work of writing to score an 8 or higher out of 10 points.

ChatGPT3

• Each of the arguments/statements provided is considerably more substantial than those at Perplexity and explicitly cites at least one of the related readings as required by the assignment.

• Overall, the “substance” of the answer is strong — but the writing is “too” perfect.

• If a student were to turn this in as their assignment without any changes to make the writing look more “human,” detection would not be difficult.

Below are the statements, related prompts, and answers provided by ChatGPT3 and Perplexity for each of the next three assignments — followed by my summary evaluation and comments.

Dialectical Paper 2.0 —  “Too much democracy is bad for democracy.”

• ChatGPT3 prompt & answer

• Perplexity prompt & answer

Dialectical paper 3.0 — “Social media is the main driver of today's political dysfunction.”

• ChatGPT3 prompt & answer

• Perplexity prompt & answer

Dialectical paper 4.0 — “Left-wing populism is as damaging to liberal democracy as right-wing populism.”

• ChatGPT3 prompt & answer

• Perplexity prompt & answer

Perplexity

• For Perplexity, as in the first assignment, the provided answers for assignments 2.0 — 4.0 lack sufficient depth and do not explicitly integrate and cite the required readings provided. The answers could provide ideas for students, but they would need to invest in substantial reading and additional writing to receive a grade of 8 or higher out of 10 points.

ChatGPT3

• At first glance, each argument/statement is written at sufficient depth, and they explicitly integrate/cite at least one of the related sources provided.

• Yet, substantive errors appear across all three assignments. The readings that students must draw on are frequently cited for arguments/statements that the authors are against or that their findings contradict.

• Because these three assignment topics and related readings are more complex than the first, they appear to exceed the ability of ChatGPT3 to answer accurately.

• If a student were to turn in these answers as an assignment, not only would the “too perfect” copy suggest they were relying on an AI platform — but their grade would likely be below an 8 out of 10 on the assignment, based on the subtle yet substantive errors in how sources were cited.

In upper-level college writing seminars, as my examples demonstrate, it is possible for instructors to “AI proof” their assignments.

Even relative to the initial “low stakes” assignments I use with students at the start of the semester — it appears that they are beyond the ability of ChatGPT3 and Perplexity at this time to answer accurately, with depth, and/or without easy detection.

In a 2011 study I co-authored with Declan Fahy, we analyzed these diversifying roles and practices. We first reviewed research, news coverage, and commentary describing relevant journalism trends. We followed by interviewing eleven nationally prominent US/UK journalists and writers.

In this article, I summarize our findings. They offer a useful starting point for ongoing discussions at BLUR about contemporary journalism and news media. I hope you will also weigh in with your thoughts in the comment section. Below are a few questions to consider, but feel free to go beyond them:

• How have approaches to science, environmental, and climate journalism shifted (or remained the same) in the twelve years since we published our study?

• How has the broader “science media ecosystem” evolved or changed?

• What have been the benefits and trade/offs relative to these changes?

Also important to consider: Our study was published during an era of intense optimism among many science bloggers about the ability of the “Science Online” movement to promote greater public understanding. It was not an optimism we shared.

Twelve years later, the era's euphoria has been replaced by widespread concern about the threat of online misinformation. As Dominique Brossard and Dietram Scheufele wrote in a 2013 commentary at Science magazine:

Online environments are providing audiences with great opportunities to connect with science, but social scientists are only beginning to understand the nature of these connections and their potential outcomes on how audiences all make sense of complex scientific issues.

“Is it an embargo break to say what a paper is not?”

In 2010, NASA announced a press conference to “discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.”

As the norm, journalists covering the science beat had already received a pre-publication “embargoed” version of the forthcoming study at Science.

This decades-old norm allowed journalists time to report and write their stories if they agreed to publish only after a specified date and time. It also enabled scientific institutions and journal publishers to control the media narrative about a new study.

However, on the day the NASA press release was distributed, an independent blogger speculated that the paper concerned the discovery of arsenic on Titan, one of Saturn’s moons. The next day, MSNBC’s Cosmic Log blog, Discover’s Bad Astronomy blog, and the independent NASA Watch blog tried to quell the spreading speculation.

With advanced access to the paper, science journalists at legacy newspapers and magazines were in a position to provide context, but many could not because of the embargo policy. Instead, they used Twitter to comment only indirectly:

• ‘I’ve seen the Science paper. It’s not that,” the Atlantic’s wrote on Twitter.

• To which science journalist John Fleck replied: “Been dying to say. Is it an embargo break to say what a paper is not,” CCing Ivan Oransky at the blog Embargo Watch.

When published, the Science study did not confirm life on other planets but instead described a lab experiment purporting to show how arsenic could interact with bacteria to create a new life form. In blog posts, however, several scientists raised doubts about the study’s methods and conclusions.

In an article at the online magazine Slate headlined “This Paper Should Not Have Been Published,” Carl Zimmer reported that a dozen researchers “almost unanimously” agreed that the NASA scientists “failed to make their case.”

The editors at Nature argued that scientist bloggers had played a valuable extended peer-review role:

…and many researchers' blogs, in particular, contain better analyses of the true significance of a scientific finding or debate than is seen in much of the mainstream media. Science journalists who repeated NASA's claims on the arsenic bacterium and did not tap into the widespread criticisms, did little to defend themselves from claims of reporting by press release.

The new science media ecosystem

As the NASA arsenic study case demonstrated, not only were bloggers and “digital news” platforms by the late 2000s generating alternative sources of science-related information, but they also challenged legacy science journalists’ longstanding gatekeeper role.

Scientists, scholars, journalists, advocates, and the “people formerly known as the audience” could now all be content contributors, each with varying knowledge, background, perspectives, and motivations. This complex web of journalism organizations and science-related online platforms included:

• Opinion-leading legacy newspapers and magazines like The Guardian, New York Times, Discover, Scientific American, and Science that published articles both in print and online.

• Online-only articles and blogs at legacy newspapers and magazines like the New York Times “Dot Earth” blog or Science magazine’s “Science Insider.”

• Emerging science-related blogging and aggregation sites, most notably Scienceblogs.com.

• Politically aligned, science-related blogs like PZ Meyer’s Pharyngula and Joe Romm’s Climate Progress.

• Review and criticism of science and environmental journalism at MIT’s Knight Science Journalism Tracker and the Columbia Journalism Review’s (CJR) “The Observatory.”

The new landscape required journalists at legacy publications to cover studies published in peer-reviewed journals — and to provide further context as they were being debated online.

As Eli Kintisch, formerly of Science magazine, told us:

Today there are much lower barriers between my audience and information, especially information reporters used to have sort of privileged access to, that includes today digital copies of scientific papers and main sources of information such as podcasts of news conferences, transcripts of speeches, or hearings. In the past, reporters were the only ones, now there is much more broad access, including the fact that scientists themselves have blogged about the paper or event. So information goes straight to the Internet audience, versus before there was more of a privileged role of reporters as an intermediary.

As Curtis Brainard, formerly of CJR, said:

Rather than having a readership that remains dedicated to your publication or any single publication, you’ve got readers who will find you when you’ve got something good. There’s that ability for stories from even the smallest publications, whether that be the Columbia Journalism Review or any other small newspaper, to really go viral and get a lot of national and even international attention.

The diversification of news and information sources featuring science-related content also paralleled a decline in the number of journalists employed by legacy newspapers and magazines.

The result was an increased workload for the science and environmental journalists remaining at legacy news organizations and a “wearing of many hats” among freelancers. As science journalist and professor Deborah Blum told us, the industry-wide move to freelancing had:

… driven our changing perception of what a science journalist is. A science journalist wears a lot of hats, the way I do … I write books, I do magazine articles, I teach – [this] is much more the twenty-first-century version of a journalist.

To clarify these multiplying roles, in our study, we introduced a typology of journalistic approaches old and new.

The conduit/gatekeeper

• In this traditional role, the journalist explains or translates scientific information in their reporting from experts to the non-specialist public.

Alok Jha, (at the time) science correspondent at the Guardian, said the main goal was reporting “what’s happening and what’s interesting. That’s the primary thing.” Other roles and functions flow from this primary reporting role. Yet he also distinguished this reporting function from roles as “conduits” and “explainers.”

Ed Yong, who (at the time) wrote Discover’s Not Exactly Rocket Science blog, said a core feature of his writing was explaining science understandably to non-specialists.

I think that area of science reporting often gets forgotten about in the mainstream. I’m not sure it’s as valued as strongly as – I don’t know – uncovering acts of fraud or misconduct or finding juicy human stories. I think the very simple act of making complex things simple is tremendously valuable. It’s essential for science journalism.

The agenda-setter

• In this role, journalists call attention to important research areas, trends, and issues, coverage of which is then picked up and reflected in other science news outlets.

James Randerson, (at the time) environment reporter at The Guardian, told us that agenda-setting remained a central role him and his newspaper:

Being able to project the story … The readership and the influence of the Guardian are very important in terms of making a story acquire legs and really start moving and change what governments think.

Similarly, as CJR’s Curtis Brainard noted:

One thing that hasn’t been lost in the media is that desire to be first … We love it when we can get out with an analysis before anybody else and become the foundation on which all the following coverage is built.

The science watchdog/critic

• In this role, the journalist holds scientific institutions, government agencies, corporations, advocacy groups, and their affiliated professionals accountable for their actions, claims, and impacts.

Several interviewees resisted being classified as a “science critic” and were likelier to think of themselves as watchdogs. Yet, several stressed that interpretative, analytical, and accountability reporting cut across roles in our typology.

John Horgan was the lone journalist to embrace the critic label. As a staff reporter for Scientific American in the 1990s, he said he ‘became dissatisfied’ with the constraints of traditional reporting, and he wanted to undertake more opinion-based, interpretative reporting.

Horgan classified himself as a “critical debunker” and said he looks for “exaggerated or erroneous scientific claims” that he tries to question and debunk. He pioneered this approach in best-selling books like The End of Science and by writing the Cross-Check blog (formerly at Scientific American). As he told us:

I convinced myself that that was actually a good thing to do because science had become such an authority that there was a need for a scientific critic … I just enjoy that form of journalism myself. It’s a paradox: it’s using subjectivity to ultimately get a more clear, objective picture of things.

The advocate

• In this role, a journalist or writer is driven by a specific worldview or on behalf of an issue or idea, such as sustainability or environmentalism.

Despite the strong prevalence of advocacy journalism in the new media ecosystem, none of the journalists interviewed self-identified in the advocate role. This may reflect the absence of a journalist from an advocacy outlet like Mother Jones or Inside Climate News among those we chose to interview.

The civic educator

• In this role, the journalist informs non-specialist audiences about a scientific work's methods, aims, limits, and risks.

Though science journalists have traditionally been resistant to viewing their work as education, some interviewees noted that the limitless availability of space online allowed reporters to fulfill more of an educational role.

As CJR’s Brainard said:

Before digital media, the news was the news, and yesterday was ancient history. There was no efficient way to archive information for the public at your traditional news outlet. But now, the web has changed all that and so journalists need to be not only presenting the news, but they need to make pertinent background information readily accessible … the web allows us to do that. News outlets should almost develop these encyclopedias at their back end. The New York Times has done a great job on this.

As Discover’s Ed Yong told us, contextualized science reporting does have an educational function by not only promoting scientific achievements but also showing:

Where scientists disagree, areas where controversies are going on, because that’s part of science, that’s an inescapable part of the scientific process … it shows people scientists are human and that science is a human process.

Several journalists interviewed, however, were ambivalent about this role. The Guardian’s Jha said it’s “a role that if it happens, then great … but it’s not the primary intention.”

The curator

• In this role, the journalist gathers science-related news, opinion, and commentary, presenting it in a structured format, with some evaluation, for audiences.

Those we interviewed agreed that sifting through and evaluating the vast amount of science-related content has become an increasingly prominent function for science reporters. With so much science content available, The Guardian’s Randerson argued that curation is “about what it means to be a journalist in the digital age.”

We made a very conscious decision to add value to stories by doing this kind of curation role, and basically admitting that we are not the fount of all knowledge, that we do have the ability to present information in a useful way and to hopefully decide which information is useful and which isn’t, and to try and bring in the information that’s good and present it in a way that’s meaningful, and to use our readers, our readership, and the people who are part of our community to help us in that task.

CJR’s Brainard defined curation as more than an aggregation of content and that adding value to stories is essential:

It means informed or value-added aggregation. If you go to a museum, the curators don’t just put up a painting; they also put up a little sign next to it, explaining something about that work. That’s more what we do, that informed aggregation … We’re collecting headlines, but at the same time, we’re telling you why we’re recommending this story, or why we’re recommending you don’t read this other story.

The convener

• In this role, the journalist connects scientists, experts, and the non-specialist public to discuss science-related issues online or at events.

Andrew Revkin told us this was a major part of his journalism at the New York Times’ Dot Earth blog:

A big subset of posts that I do are along those lines. When I go places to speak, quite often I’ll be in the role of moderator or kind of convener … where I am on stage with four or five scientists or technologists or engineers or academics and challenging them in the same way as I do on the blog.

He approached his writing at Dot Earth as posing questions and convening conversations rather than providing answers. His dialectical style also allowed him to bridge opposing perspectives among his readers:

They [readers] are sort of all over the map ideologically. The blog is very different than most in that most blogs are built to provide a comfort zone for a particular ideological camp, for liberals or conservatives or libertarians … what I do at Dot Earth is try to maintain an open forum where everyone can speak. I try – and sometimes fail – to maintain constructive discourse in the comments … And as a result it’s different. It’s a discomfort zone … I’m not here to provide you with a soft couch and free drinks if you’re an enviro or if you are a conservative. It’s a place to challenge yourself.

Last year, the mobile meditation app industry was expected to earn close to $1 billion in U.S. sales, doubling annual revenue from before the pandemic.

Yet as the author of a recent study concludes, when people use their smartphones to access guided meditations on apps engineered to distract them, it is unlikely that they will experience benefits relative to mood or attention.

Instead, users may simply be substituting one form of carefully designed addiction for another — reinterpreting their “experiences as mindful, even when digital platforms ironically lure them into practices that are distracted and compulsive,” writes the study’s author Rebecca Jablonsky. 

The growing popularity of meditation apps “signals the expanding power of behavioral design, which not only changes how people behave but changes how people think and feel about their behavior.”

Merchants of distraction

Over an eighteen month period, Jablonsky attended several U.S. and Canadian tech industry events, conferences, and meetings. She also interviewed seventeen meditation app company managers and designers; visited the headquarters of two leading app makers; and interviewed twenty-one meditation app users.

Ethnographers like Jablonsky combine close observation of organizational settings, document analysis, and open-ended interviews to arrive at richly detailed accounts of human behavior. The downside to ethnography is that a study may lack broader generalizability across a population — meaning that studies using a diversity of other methods are needed to build stronger confidence about an initial set of findings.

Many in the mindfulness app industry, as Jablonksy reports, believe they are “channeling the addictive properties of digital technology toward a healthier form of attention that could restore for users a sense of agency, control, and even personal meaning.”

In doing so, they are making a bold promise that using their app will “somehow reduce or reverse the negative mental effects of other popular contemporary digital technologies.”

When an app company lures new users by way of a carefully targeted social media campaign, the typical offer is free access to a sample video or audio meditation designed to elicit a positive emotion.

“Meditation app companies thus capitalize on their knowledge that potential users are already anxious — they are in some form of pain that needs relief — and use this to their advantage by making the first experience of meditation pleasurable and easy,” notes Jablonsky.

Among mobile meditation companies, Headspace spends the most on media advertising, sometimes in collaboration with other brands. 

As part of the “Food for Mood” campaign, Headspace partnered with Whole Foods to offer free guided meditations promoting “Joyful shopping,” “Cooking with gratitude” and “Mindful eating.”

In another example, Headspace in September 2021 launched a YouTube ad campaign intended to target users across countries. The ad suggests that the global pandemic is on the wane. Images feature actors wrestling with their children, floating on their backs in the ocean, hugging elderly relatives, and staring into the eyes of babies.

Testimonials from users read by actors declare how much meditation has helped them: “This year has been stressful, but then I found Headspace.”

Once an individual downloads a meditation app like Headspace, the app sends a constant stream of notifications intended to promote greater frequency of use and more downloads — which generates more revenue for the company.

“The attention designed into meditation apps thus is not the mindful attention that is promised, but rather reflects forms of attention considered more valuable and profitable to the broader technology industry — an attention that is malleable, compulsive, and distracted,” writes Jablonsky.

Technological antidote

In one interview, a meditation app company executive described their typical user as looking to escape the “fundamental conditions of modern life,” an existence which involves millions of demands on their attention.

Examples include “people going to bed feeling upset with themselves because of their friend’s Instagram accounts,” or someone who “can’t focus their way through a conversation with their partner because their Apple watch keeps buzzing.”

According to the executive, meditation apps were the “technological antidote to the problems that technology has created.”

In a second interview, a former design director at Muse —  maker of a “brain sensing” meditation headband —  described his work as a form of “attention activism.”

Meditation apps are “about exercising your right to decide what to pay attention to. It’s about resisting those who want to profit from selling something that belongs to you,” he said.

According to its Amazon page, Muse’s brain sensing headband enables users to discover their “mind-body connection through powerful, accurate real-time feedback on brain activity.”

The device is supposedly able to notify a user if they have a “busy mind” (signaled by way of “stormy weather” noises) or a “calm” mind (“peaceful weather” noises).

The gamification strategy promotes frequent headband use by rewarding users with diamond-shaped “Muse points” and bird-themed milestones. “Is this what happens when Angry Birds get therapy? It’s fun, but should it be?” writes The Guardian’s Rhik Samadder.

Binging on mindfulness

Among the twenty-one meditation app users that Jablonsky interviewed, a majority “regularly described their broader technology use habits as through the lens of popular critiques of technology ‘addiction,’ while turning a blind eye to their compulsive use of meditation apps,” she writes.

Several users blamed themselves (rather than the app) when their efforts at meditation did not seem to work, concluding that “they needed to be more mindful and pay more attention — reinforcing the value of the meditation app circularly.”

One said that using Headspace was similar to her “binge-watching” television habits. She purchased a thirty-pack of meditations, binged them quickly, tried to meditate on her own once a week, and then stopped. If she tried a meditation app again, she expected to repeat the cycle of binging and purging.

Another user knew that his Calm meditation app was not as beneficial as an in-person meditation class, but it was the only option he could fit into his hectic work schedule.

“His use of meditation apps thus remains palliative, providing a temporary fix that is interchangeable with other fixes,” writes Jablonsky. “He doesn’t expect to achieve a state of mindful attention from the meditation app — he simply expects to feel better in the moment.”

A third user described using her Headspace meditation app like a podcast, listening to the calming voice of Headspace founder Andy Puddicombe (a former Buddhist monk) while doing chores and writing emails.

“The meditation app doesn’t absorb her full attention but simply reminds her of the things she would like to pay more attention to when she has the time — notably her own self-care,” writes Jablonsky. But this also leaves her stuck in “a state of distraction from which she must recover continuously through efforts to pay attention.”

However, some interviewees were aware of the traps involved in using mediation apps, optimistically believing that they could exert control over them.

One said she typically used the timer on her device as part of self-guided meditations that she would do in a quiet room. She believed she was taking advantage of the “better tool, which is the real mindfulness — either focusing on your breath or paying attention to your thoughts.”

A second user had spent years studying meditation in his native India. He described meditation as “building a muscle” and attention as a form of discernment. His experience allowed him to know when he needed to use an app versus something else and says he uses an app to meditate twice a day for 30 minutes.

The quest to design an app that facilitates mindful attention is “impossible to fulfill as the affordances of the smartphone and its suite of digital tools capture attention in equal — if not greater — measure as meditation apps claim to give it back,” concludes Jablonsky.

Addicted to distraction

Even when we try to use smartphone apps minimally and mindfully, we run up against an impossible task. Meditation app companies have joined Facebook and other social media platforms in recruiting some of the world's brightest minds to create an unbeatable chess game.

In using any of these apps, we are battling artificial intelligence and algorithms with almost perfect information about us — machine learning tools that aim to keep us addicted to distraction.

It is not just smartphones and apps but online immersion itself that is the death of our focus and attention. “As our window onto the world, and onto ourselves, a popular medium molds what we see and how we see it — and eventually, if we use it enough, it changes who we are, as individuals and society,” wrote Nicholas Carr in 2011’s The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.

RELATED: The Moderate-Minded Writer

He argued that replacing printed books and articles with screen-based text, images, and video marked the transition between two dramatically different modes of thinking.

When printed books and articles were at the center of human culture — the linear medium cultivated habits of mind related to concentration and disciplined thought.

“As supple as it is subtle,” the book has been “the imaginative mind of the Enlightenment, the inventive mind of the Industrial Revolution, even the subversive mind of Modernism,” wrote Carr.

In contrast to the book, the Internet incentivized a reliance on skimming, multi-tasking, superficial thinking, and short-term memory rather than deeper understanding.

Over time, as the mental circuits devoted to constant online multitasking strengthen, the circuits used for reading and concentration erode. The altered brain consequently finds it more difficult to concentrate and read deeply — as numerous studies in subsequent years have shown.

When the tenth-anniversary edition of The Shallows was published in 2020, Carr, in an updated introduction, built on his thesis that digital technologies continued to make people more distracted and less focused.

The diffusion of smartphones has accelerated this process. “It’s common today, even more so than ten years ago, to think of knowledge as something that surrounds us, something we swim through to consume, like sea creatures in plankton-filled waters,” he wrote.

Delete your apps

If you aim to improve your attention and mental health, instead of relying on a meditation app, you are better off ridding yourself of the full suite of addictive technologies that distract you.

Start by deleting almost every app on your phone and tablet that is not a GPS or map; turn off all notifications; silence your text messages; cancel your streaming services; and hide your devices in an inconvenient location for twelve hours a day [start after dinner], and ideally a full day on weekends.

After taking these steps, you can start to rebuild your attention and boost your mood through various embodied practices and activities.

You can rediscover the joy of books and the tactile feel as you turn the pages; spend time writing every day in a well-crafted journal using a specially chosen pen or pencil; draw and color in a sketch pad; clean, build, and fix things around your house; cook your meals [with no music or podcasts]; take a walk in a park [with no headphones]; or attend a regular yoga class at a neighborhood studio. 

If you are interested in meditation, make the time to connect with a local Buddhist meditation group [which is usually free and open to all]. There, you will find experienced teachers to guide you, an ethical philosophy, books and readings to help you make sense of life, and a community of people to share the experience with.

A few weeks ago, I told my 7-year-old son the story of the Piltdown Man hoax. I’m not sure how it came up, other than that it was part of our daily discussions about predatory dinosaurs, paper airplane designs, and Wimpy Kid books.

The look of fascination on his face as he learned about the most famous scientific fraud in history inspired me to dig up more details about the skullduggery involved.

As I started going through relevant sources, I soon realized that the Piltdown Hoax is not only a fascinating tale — but also an amazing parable about how easy it is to fall victim to groupthink.

We typically consider group decisions — especially when arrived at by experts — to be better than those made by the lone individual.

Yet although a correct decision may be the goal of an expert group, social psychologists find that this objective is seldom the primary factor influencing the judgments of the individual experts involved.

During debate, experts may feel reluctant to offend their colleagues by contradicting their views. Once a perceived consensus is established, some experts may also self-censor their doubts fearing professional reprisal.

Expert groupthink is most likely to occur when the conditions surrounding a decision remain uncertain, if most experts within a group share a strong commitment to a particular social identity, and if that identity is perceived as under threat.

The gravel pit and the skull fragment

In early 1912, the lawyer and amateur archeologist Charles Dawson sent a letter to his colleague Arthur Smith Woodward, head of geology at the prestigious British Museum in London. A workman a few years earlier had given Dawson a skull fragment from a nearby gravel pit in Piltdown, a hamlet in Sussex, England.

After consulting with fellow amateur archeologists, Dawson told Woodward that the skull fragment resembled the “Heidelberg Man”—Neanderthal remains unearthed a few years earlier in Germany.

If Pleistocene-era bones had been discovered at Piltdown, it would not surprise Woodward, since many geologists at the time believed that the gravel pit had been left behind by an Ice Age river bed.

After examining the skull fragment at the British Museum, the two men traveled to Piltdown to begin a systematic excavation.

By the end of the summer, Dawson and Woodward had recovered additional skull fragments, an ape-like jaw bone, flint tools, and what appeared to be Pleistocene-era mammal remains.

Before they could formally present the findings to their scientific peers — an unknown informant leaked news of the discovery to the Manchester Guardian.

“The Earliest Man? Remarkable Discovery in Sussex – A Skull ‘Millions of Years Old?,’” was the November 21, 1912 headline. The ape-man creature was “certainly from the beginning of the Pleistocene period,” and “there is no doubt of its authenticity.”

The cranium and jawbone were in fact the “earliest trace of mankind that has yet been found in England.” Compared to Germany’s famous Heidelberg Man, these fragments suggested “a much lower and more primitive type of mankind.”

The discovery, according to the newspaper, could settle a debate that had raged since Charles Darwin’s 1850 publication of The Origin of Species. The “theory of evolution applied to man suggest[sic] that he had a common origin with the apes.” Yet to satisfy Darwin’s skeptics, the “need has been felt for discovering ‘the missing link’ between the highest apes and the lowest men’.”

In 1891, on the island of Java in South Asia, the Dutchman Eugène Dubois had discovered fossilized remains of a small partial cranium, teeth, and a modern-looking femur indicative of an upright posture.

Dubois named the species Pithecanthropus erectus (erect ape-man), claiming it was a “missing link.” Yet many geologists doubted the claim.

Over the next few years, Neanderthal remains like Heidelberg Man were recovered from multiple sites in Germany. In contrast to their European rivals, British scientists had yet to find pre-human remains in their own country.

But now according to The Manchester Guardian “there appears to be no doubt of whatever of its genuineness…[and] more than a possibility of its being the oldest remnant of a human frame yet discovered on this planet.

Selling the discovery

The Geological Society of London held a special December 1912 meeting so that Woodward and Dawson could formally present their findings. Using lantern slides and diagrams, they argued that the bone fragments represented an ape-man from the early Pleistocene period, possibly the oldest such remains found in the world.

“The skull may be regarded as presenting a hitherto unknown species of homo, for which a new name is proposed," Woodward said. They named the species Eoanthropus Dawsoni – “The Dawn Man.”

In convincing many in attendance that day, Dawson and Woodward likely benefited from the advance publicity. The Manchester Guardian had spun a vision of an early Pleistocene ape-man that resonated not only with British nationalism but with the iconic quest to locate the “missing link.”

The newspaper’s vivid account went well beyond the more cautious, tentative style of arguments that Woodward could present to his peers.

Imagine for a moment that you are a British scientist in November 1912 picking up the Manchester Guardian that day—or reading a clip a few days later that had been sent to you in the mail.

The storm clouds of World War I are on the horizon, as a belligerent Germany pursues a policy of militarization. The British Empire is in decline. America is passing Britain as the world leader in science and technology.

Yet if the Manchester Guardian’s report proved true, Britain had just catapulted back to the top of the international order.

A news story about Dawson and Woodward’s presentation at the Geological Society only helped bolster their case. “The Earliest Skull. ‘A Hitherto Unknown Species.’ Story of the Sussex Discovery,” was the headline at the Manchester Guardian.

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The production of scientific knowledge and popular communication about that knowledge are conventionally considered distinct activities. First comes the research, peer-review, and scientific article—and only then does popular communication begin.

Each discipline differs, but every discipline as part of the peer-review process follows particular rules for gathering, analyzing, and interpreting evidence, and the standards by which a claim must be assessed.

Very few topics in science are completely "settled" or certain. Scientific theories, findings, and knowledge are instead considered provisional, open to challenge and revision.

But similar norms of rigor and scrutiny are not usually applied by journalists writing for the popular press, or by editors publishing commentaries by scientists. This provides scientists with the opportunity to go beyond what can be said in a journal article and to use the popular press as a forum to promote their research — not only to the public but also to their scientific peers.

Over the centuries, these strategies have varied in form – but they reveal how scientific knowledge is constantly being shaped, interpreted, and promoted outside of formal peer-reviewed channels. 

Yet even with the aid of publicity, some at the December 1912 presentation voiced their reservations about linking the skull and the jawbone to the same individual – since they were so anatomically different.

These critics did not question the fragments’ Pleistocene era origins, but rather believed that the skull represented a more human-like individual from the period and the jawbone a different, more ape-like one.

Woodward admitted the incongruence, but countered that the accumulation of evidence suggested a single individual. The fragments were found in the same pit, the same layer of sediment, and adjacent to each other.

Silencing skeptics

Woodward and Dawson followed their 1912 presentation by publishing a series of papers in the the official journal of the Geological Society.

But as news spread outside of Britain, foreign scientists voiced their skepticism about the authenticity of the alleged “missing link.” When requests to directly examine the fragments were denied, the decision deepened their suspicions.

In 1915, “Piltdown Man II” was discovered a few miles away from the original pit. The fossil fragments included a human-like cranium and ape-like tooth with wear marks unlike any modern ape.

The emergence of a second Piltdown Man silenced skeptics among foreign scientists. Based on gathered evidence, scholars also believe that there were scientists working within the British Museum who had quietly uncovered the fraud — but did not step forward for fear of disturbing the canonical peace.

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The unwillingness of skeptics and museum insiders to speak out was likely also driven by the credulous headlines about Piltdown Man that had been running in newspapers across the world.

In many of these stories, their scientific peers were quoted, affirming the ground-breaking nature of the discoveries. In other cases, scientist enthusiasts published popular articles that extolled the genuineness of an English ape-man missing link.

In arguing on behalf of Piltdown Man's authenticity, these scientists could bypass the stricter standards for evidence required by science journals. But at the same, they drew on their scientific authority to spin culturally persuasive narratives about Piltdown Man’s "humanness.”

But given its chimeric ape-human qualities, why would Piltdown Man be declared the "Earliest Englishman" by scientists and journalists?

The narrative was not scientifically based, but fit a vernacular "folk wisdom" of the British Empire-era that traded on themes of nationalism and racism. 

Piltdown Man’s hybrid "almost humanness" was rationalized by often linking the remains more closely to indigenous and non-white peoples — "savages" according to the racist vernacular of the day.

In this way the "Earliest Englishman was moved closer to us, whilst non-white, non-Europeans were moved further away," writes sociologist Murray Goulden.

Yet over the next few decades as more human-ape remains were found in South Africa, Java, and China, each were anatomically opposite to Piltdown Man. Their skulls were more ape-like and their jaw bones more human-like.

These subsequent findings appeared to form a  consistent evolutionary tree (but only if Piltdown Man were excluded from consideration).

Piltdown Man supporters, however, could still reason away the mounting discrepancies by claiming that their favored bones were much older – thereby representing a separate, uniquely English man-ape species.

In 1953, Kenneth Oakley of the British Museum and J.S. Weiner of the University of Oxford published a study with colleagues that re-examined the Piltdown fragments. They relied on advanced stereomicroscope technology, a new fossil dating method, and other innovative techniques.

Their tests placed the skull as no older than 50,000 years, rendering Piltdown Man an “evolutionary absurdity,” with no known ancestor or descendant, they wrote.

According to Oakley and Weiner, a “modern ape jaw had been deliberately placed with the more ancient brain-case, and that to disguise its modern character and link it with the human brain-case, the bone had been suitably stained, and the teeth deliberately ground down.”

In a 1954 commentary at Science magazine, the American anthropologist William Strauss attempted to explain why it had taken forty years to unmask Piltdown Man as a forgery.

In assigning blame, Straus conveniently ignored the role of scientific nationalism, racism, and hype in promoting expert groupthink. Instead, he argued that until Oakley and Weiner’s tests had revealed the modern origins of the bones, there was no reason to suspect fraud. And those tests had only become available in recent years.

The status seeking con man

Over sixty years later, a team of anthropologists led by Isabelle de Groote published a 2016 study describing their investigation of the Piltdown bone fragments using DNA analyses, CT scanning, and X-ray tomography.

They concluded the jawbone fragments for both Piltdown I and II came from a single Borneo orangutan, and the skull fragments from two or three possibly medieval humans.

The bones and teeth had been cleverly loaded with gravel held in place with pebble plugs; making them feel heavier, and therefore more fossil-like. Silicate dental putty was used to reconstruct the fragments, and piece them together where needed.

Since the 1950s, at least twenty individuals have been suspected of involvement in the hoax. But consistent with the conclusions of several book-length studies, de Groote and her colleagues concluded that Dawson was the lone perpetrator.

Dawson was the origin of the original fragment – and either found the rest of the fragments, or was present when they were discovered. The consistency in method for how the flints and bones were chiseled and manipulated also suggest that a lone person did the work.

He had the connections and means to obtain the skull, jawbone fragments, mammal fossils, and tools that he stained and manipulated. He likely knew who to talk to at the newspapers, and was acquaintances with Woodward – head of geology at the prestigious British Museum.

As a lawyer, Dawson had swindled his associates in various real estate deals, and the majority of his other archeological finds were eventually discovered to be frauds. Notably following his death in 1916, no remains similar to those of Piltdown Man were ever again recovered.

To pull off a scientific fraud, you have to give scientists and the public what they are looking for. Dawson as an experienced fossil hunter knew that the British scientific community was searching for its own “missing link.”

He would have known that scientists were looking for stained bones suggesting the Pleistocene age of the skull and jaw. He also knew that in order to corroborate the Piltdown Man fragments, adjacent tools and mammal fossils needed to be recovered.

But why would Dawson commit such a crime? In 1909, when Dawson claimed the first Piltdown fragment had been handed to him by a worker, he was 44 years old. By then he had authored or co-authored some 50 publications in geology, archeology, and history, explains de Groote.

As a prolific amateur, Dawson likely felt he had never gained the recognition from the scientific establishment he thought he deserved. In a 1909 letter to Woodward, he lamented “waiting for the big ‘find’ which never seems to come along….” Later that year his younger naval officer brother received a knighthood.

Dawson’s wife soon wrote to the British Home Secretary, who she refers to as an “old friend,” suggesting that because of his quarter century of scientific service, her husband also deserved recognition.

Before Dawson died in 1916, he was nominated for induction into the Royal Society (Britain’s highest scientific honor), but the nomination was rejected.

I spend most of my time studying, writing, and teaching about intractable debates over science, technology, and the environment. It is, at times, a depressing experience. Climate change, for example, is a grave threat and one of the world’s most divisive issues.

Over the years, I have learned that strong discipline is required to avoid the easiest, most comfortable narratives and to reconcile in my writing competing visions of the “good society.” 

Only a quiet mind can remain intellectually humble, recognizing the limits to knowledge and the wisdom in drawing on multiple perspectives.

Therefore, several years ago, I decided to dramatically minimize my social media use and screen time. I also shifted most of my reading back to print and dedicated portions of each day to introspection and contemplation. 

The vast complexity of our problems requires us to constantly update our assumptions and beliefs, a goal best reached not through full-throated advocacy but via contemplative engagement with diverse voices and ideas.

Instead of quickly choosing between clashing perspectives, a better approach is to wrestle with their tensions and uncertainties and recognize what each offers that is of value. It is, therefore, essential for academics, intellectuals, and journalists to model forms of moderation, pragmatism, and skepticism that can only be cultivated through deep reading and contemplation.

This is my story on how I arrived at this realization — and how I strive to apply these habits of mind and virtues to my research, teaching, writing, and intellectual life.

The outrage machine

It is impossible to resist the siren song of political tribalism if, like the average American, you spend several hours a day on your smartphone swiping, scrolling, skimming, liking, hearting, retweeting, forwarding, and responding to other people's thoughts.

Artificial intelligence-driven platforms serve a constant stream of news and commentary that reflect our existing biases and beliefs rather than news and analysis that might challenge them. 

Because they kidnap our attention, the most inflammatory, most outrageous, and most catastrophic headlines are rewarded by social media algorithms, ensuring that they travel the furthest.1

When a major event occurs, or a policy proposal is announced, your first thought in today's news feed culture is not your original idea but, almost inevitably, a headline or commenter appealing to your worse biases.2

Playing to the rawest elements of human nature, today’s social media-driven outrage machine has greatly damaged intellectual life, destroying our ability to think independently and discuss productively across lines of difference. 

On no other topic is this clearer than climate change.

In tracking how our media system tends to distort debate, scholars have primarily studied national TV news and cable news networks. With their focus on breaking political events, personality clashes, and election races, these outlets continue to give little airtime to climate change.3

When TV news does report on climate change, portrayals tend to exaggerate the threats without providing information about what audiences might be able to do to protect against them, a style of fear-mongering that can result in feelings of powerlessness or forms of denial.4

Researchers have also documented that just as troubling are portrayals at Fox News and online outlets such as Breitbart News, which routinely deny the reality of human-caused climate change and castigate climate scientists in the process. Scholars, however, have tended to overlook the strategies of climate advocates that harm society’s ability to reach an agreement on effective climate policy actions.5

Instead, some academics have joined with advocates in preaching that climate activists need to be more like their long-standing conservative opponents: more ruthless, more cunning, more aggressive, and more committed to the most audacious and ambitious policies regardless of their flaws.6 

In the quest for climate progress, the goal is not to broker cross-alliances between the center-right, center-left, and left-wing, drawing on the best ideas those factions can offer but building progressive power.

By doing so, the vast complexity of climate politics is reduced to a Manichean storyline about a battle between the forces of “good and light” and “evil and darkness.” 

Yet even as climate activists and allied journalists view conservatives and the fossil fuel industry as extreme, they seldom apply the same label to those on their side. 

To protect preferred narratives, a leading strategy by some activists, academics, and journalists has been to discredit experts who question worst-case scenario narratives or policies like the Green New Deal by labeling them “deniers,” “delayers,” “contrarians,” “confusionists,” “lukewarmers,” “inactivists,” and “non-solutionists.”7

These attacks are not so much about the specifics of climate science or policy as they are about controlling who has the authority to speak on the subject.

Such labeling comports well with the political mood of the day. It breeds incivility and cultivates a discourse culture in which protecting one’s identity, group, and preferred storyline takes priority over constructive consideration of knowledge and evidence. Yet the more we become angry and catastrophize about the future, the less likely we are to find common ground for practical actions or even recognize our mistakes.8

We used to be human

It is not just the outrage culture of social media that is killing the moderate mind. The process of online immersion itself disrupts the most basic habits needed to engage in intellectual life.

“As our window onto the world, and onto ourselves, a popular medium molds what we see and how we see it — and eventually, if we use it enough, it changes who we are, as individuals and society,” wrote Nicholas Carr in 2011’s The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.9

He argued that replacing printed books and articles with screen-based text, images, and video marked the transition between two dramatically different modes of thinking.

When printed books and articles were at the center of human culture — the linear medium cultivated habits of mind related to concentration and disciplined thought.

“As supple as it is subtle,” the book has been “the imaginative mind of the Enlightenment, the inventive mind of the Industrial Revolution, even the subversive mind of Modernism,” wrote Carr.

In contrast, the Internet incentivized reliance on skimming, multitasking, superficial thinking, and short-term memory. Over time, as the mental circuits devoted to constant online multitasking strengthen, the circuits used for reading and concentration erode.

The altered brain consequently finds it more challenging to concentrate and read deeply — as numerous studies in subsequent years have shown.10 

Consider the example of Andrew Sullivan, as he described in a 2016 New York magazine cover story “I Used to be a Human Being.” After completing his doctorate at Harvard, Sullivan spent the first part of his career as a long-form journalist and editor at The New Republic. To author a 3,000-5,000 magazine article or to get an issue of the magazine to press required Sullivan to spend his days engaged in immersive reading, writing, editing, and revision.11

But the pattern of his life and thoughts dramatically changed in 2000 when he launched his blog, The Dish. For the next fifteen years, success as a blogger required that he constantly keep up with the latest trending topic and hot take — and publish multiple posts a day, seven days a week.

But his experience took a severe toll on his psyche, relationships, and health. He could no longer read books, his mind and fingers “twitched for a keyboard,” and he suffered from chronic respiratory infections. Even though Sullivan spent every day alone at a computer, he felt like he was in a “constant cacophonous crowd of words and images, sounds and ideas, emotions and tirades – a wind tunnel of deafening, deadening noise.”

In 2015, Sullivan quit his blog and embarked on a months-long recovery that began with a silent meditation retreat. He then returned to long-form journalism as a columnist at New York magazine.

In retrospect, Sullivan realized he had been a “very early adopter of what might now be called living-in-the-web.” Yet now, as he warned readers in his cover story, the rapid diffusion of social media apps via smartphones had turned the insanity that was once unique to him into the cultural norm. “The once-unimaginable pace of the professional blogger was now the default for everyone,” he wrote.

The purposively engineered addictiveness of social media apps lulls users into the belief that there are no downsides despite the many negative consequences. The smartphone had banished “the very spaces where we can gain a footing in our minds and souls that is not captive to constant pressures or desires or duties,” Sullivan warned.

[Today, writes a weekly long-form essay at his Substack and hosts a weekly podcast conversation with journalists, intellectuals, and authors.]

In 2020, in the updated introduction to the tenth-anniversary edition of The Shallows, Carr argued that digital technologies, driven by smartphones, were making people even more distracted and less focused. “It’s common today, even more so than ten years ago, to think of knowledge as something that surrounds us, something we swim through to consume, like sea creatures in plankton-filled waters,” he wrote.

Researchers, for example, find that college students today have far less experience than past generations with the deep reading of challenging books beyond what might be required in a course. As a result, those who avoid reading for its own sake may lack basic skills related to analytical reasoning, perspective-taking, and persuasion.

As a professor, I find this worrying for multiple reasons. Without the ability to read deeply, reason analytically, or argue effectively, generations of college students risk missing out on the essential skills needed to sustain a liberal democracy.

In 2019, realizing that the cost of us zipping around online is an increase in sectarian polarization and a loss in our depth of thinking, I began experimenting with different techniques for minimizing my time online.

I started by writing out a very long password in a notebook so that when logging on to Twitter or Facebook, I had to do so with a specific intention and purpose. On the latter platform, I also pared down my list of "friends" from more than 800 to just sixty-five, half of whom were relatives. 

But even when we try to use social media minimally and mindfully, we run up against an impossible task, writes early Facebook investor Roger McNamee. Tech companies have recruited some of the world's brightest minds to create an unbeatable chess game in which we battle artificial intelligence and algorithms with almost perfect information about us — machine learning tools that aim to keep us addicted to distraction.12  

So, realizing the battle we all are losing, after a few months, I permanently deleted my Facebook and Twitter accounts after a few months.

At the time, I was reading the Roman stoic Seneca, who, around 50 CE, as a busy senator and advisor to emperors, still reserved time for the life of the mind as a prolific philosopher and essayist, influencing countless subsequent generations of intellectuals and writers. 

“No activity,” wrote Seneca, “can be successfully pursued by an individual who is preoccupied since the mind, when distracted, absorbs nothing deeply but reflects everything which is, so to speak, crammed into it.”13

Today, I begin my mornings by spending several hours of solitude in my office with no digital screen in sight. Shifting my reading back to print has enabled me to be alone with my thoughts, wrestling with uncertainties and complexities, scrutinizing my assumptions and beliefs.

As I read a book or article, I write in the margins and underline the sentences, pausing to fill notebooks with related observations. During breaks, taking a walk or practicing yoga, I sort out the complexities of something I might be writing — as I quiet the mind, easing the anxieties that afflict every writer. 

We have forgotten that writing is not typing. There is a creative link between the intellect and the pen that I have rediscovered by writing the first draft of an article (including this one) by hand. I can only free my mind to write honestly and clearly by committing to solitude and contemplation.

In early 1968, the New York State Electric and Gas Corporation (NYSEG) purchased 735 acres adjacent to Milliken Station, a 330 megawatt (MW) coal plant on Cayuga Lake, about 12 miles from Cornell University.

A few weeks later, the utility informed the local news media of its plan to replace the coal plant with Bell Power Station, an 830 MW nuclear-fueled electric generating facility. The utility estimated the construction cost at $135 million (equivalent to $1 billion today), with completion expected by mid-1973.

Local political leaders supported the initial announcement, and many in the community recalled thinking “finally progress is coming to the area,” wrote Cornell sociologist Dorothy Nelkin who closely studied the controversy that was about to erupt. 

Following the announcement, Cornell fishery biologist Alfred Eipper formed a committee of seventeen campus scientists to write a position paper describing the lake's thermal pollution risk. 

Eutrophication was already a problem due to agricultural runoff, and Eipper and his team believed thermal heating from the nuclear plant would worsen it. They warned that Cayuga Lake could become the color of “pea soup,” like the notoriously polluted Lake Erie. 

Eipper joined other co-authors in founding the Citizens Committee to Save Lake Cayuga. The group opposed any action that might risk “irreversible” damage to the lake. Their strategy was to delay construction, hoping that NYSEG would eventually find the delay too costly and decide to pull out of the project. For Eipper, the issue was moral, requiring scientists to take a political stand.

Over the next year, the Citizens Committee distributed 22,000 copies of position papers, recruited 854 dues-paying members, and generated more than a hundred stories about the controversy in the local press, the great majority favorable to their position, with headlines such as “Cayuga Lake Shouldn’t Look Like ‘Diluted’ Pea Soup.” 

Other Cornell scientists and engineers also evaluated the potential risks, deploying varying disciplinary assumptions and methods. One team emphasized that thermal heating was likely to be greater than from the existing coal plant but “neither an overwhelming nor negligible perturbation.” Another urged that the problem of managing radioactive waste be more closely considered.

A third team argued for evaluating the impact of heating on the entire lake rather than just the area closest to the plant. However, none of the expert groups could definitively demonstrate the possible consequences for the lake, and their reports did not gain as much public attention as the original “pea soup” report.

Eipper’s delay strategy proved successful: In 1969, NYSEG announced that it was suspending construction plans, pending the completion of a $1.5 million research study that it had commissioned, conducted by two different Cornell teams evaluating the possibility of thermal pollution risks.

Four years later, after the Cornell teams released five volumes of new analysis supporting the company’s original position that the risks were negligible, NYSEG expected to be able to move forward with its original plant design. 

But by now, even though scientists and NYSEG remained focused on thermal heating, local community members were more concerned about radioactive waste, which had become a national political issue during the intervening years. Facing intensifying opposition and mounting costs, in 1973, NYSEG canceled construction.

Built in 1955, the Milliken plant remained in operation until 2019, when it was shut down after burning thousands of train cars of coal annually for 65 years.

Despite the immense amount of coal transported and burned, residents experienced decades of unreliable electric service. When the coal plant closed, the local town supervisor feared that “consistent power may still be a concern.”

A nearby coal ash landfill also remains a problem. Built in 1977 without a liner to protect against leakage, analysis suggests the landfill is likely to have steadily released arsenic, lead, mercury, and other hazardous substances into the local drinking water supply for decades. 

The Cayuga Lake nuclear controversy is not only a lesson about the need for intellectual humility, cool-headed analysis, and negotiated compromise, but it also symbolizes a new era in the relationship between scientists and society.

By the early 1970s, similarly intense public controversies emerged around numerous science and technology issues. Decisions that for decades had been defined as technical—handled quietly among bureaucrats, experts, and industry — were now out in the open and hotly contested. 

Protest groups stormed a genetic engineering forum at the National Academies of Sciences, waving signs that read, “We Shall Not Be Cloned.” Thousands turned out to protest the construction of a nuclear power plant in Seabrook, New Hampshire. Animal rights activists in New York City picketed the American Museum of Natural History to oppose animal experimentation. 

Christian fundamentalists in California lobbied to replace the teaching of evolution with creation science. In court proceedings, pro-life activists sought to ban Federal funding for fetal tissue research. Some activists questioned mandatory automobile airbags, as others protested a ban on laetrile, a sham cancer treatment. 

Scientists challenge science

In reaction to the erupting controversies, commentators warned about a new “anti-science” culture.

Science was under increasing attack from all sides, by a “a significant coalition of reactionary and left wing thinking,” wrote a political scientist. The protesters against science were Luddites rejecting technological change, according to Zbigniew Brzeziński, representing “the death rattle of the historically obsolete.” Opponents of genetic engineering were “kooks, shits, and incompetents,” declared Nobel prize winner James Watson. 

For these commentators, the controversies reflected the anti-intellectualism tradition in American life that historian Richard Hofstadter had famously chronicled in his 1964 Pulitzer Prize-winning book. 

Hofstadter described the anti-intellectual as someone who derided experts as “eggheads” and universities as “rotten to the core.” In the mold of Joseph McCarthy, anti-intellectuals assumed experts were “pretentious, conceited, effeminate, and snobbish; and very likely immoral, dangerous, and subversive,” he wrote. In other cases, like Dwight Eisenhower, the anti-intellectual believed that “the plain sense of the common man” could substitute for the formal knowledge of the specialist.   

Yet the controversies during the 1970s were neither anti-intellectual nor could they be credibly called anti-scientific. They did not pit the scientific community against an irrational public mobilized by propagandistic fear and anti-Enlightenment attitudes. 

Instead, the principal instigators of the debates —the voices who called attention to the issues and supplied the evidence — were scientists themselves, even in creation science, as Nelkin famously documented. 

Yet the controversies that swept across the U.S. during the 1970s were neither anti-intellectual nor could they be credibly called anti-scientific.

In the years following World War II, the consolidation of power in a highly centralized Federal government staffed by experts prioritized efficiency and speed in decision-making over public participation, consultation, and negotiation.

In contrast to Hofstadter, Daniel Bell in The End of Ideology (1960) and sociologist Robert Lynd in articles like “The Decline of Politics and Ideology” (1965) interpreted the early 1960s as reflecting a new age of centralized technocratic authority in which experts would “depoliticize” national decision-making. 

Historian Brian Balogh, writing in 1991, described the post-World War II configuration as a “proministrative state.” In a symbiotic relationship that held until the late 1960s, highly credentialed, professional experts directed Federal resources. They relied on administrative agencies to implement ambitious programs ranging from international development and anti-poverty programs to constructing nuclear power plants and airports. 

In turn, the Federal government, through graduate fellowships and research funding, bankrolled the production of a record number of experts who moved into government-funded positions at Federal agencies, laboratories, and universities upon graduation. 

The centralized, Federal proministrative state prioritized rationalization, efficiency, speed, and predictability in decisions over public consultation and participation. Decisions were claimed to be rational and “apolitical” because they were based on “objective” data gathered through reliable procedures and evaluated by a scientific community that adhered to rigorous, impartial norms. 

The centralized, Federal proministrative state prioritized rationalization, efficiency, speed, and predictability in decisions over public consultation and participation.

Scientists were to be trusted not only because their research had led to stunning technological breakthroughs but also because they were viewed as “above the fray,” politically detached in their judgments and actions. 

If political choices could be framed as technical ones, scientific knowledge could be used as a “rational” basis for the rapid and efficient completion of large-scale, modernist projects and as a rhetorical tool for defending “big” government spending priorities. 

Yet in deploying scientific expertise to legitimize a highly centralized, Federal bureaucracy at odds with America’s decentralized, pluralist tradition, scientists and their government partners unknowingly turned scientific knowledge into a potent source of political conflict. 

No end to debate

Signs of the weakening authority of technocratic decision-making appeared during the early 1960s as the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring coincided with public alarm over atmospheric nuclear testing. An awareness of its many ironies suddenly tempered belief in technology as progress, wrote Nelkin. 

The pesticide known as “DDT” had rid the U.S. of malaria but was now revealed to pose grave ecological harm. Nuclear weapons had been celebrated as the technology that ended World War II, but now the same bombs threatened global annihilation. A newly built nuclear power plant might bring abundant electricity to a region but pose a pollution threat to local waterways. 

Fueling the 1970s resistance to science and technology was a new generation of scientist advocates supported by a rapidly growing infrastructure of organizations.

These scientist activists campaigned to control the conduct of science, not just its applications, asking if specific lines of research like genetic engineering should even be conducted. They voiced doubts about whether science could regulate itself and advocated for measures of external government control. 

One group, which Nelkin called “public interest scientists,” were more conservative in their approaches. These experts were ideological descendants of the scientists who fought for civilian control of nuclear technology and to shape foreign policy in the post-WWII years. During the 1970s, legacy organizations like the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and the Federation of American Scientists broadened their focus to include issues like genetic engineering.

These scientist activists campaigned to control the conduct of science, not just its applications, asking if certain research like genetic engineering should even be conducted.

However, the most striking aspect of the 1970s evolution, according to Nelkin, was the rise of a cadre of professional scientist-activists and their willingness to provoke controversy. These experts were willing to speak out on almost any issue, regardless of its disciplinary emphasis, whether sociobiology, genetics research, military research at universities, nuclear energy safety, or nuclear waste disposal. 

They believed that protest was a necessary and positive force in a society that, according to the New Left writer Theodore Roszak, had “surrendered responsibility for making morally demanding decisions, for generating ideals, for generating controlling public authority, for safeguarding society against its despoilers.” 

By way of groups formed during the 1970s like Science for the People, Science in the Public Interest, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Scientific Workers for Social Action, and the Nader Clearinghouse for Professional Responsibility — scientist-activists sought to empower local control of decisions by providing communities with scientific resources and advice, and by participating as advocates themselves. 

But as scientists stepped out into the open to join the political fray, the issues became more complex, and the types of experts who claimed authority to weigh in on an issue expanded. Not only would political goals, funding, and affiliations divide experts, but disagreement also stemmed from the diverging assumptions and methods used to assess risk.

During the 1970s, as decision-making became more decentralized and as the once mighty proministrative state lost much of its authority, power in American politics was determined by the ability to manipulate knowledge on behalf or in opposition to particular policies, wrote Nelkin. 

Scientific expertise could no longer ensure political consensus but instead had become a resource exploited by all parties to justify their political, moral, and economic views. 

References

Balogh, B. (1991). Chain Reaction: Expert Debate and Public Participation in American Commercial Nuclear Power 1945-1975. Cambridge University Press.

Nelkin, D. (1971). Nuclear power and its critics: The Cayuga Lake controversy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Nelkin, D. (1971). Scientists in an environmental controversy. Science Studies, 1(3-4), 245-261.

Nelkin, D. (1974). The Role of Experts in a Nuclear Siting Controversy: New York case pitted academe against industry. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 30(9), 29-36.

Nelkin, D. (1975). The political impact of technical expertise. Social studies of science, 5(1), 35-54.

Nelkin, D. E. (1992). Controversy: politics of technical decisions. Sage Publications.

Nelkin, Dorothy. "Science controversies: The dynamics of public disputes in the United States." Handbook of science and technology studies 444 (1995): 456.

From academic meetings to corporate boardrooms, many societal leaders are deeply worried about what they perceive as a loss of public faith in technological innovation, expert authority, and the scientific enterprise.

To better understand these dynamics, in a 2019 research paper co-authored with Erik Nisbet and published by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, we analyzed the 2010-2014 World Values Survey, evaluating public beliefs about science, technology, and society across fifty-four countries and 81,000 survey respondents.

Nisbet, M. C., & Nisbet, E. C. (2019). The Public Face of Science Across the World. In American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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In our study, we assessed country-level and individual-level factors predicting survey measures related to optimism about the ability of science and technology to improve society (“scientific optimism”) and those related to reservations about the impact of science and technology on traditional values and the speed of change (“scientific reservations”).

These two mental models, as previous research suggests, serve as cognitive shortcuts for quickly evaluating the social implications of specific science and technology-related issues and for estimating the trustworthiness of experts and their institutions as sources of information.

To measure scientific optimism, respondents to the World Values Survey were asked to agree or disagree with the following three statements. Responses to the individual statements were then summed into a measure.

• Science and technology are making our lives healthier, easier, and more comfortable.

• Because of science and technology, there will be more opportunities for the next generation.

• All things considered, would you say that the world is better off, or worse off, because of science and technology? Please tell me which comes closest to your view on this scale: 1 means that “the world is a lot worse off,” and 10 means that “the world is a lot better off.”

To assess scientific reservations, respondents were asked to agree or disagree with there statements other statements — with their responses also summed into a single scale.

• One of the bad effects of science is that it breaks down people’s ideas of right and wrong.

• We depend too much on science and not enough on faith.

• It is not important for me to know about science in my daily life.

To predict survey respondent scores on scientific optimism and scientific reservations, our statistical models allowed us to control for various country-level factors. Examples include a country’s degree of economic development, democratic development, scientific development, and the cultural history of a country.

We were also able to examine the influence of individual-level factors such as those related to socioeconomic status, personal beliefs and values, religiosity, and forms of institutional trust.

Our findings are consistent with those from a recent report conducted by Gallup and commissioned by the Wellcome Trust UK which employed slightly different survey measures to map trends in science attitudes across countries.

But our analysis goes beyond describing public opinion trends to dig more deeply into why nations, cultures, and individuals differ in their beliefs about science, technology, and society. We also discuss the relevance of our findings to strategies aimed at addressing rising public anxiety in an era of startling scientific advances and disruptive innovations.

The post-industrial paradox

Each of the fifty-tour countries we evaluated in the World Values Survey rated relatively highly on scientific optimism, with the combined mean score for respondents from each country ranging from 6.0 to 8.8 on a ten-point scale. In comparison, scores were relatively lower in terms of scientific reservations.

Per country, sample means ranged from 4.0 to 6.5 on a ten-point scale with a higher score meaning greater reservations. On both scientific optimism and reservations, the United States ranked about mid-tier among the fifty-four countries. Importantly, however, the U.S. mean score of 7.2 on optimism was considerably higher than the mean score of 5.0 on reservations.

In our statistical models, after controlling for a variety of factors, people living in less-developed countries were generally more optimistic about science and technology, expressing fewer reservations. People living in economically advanced countries, in contrast, were generally less optimistic and more likely to express stronger reservations.

Our findings can be explained by what social psychologist Martin Bauer and colleagues call the “post-industrial paradox”: In contrast to less-developed countries, citizens in more-advanced economies may no longer idealize science and technology as necessary to economic growth and human security.

Populations living in more advanced economies are still likely to expect benefits from science and technology, but they may also be more sensitized to the moral trade-offs or risks posed by technological breakthroughs and scientific discoveries.

Cultural context matters

Seventeen of the nineteen countries that scored highest in terms of scientific optimism were post-Soviet/former Eastern Bloc or Muslim-majority countries, and most of these same countries score at the bottom scale on scientific reservations, a trend that remained significant when controlling for a variety of factors in our statistical models.

We interpret these findings as consistent with a long-standing emphasis in former Communist countries on science and technology as a vehicle for progress and the admiration that Muslim publics have expressed when asked in polls about Western science, medicine, and technology.

Interestingly, even when controlling for economic modernization, people living in countries with greater scientific and technological output as measured in terms of scientific publications, patents, and citations tend to be more optimistic about science and technology and to hold fewer reservations.

In this case, however, it remains unclear whether a national culture of scientific optimism that expresses fewer social reservations drives scientific ambition and productivity or whether national ambition and productivity boosts public optimism and limits the expression of reservations.

Turning to individual-level factors, religious individuals living in more-advanced countries with greater political freedom were more willing to express their reservations about science and technology than their similarly devout counterparts living in countries that lack such freedoms. Several related processes may account for these findings.

First, as people living in more-advanced countries achieve greater personal and societal security, they appear to be no longer willing to overlook the potential risks, economic costs, or moral trade-offs associated with scientific advances and innovations.

To the extent that individuals living in more-advanced countries also enjoy greater political freedom, they can also express these reservations about emerging issues, such as gene editing, without fear of political sanction.

In contrast, those living in less-developed countries may not only view science and technology in terms of social progress and enhanced security but also as a source of national pride and global competitiveness.

To the extent that they live in a country with fewer political freedoms, even if they did hold reservations, they may not be willing to express them for fear of reprisal.

Liberal values and authority

Across countries, those individuals who share classical liberal values oriented toward free enterprise, free inquiry, and the pursuit of knowledge, networks, and information, and who have thrived in a globalized market economy also tended to be among the most optimistic about science and technology and to express fewer reservations.

There were, however, important caveats and contingencies to these relationships based on the country-context in which an individual lived.

Specifically, the least educated residing in the richest countries tended to express much higher levels of scientific reservations than the least educated living in poorer countries. For wealthier optimists, scientific advances and innovations are likely to enhance their careers, fuel gains in their stock portfolios, and provide benefits that they can afford.

But many other members of the public are justifiably concerned that advances such as automation or gene editing may displace their jobs, remain beyond their ability to afford, and/or conflict with cherished values.

In wealthier countries, such as the United States and those of Western Europe, individuals expressing greater skepticism of traditional forms of authority, such as the family, nation, and state, were less optimistic and held stronger reservations about science and technology than their counterparts in poorer countries.

In advanced economies, those skeptical of traditional forms of authority may be more prone to view the close association between scientific research, technological innovation, militarization, and surveillance as operating in the service of elite control rather than economic growth and progress, as their counterparts in developing countries might still primarily view science.

No communication fix

On the topic of morally fraught issues that challenge traditional values, major investments in public dialogue across advanced economies are needed. But to lead a national and global conversation about such powerful scientific advances, scientists will need help not only from their colleagues in the humanities, social sciences, and creative arts but also from journalists and philanthropists.

Informed public discussion about scientific advances and innovations is not possible without high-quality, sustained reporting from journalists with deep knowledge of the subject. New initiatives to understand public attitudes, improve public dialogue, and report on the complexities of these emerging technologies will not be possible without financial support from government and philanthropists.

There is no clear “communication fix” for the deep-seated reservations that many individuals have about science and technology. Apart from traditional values, these reservations are also rooted in widening levels of inequality and the role that innovation plays as a main driver of such disparities.

Publicly financed scientific research has generated vast wealth for professionals at the top of the knowledge economy, just as those same innovations have eliminated millions of jobs among people at the bottom, transforming entire industries and regions.

Scientists and engineers, therefore, have both a strategic and an ethical imperative to help society cope with the negative effects of globalization and automation, forces that their advances and innovations have helped set in motion.

We need broader strategic thinking about the handful of policy goals and investments that scientists and engineers can join with others in pursuing that would help alleviate inequality and the threats posed to the scientific enterprise if such policies are not pursued.

The ability of scientific expertise to be leveraged on behalf of public solutions to problems such as climate change is limited by waning public trust in government and almost every other major institution, including the news media, business, the legal system, universities, elites generally, and even capitalism itself.

As with economic inequality, there is no communication fix for this widespread erosion in trust. Rather, the scientific community must join with the leaders of other sectors of society to pursue strategies for restoring the responsiveness of our institutions and the health of our civic culture.

Read the full report:

Matthew C. Nisbet and Erik C. Nisbet, The Public Face of Science Across the World: Optimism and Innovation in an Era of Reservations and Inequality (Cambridge, Mass.: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2019).

At the 2018 Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco, thousands of delegates representing local governments, businesses, philanthropies, and nonprofits gathered to send a message to the world.

With Washington, DC, and other national capitals paralyzed by political disagreement and besieged by populist movements, the “real action is happening in cities, states, and the private sector,” declared billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the summit’s co-organizer.

In the United States, even as the Trump administration planned to withdraw from the climate treaty and to roll back federal pollution regulations, the leaders of states and cities were “positioning the U.S. to uphold our end of the Paris Agreement, no matter what happens in Washington,” Bloomberg noted.

A version of this article originally appeared at Issues in Science & Technology magazine

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Nisbet, M. C. (2019). Climate Philanthropy and the Four Billion (Dollars, That Is). Issues in Science and Technology, 35(2), 34-36.

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A few dozen US-based foundations are the main force behind this coalition of civil society leaders. By framing the challenges and defining the priorities, funders have promoted a specific way of thinking about climate change, focusing otherwise disconnected advocates and experts on shared approaches to the problem.1

In this decades-old rendering, climate change is primarily an environmental pollution problem, solvable by setting a carbon price and deploying other market forces.

These actions, in the words of an influential 2007 report from a group of major philanthropies, titled Design to Win, will “prompt a sea change that washes over the entire global economy,” accelerating the transition toward solar and wind power, energy efficiency practices, sustainable agriculture, and clean transportation.

As endowments at the world’s biggest foundations rapidly grow, and as wealth continues to concentrate among a few politically active billionaires, philanthropists are likely to surpass national governments in their ability to define the agenda on climate change.

At the 2018 Climate Action Summit, 29 of the world’s largest foundations pledged $4 billion in grant funding over the next five years to accelerate efforts to limit greenhouse emissions and to transition to clean energy.

Yet with big philanthropy moving to the center of influence on climate change and similarly intractable problems, we are heading toward a future in which a few hundred unelected trustees, families, and individuals seek to exercise global power in a manner that is accountable to no one.2

Framing the options

Current laws allow foundations as nonprofit charities to operate without transparency, making decisions at closed-door meetings under the cover of opaque announcements and press releases. US foundations' only legal obligation is spending 5% of their net assets annually, filing a financial statement with the Internal Revenue Service, and conducting an annual audit.

In the past, when scholars and journalists have focused on climate change-related philanthropy, they have justifiably written about the efforts of the conservative donors Charles and David Koch to block policy action and spread doubt about climate science. But such efforts have largely ignored the need to also shine a spotlight on the actions of left-of-center foundations and donors.

One reason is that grantmakers and donors on the left are among the major patrons of academics and their work and are the main supporters of the rapidly growing nonprofit journalism sector. Many scholars and journalists, therefore have reason to be cautious in their assessment.3

Another reason is that as funders have invested in a common road map for tackling climate change, their preferred framing has become so pervasive, so deeply embedded in consciousness, and so invisible to critical analysis that most advocates, journalists, and academics no longer perceive the road map as a set of imperfect and incomplete ideas, or that there might exist alternative interpretations and courses of action to consider.4

The lack of scrutiny enjoyed by climate-change funders has allowed them to take bold risks beyond the scope of governments or corporations, make these big bets without political interference from outside groups, and stay the course with their decisions over many years.

RELATED: Philanthropy in the post cap-and-trade years

But the insularity of these same funders has also fostered groupthink, leaving civil society at risk of a dangerous path dependency, prioritizing the funding of renewable energy and the support of carbon-pricing policies to the exclusion of a wide range of other technological and policy tools that could not only help decarbonize the world economy but also expand the range of interests who would see benefit in doing so.

Insularity has also cultivated a bunker mentality among some funders in which legitimate criticism and challenging ideas have at times, been met with open hostility.

Since the 1990s, major foundations have distributed several billion dollars in grants to influence US federal, state, and international policy. The most notable priorities have been the failed effort in 2010 to pass federal cap and trade legislation and the years of negotiations that eventually led to the 2015 UN Paris treaty.

They have also spent heavily on influencing the direction of specific geographic regions and industry sectors, including backing efforts to pass renewable energy mandates in dozens of states, supporting the growth of the wind sector in the Midwest, nurturing the West Coast solar industry, and promoting the adoption of renewables and efficiency practices among utilities, municipalities, and companies.

To achieve their goals, foundations have spent their money on behalf of policies and practices that shift markets, industries, and consumers in the direction of renewables and efficiency practices. They have bet heavily on market-driven engineering solutions, relying on economic signals that make carbon-energy sources more expensive to achieve cuts in emissions.

My analysis of $556 million in US-focused grants awarded between 2011 and 2015 by 19 influential foundations shows that they continued to invest in efforts to shape federal climate and energy policy but redirected much of their funding to support actions at the regional, state, or municipal level, prioritizing the West Coast, Midwest, and Northeast regions.

The largest environmental grantmakers remained committed to their decades-old policy and technology roadmap on climate change, investing in familiar approaches, strategies, and goals. In this case, one out of every four dollars invested ($140.3 million) was dedicated to promoting renewable energy and efficiency-related actions across states and various industry sectors, with an additional 27% ($151 million) going to communication and mobilization efforts — much of this focusing on influencing public sentiment in politically strategic Midwest states.

Funders also responded to past critics who had argued for investment in climate change resilience and for greater financial resources devoted to opposing the fossil fuel industry. More than $55 million was dedicated to building sustainable and resilient cities and local economies, with $17.2 million focused on the needs of low-income and minority communities.

Philanthropists also aggressively targeted the fossil fuel industry, spending $69.4 million to limit coal power, ban or restrict fracking, and hold the industry accountable for pollution and legal violations.

Foundation investments and strategies have led to several important successes. Many market and social forces propelling renewable energy today result from the decades-long roadmap pursued by major climate funders.

The 99% decline since the early 1990s in the cost of solar panels, concludes a recent study published in Energy Policy, would not have happened without the types of market-stimulating policies long favored by philanthropies. But early government spending on research and development was also essential, as were the enormous economies of scale achieved by Chinese overproduction and dumping of cheap panels on US markets.5

Although the grant investments intended to influence voter opinion in Midwest states did not pay off during the 2016 presidential elections, the efforts have likely altered consumer and opinion-leader sentiment across several major cities and municipalities favoring renewable energy.

In 2018, one of the Midwest’s largest utilities announced plans to cut carbon emissions from electricity production by 80% over the next dozen years and to rely on 100% zero net carbon electricity by mid-century.

Yet California is the brightest philanthropic success. Influencing the direction of the world’s fifth-biggest economy has been a top priority for foundations. Not only have statewide improvements in energy efficiency decreased the demand for electricity in California even as the economy and population have grown, but the sharp drop in the price of solar panels combined with state renewable energy mandates have accelerated the transition from reliance on natural gas plants to clean energy sources.

At the 2018 Climate Action Summit, outgoing Governor Jerry Brown announced signing an executive order committing the state’s entire economy to net zero carbon emissions by 2045.

However, many challenges remain for California, according to a 2018 Los Angeles Times analysis of state agency data, which also applies to most other states. Emissions from cars and trucks, already the state's biggest source of carbon pollution, continue to increase. Lower gas prices have not helped, nor has consumer preference for bigger, less-efficient cars and the relatively slow adoption of electric vehicles.

The scheduled shuttering of California’s last remaining emissions-free nuclear power plant may also shift some electricity generation back to natural gas, with renewables currently unable to take up the slack. Similarly, at the national level, a glut of cheap natural gas also threatens the country’s 100 nuclear power plants, which generate 20% of all US electricity and 50% of the country’s carbon-free electricity.

In most states, solar and wind power will not be able to make up for lost nuclear generation. Instead, emissions-free nuclear will be replaced by carbon-polluting natural gas or in some cases coal.

Diversifying the portfolio

The conclusions of the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report are looming over the momentum achieved by philanthropists and their grantees. The authors of the report estimate that to meet the Paris Climate Treaty’s more ambitious goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius this century, world carbon dioxide emissions would need to be cut 50% by 2030 and entirely by 2050.

To achieve this historically unprecedented societal shift, most IPCC scenarios, along with numerous other expert projections, call for the massive expansion of renewable energy and major investments in nuclear energy, carbon capture and storage, negative emissions technologies, and research evaluating geoengineering options.

Such scenarios directly challenge the foundation world’s deeply institutionalized patterns of spending. In the years leading up to the 2016 elections, funders almost exclusively backed grantees aligned with their long-standing commitment to renewable energy, channeling over half of the $556 million in grants distributed to just 20 organizations.

Consequently, only $1.3 million in grants supported the development of carbon capture and storage. Out of 2,502 grants, not a single one focused on keeping existing US nuclear energy power plants open or on boosting the development of advanced nuclear technologies. Nor did a single grant finance effort establishing federal funding for geoengineering research or negative emissions technology.

Over the next few years, foundations will also face difficult political choices in their grant-making. Campaigns waged by their grantees among environmentalists and progressives opposing natural gas fracking, oil and gas pipelines, and nuclear energy plants, along with new “intersectional” causes related to race, ethnicity, and gender, are likely to amplify political polarization and serve as potent rallying points for Republican donors and activists opposed to climate change action.

These issues also divide liberals and centrists and will be a major source of contention during the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries and national convention.

Within the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, the progressive caucus has proposed a Green New Deal legislative agenda that has sparked widespread excitement among liberal activists, thinkers, and donors.

The package of proposals tying together greenhouse gas emissions cuts with a government job program, infrastructure spending, universal health insurance, income inequality, and anti-discrimination efforts has elevated the political agenda status of climate change, yet each of these causes has proven to be politically divisive in its own right.6

The New Green Deal also calls for a transition to 100% renewable energy within a decade, which almost every expert believes is technically impossible. In line with IPCC projections, experts see a path for US states and utilities to shift to 80% renewable energy for electricity production by 2030, but the final 20% is likely to rely on other technologies such as nuclear energy and carbon capture, which progressive House Democrats tend to oppose.

A highly implausible decade-long timeline is also proposed for decarbonizing the transportation sector, which accounts for nearly 30% of US emissions.

There are, however, important signs of change among a few influential funders acknowledging the realities and challenges ahead. Over the past few years, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has provided grants to the Energy Reform Innovation Project and similarly focused groups to work “on energy solutions that resonate with center-right interests, including mitigation technologies such as carbon capture and storage and advanced nuclear.”

Larry Kramer, the president of Hewlett, is on record as saying he takes seriously criticism that past investing in climate change has been too narrow. “We are in a position of spreading our bets,” he told Inside Philanthropy. Hewlett is also working to diversify the types of funders committing money to the problem. Despite the billions spent by philanthropy on climate change, this funding still only accounts for 1% of all foundation giving, noted Kramer.

Similarly, in 2018, the president of the MacArthur Foundation, Julia Stasch, in a co-authored statement with the chief executive officer of the Exelon Corporation, the largest operator of nuclear power plants in the United States, announced that her organization would begin to support work related to nuclear energy and carbon capture and storage.

The two leaders urged greater collaboration between environmentalists and the energy industry. “The climate challenge is so steep and urgent that we will need to be prepared to deploy all available tools to reduce carbon in the atmosphere, not just renewable energy,” they wrote.

The question moving forward is whether other philanthropists will join Hewlett and MacArthur in recognizing not only the need for a broader set of technological options but also the need to build a broader political coalition that seeks out nontraditional allies and welcomes challenging ideas.

Much of the climate philanthropy world remains fiercely partisan. Absent the checks and balances of democratic institutions or even the competitive marketplace, who will scrutinize this insulated world’s activities, shining a critical light on its decisions and evaluating its successes and mistakes?

A version of this article appeared in the Jan/Feb 2018 edition of American Scientist magazine.

In 2014 biochemist Jennifer Doudna of the University of California at Berkeley awoke from a nightmare that would shift the focus of her world-class scientific career.

Two years earlier, Doudna and her colleague Emmanuelle Charpentier became the first to utilize a process called CRISPR-Cas9 to modify the genetic makeup of living organisms. The innovative "gene-editing" tool enables scientists to efficiently insert or delete specific segments of DNA with unprecedented precision.

But as applications related to modifying human genes were soon reported in the scientific literature, Doudna began to worry.

In the dream, a colleague asked if she would help teach someone how to use CRISPR. She followed him into a room and was greeted by Adolph Hitler wearing a pig face. The nightmare reinforced her belief that public discussion of the technology was far behind the breakneck pace of its emerging applications. She feared a public backlash that would prevent beneficial forms of gene-editing research from moving forward.

Doudna organized a workshop among scientists, ethicists, and other experts. The participants published a 2015 paper in Science urging an international summit on the ethics of gene-editing and a voluntary pause in scientific research that would alter the genetic makeup of humans.

In a TED talk that year, she called for a global conversation about gene editing so scientists and the public could consider the full range of social and ethical implications.

Her 2017 book, A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution, coauthored with her former student Samuel Sternberg, follows up on these efforts. In their book, Doudna and Sternberg systematically reviewed the vast number of applications across the life sciences that CRISPR-Cas9 may enable.

With livestock, gene editing can be used to produce leaner meat, make livestock more resistant to infection, remove allergens from eggs and milk, reduce the use of antibiotics, and achieve other outcomes that benefit human nutrition and animal welfare.

In medicine, gene editing is used to engineer mosquitoes so they no longer spread viruses such as malaria or Zika and mice and no longer transmit Lyme disease to ticks, thereby reducing infection rates among humans.

In other applications, the gene editing of goats, chickens, and rabbits may allow pharmaceuticals to be manufactured more quickly, at higher yields, and at lower cost than traditional laboratory methods. In the future, gene-edited pigs may be a significant source for lifesaving organ transplants, providing tissues less likely to be rejected by human patients.

In applications related “somatic” gene editing, scientists are exploring ways to treat diseases caused by a single mutated gene, such as cystic fibrosis, Huntington's, and sickle cell disease. The patient's cells in the affected tissues would be either edited within the body or edited outside and returned to the patient. In both cases, the corrections would not be passed on to offspring.

Specific to human applications, the most widely debated research involves so-called germline gene editing. The process would alter sperm, eggs, and early-stage embryos to protect a child against inheritable diseases such as diabetes, Alzheimer's, and forms of cancer.

But such techniques could also be used to select for specific physical traits or to boost human performance by way of denser bones and greater endurance, creating so-called designer babies. In each application, as a human matured, the altered DNA would be copied into every cell, and passed on by a parent to their children.

Not surprisingly, public opinion surveys reveal widespread reservations about the technology and a firm belief that scientists should consult the public before applying germline altering techniques to humans.

In 2017, the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) recommended that scientists invest in ongoing input from the public regarding the benefits and risks of human genome editing and that more research be conducted to better understand how to facilitate such a process.

Yet, to lead a national and global conversation about gene editing, scientists will need help not only from their colleagues in the humanities, social sciences, and creative arts but also from journalists and philanthropists.

Informed public discussion about gene editing is not possible without high-quality, sustained reporting from journalists with deep knowledge of the subject. New initiatives designed to understand public attitudes, facilitate public dialogue, and report on the complexities of gene editing also requires financial support from funding agencies and philanthropies.

Making sense of a morally complex debate

Given that discussion of human gene editing still remains primarily confined to scientific meetings and elite gatherings such as TED conferences, it is not surprising that a 2016 Pew Research Center survey showed that 42 percent of Americans have heard "nothing at all" about the topic, compared with 48 percent "a little" and 9 percent "a lot."

However, polls also show that Americans hold fairly consistent opinions and judgments about gene editing, even if they hold little to no information about the complex subject. To do so, individuals actively draw on their religious and cultural values, familiar narratives from popular culture, and similarities to past debates.

For example, in the same 2016 Pew survey, when asked about the moral acceptability of gene-editing techniques intended to give healthy babies a reduced risk of disease, only 28 percent of Americans consider the application acceptable, compared with 30 percent who say it is unacceptable and 40 percent who are not sure.

Notably, among the one-third of Americans who can be classified as highly religious, just 15 percent consider such applications morally acceptable (see figure below). When asked separately if such an application meddled with nature and crossed a line that should not be crossed, 64 percent of highly religious Americans agreed with the statement.

For many religious Americans, gene editing is likely closely associated with past debates over embryonic stem cell research and fetal tissue research. In these controversies, Christian leaders mobilized opposition to government funding by framing research as a violation of religious teachings.

From a traditional Christian perspective, human life begins at conception and is created in God's image. Embryos are considered to be divinely created human beings. When scientists destroy or alter human embryos, they take on the role of God, violating divine will. Therefore, traditional Christians believe that embryo research is morally wrong and that if it is funded by the government using tax revenues, such funding makes all Americans complicit in destroying human life.

In the Pew survey, for example, among those who said gene editing was morally unacceptable, more than one-third of responses referred to changing God's plan or violating his will.

However, as various survey findings indicate, it is not just the strongly religious who have moral reservations about gene editing. Even among non-religious Americans, 17 percent say that gene editing to give babies a much-reduced risk of disease is morally unacceptable, and 37 percent say they are unsure.

In a follow-up question, more than one-quarter of nonreligious respondents say they oppose gene editing to improve the health of a baby because it would be meddling with nature and cross a line that should not be crossed.

When asked more specifically if saving a baby's life required testing on human embryos or altering the genetic makeup of the whole population, about half of all Americans say that such scenarios would make the application less acceptable to them.

A 2016 survey conducted by Harvard University's Chan School of Public Health found even stronger reservations. When asked about changing the genes of unborn babies to reduce their risk of developing certain serious diseases, 65 percent of Americans said that such an application should be illegal. More than 80 percent said the same when asked about gene editing to improve intelligence or physical traits.

What explains the reservations voiced by both religious and nonreligious Americans? Bioethicists have used the term Yuck Factor to describe a "visceral repugnance" and "emotional opposition" felt by the public when they first hear about human genetic engineering.

The feeling of repugnance, wrote University of Chicago ethicist Leon Kass in an oft-cited 1997 article in the New Republic, is an "emotional feeling of deep wisdom" that leads an individual to "intuit and feel, immediately without argument, the violation of things that we rightfully hold dear."

The Yuck Factor likely originates in Kantian and Christian philosophies of human dignity that permeate Western culture. The related traditions emphasize that human life has a higher moral place than the rest of the natural world. Therefore even at its earliest stages of development, human life should always be treated with sacred respect.

Such teachings have shaped Western culture so that their principles are passed on even to those who have never set foot in a church. The Yuck Factor is, therefore, a relatively intuitive response, a reaction formed below the level of conscious deliberation on the part of an individual, often in the absence of substantive information.

When asked about emerging gene-editing techniques that involve altering human embryos or engineering desired traits, most individuals probably have difficulty articulating why they might consider them morally questionable—they just know it when they feel it.

Why journalism matters

Although scientists are responsible for engaging the public about the social implications of gene editing, informed public dialogue ultimately depends heavily on journalists and their news organizations.

Quality science reporting is essential to understanding how and why gene-editing research is being conducted, including the connections between new advances and ongoing debates over funding, governance, regulation, ethics, accessibility, uncertainty, and patent rights.

Even in today's dramatically altered media landscape, coverage at legacy national newspapers and magazines still drives the discussion of complex issues such as gene editing. Specialized reporting by experienced journalists at outlets like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, or Science magazine provide the explanations and storylines that shape how experts, advocates, policymakers, and other journalists think and communicate about the issue.

Yet for the past two decades, the news media have faced crippling economic and technological disruptions that have forced cutbacks in the amount of specialized reporting on complex science topics such as gene editing. Due to layoffs there are also far fewer veteran journalists on staff who can draw on decades of experience to provide readers with essential context.

Industry practices within journalism have also changed. Rather than rely on professional judgment to decide the most important stories to tell readers, journalists are increasingly influenced by considerations of what might “go viral” or “catch the wave” of a trending social media topic.

As a consequence, coverage of gene editing loses out to the latest sensational cultural event or breaking political scandal. When gene editing is covered, headlines and story angles may exaggerate the technology's promise and peril to win scarce reader attention.

Now is the time, therefore, for scientists and philanthropists to help journalists and news organizations to correct these pressures and biases by investing in programs that make it easier to produce high-quality reporting about gene editing.

They can do so by sponsoring workshops where a diversity of experts and stakeholders gather to discuss with journalists and editors the scientific, ethical, and legal implications of gene editing, making it easier for journalists to cover gene editing accurately and regularly.

Philanthropists, universities, and research institutions can also provide fellowships and other sources of financial support that enable journalists to spend the weeks and months required to report on the subject substantively.

However, journalists are not the only professionals who are needed to write compellingly about the scientific and social implications of gene editing. Scientists, ethicists, and social scientists can also contribute commentaries and articles to the popular press, offering independent insights and context.

In one initiative to facilitate such articles, the Kavli Foundation is partnering with the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science and several science magazines and online publications (including American Scientist) to train scientists to apply the techniques and standards of journalism in writing about complex topics such as gene editing.

Investing in public dialogue

Yet even as quality journalism provides the central architecture around which informed debate about gene editing will occur, the scientific community, along with universities, philanthropies, and research institutions, must also help create opportunities for direct public participation in dialogue and deliberation.

Such an effort starts with the sponsorship of carefully conducted social science research that assesses public discourse about gene editing, the sources of information and arguments that are shaping the debate, and the factors that are influencing public attitudes.

In turn, this research should inform the design and evaluation of a variety of dialogue- based communication initiatives organized by scientific organizations, government agencies, and universities.

Over the past decades, across Europe and North America, efforts to promote dialogue-based science communication have taken various forms. Still, as the University of Calgary's Edna Einsiedel notes, each format shares a few common principles.

First, in these initiatives, communication is defined as an iterative back-and-forth process between various segments of the public, experts, and decision-makers. Such approaches assume that there is no single "correct" way to discuss and understand the social implications of a complex subject such as gene editing.

Second, rather than being top-down and controlled by scientists and their partners, societal leaders and the public are invited to be active participants in defining what is discussed and sharing their own knowledge and perspectives.

Third, there is no single "public" to communicate or engage, but rather multiple "publics" exist. These include but are not limited to church leaders and congregations, racial or ethnic groups, parents and patient advocates, and political identity groups such as liberals or conservatives.

Among the most crucial organized dialogue initiatives are smaller, more intimate events that bring together scientists and other societal leaders to facilitate the sharing of perspectives and the forging of relationships.

In one leading example, the Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion (DoSER) at the American Association for the Advancement of Science has organized workshops that convene scientists and clergy to discuss topics of mutual concern and possible disagreement, such as embryonic stem cell research.

To inform the discussion, focus groups were conducted before the events, and the meetings were professionally facilitated. Scientists and clergy participating in the meetings indicated that the sessions helped break down stereotypes about each other, facilitating learning and mutual respect.

In a related initiative, DoSER has worked with seminary schools and synagogues to develop curricula and resources that aid clergy in having more constructive conversations with their congregations about complex scientific topics.

As these examples suggest, religion is more than a belief system that shapes people's understanding of gene editing. Churches are communication contexts where discussions can sometimes be framed in intensely moral terms by congregational leaders, reinforced by conversations that churchgoers have with others, and shaped by information provided directly when at church.

For these reasons, on a topic such as gene editing, churches often serve as networks of civic recruitment where congregants receive requests to voice their opinions to elected officials.

During the debate over embryonic stem cell research, for example, among the strongest predictors of whether individuals had become involved politically on the issue was whether they had discussed or received information about the topic at church.

In sum, when it comes to public dialogue about gene editing, scientists can either cede communication at churches to religious leaders or become active partners in facilitating and enriching church-based discussions.

Perceptions of promise and reservations

The scientific community can also benefit from partnering with humanities, philosophy, and the creative arts experts to promote broader engagement across religious and nonreligious publics.

Scholars in the humanities and philosophy draw on literature, religious traditions, and ethical frameworks to help the public consider what is good, right, and valuable about a complex topic such as gene editing.

Writers, artists, filmmakers, and other creative professionals are among society's most inspiring storytellers about complex issues, and they can communicate about gene editing in imaginative, compelling, and novel ways. Integrated into public dialogue initiatives, their work can motivate different forms of learning, sponsor critical reflection and deliberation, and produce thought-provoking visions of the future.

In a past example that serves as a prototype for such initiatives, faculty at the University of Alberta in Canada hosted workshops in 2008 that facilitated discussions about the social implications of human genetic engineering among visual artists, scientists, bioethicists, and social scientists.

Informed by their conversations, the artists were commissioned to produce visual works reflecting the themes discussed, while the other participants were asked to write short essays. The project culminated in the exhibit "Perceptions of Promise: Biotechnology, Society, and Art," which toured North America.

As part of the exhibit tour, forums were held at museum venues, generating local news coverage of the themes expressed. The essays and the artistic works were published as part of a book and catalog sold at art museums, bookstores, and online.

Works of literature and film can also stimulate public dialogue. For example, the 1997 film Gattaca is often used in college classrooms to stimulate student discussion of the social implications of human engineering.

Research suggests that rather than alarming audiences, science fiction TV and film portrayals may help familiarize viewers with the moral dimensions of human genetic engineering, thereby helping them overcome their intuitive Yuck Factor reservations.

This year, in recognition of the 200th anniversary of Frankenstein's publication, faculty at Arizona State University have published an annotated version of the novel that also features essays from scientists and scholars in the humanities and social sciences.

With support from the National Science Foundation, the university is also coordinating nationwide events and activities at science museums and centers, including exhibits, an online multimedia game, and at-home activities for parents. Each is carefully designed to foster discussion about the social and ethical dimensions of gene editing and other technological innovations.

For many, such broad-based initiatives may be beyond their ability to organize or to fund. Significant investments in public dialogue and in supporting high-quality journalism about gene editing will take coordinated action from leaders of the scientific community and their peers across fields, including the news media and philanthropy.

However, scientists and others should not overlook the contributions to the public dialogue they can make right now.

University scientists can partner with their peers in the social sciences and humanities through their classrooms and new degree programs to equip students with the knowledge and skills they need to think critically about the future of gene editing and similar advances.

At Cornell University, for example, one model to emulate is the undergraduate major in Biology and Society. Among the most popular on campus, the major enables students to combine training in the biological sciences with coursework in science communication, the social sciences, and the humanities.

Within their local communities, individual scientists can also actively encourage discussions about gene editing by way of informal conversations and by volunteering to give presentations to community groups, connecting with others through shared interests, values, and identities.

Ultimately, Jennifer Douda’s goal is to motivate the next generation of scientists to engage much more actively and directly with the public, applying the principle of "discussion without dictation" on how gene editing should be used.

She argues that all scientists, regardless of discipline, must be prepared to participate in conversations with the public about the far-reaching consequences of gene editing and similarly powerful technologies.

Original article | Citation

Nisbet, M.C. (2018). The gene-editing conversation. American Scientist, 106(1), 15–20

References

Caulfield, S., C. Gillespie, and T. Caulfield (eds.). 2011. Perceptions of Promise: Biotechnology, Society and Art. Edmonton, Canada: University of Alberta Press.

Doudna, J., and S. H. Sternberg. 2017. A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin.

Einsiedel, E. F. 2014. Publics and their participation in science and technology. In M. Bucchi and B. Trench (eds.). Routledge Handbook of Public Communication of Science and Technology. New York, NY: Routledge.

Foer, F. 2017. World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech. New York, NY: Penguin.

Fukuyama, F. 2003. Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Funk, C., B. Kennedy, and E. P. Sciupac. 2016. U.S. Public Wary of Biomedical Technologies to "Enhance" Human Abilities. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Published online June 26, updated November 2.

Kass, L. 1997. The wisdom of repugnance. The New Republic, June 2, pp. 17-26.

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2017. Human Genome Editing: Science, Ethics, and Governance. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Nisbet, M. C. 2005. The competition for worldviews: Values, information, and public support for stem cell research. International Journal of Public Opinion Research 17:90-112.

Nisbet, M., and E. M. Markowitz. 2014. Understanding public opinion in debates over biomedical research: Looking beyond political partisanship to focus on beliefs about science and society. PloS One 9(2):e88473.

Scheufele, D.A. 2013. Communicating science in social settings. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(Supplement 3):14040-14047.

Scheufele, D. A., et al. 2017. U.S. attitudes on human genome editing. Science 357:553-554. Shapshay, S. (ed.). 2009. Bioethics at the Movies. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

June 9, 2018 — In a 2018 Shorenstein Center study co-authored with colleagues at Northeastern University, we assessed major patterns in foundation support for nonprofit journalism and media in the half-decade leading up to the 2016 election, with a focus on support for digital news nonprofits. My collaborators on the project were John Wihbey, Aleszu Bajak, and Silje Kristiansen.

Over the past fifteen years, digital news nonprofits at the national and state/local levels, such as ProPublica and the Texas Tribune, along with their public media peers, have aimed to fill coverage gaps created by the dramatic decline of the newspaper industry.

Most news nonprofits rely heavily on foundation funding as a primary or major source of revenue. Assessing foundation investments is therefore crucial, as they remain the financial backbone of nonprofit news, playing a behind-the-scenes role in guiding the field's direction, including the types of subjects covered, organizations supported, and regions prioritized.

We assessed 32,422 relevant grants totaling $1.8 billion distributed by 6,568 foundations supporting journalism and media-related activities between 2010 and 2015.

About a third of the funding, or $570 million, was dedicated to journalism higher education, the Newseum, journalism fellowships, journalism research, legal support, and technology development. An additional 44%, or $795 million, supported public media, and 5%, or about $81 million, backed nonprofit magazines. In comparison, 20%, or about $331 million, directly supported national, local/state, and university-based digital news nonprofits.

Main conclusions

In evaluating direct support for digital news nonprofits, we concluded that many innovative projects and experiments have happened and continue to take place, but that grantmaking remains far below what is needed, even in an era of increased journalism giving following the 2016 elections.

Our analysis identifies sharp geographic disparities in foundation funding, a heavy concentration of resources in a few dozen successful digital news nonprofits, and on behalf of coverage of a few issues. At the national level, money was granted to a disproportionate number of ideologically oriented outlets.

Although there are some success stories, neither the digital news nonprofit sector nor any other form of commercial media has yet to meaningfully fill the coverage gaps created by the collapse of the newspaper industry.

A major challenge is that, despite more than 6,500 foundations supporting journalism- and media-related activities during the first half of this decade, just a few dozen have provided the bulk of direct support for newsgathering.

At the state and local levels, funding for digital nonprofit media depends heavily on the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and other philanthropies.

Several trends since 2016, however, offer reason for optimism, including the launch of the NewRevenue Hub and NewsMatch, along with the considerable “Trump bump” in revenue at ProPublica, which has used the funds to expand its operations at the state and local level.

Key Findings

Several funding categories assessed in the Shorenstein study were not directly related to news nonprofits. Still, they represented activities or initiatives intended to enhance journalism generally and its public understanding.

These other categories of grants reflect the tough choices that funders face, as prioritizing one of these areas, even to improve journalism's practice and reach in society, may take away from direct support for nonprofit news production. Specific to these other activities:

• Journalism and communication programs at universities and the Newseum received $369 million, or 21% of the $1.8 billion in relevant funding distributed over the six years.

• Journalist professional development received an estimated $122 million, or approximately 7% of the $1.8 billion in funding analyzed. These grants supported journalist associations, awards, training workshops, and fellowships.

• Journalism-related research, technology development, legal support, and philanthropic coordination received approximately $79 million, or 4% of all funding during the six years analyzed.

Public media

• Public media received approximately $796 million, or about 44% of the $1.8 billion in grant money analyzed. Much of this funding supported non-news content such as programming related to the arts, music, culture, or entertainment.

• Twenty-five public media stations and content producers accounted for 70% of all funding, with grant money going primarily to stations or content producers based in 10 states.

• The heavy concentration means that public media organizations in most states lack the funding needed to evolve into digital news hubs that produce local reporting to fill gaps in newspaper coverage.

Magazines

• Magazines generated an estimated $80.1 million in grant support over the six years assessed, accounting for about 5% of all funding. The nonprofit magazine field has winnowed to the degree that a few dozen publications received 99% of foundation funding, with a similar number of foundations providing most of the support.

• Grant-making also flowed heavily toward ideological perspectives, with nine liberal/left-wing magazines and five conservative/right-wing counterparts ranking among the top 25 grant recipients.

National news non-profits

• National news nonprofits were backed by approximately $216 million in foundation funding, or about 12% of the $1.8 billion analyzed. Eight out of 10 foundation dollars supported just 25 news nonprofits, with four investigative journalism units topping the list.

• The leading two dozen recipients were also notable for featuring six deep-vertical news organizations specializing in topics like the environment — and six nonprofits with a clear ideological perspective.

• National news nonprofits are highly dependent on about two dozen institutional funders for nearly 70% of the grants distributed over the 6-year period analyzed.

Local news non-profits

• Local/state nonprofit news organizations received approximately $80.1 million, or about 5% of the $1.8 billion analyzed.

• As foundations pursued strategies to fill gaps in local newspaper reporting, they focused primarily on 11 state/local public affairs news sites, six state/local investigative news units, and coverage specific to health care and the environment.

• Other major investments backed the Institute for Nonprofit News and related initiatives aimed at building capacity and collaboration across the nonprofit news sector.

• Local/state news nonprofits also depended on a limited pool of funders for their support, with the Knight Foundation driving most of the growth in the area, accounting for 20% of funding during the six-year period we analyzed.

University-based professional journalism

• University-based journalism initiatives that produce local or national public affairs coverage were backed by an estimated $35.9 million, or about 2% of the $1.8 billion analyzed.

• Five universities accounted for half of all foundation funding, and 16 of the top 25 grant-receiving campuses were based in California or the Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. metro areas.

• Regarding major grantmakers, 25 foundations provided 91% of the funding in the area, with the Knight Foundation accounting for nearly a third of all grant dollars distributed.

NOTE: The summary reflects findings/context as of the original 2018 report release.

Citation

Nisbet, M., Wihbey, J., Kristiansen, S., & Bajak, A. (2018). Funding the news: Foundations and nonprofit media. Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy in collaboration with Northeastern University’s School of Journalism. Harvard University / Northeastern University.

I analyzed $557 million distributed across 2,502 grants by 19 major foundations, detailing the financial support for specific strategies and solutions, noting long standing patterns in funding, but also evidence of new directions. In the conclusion to the paper, I discussed the implications for strategic philanthropy during the Donald J. Trump presidency and beyond.

The study appeared at Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change, a leading forum for analysis of the scientific and social dimensions of climate change, published in association with the UK Royal Geographical Society and Royal Meteorological Society.

Nisbet MC (2018). Strategic philanthropy in the post-Cap-and-Trade years: Reviewing U.S. climate and energy foundation funding. WIREs Climate Change. 2018;e524

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Key findings

Between 2011 and 2015, the 19 foundations I assessed continued to invest in efforts to shape U.S. Federal climate and energy policy, but redirected much of their funding to support actions at the regional, state, or municipal level, prioritizing the West coast, Midwest, and Northeast regions.

In doing so, the largest environmental grantmakers remained committed to their decades-old policy and technology roadmap on climate change, investing in familiar approaches, strategies, and goals:

• Large national organizations continued to be favored over smaller groups, with just 20 grantees receiving more than half the money distributed ($230.4 million).

• Similarly, 1 out of every 4 dollars invested ($140.3 million) was dedicated to promoting renewable energy and efficiency-related actions across states and various industry sectors.

• In comparison, only $10.5 million (~2%) was granted specific to promoting other low-carbon energy sources or innovation in these areas.

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Of this amount, $8.4 million focused on making natural gas production safer and cleaner. Other grants went to evaluate carbon capture and storage ($1.3 million); to promote R&D spending ($573,000), and the role of government in fostering innovation ($100,000).

No grants were dedicated to promoting nuclear energy, though $175,000 in grants were devoted to opposing nuclear energy for cost and safety reasons.

However, funders also responded to calls for new directions. Some of this shift occurred on the part of the Energy Foundation and other major funders such as the Hewlett foundation, but much of the change was also driven by smaller funders investing in complementary or counterbalancing strategies:

• Of the $91.4 million in grants dedicated to climate mitigation and adaptation actions, more than $55 million was invested in building sustainable and resilient cities and local economies with $16.2 million of this total focused on the needs of low-income and minority communities.

• Philanthropists were also aggressive in targeting the fossil fuel industry, spending $69.4 million to limit coal power, ban/restrict fracking, and hold the industry accountable.

• Responding to calls to more effectively shape public opinion and influence voters, philanthropists devoted a combined $151 million to climate-, fossil fuel industry- and renewable energy-related communications, media, and mobilization efforts.

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Recommendations

In coming years, as the endowments of major foundations continue to grow, providing philanthropists with ever greater resources, they are likely to play an even more active and strategic role in funding actions to address climate change in the U.S. and abroad.

In 2017, the Hewlett foundation, for example, announced it would spend $600 million over the next decade to combat the problem.

By framing the challenges and defining the solutions to climate change, as they did in the years following the defeat of the cap and trade bill, Hewlett and other major philanthropies are likely to deepen their ability to bind together organizations and leaders into shared approaches and strategies.

In an era of political dysfunction and diminished public spending, many will look to philanthropy and their resources for answers. But as foundations consider next steps, several considerations are merited:

Engage on nuclear energy, carbon removal, and geoengineering

First, philanthropists and their grantees may want to reconsider their opposition to support for nuclear energy, their reluctance to consider carbon capture and storage, and the absence of funding to explore scientific and policy challenges related to geoengineering research. Analysts warn that the United States and many states will not meet their emissions goals if current nuclear power plants close, and if new plants are not built in the future.

Several expert projections on decarbonizing the world and U.S. economies define an important role for nuclear energy and carbon capture and storage, and intense scientific debate continues over the technical feasibility of a 100% renewables pathway to decarbonization.

Over the next few years, there is also likely to be considerable debate over geoengineering, as more scientists evaluate various methods and their risks, and as political leaders consider the option. However, during the post cap-and-trade years, not a single grant from among the 19 foundations focused on geoengineering research or its governance, a trend that should be addressed.

Reconsider communication and mobilization strategies

Second, In the post cap-and-trade years, the $151 million devoted by funders to climate change-, fossil fuel industry- and renewable energy-related communication activities were complemented by a combined $150 million spent by the billionaire Tom Steyer in successive elections to mobilize climate voters on behalf of Democratic candidates.

Yet in 2016, despite the stark differences on climate change between Trump and his rival Hillary Clinton, Trump won a majority of the decisive Midwest battleground states. Nationally, Republicans retained control of Congress and strengthened their hold on state governments.

Today, polling shows that although liberal Democratic voters consider global warming among the most important issues influencing their vote, among moderate-leaning Democrats and Republicans, global warming ranks as a mid- to bottom-tier priority.

During the Trump years, similar to the post cap-and-trade period, given the challenges faced and the evolving political dynamics, critical evaluation of communication and mobilization strategies are needed.

How the research was conducted

To review the climate and energy-related funding choices of major U.S. foundations in the post Cap-and-Trade years, during Spring/Summer 2016 I compiled a database of 2,502 U.S. grants distributed by 19 foundations between 2011 and 2015.

Selecting the funders

I selected the 19 foundations based on their track-record of grant giving on the issue, their association with specific funding approaches, and the availability of grant specific information provided by way of their web sites or tax filings.

These 19 foundations represent the major agenda-setting funders in the U.S. on climate change and energy, with their history of funding stretching in many cases back to the 1990s, influencing the decisions and focus of many other grantmakers, shaping the direction of much of the non-profit and advocacy sector.

To inform analysis and conclusions, available white papers, strategy documents, calls for proposals, and annual foundation reports were also reviewed. For each of the 19 foundations, Table 1 in the paper [also below] summarizes the sources of grant information per foundation available at the time of data collection, the strategies used to identify climate change- and energy-related grants, years where missing data might exist, and other details on why they were included as part of the analysis.

Given the scope and breadth of U.S. climate and energy-related funding, I was not able to include all relevant grant makers as part of my analysis. But in selecting the 19 foundations to analyze, as highlighted in the previous sections, I focused on grant makers that have historically been among the largest and most influential funders of climate and energy-related policy options and technologies.

For example, given the significance of the Design to Win alliance of funders, as summarized in Table 1, I began by including eight of the nine original allied funders. The ninth funder, the SeaChange foundation, was not included due to a lack of publicly available grant information.

Further justifying their inclusion in the analysis, six of these eight Design to Win funders also rank among the top 50 environmental grant makers as tracked by the U.S. Foundation Center. These include the Hewlett Foundation (#1 in environmental giving), Packard Foundation (#2), Doris Duke Foundation (#15), Kresge Foundation (#16), Oak Foundation (#20), and the McKnight Foundation (#41). The other two original Design to Win aligned funders included in my analysis were the re-granting organizations Energy Foundation and ClimateWorks.

I selected three other foundations because they rank among the country’s leading environmental grant-makers, and they have been recognized by scholars for their influence on the environmental movement. These three funders are the MacArthur Foundation (#17), Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation (#3), and Ford Foundation (#12).

Compared to these 11 major grant makers, I selected the other 8 foundations because of their comparatively unique focus, approach, or influence. The Skoll Global Threats Fund prioritizes investments in climate change communication, engagement, and media initiatives.

The Surdna Foundation prioritizes a “next generation infrastructure” approach that emphasizes localized climate change mitigation and adaptation actions that serve the needs of low income and minority communities, with the goal of promoting justice and fairness.

The Park Foundation and Rockefeller Brothers Fund (#28 environmental grantmaker) are notable for supporting strategies that directly target the fossil fuel industry by way of communication, media and mobilization campaigns.

The Wallace Global Fund has played a key role in coordinating the fossil fuel divestment movement. Along with Park, both the Heinz Endowments (#26) and Schmidt Family Foundation have prioritized stricter regulation and/or bans on natural gas fracking.

The Bloomberg Foundation has prioritized the funding of litigation and advocacy to limit or shut down coal fired power plants. In sum, my analysis includes 8 of the 9 Design to Win alliance members for which public records are available, 3 of the top 5 U.S. environmental grantmakers, 8 of the top 20 such funders, and 10 of the top 50.

Categorizing the focus of grants

Once grants from each of the foundations were entered into a database, to record the focus of each grant, I developed and refined categories by reviewing foundations’ mission statements, call for proposals, annual reports, program descriptions, white papers, and other relevant information.

I categorized each grant by the main focus as determined by the description available for the grant, by cross checking with the web site of the grant recipient, and by way of the relevant program description for the foundation.

These categories include a focus on Federal, state, or local climate change policy actions and research including those related to agriculture, transportation, adaptation; and human dimension such as health, equity, or jobs; actions related to energy policy, technologies, and efficiency practices including their human dimensions; forms of climate change and energy-related communication, mobilization, media; and actions specific to regulating, restricting, or opposing the fossil fuel industry.

To inform my review, I report combined funding trends from among the 19 foundations and across the five-year period 2011-2015, detailing the aggregate patterns by way of a series of main tables. In some cases, drawing on the compiled database, foundation specific totals for a particular organization or focus area are also referenced.

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A version of this article appeared in the Jan./Feb 2018 issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

For decades, scientific advances and technological innovations have generated vast wealth for professionals at the top of the U.S. knowledge economy. Yet those innovations have also eliminated millions of jobs among those at the bottom, transforming entire industries and regions. Among the most disadvantaged are not only individuals who lack a four-year college degree but also many people of color.

When we think about distrust of scientific expertise in the United States, we too often focus on partisan or religious differences. However, research indicates that income, education, and racial disparities also play an influential role in how Americans view the relationship between science and society, with these reservations transcending traditional left-right ideological differences.

In public opinion surveys, if asked generally about the societal impact of science and technology, those members of the U.S. public who express strong optimism tend to be white, hold a college degree or higher, and rank among the top 25% in household income. These individuals can justifiably expect that their careers will benefit from scientific innovations and that they can afford new technologies and medical treatments.

In contrast, individuals with the strongest reservations about science and technology tend to hold a high school degree or less, earn less than $50,000 annually, and are likelier to be non-white. These individuals may be justifiably concerned about how they will compete in an innovation-based economy, how they will afford access to new technologies or medical advances, and how such advances may reinforce patterns of discrimination and other social disparities (Nisbet & Markowitz, 2014).

Artificial intelligence-related advances like driverless cars or self-service kiosks are hyped as benefiting economic growth, public safety, and consumer experience. Yet they are also predicted to eliminate the jobs of millions of truck drivers, taxi operators, retail workers, and professionals. Tech companies risk further public backlash as they seek to fast-track the adoption of AI applications by spending millions to avoid regulation (Lloyd, 2017).

In a recent Pew survey, when asked to consider a future in which robots and computers can do many human jobs, more than twice as many Americans (72 percent) expressed worry compared to enthusiasm (33 percent). A similar proportion expected that economic inequality would worsen due to such advances. Concerns about the negative impact of workplace innovations were strongest among those lacking a four-year college degree (Pew, 2017a).

Americans also express strong reservations about the impact of social inequality on biomedical innovations related to human enhancement. Substantial majorities say they are “very” or “somewhat” worried about gene editing, brain chips, and synthetic blood, and that these technologies would become available before they were fully understood (Pew, 2017b).

Much of their anxiety relates to anticipated disparities: more than 70 percent fear these innovations would exacerbate the divide between “haves” and “have-nots” because they would only be available to the wealthy.

Informing the best-educated

Therefore, the scientific community has both a strategic and an ethical imperative to facilitate public participation in decision-making about science and technology, and their adverse impacts on society.

Consider the example of gene editing. A 2017 report from the U.S. National Academies of Sciences recommended that scientists and policymakers facilitate ongoing input from the public regarding the benefits and risks of human genome editing. Research was also needed on effectively facilitating such a process (National Academies 2017).

These investments are essential since Americans believe scientists should consult the public before pursuing gene editing applications (Scheufele et al., 2017). However, to address growing concerns about gene editing and other technological innovations, novel approaches for engaging segments of the public from lower socio-economic backgrounds are needed.

Traditional science communication efforts that focus on informally educating the public through TV documentaries, popular science books, magazines, and science museums tend to engage the best-educated and highest-earning Americans. These publics are, on average, the heaviest consumers of these resources, and tend to be already enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and optimistic about technological innovations.

A recent Pew survey (2017c), for example, finds that only about 17 percent of Americans are active science news consumers, defined as those who seek out and consume science news at least a few times a week. On average, this group tends to be better educated, higher wage earners, and predominantly white.

In turn, attention to science news and socioeconomic status are the strongest predictors of whether an individual engages in other informal science education activities, such as attending a museum, taking up a science-related hobby, or participating in a citizen science project.

Disparities in news attention and informal learning activities present significant barriers to addressing public reservations and misconceptions.

Consider past communication and outreach efforts related to nanotechnology. Between 2004 and 2007, as hundreds of nanotechnology-related products and applications were introduced into the U.S. marketplace, knowledge of nanotechnology increased substantially among the best-educated but declined among the least educated.

Widening gaps in public knowledge occurred even as news coverage of nanotech increased and government agencies, science museums, and universities invested considerable resources in informal education and outreach activities.

Researchers across issues have tracked this “knowledge gap” effect for several decades. As an emerging scientific issue, such as nanotech, gene editing, or artificial intelligence, gains news attention and is the subject of outreach at museums and other venues, individuals with higher socio-economic status will likely acquire knowledge faster than their lower-status counterparts. Consequently, differences in knowledge between these segments will tend to increase rather than decrease.

Better-educated individuals can more efficiently understand and integrate new information about science and technology. To aid them in this process, they can turn to their equally well-educated friends and family members to discuss and follow up on concepts they do not understand.

Higher-wage earners also have the financial means and time to access high-quality news coverage and attend science museums and similar cultural institutions.

In 2012, 40 percent of Americans in the top quartile of wage earners said they had visited a natural history museum or a science center during the past year, compared to less than 20 percent among those in the bottom quartile.

The knowledge gap effect is also observed as an outcome of popular science TV viewing of PBS, Discovery, and National Geographic programs intended to engage broader audiences who otherwise may never consume science-related information (Corley and Scheufele 2010; Nisbet et al. 2015).

Despite its popularity as a tool among scientists and their allies, social media is no panacea, and initiatives that invest heavily in social media outreach at the expense of other strategies may only reinforce disparities and divisions.

According to Pew (2017c), a substantial proportion of social media users say that they incidentally encounter science news stories that they otherwise would not have sought out. However, about twice as many users also say they mostly distrust rather than trust the science posts they encounter. This distrust parallels rising concerns about misinformation, incivility, and political polarization.

It is time to focus on novel methods for promoting a more fruitful dialogue about science, technology, and society. These methods should bring scientists and people of diverse backgrounds together to talk, contribute to mutual appreciation and understanding, and forge new relationships and insights.

Original Article | Citation

• Nisbet, M. (2018). Divided Expectations: Why We Need a New Dialogue about Science, Inequality, and Society. Skeptical Inquirer, 42(1), 18–20

References

• Corley, E.A. & D.A. Scheufele. 2010. “Outreach gone wrong? When we talk nano to the public, we are leaving behind key audiences.” The Scientist 24(1): 22.

• Lloyd, J. (2017, April 14). “A March Won’t Make the Public Respect Science. Here’s What Will.” Slate.

• National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2017). Human Genome Editing: Science, Ethics, and Governance. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

• Nisbet, E.C., K.E. Cooper & M. Ellithorpe. (2015). “Ignorance or bias? Evaluating the ideological and informational drivers of communication gaps about climate change.” Public Understanding of Science 24(3): 285–301.

• Nisbet, M. & Markowitz, E.M. (2014). “Understanding public opinion in debates over biomedical research: Looking beyond political partisanship to focus on beliefs about science and society.” PloS One 9(2): e88473.

• Pew Research Center (2017a). “Automation in Everyday Life.” Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.

• Pew Research Center (2017b). “U.S. Public Wary of Biomedical Technologies to ‘Enhance’ Human Abilities.” Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.

• Pew Research Center (2017c). “Science News and Information Today.” Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.

• Scheufele, D.A., M.A, Xenos, E.L. Howell, et al. (2017). “US attitudes on human genome editing.” Science 357(6351): 553–554.

A version of this article appeared in the July/August 2017 issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

On April 22, 2017 thousands of scientists and their supporters gathered in Washington, D.C., and at more than 600 other locations across the world to participate in the March for science.

Pegged to Earth Day, protesters voiced their opposition to proposed federal cuts to funding for scientific research and the planned rollback of environmental rules and public health regulations. They raised alarm over the appointment of political officials dismissive of climate change and of President Donald J. Trump’s false claims about vaccines and global warming.

Previous Democratic administrations have made questionable decisions on science policy. Still, regardless of where you stand politically, the actions of the Trump administration to date should be alarming to anyone who cares about the future of scientific enterprise, much less the planet.

However, it is unlikely that the March for Science will impact federal policy over the next few years. Instead, in the long run, the protest may have only deepened partisan differences, jeopardizing trust in the impartiality and credibility of scientists.

Blind to mistakes

“When you become scientifically literate, I claim, you become an environmentalist,” Bill Nye, an honorary co-chair of the March for Science, told the Washington Post (Gibson 2017).

Many signs carried by protesters echoed that assumption, emphasizing themes like “Make America Smart Again,” “Science is the cure for bullshit,” and “Knowing stuff is good.”

Another March for Science sign quoted astrophysicist Neil de Grasse Tyson stating “I dream of a future where the truth is what shapes people’s politics, rather than politics shaping what people think is true.” Yet as risk communication expert David Ropeik (2017) countered, decades of social science research suggest that human cognition and decisions rarely work that way.

Humans are not robots. A deficit in science literacy is not why political leaders and the public disagree over climate change, vaccines, or government funding. By fundamentally misdiagnosing the causes of political conflict today, March for Science advocates may be undermining their cause.

Numerous studies show that the best educated and most scientifically literate are often prone to biased reasoning and false beliefs about contentious science issues.

The reason for this surprising paradox is that individuals with higher science literacy tend to be more adept at recognizing arguments congenial to their partisan identity, are more attuned to what others like them think, are more likely to react to these cues in ideologically consistent ways, and tend to be more personally skilled at offering arguments to support their preexisting positions (National Academies 2017; Nisbet 2016).

For example, studies find that better-educated conservatives who score higher on measures of basic science literacy are more likely to doubt the human causes of climate change. Their beliefs about climate science conform to their sense that actions to address climate change would mean more government regulation, which conservatives tend to oppose (Kahan 2015).

Similarly, better-educated liberals engage in biased processing of expert advice when forming opinions about the risks of natural gas fracking, genetically modified food, and nuclear energy. In this case, liberal fears are rooted in a generalized suspicion of technologies identified with large corporations (Nisbet et al. 2015).

The same relationship holds about support for government funding of science. Liberals and conservatives who score low on science literacy tend to voice equivalent support for science funding. However, analysis shows that as science literacy increases, conservatives grow more opposed to funding, and liberals grow more supportive, a shift in line with their differing beliefs about the role of government in society (Gauchat, 2015).

Our beliefs about contentious science issues reflect who we are socially and politically. The better educated and more literate we are, the more adept we are at recognizing the connection between a political issue and our group identity and interests (Kahan, 2015).

Similar factors influence policy decisions. As the late sociologist Dorothy Nelkin (1978) observed nearly forty years ago, political disputes such as those over climate change, vaccination, and scientific funding are fundamentally controversies over political control:

• Who decides the priority of whether these issues should take over others or the actions and costs taken to address problems?

• Which values, interpretations, groups, and worldviews matter and deserve the most significant weight?

For these reasons, much of the rationale behind the March for Science is not only off target, but the event and similar future activities may intensify political deadlock rather than overcome it.

Staying credible

Although the March for Science was supposed to be nonpartisan, the messages leading up to and during the event were anything but helpful.

Early on, reflecting contemporary debates on college campuses, organizers were besieged by concerns over issues related to inclusion and identity. Some criticized the organizers for not paying enough attention to these topics, which prompted posting a diversity statement online.

In response, cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker tweeted: “Scientists’ March on Washington plan compromises its goals with anti-science PC/identity politics/hard-left rhetoric” (Sheridan & Facher 2017).

Twitter remained a source of controversy for organizers. A few days before the event, the official March for Science account declared that the U.S. bombing of an ISIS compound in Afghanistan was an example of how “science is weaponized against marginalized people.” The Tweet was later deleted, earning ridicule from right-wing bloggers (Kelly, 2017).

On the day of the march, across cities, some participants donned pink “brain caps,” a reference to the pink “pussy caps” worn at the January 2017 Women’s March. In a similar tribute, T-shirts and signs declared, “Keep your tiny hands off my science.” Many signs played on the official Hillary Clinton campaign theme “I’m with her,” displaying an arrow pointing to planet Earth instead.

Some signs mocked Trump by employing allusions to science, referencing him as an “absolute zero” and “black hole.” Other cheeky slogans included “Less invasions, more equations” and “I’ve seen smarter cabinets at IKEA” (Politi, 2017).

In these cases, the March for Science constitutes a potentially hazardous misfire. By choosing public protest as a primary strategy and voicing messages with an obvious partisan and ideological slant, the March for Science made it much easier for Americans to lean on their group identities in forming opinions about contentious issues.

A much-discussed recent study published in Environmental Communi­cation, a journal where I serve as editor-in-chief, suggests that scientists may have more discretion to advocate for policy positions without hurting their credibility (Kotcher et al., 2017).

However, the preliminary study did not test what happens to the perceived credibility of scientists when they argue on behalf of those policy positions as partisan protesters marching against a newly elected president. 

Since the 1970s, public confidence in almost every major institution has plummeted, as confidence in the leadership of the scientific community remained strong (Funk & Kennedy, 2017).

As a consequence, scientists in society today enjoy almost unrivaled communication capital. The challenge they face following the March for Science is using this capital wisely and effectively.

Citation | PDF

• Nisbet, M.C. (2017, July/August). The March for Science: Partisan Protests Put at Risk Public Trust in Scientists. Skeptical Inquirer Magazine.

References

• Funk, C., & Kennedy, B. (2017, April 6). Public confidence in scientists has remained stable for decades. Pew Research Center.

• Gauchat, G. (2015). The political context of science in the United States: Public acceptance of evidence-based policy and science funding. Social Forces, 2, 723–746.

• Gibson, C. (2017, April 23). The March for Science was a moment made for Nye. The Washington Post.

• Kahan, D. (2015). Climate science communication and the measurement problem. Political Psychology, 36(S1), 1–43.

• Kelly, J. (2017, April 1). March for science: Sympathy for our enemies. National Review.

• Kotcher, J. E., Myers, T. A., Vraga, E. K., et al. (2017). Does engagement in advocacy hurt the credibility of scientists? Results from a randomized national survey experiment. Environmental Communication, 11(3), 415–429.

• National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2017). Communicating Science Effectively: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

• Nelkin, D. (1978). Controversy: Politics of Technical Decisions. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publicans.

• Nisbet, M. C. (2016). The science literacy paradox: Why really smart people often have the most biased opinions. Skeptical Inquirer, 40(5), 21–23.

• Nisbet, E. C., Cooper, K. E., & Garrett, R. K. (2015). The partisan brain: How dissonant science messages lead conservatives and liberals to (dis) trust science. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 658(1), 36–66.

• Politi, D. (2017, April 22). Here are some of the best signs from the March for Science. Slate.com.

• Ropeik, D. (2017, April 24). Why the March for Science failed as demonstrated by its own protest signs. Medium.com.

• Sheridan, K., & Facher, L. (2017, March 22). Science march on Washington, billed as historic, plagued by organizational turmoil. STAT.

A version of this article appeared in the May/June 2016 issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

In January 2016, Campbell’s food company generated headlines by announcing it would voluntarily label its products containing genetically modified (GM) corn, soy, beets, and other crops. Like most conventional food companies, about three-quarters of Campbell’s products contain such ingredients.

The announcement preceded a summer deadline set by Vermont, which required the labeling of GM foods sold in the state. Nationwide, more than twenty state legislatures are considering similar measures.

As food industry groups lobby for Federal legislation that would prevent state labeling requirements, Campbell’s has also adopted a unique stance — calling for mandatory labeling instead (Strom 2016).

A Federal law requiring the labeling of GM foods would be a shrewd gamble that could lead to counterintuitive yet welcome outcomes for the food industry.

If Americans knew that 90% of the processed food they had been eating safely for years was genetically modified — it could bolster consumer trust in advance of a new generation of high-tech crops and foods over the next decade and beyond.

A clash of worldviews

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, GM foods do not pose substantial risks to human health compared to other food products. Thus, federal regulators, experts, and industry members argue that special labeling has no scientific or legal justification.

Yet a few studies provide just enough rhetorical fodder for activists to claim that GM food poses a risk to human health. In the face of such uncertainty, they argue that precaution should be the rule. Therefore, consumers have a "right to know" if they consume GM ingredients.

For these activists, the debate over the scientific justification for labeling is a smokescreen that clouds deeper-rooted grievances. In this sense, no amount of scientific evidence will soften their opposition.

In the early 2000s, survey findings revealed that most Americans were unaware of GM food products, lacked basic knowledge of the science or policy specifics involved, and had yet to form strong opinions about the issue (Shanahan et al. 2001).

However, among a smaller segment of consumers, the issue emerged as a chief concern, correlated with other food-related attitudes. Those few Americans who actively looked to buy GM-free food also said they preferred their food to be organic, vegetarian, natural, locally produced, not processed, and without artificial colors or flavors (Bellows et al. 2010).

These consumers were early adopters of many of the beliefs and preferences that constitute today's local food movement. The movement's origins date to the 1980s, when a series of high-profile food safety controversies occurred.

Since then, influential activists, food writers, and documentary filmmakers have argued that agricultural policy and industrial food production are leading causes of obesity, income inequality, food-borne illness, and declining community life (Pollan 2010).

In doing so, they have contributed to a new food politics, helping diverse groups unify behind a movement for food system reforms.

From Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, many regions have rebuilt their economies and identities around locally owned, primarily organic farms, restaurants, and artisanal foods. The popularity of well-known national organic brands such as Stonyfield Farms and Horizon complements these local efforts.

In 2014, U.S. consumption of organic fruits, vegetables, dairy, bread, meat, and other foods generated an estimated $35 billion in sales, more than triple the amount from a decade ago (USDA n.d.).

The growth in the organics industry and local food economies have created a formidable alliance of farmers, entrepreneurs, and activists who bring considerable money, influence, and voice to the debate over labeling.

For this alliance, corporate-controlled, "unnaturally" produced GM food is perceived as a direct threat to their livelihood and preferred way of life.

“The worst PR strategy ever”

Simmering at the grassroots level for years, GM food labeling exploded into prominence in 2012 as a hotly debated political issue. In successive years, California, Washington, Oregon, and Colorado residents considered and eventually voted down proposals to label GM food products.

In these battles, the food industry is estimated to have spent more than $100 million to block labeling efforts, as activists and organic industry members spent tens of millions promoting the measures.

Yet despite national news attention to these Western state ballot measures, broader public awareness of GM food remained relatively low. For over a decade, nearly all processed foods sold in grocery stores have contained ingredients from GM crops.

However, in a 2013 Rutgers University survey, only 44 percent of Americans said they were aware of such foods, and only 26 percent believed that they had ever eaten any food with GM ingredients (Hallman et al. 2013).

A majority said they knew “very little” or “nothing at all” about GM foods, and 25 percent had never heard of them. Even those who answered that they had heard of the issue lacked basic knowledge about which foods might contain GM ingredients. A majority, for example, falsely believed that GM tomatoes, wheat, and chicken products were being sold in supermarkets (Hallman et al. 2013).

Specific to labeling, if asked directly, 80 percent of the public said that it was either "very important" or "somewhat important" to know whether a product contains GM food. However, if not prompted directly to think about labeling, when asked, "What information would you like to see on food labels that are not already on there?" only 7 percent said GM food labeling. Moreover, only one in four Americans knew federal regulations do not require such labels (Hallman et al. 2013).

Given the public's ambivalence about labeling, economists have long questioned claims that labeling would deter most consumers from purchasing GM food products. For most Americans, cost and brand preference rather than labeling are likely stronger determinants of food choices. Although most organic foods today cost 50 to 100 percent more than their GM counterparts, this price difference will likely override any label impact.

To test these assumptions, economists Marco Costanigro and Jayson Lusk designed a series of experiments that asked a nationally representative sample of American adults to choose between apples and Cheerios labeled as genetically modified or unlabeled. To simulate the price differences for these products, those marked as genetically modified were priced at half the cost of their unlabeled counterparts.

Across the experimental conditions, the economists did not observe any significant impact of labeling on risk perceptions or concerns. Subjects rated GM apples and Cheerios as safe as their non-modified counterparts.

However, respondents under the GM label were somewhat more willing to pay a premium for unlabeled apples and Cheerios. Based on these findings, Costanigro and Lusk conclude that GM labels are unlikely to raise undue alarm among consumers — but they may indirectly help boost sales of organic food products.

For these reasons and others, environmentalist Mark Lynas (2013) argues that if the food industry supported Federal legislation requiring labeling, the strategy would help restore public trust in the industry and quell controversy:

People are getting increasingly scared of [GM food] precisely because the industry is fighting a rearguard battle not to tell people which foodstuffs contain them. This has to be the worst PR strategy ever: can you think of a single analogy where an industry uses every media tool, every electoral and legal avenue possible to stop people knowing where their own products are used?

Similarly, as risk communication expert David Ropeik (2013) wrote in an open letter to the food industry:

Even if you win the vote, you will lose the war ... because the war isn't about labeling. It's about the public's lack of trust in you, and therefore their opposition to the technology that is so important to your success. Your company's opposition to labeling is hurting you far more than it's helping. It is time for a new approach.

Defusing controversy

If a food industry-backed Federal labeling requirement were implemented, despite the evidence from experimental studies, it is impossible to predict precisely how various segments of consumers in the “real world” would respond.

Yet, continuing to oppose labeling rules is also risky, lending credibility to food activists' claims that major food companies have an undue, corrupting influence on the political process.

In contrast, the labeling of GM food may have only a limited impact on consumer buying habits while doing little to alarm the public about the technology's safety. Ending the labeling controversy is also likely to benefit public debate over the next generation of genetically engineered foods, ensuring that scientists, universities, and companies have the freedom to pursue breakthrough technologies.

These innovations are aimed directly at helping the world meet a 70 percent increase in food demand by 2050. Some crops have been engineered to counter deficiencies in vitamin A and iron among populations in developing countries. Other GM crops can survive drought, extreme heat, or unfavorable soil conditions (Wohlers 2013).

After many years of evaluation, in 2015, a genetically engineered salmon became the first modified animal approved for human consumption by the U.S. government. The small company behind the high-tech salmon says they can be grown in half the time, using 25 percent less small wild fish as feed.

The all-female sterile fish are raised in landlocked tanks — thereby substantially reducing their ecological impact if the GM salmon were to escape. The fish farm system also recycles 95 percent of the water used and includes other measures to reduce harmful waste. Currently produced in Panama, the plan is for the fish to be grown close to large U.S. urban areas, reducing the energy costs associated with transportation (Saletan 2015).

Activists have quickly opposed such "Frankenfish," pressuring major grocery store chains and restaurants to refuse to sell the sustainability-friendly product. Apart from unsupported claims about environmental and health risks — their chief complaint is that the fish must be labeled.

As the case of engineered salmon suggests, the primary strategy of GM food opponents to appeal to the public's "right to know" can be removed from the table by pushing for an intelligent, mandatory labeling policy.

CITATION | PDF

• Nisbet, M. (2016). Don’t fear a Franken public: the surprising reasons why we should label genetically modified food. Skeptical Inquirer, 40(3), 18–22.

References

• Bellows, A.C., G. Alcaraz, and W.K. Hallman (2010). Gender and food, a study of attitudes in the USA towards organic, local, US grown, and GM-free foods. Appetite 55(3): 540-550.

• Costanigro, M. & Lusk, J.L. (2014). The signaling effect of mandatory labels on genetically engineered food. Food Policy 49: 259-267.

• Hallman, W.K., Cuite, C.L. Morin, X.K. (2013). Public perceptions of labeling genetically modified foods. Working Paper 2013-01. Rutgers University.

• Lynas, M. 2013. It's time to label GMOs: Why we need to move biotech out of the shadows. The Breakthrough.org (October 23).

• Pollan, M. 2010. The food movement, rising. New York Review of Booh (June).

• Ropeik, D. 2013. GMO labeling: An open letter to BigAgTech CEOs. The Huffington Post (November 6).

• Saletan, W. 2015. Don't fear the Frankenfish. Slate.com (November 20).

• Shanahan, J., Scheufele, D., & Lee, E. (2001). Trends: Attitudes about agricultural biotechnology and genetically modified organisms. The Public Opinion Quarterly, 65(2), 267-281.

• Strom, S. (2016). Campbell labels will disclose G.M.O. ingredients. New York Times (January 7).

• USDA n.d. Organic market overview. United States Department of Agriculture. A

• Wohlers, A.E. (2013). Labeling of genetically modified food: Closer to reality in the United States? Politics & Life Sciences 32(1): 73-84.

A version of this article was published on May 11, 2015, in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The extent of human impact on the global environment over the past century has led some scientists to argue that we have entered a new geological period — the Anthropocene, the age of humans.

For many on the left, the Anthropocene is a reason to question the economic policies and technological advances that have enabled human society to flourish over the past century. To save the earth, they argue, we must end economic growth, give up on our most powerful innovations, and learn to live with much less.

Earth is screwed, and our insatiable growth economy is to blame, declares Naomi Klein in her international bestseller This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (Simon & Schuster, 2014), the highest-profile example of this argument to date.

“Only mass movements can save us now,” she writes. To avoid catastrophe, we need a “profound and radical economic transformation” that upends our fossil-fuel-dominated system of energy and food production.

Klein and intellectual confederates like the author Bill McKibben urge an international shift to small-scale economies powered by community-owned solar panels and wind turbines supplied by local organic farms and connected by free public transportation.

In this future, countries would de-emphasize economic growth and maximize well-being through minimum consumption, pursuing an egalitarian “good life” to achieve a new harmony with nature.

But for others on the left, halting the many societal gains we have achieved through technological innovation rules out our best tools for combating climate change, protecting nature, and helping people.

For these self-described “ecomodernists,” the urgent environmental problems we face are the reason for more modernization, not less. “Knowledge and technology, applied with wisdom, might allow for a good, or even great, Anthropocene,” argued eighteen academics and intellectuals last month in the “Ecomodernist Manifesto,” a document outlining their views.

They contend that hope for a better future starts with advanced technologies that intensify rather than weaken our mastery of nature. High-tech crops, advanced nuclear power, carbon capture and storage, aquaculture, desalination, and high-efficiency solar panels all have the potential to reduce human demands on the environment and spark the economic growth needed to lift people out of extreme poverty.

These advances will enable more people to live in bigger cities that are powered and fed more efficiently. People in cities also tend to have fewer children, slowing population growth. From this perspective, technological advances and urbanization will free up more space on the planet for nature.

Yet, to achieve this future, ecomodernists warn that we have put too much faith in carbon pricing, social-impact investing, venture capital, Silicon Valley, and other market-based “neoliberal” mechanisms to spur technological innovation and social change.

Instead, we must focus more on understanding how technological advances happen and the role of government planning and spending (rather than the market) as the main driver of innovation and societal change.

Ecomodernists predict that once technologies that make meaningful action on climate change and other problems are available and cost less, much of the political argument over scientific uncertainty will diminish.

Under those conditions, gaining political cooperation from across the ideological spectrum and from developing countries will be easier. National leaders and their constituents are far more likely to spare nature because it is no longer needed to meet their economic goals than they are for any ideological or moral reasons.

“An Ecomodernist Manifesto” is the brainchild of Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, co-founders of the Oakland, Calif.-based think tank The Breakthrough Institute.

A decade ago, in an essay titled “The Death of Environmentalism,” they were among the first intellectuals on the left to question the politics of limits that had for decades defined America’s environmental movement.

In the years since, with support from the Nathan Cummings Foundation (which has also supported my work), the institute has played a lead role in forging an international network of academics and intellectuals who share the goal, as the institute’s website puts it, of “challenging conventional progressive and environmental wisdom in service of creating a relevant and powerful new politics.”

Other ecomodernist thinkers, all co-authors of the recent manifesto, include:

• University of Colorado at Boulder political scientist

• Harvard University applied physicist David Keith

• Columbia University geographer Ruth DeFries

• Stanford University historian Martin W. Lewis

• University of Maryland at Baltimore geographer Erle C. Ellis

• Futurist Stewart Brand

• Filmmaker Robert Stone

• Writer Mark Lynas

• Philanthropists Rachel Pritzker and Peter Teague

For these ecomodernists, progress requires respectful engagement with diverse voices and ideas. “Too often discussions about the environment have been dominated by the extremes, and plagued by dogmatism, which in turn fuels intolerance,” they write.

Yet many of their left-wing counterparts have met their call for respectful debate and critical reflection with intense hostility.

• Blogger Joseph Romm dismissed the manifesto as an Orwellian time waster and encouraged his readers to skip any discussion of its ideas.

• In her book This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein writes that ecomodernists are either “dishonest or delusional,” as they advocate a “doubling down on exactly the kind of reckless, short-term thinking that got us into this mess.”

• In a recent essay at Aeon magazine, Duke University law professor Jedediah S. Purdy accused ecomodernists of being nothing more than “branding opportunists,” sloshing “around old plonk in an ostentatiously shiny bottle,” all to win speaking and consulting fees.

• In a blog post last year, the philosopher Clive Hamilton of Charles Sturt University in Australia declared that by promoting the possibility of the “good Anthropocene,” ecomodernists are “unscientific and live in a fantasy world of their own construction.” In Earth Island Journal last month, he dismissed the recent manifesto as “detached and dreamy, and blind to the hard truths of political combat.”

Grass-roots activism and political reforms are important in managing the many threats we face in the Anthropocene, as is the quest for a more advanced arsenal of technological options and a reconsideration of our economic goals.

But so too is investment in our capacity to learn, discuss, question, and disagree in ways that constructively engage with uncomfortable ideas.

RELATED: Against climate change tribalism

Yet most academics and journalists avoid challenging the powerful forms of groupthink that have derailed our efforts to combat climate change. In this regard, attacks on those who question cherished assumptions have had a powerful chilling effect.

We, therefore, depend on risk-taking intellectuals like the ecomodernists to lead the way, identifying the flaws in conventional wisdom and offering alternative ways of thinking and talking about our environmental future.

In such roles, argued Michel Foucault, the function of the intellectual is to “question over and over again what is postulated as self-evident, to disturb people’s mental habits, the way they do and think things, to dissipate what is familiar and accepted, to re-examine rules and institutions.”

Conversely, as the sociologist Amitai Etzioni has warned, in the absence of intellectuals who challenge assumptions, those working on complex problems like climate change may “be lacking in reality testing, be slower in adapting … policies and viewpoints to external as well as domestic changes, and be more ‘ideological.’”

Reading Klein, it is clear that she is not confident that the mass movement she calls for and the deep structural reforms that “change everything” are achievable. Instead, like radical intellectuals of past movements, her utopian vision serves an important political function, creating space for the more pragmatic, less revolutionary ideas of ecomodernists and others.

With the 2016 U.S. elections on the horizon, ecomodernists are “providing arguments for people in the middle to hold on to so they can have some kind of environmental vision,” Paul Robbins, director of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told Slate.

“You’ve got to have some kind of position, and they’re offering them something to jump at. It’s not like they’re going to jump on Naomi Klein’s bandwagon.”

In order to effectively manage problems like climate change, we must constructively engage with diverse perspectives and learn from opposing arguments. This approach allows us to hold our convictions more lightly, update our assumptions in light of new evidence, and pursue the best of the many ideas available.

Citation | PDF

• Nisbet, M. C. (2015). Ecomodernists Spark Rhetorical Heat. The Chronicle of Higher Education pg B4-B5.

New research suggests scientific institutions and organizations can improve their communication and outreach with the public by addressing people's strongly held beliefs about science and its role in society.

These beliefs play a key role in shaping people's opinions, and ultimately, their support for scientific advances, according to the study "Understanding Public Opinion in Debates Over Biomedical Research: Looking Beyond Partisanship to Focus on Beliefs about Science and Society," by American University professor Matthew C. Nisbet, Ph.D., and Ezra Markowitz, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University.

The study was published in the interdisciplinary journal PLOS ONE.

"What divides the American public in their views about scientific advances? The easy answer, especially over the last decade, is political partisanship and ideology. The commonly held view is that Conservatives and Republicans are anti-science, and Liberals and Democrats are pro-science," said Nisbet, a social scientist who studies the impact of strategic communication in policy debates over science and the environment.

"Yet if we continue to think about public opinion in this narrow way, as policy conflicts emerge, mistakes will be made and opportunities will be missed to effectively engage the public on the questions and concerns that matter to them."

RELATED: Reservations about scientific advances blur party/political lines

The two researchers analyzed nationally representative surveys collected between 2002 and 2010 with the goal of better understanding how the U.S. public came to form opinions in the debate over human embryonic stem cell research.

Intense campaigning on stem cell research across elections and states, as well as the 2004 election between President George W. Bush and then-Senator John Kerry, provided a valuable case study to compare the factors that drive public opinion.

To be sure, political party affiliation, ideology, and religious beliefs played a role — but they weren't the strongest influences on why people supported stem cell research.

The primary influence, Nisbet and Markowitz determined, was that of differences in people's perceptions about the social implications of science. Instead of viewing people exclusively in terms of their politics or faith, scientists can benefit from understanding the public through four distinct groups that are not easily defined by traditional labels.

In their analysis, Nisbet and Markowitz classified the groups as follows:

• "Scientific optimists" comprise a third of the public, believe strongly in the link between science and social progress, and are likely to support most scientific advances. Optimists are on average highly educated, financially well off, and disproportionately white. They also tend to split almost evenly by partisan identity, although they trend slightly more Democrat.

• "Scientific pessimists" comprise about a quarter of the public, have strong reservations about the moral boundaries that might be crossed by scientists, and believe science may lead to new problems. They are the most likely to oppose advances in biomedical research and related fields. This group on average scores much lower in terms of educational attainment and income and trends more female and minority in background. Pessimists split evenly relative to partisan identity.

• The "Conflicted" comprise about a quarter of the public and view science in both optimistic and pessimistic terms. Though they are socially similar to Scientific Pessimists in their background, they tend to be older than members of other segments. They appear open to accepting the arguments of scientists and advocates who emphasize the benefits of research.

The "Disengaged" comprise about 15 percent of the public, appear to lack strong beliefs about how science might impact society, and as a consequence are likely to be the most susceptible to shifts in opinion driven by high profile news coverage or political messaging.

Over the coming decade, developments in the life sciences such as in-vitro fertilization, the demand for human tissues by scientists for research, or the engineering of new life forms, will raise ethical and moral issues that transcend partisan politics.

People's concerns, says Nisbet, are likely to center on several recurring themes including whether:

• scientific breakthroughs promote or undermine social progress

• research gets pursued too cautiously or too quickly

• moral boundaries are crossed or respected

• research is seen as serving public or private interests

• and the process by which decisions are made.

"Our dysfunctional media system is not capable of adequately addressing these questions. On cable news or via social media almost every complex debate is re-defined in terms of partisan and ideological differences," Nisbet said. "We need to build a new civic infrastructure that enables public learning and input, and the place to start may be in the cities and states where research is taking place."

Nisbet's prior research examining public opinion about climate change and energy insecurity also revealed for science communicators that understanding the public in more precise ways than partisanship or ideology allowed for improved outreach. Other research by Nisbet has analyzed the role that journalists and their organizations play in engaging the public on complex policy problems.

READ THE STUDY:

• Nisbet, M., & Markowitz, E. M. (2014). Understanding public opinion in debates over biomedical research: Looking beyond political partisanship to focus on beliefs about science and society. PloS one, 9(2), e88473.

— This 2015 essay was originally published at The Conversation describing a 2015 PLOS One study co-authored with Ezra Markowitz, UMass-Amherst.

Reading about the rapid pace of advances in biomedicine, you may have wondered why more politically liberal countries like Germany and Canada have stronger restrictions on embryonic stem cell research than the politically conservative US.

History and happenstance play a role, but these differences also reflect public concerns that do not conform to traditional left or right political ideologies.

As debates over stem cell research continue and as conflicts over other biomedical advances emerge, a recurring set of questions is likely to be seen. Do scientific breakthroughs promote or undermine social progress? Is research being pursued too cautiously or too quickly? Do scientists respect or cross moral boundaries?

In a study, just published in PLOS ONE, we analysed a series of surveys collected between 2002 and 2010 to better understand what the US public thinks about stem cell research and how they formed these opinions.

We were able to distinguish between the different factors influencing their beliefs. At play were factors such as traditional loyalties to political parties and more fundamental beliefs about science, technology, and society.

Our results indicate that, more than political party identification, ideology or religious beliefs, an individual’s beliefs about science and society had the strongest influence on their support for stem cell research.

It was also possible to identify distinct segments who differ substantially in what they thought about the social implications of science and technology. Traditional political labels do not easily define these groups. Based on our data we classify the US public in four categories:

1. Scientific optimists: These comprise about a third of the public. They believe strongly in the link between science and social progress. They are likely to support most scientific advances and three quarters of this group are in favour of embryonic stem cell research. Optimists are on average highly educated, financially well off and disproportionately white. They are split almost evenly along political lines, with slightly more Democrats among them. In terms of political ideology, they are the most moderate in their outlook.

2. Scientific pessimists: This group comprises just under a quarter of the public. They have strong reservations about the moral boundaries that might be crossed by scientists and believe science may lead to new problems. They are the most likely to oppose advances in biomedical research, with only 40% in favour of stem cell research. Compared to optimists, this group scores much lower on average in terms of educational attainment and income. More tend to be female and from a minority background. Pessimists split evenly along party lines, but tend to be disproportionately either moderate or conservative in their ideological outlook.

3. The conflicted: This group represents another quarter of the public. They view science in both optimistic and pessimistic terms. Though they are socially similar to the Pessimists in their background, they tend to be older on average than members of other segments. They appear open to accepting the arguments of scientists and advocates who emphasise the benefits of research. By 2010, more than 60% of this segment had come to favour embryonic stem cell research.

4. The disengaged: About 15% of the public lacks strong beliefs about how science might impact society. As a result, they are likely to be the most susceptible to shifts in opinion driven by political messages. For example, between 2008 and 2010, support for embryonic stem cell research among this group increased by 20 percentage points.

A better informed public

As advances in stem cell research, synthetic biology, personalised genomics and other scientific fields move forward, our current media is unlikely to adequately address the deeper set of public concerns reflected in our study.

Cable TV, social media and the tabloid press tend to favour sensationalism over context. These complex debates are all too likely to be distorted in terms of simplistic left-right distinctions or exaggerated to be miracle breakthroughs or morally repugnant. At more prestigious news outlets, budget cuts and layoffs will limit the opportunity for in-depth coverage and analysis.

RELATED: Beyond partisanship — engaging in debates about science and society

Given these challenges, academics need to invest in encouraging respectful debate about the future of science and technology and what it means for society. The place to start may be in the cities and regions where research is taking place. Here we need to better understand the different questions being asked about scientific advances and invest in local media and public forums that encourage constructive discussion and debate.

But, given the international nature of science, we also need to think more broadly and ensure conversations transcend national boundaries. We need to take advantage of online media platforms to build what journalists Andrew Revkin () and Krista Tippet have called the “Knowosphere,” a global classroom where interested people can learn about and discuss the social and ethical implications of science.

Revkin’s blog Dot Earth1 and Tippett’s multimedia series On Being are prototypes for designing these new types of forums. So too is The Conversation. Yet more support for these forums and similar ventures are needed and it will ultimately be up to universities, scientific institutions, and philanthropists to lead the way.

READ THE STUDY:

• Nisbet, M., & Markowitz, E. M. (2014). Understanding public opinion in debates over biomedical research: Looking beyond political partisanship to focus on beliefs about science and society. PloS one, 9(2), e88473.

In the talk, I provide an overview of four main models of science communication and public engagement: 1) popularization and dissemination, 2) strategic communication, 3) public engagement and dialogue, and 4) stakeholder-driven science.

For each model, I review the research evidence, key benefits, and trade-offs, drawing on examples from debates over climate change, biomedical research, and the teaching of evolution in schools.

To produce the transcript, I designed a Claude-specific AI prompt to process the raw text auto-generated by YouTube. The prompt removes filler words and false starts, organizes text into short sentences and paragraphs, and provides a time-stamped table of contents with section-by-section summaries.

Citation

National Research Council (2013, December 9). Matthew Nisbet: Infrastructure to connect scientists to public interfaces [Video, 28 min]. YouTube.

Workshop report

National Research Council (2014). Sustainable Infrastructures for Life Science Communication: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Table of contents

Session overview and agenda (0:02—1:12)

• Nisbet introduces the session as a brief overview of science communication models and public engagement infrastructures.

• The overview will inform a panel discussion featuring scientists and practitioners at the forefront of public engagement work.

• He notes that detailed background reading for each model is available at his website, climateshiftproject.org.

• The session will close with a response from Daniel Sarewitz and closing remarks from Dietram Scheufele.

Popularization and dissemination: the dominant model (1:17—5:45)

• For the past fifteen to twenty years, four to five main models of science communication have been the focus of research, analysis, and debate.

• Much of the day’s earlier discussion reflects the dominant model: popularization and dissemination, aimed at translating complex science and building public appreciation for research.

• Major research universities and government agencies now function as their own publishers, producing YouTube videos, blog content, and social media material through experienced science writers and producers.

• Traditional science media outlets — PBS, Scientific American, Science Friday — now exist alongside direct scientist-to-public channels, giving highly attentive audiences more choices than ever before.

• Scientists are building personal followings as online personalities, with some blogs reaching 30,000 monthly readers and Twitter feeds attracting comparable audiences.

Research evidence on the popularization model (5:46—10:04)

• The attentive public for science represents roughly 10 to 15% of Americans; the share who have shared climate content on social media is less than 5%.

• In absolute terms, however, 20 to 30 million Americans may comprise the attentive science audience — a large constituency for engagement.

• Focusing events and entertainment productions can incidentally expose less-attentive publics to science content, sparking temporary increases in motivation and search behavior.

• Popularization influences the decisions of policy makers, journalists, and funders who are already predisposed to accept scientific findings.

• For scientists, public communication builds personal brand, increases citation impact, and opens new career pathways in science writing and agency work.

Hype, credibility, and the limits of dissemination (10:05—10:42)

• When popularization leads to a cycle of hype — documented especially in biomedical and genomics research — credibility and public trust in science are placed at risk.

• Funding agency pressure to demonstrate broader impacts and economic relevance pushes scientists and institutions to oversell findings.

• Media coverage of biotech has emphasized near-term societal benefits and market development for at least twenty years, with corresponding underemphasis on uncertainty and risk.

• Increasingly defining universities in terms of job creation and economic development rather than critical inquiry threatens the case for basic research.

Popularization and scientific controversy (10:43—13:18)

• Popularization is often assumed to diffuse controversy, yet research consistently shows that more scientific information can deepen disagreement rather than resolve it.

• Dorothy Nelkin’s case studies going back forty years show that in highly polarized debates each side recruits scientific evidence to reinforce pre-existing ideological positions.

• Dan Kahan’s cultural cognition research finds that more scientific literacy among hierarchical individualists actually increases their rejection of climate change risk — the opposite of what the deficit model predicts.

• These findings are not new: studies going back ten to fifteen years show differential effects of knowledge on opinion depending on religion, ideology, and other factors.

Political composition of scientists and its consequences (13:19—17:25)

• Carl Sagan is invoked as a model popularizer, yet his example also illustrates the political risks of scientists mixing science communication with strong political advocacy.

• Pew survey data from 2009 show that roughly 55% of AAAS members self-identify as liberal, compared to about 20% of the general public; only 9% identify as conservative, compared to 37% of the public.

• This ideological concentration means scientists may be poorly positioned to intuitively understand the sources of public resistance among audiences with different political backgrounds.

• AAAS members rank among the most politically homogeneous groups in American society, comparable in ideological uniformity to Mormon church members or Tea Party members.

• Effective communication may therefore require either recruiting scientists who share the political backgrounds of target audiences or identifying trusted non-scientist opinion leaders within those communities.

Strategic communication model (17:26—24:11)

• A second model — strategic communication — uses audience research, message testing, and opinion leader identification to reach specific publics more effectively.

• The National Academies booklet on science, evolution, and creationism illustrates this approach: focus groups and surveys identified medicine and agriculture as the frames most effective for communicating the value of teaching evolutionary science.

• The booklet also reinforced for the public that many religious leaders see no conflict between evolution and faith — a finding derived from audience research rather than assumed.

• The Global Warming Six Americas segmentation scheme, borrowed from marketing and public health, moves beyond binary believer-versus-denier framing to identify six distinct audience groups ranging from the alarmed to the dismissive.

• Experimental message testing finds that framing climate change as a national security problem actually produces anger among the most dismissive audiences; a public health frame is more effective at reducing resistance.

• Trade-offs include the risk that heavy spending by outside interests raises questions about manipulation and conflict of interest, and that targeting can increase polarization rather than consensus.

Public engagement and dialogue model (24:32—26:25)

• A third model shifts from dissemination or persuasion to inviting the public into the decision-making process itself, recognizing that lay publics bring genuine expertise of their own.

• Public consultation exercises — deliberative forums, public meetings, and online dialogue platforms — are the primary tools of this approach.

• Andrew Revkin’s Dot Earth blog at the New York Times is cited as an example of an experienced journalist brokering dialogue across different perspectives on climate change.

• Research shows these models can increase participant trust and knowledge, soften group differences under some conditions, and generate useful insights on policy options.

• Critics question whether participants are representative, whether minority or fringe views receive unwarranted amplification, and whether forums that produce no real policy input become a form of public relations.

Stakeholder-driven science and lay expertise model (26:26—28:19)

• A fourth model, rooted in sustainability science, holds that research must be co-produced with the public from the earliest stages of agenda-setting to be truly effective.

• The University of Maine Sustainability Solutions Initiative — a five-year, $20 million NSF grant — is cited as an early case study of this approach.

• Early evidence suggests that involving stakeholders in the research process builds trust and support for state and land-grant universities among publics and policy makers.

• Trade-offs are significant: the process is time-consuming, resource-intensive, and difficult to align with traditional publication and credit models.

• Nisbet closes by noting that the overview covers twenty years of research in a short time and hands the session to the panel for discussion of how these models apply to their own work.

Recommended reading (28:20)

• Nisbet organizes recommended reading into four thematic clusters that correspond to the models covered in the presentation.

• “General overviews and major themes” include foundational texts on models of public understanding of science, with key contributions from Miller, Brossard and Lewenstein, and Nisbet and Scheufele.

• “Popularization, scientists, and political controversy” includes research on the cycle of hype, cultural cognition, framing, and the political dynamics of science coverage, with key contributions from Nelkin, Kahan, Sarewitz, and Caulfield.

• “Public engagement: advantages and pitfalls” includes research on audience segmentation, message testing, deliberative forums, and the ethics of framing, with key contributions from Maibach, Leiserowitz, Scheufele, and Einsiedel.

• “Sustainability science and lay expertise: promise and challenges” includes case study research on the University of Maine Sustainability Solutions Initiative and the relationship between communication research and sustainability science.

TRANSCRIPT

Session overview and agenda (0:02—1:12)

Nisbet: We’re almost to the penultimate discussions of the day. I’m going to start this session off with a brief overview on models of science communication and public engagement.

If we’re going to build infrastructures to support science communication, public outreach, and public engagement, what does that look like? What are the different models we can build infrastructures to support, and what are some of the benefits and some of the trade-offs to each one of these models?

After I give that brief overview, it’s going to inform some of the discussion of our panel. We have some truly outstanding scientists and others who are at the forefront in terms of experience and working on public engagement and policymaker engagement.

At the end of the panel, Dan Sarewitz is going to give us a discussion of his thoughts on the panel, and then we’ll finish the day with closing remarks from Dietram Scheufele.

For those of you watching from home or the office, and if you’re live-tweeting — which I know several people are — there’s the hashtag and my Twitter handle. On my website, climateshiftproject.org, you can deep-dive into some of this literature. For each of the models I’ll cover today, I’ve put five to seven studies or papers where you can read more background.

Popularization and dissemination: the dominant model (1:17—5:45)

Nisbet: For over the last fifteen to twenty years, there have been four to five main models or modes of science communication and public outreach that a lot of research has been conducted on. There’s been a lot of analysis and debate over these models.

For the most part, a lot of the conversation today has taken place within the dominant model of thinking about — and practicing — science communication. That is what can be called the popularization or dissemination model.

In many cases, we’re living in a golden age of popularization and dissemination. The infrastructure, the support, and the activity we have for translating complex science, informing different publics, and building an appreciation for science are remarkable.

Even five years ago, it would have been hard to predict what we’re seeing today. Every major research university — through their research news office — and government agencies are now their own publishers. They’re their own platforms. They’re putting out their own content with experienced science writers, video makers, and producers. Their YouTube videos are then reposted across social media, tweeted, and shared.

Our traditional popular science media — from PBS and Scientific American Frontiers to Science Friday, science newspapers, and science magazines — can now be accessed any time. You can wake up in the morning and read the Guardian Science online, the New York Times science section online, Scientific American and all the blogs there.

As someone deeply interested in a scientific subject, you can follow news of that issue across multiple platforms. Even though coverage at a single paper like the New York Times is declining on issues like the life sciences or the environment, for the community of people who are highly attentive to these topics, they have more choices than ever.

Not all of it — and probably most of it — is no longer mediated by journalists. It comes directly from the voices of scientists. You can move upstream and actually dive into how scientists are talking about research as it happens. You can watch a live webcast of a press conference or a science conference like the AAAS meeting. You can read scientists discussing their research at a blog or on Twitter before publication.

Scientists are now finding new jobs as professional science communicators, being paid to communicate about science on platforms that didn’t exist five years ago. Videos they produce might be viewed — or at least clicked on — three million times by way of the YouTube metric.

I first started blogging about social science research and communication in 2005 at a platform called ScienceBlogs.com, which is now run by National Geographic. What we see at a community like ScienceBlogs is that many scientists have become celebrities and personalities in their own right among their followers. Their Twitter feeds might have 30,000 followers. Their Facebook pages might have three to five thousand. Their blogs might be read 30,000 times a month.

These are the types of access and dissemination that we couldn’t have thought of ten years ago.

Research evidence on the popularization model (5:46—10:04)

Nisbet: As we start to look at research in this area — and several people in this room, like Dominique and Dietram, have done several of the studies on this topic — what we see is that the popularization and dissemination model engages very well a core audience of science enthusiasts.

These are people who are highly attentive to science, usually very passionate and very supportive, who can comment on, share, and repurpose content across the web.

Different surveys show that the attentive audience for science and technology may be between 10 to 15% of Americans. A George Mason survey that recently came out found that the percentage of Americans who have at least once shared content on Twitter or Facebook about climate change is less than 5%.

So even though there’s a lot of deep engagement among these attentive publics and a lot of participation, the overall size of this public in percentage terms is not very large. In absolute terms, however, it is very large. We’re talking 20 to 30 million Americans who may comprise the attentive audience for science.

With focusing events, or by way of social media networks, publics that lack a deep interest in science might be incidentally exposed to science content. They might bump into it. A focusing event happens, an entertainment production sparks their interest, and they have an increase in motivation. They Google search. Now all this sharing and production of science content across platforms is readily available for them to find and deep-dive into once their motivation is sparked.

We also know from different case studies and research that the popularization and dissemination model does influence the decisions and thinking of policy makers, journalists, and funders. Particularly those who are predisposed to accept the findings of science and see those findings as in line with their policy or political goals.

For scientists, engaging in popularization and dissemination can build your personal brand, increase your citation impact, and influence scientific peers. A lot of what’s being shared by way of blogs and Twitter is consumed by other scientists. When your paper comes out and you’re trying to influence your community of peers, having your information more readily available than others can be a form of persuasion even among other experts.

For many scientists — whether research scientists or those not pursuing a research career — simply participating in these activities and gaining training from the many available opportunities is an important form of career development. It opens new types of jobs with NGOs, government agencies, media organizations, and as science writers.

Hype, credibility, and the limits of dissemination (10:05—10:42)

Nisbet: There are several trade-offs and frictions.

My colleague at the University of Alberta, Tim Caulfield, and others have talked about what popularization can lead to: a cycle of hype. This is particularly relevant to biomedical research and to personalized medicine and genomics.

Caulfield and his colleagues point to several reasons for this. One is that the emphasis by funding agencies on broader impacts — defining the relevance of science as leading to job creation and economic growth — puts pressures on scientists and their institutions to oversell their findings.

As a result, media coverage tends to emphasize near-term societal benefits and market development, with less emphasis on uncertainty and possible risk. Stem cell research was mentioned earlier as an example where hype has played a role. Bruce Lewenstein and I did a paper together when I was in graduate school looking at the history of coverage of biotechnology, and we saw the same pattern there.

When popularization leads to a cycle of hype, what’s at risk is credibility and trust in science.

It may also undermine our ability to do basic research. If you can’t easily claim that your research will lead to job creation or societal benefits, you may be less likely to gain funding, and much less likely to gain public and media attention.

What we’re also seeing at the university level — especially with state universities — is an increasing tendency to define science and higher education in terms of economic development and job growth, rather than as places of learning or critical inquiry.

Popularization and scientific controversy (10:43—13:18)

Nisbet: The other thing is that popularization is often seen as a way to diffuse controversy. In fact, it’s not a very good way of dealing with controversy.

Research consistently shows that producing or disseminating more scientific knowledge can actually lead to more disagreement.

I recently finished a book chapter looking back on the work of the late sociologist Dorothy Nelkin. If you go back forty years to the first case studies on controversies over things like nuclear energy or genetic engineering, you can see that scientific evidence in highly polarized political debates becomes a resource that each side recruits to reinforce its position. Scientific evidence ends up being used to canvas over what are really disagreements over ideology and political goals and interests.

Last year at the Science of Science Communication Sackler Colloquium, Dan Kahan talked about his research on cultural cognition. Dorothy Nelkin’s work looks at this at the case study level. Kahan’s findings look at it at the individual psychological level. His findings have gotten a lot of attention, but they’re not new in terms of looking at the interaction between knowledge, worldviews, ideology, risk perceptions, and support for research.

Going back ten to fifteen years, we’ve seen that more knowledge has differential impacts on people’s opinions based on religion, ideology, and other factors — on issues ranging from stem cell research to climate change.

At last year’s Sackler Colloquium, Kahan talked about his findings on climate change using his cultural cognition scales. What we all assume is that people with egalitarian and communitarian worldviews are more likely to accept the risk of climate change because it aligns with that worldview, and therefore more accepting of the science. Hierarchical individualists, who tend to be more conservative, see climate change as threatening the status quo and leading to regulation of industry.

Our assumption is that if we inform hierarchical individualists about the basic underlying science, they’ll come to share the risk perceptions of egalitarian communitarians. But Kahan’s findings — confirmed in other studies — show that more knowledge does not lead to more agreement.

In fact, it leads to more polarization. The more scientifically literate hierarchical individualists are, the less accepting they are of the risks of climate change.

Political composition of scientists and its consequences (13:19—17:25)

Nisbet: Early this morning, as you can expect at a meeting like this, the name of Carl Sagan was evoked as one of our great popularizers. There’s often a call for more Carl Sagans — there’s actually a graduate student at the University of Arizona who started a website called More Carl Sagans, arguing for exactly this.

Carl Sagan was known as the showman of science, as Time magazine once headlined. But it’s interesting that in that same Time magazine article, you see the juxtaposition between Carl Sagan and Ronald Reagan. What we often forget is that Carl Sagan was not only a great popularizer but also a strong political advocate. He mixed his popularization of science with very strong stances on political issues. There’s a news article where he was arrested with other activists protesting a nuclear test.

When scientists communicate about problems their science has unearthed, one way to be effective is to be an authentic advocate — to talk about why your values, your personal identity, and your political beliefs compel you to believe something is a problem.

That wouldn’t be a problem if scientists generally reflected the political composition of the broader American public. But Kahan’s findings suggest that one reason why worldviews differentiate people in risk perceptions is that the more scientific literacy an individual has, the better they are at recognizing group cues — at recognizing what people who share their worldview believe about science.

Pew survey data from 2009 of AAAS members shows that about 55% of AAAS members self-identify as liberal, compared to about 20% of the American public. About 9% of AAAS members self-identify as conservative, compared to 37% of the public.

What this suggests is that to be effective communicators, we either need to selectively recruit scientists who share some of the political backgrounds and worldviews of the public they’re trying to communicate with, or we need to recruit non-scientists as opinion leaders among these publics. People who can not only endorse the science but also speak in a language and frame issues in ways that relate to the political and social background of the audiences we’re trying to engage with.

AAAS members, when you plot them alongside other social groups on axes of party affiliation and ideological orientation, rank among the most politically homogeneous groups in American society — comparable in their uniformity to Mormon church members, Tea Party members, and Fox News viewers.

What this means is that in terms of being politically like-minded, we all tend to read the same news sources, the same blogs. We tend to accept the same narratives about our political differences and the reasons for gridlock. We arrive at the same attributions and judgments about who is responsible for policy failures.

For many scientists, a policy like cap-and-trade might intuitively seem like the obvious response to climate change. For a member of the public with a different political background, that same policy can intuitively signal real reservations. It’s very difficult for us to understand what those sources of conflict actually are.

Strategic communication model (17:26—24:31)

Nisbet: Based on our own biases, a second model — what I call the strategic communication model, or what Dominique Brossard and Bruce Lewenstein call the social contextualist model — draws upon research to better understand audiences, test messages, and identify opinion leaders who are trusted sources within the audiences you’re trying to reach.

A good example of how this was done is the National Academies booklet Science, Evolution, and Creationism. This was aimed as a resource for PTA members, local school board members, and lawyers, so they could effectively talk about the importance of teaching evolutionary science in schools.

In putting together this booklet, the authors could have chosen any number of points of emphasis and frames. What focus groups and surveys found was that one way the public recognized the importance of teaching evolutionary science was to talk about evolution as a basic building block of medicine. So when you open the booklet, one of the main callouts is: evolution and medicine — combating new infectious diseases.

Another way the public recognized its value was to talk about its importance to innovations in agriculture. And then, not surprisingly, also to reaffirm for the public that many religious leaders and many scientists see no conflict between the teaching of evolution and their own religious beliefs.

Another example of strategic communication research that has gotten a lot of attention on climate change is the work from George Mason and Yale called Global Warming’s Six Americas. This audience segmentation scheme — borrowed from research in marketing and public health campaigns — asks people about forty different questions about their climate change attitudes, beliefs, knowledge, and risk perceptions, then statistically segments them into six distinct audience categories.

When you start to look at the public this way, you get away from thinking about them only in binary terms — liberal versus conservative, believers versus deniers. In fact, you have about 15% of the public who are truly alarmed by climate change and about 10% who are truly dismissive. In between, about two-thirds of the public are relatively ambivalent on a continuum of ambivalence about risk perceptions, beliefs, and what they think can or should be done.

Work that I’ve been doing with Ed Maibach and Tony Leiserowitz uses this audience segmentation scheme to randomly assign people within each audience segment to three different message conditions. One message condition frames climate change as an environmental threat. The second frames it as a public health threat. The third frames it as a national security risk.

What’s interesting — and this is why you want to do message testing — is that you often find what are called boomerang effects. A message you think works might actually backfire.

One message that has been presumed to work on climate change is to frame it as a national security problem. But in a paper we published in the journal Climatic Change, what we find is that the most dismissive audiences react with the most anger when climate change is talked about as a national security problem. What diffuses their anger most — among both the doubtful and the dismissive — is talking about climate change as a public health problem.

There are several trade-offs to the strategic communication model.

One is that you can have a lot of success if you spend a lot of money. Proposition campaigns in Washington and California on food biotech have spent between twenty and forty million dollars and have been able to move polls very quickly. But when that type of spending comes from outside interests within a state, it raises further questions about conflict of interest and manipulation. Is this science in the private interest or in the public interest?

Even when you have good research on message strategy — on climate change or evolution — it can be difficult for a broad-based group of scientists to readily use and adopt that information, even if it is evidence-based.

And as we see on issues like stem cell research, sometimes strategic communication and targeting can lead to more fragmentation and more polarization rather than more consensus.

Ultimately, we also have to think about under what conditions public opinion matters. Does strategic communication lead to good policy? Which publics actually matter in terms of informing science policy — an engaged issue-based public, or the broader general public?

Public engagement and dialogue model (24:32—26:25)

Nisbet: The third model is the public engagement and dialogue model.

Instead of thinking about a dissemination or strategic approach to communication, this is where you invite the public into the process of decision-making itself. It recognizes that the public has its own lay expertise. Earlier today someone mentioned that scientists can often learn from farmers and gain real scientific insights from the lay experience and expertise of people on the ground.

This engagement model has relied heavily on public consultation exercises such as public meetings and deliberative forums. I would argue we’re also now seeing a lot of online forums serve this function.

Andrew Revkin’s Dot Earth blog at the New York Times is an example of an experienced journalist acting as a broker of dialogue — mixing and bridging different perspectives on climate change. Ensia, an environmental magazine at the Institute on the Environment, is another example of blurring and bridging different perspectives, combining discussion of science with policy commentary.

The goal of this model — in its strongest form — is to democratize the governance of science and technology, to invite the public into the decision-making process, and to enhance the civic capacity of regions to debate and collaborate on complex problems.

Research shows that these models increase participant trust and knowledge. Under some conditions, they can soften group differences and polarization. They can offer important insights on policy options and adapt knowledge and policy to local context.

Critics, however, have questioned whether the people who turn out to these meetings are representative. Whether the meetings might give voice to minority views or views not in line with scientific consensus. Or whether, if these meetings do not lead to real policy input and public involvement in decisions, they simply become another form of public relations and strategic communication.

Stakeholder-driven science and lay expertise model (26:26—28:19)

Nisbet: The final model is a variant of the public engagement model, referred to as stakeholder-driven science or the lay expertise model.

Coming out of sustainability science, this model holds that in order for research to effectively address the needs of society, it has to be co-produced with the public through consultation — early on, in the research agenda-setting process itself. The public and stakeholders who will use that research should be consulted before the research agenda is set.

The emphasis is on research that is usable, problem-solving, and socially acceptable, aligning research efforts with national, state, or local needs.

Some of the early research on this has been done at the University of Maine through the Sustainability Solutions Initiative, a five-year, twenty-million-dollar NSF EPSCoR grant. It’s an important case study to look at.

Some findings show that by inviting the public and stakeholders into the research process early on — and using the research process itself as a context for communication and participation — it promotes enhanced trust, appreciation, and support for research institutions, especially state universities and land-grant universities, among public stakeholders and policy makers.

But as you can imagine, it can be very time-consuming and resource-intensive. As the SSI team puts it, it’s messy — that’s essentially their slogan for it. And it does not easily lead into traditional forms of collaboration, publication, or the academic credit model.

So that was a whirlwind overview of twenty years of research on science communication models and public engagement. We have a great panel to talk about their own work and reflect on how it might fit with some of these models and some of the issues addressed throughout the day.

Recommended reading

General overviews and major themes

• Miller, S. (2001). Public understanding of science at a crossroads. Public Understanding of Science, 10 (1), 115-120. [PDF].

• Brossard, D., & Lewenstein, B. V. (2009). A Critical Appraisal of Models of Public Understanding of Science: Using Practice to Inform Theory. In L. Kahlor & P. Stout (Eds.), Communicating Science: New Agendas in Communication(pp. 11-39). New York: Routledge. [PDF]

• Nisbet, M.C. & Scheufele, D.A. (2009). What’s Next for Science Communication? Promising Directions and Lingering Distractions. American Journal of Botany, 96 (10), 1767-1778. (PDF).

• Nisbet, M.C. & Scheufele, D.A. (2012, July 23). Scientists’ Intuitive Failures. The Scientist magazine. [HTML]

• Borchelt R. (2008). Public Relations in Science: Managing the Trust Portfolio. In Bucchi M., Trench B. [Eds.], Handbook of Public Communication on Science and Technology, 147-158. Routledge, London, UK. [PDF]

• Irwin A. (2008). Risk, Science and Public Communication: Third-Order Thinking about Scientific Culture. In Bucchi M., Trench, B. [Eds.] Handbook of Public Communication on Science and Technology, pg. 111-130. Routledge, London UK [PDF]

• CBC Radio (2008). Interview with Brian Wynne. How to Think about Science series. Listen to Podcastand/or read transcript of interview [PDF]

Popularization, scientists, and political controversy

• Hilgartner, S. (1990). The dominant view of popularization: Conceptual problems, political uses. Social Studies of Science, 519-539. [PDF]

• Nisbet, M.C. & Lewenstein, B.V. (2002). Biotechnology and the American media: The Policy Process and the Elite Press, 1970 to 1999. Science Communication, 23 (4) 359-391. [PDF]

• Mooney, C. & Nisbet, M.C. (2005, Sept./Oct.). When Coverage of Evolution Shifts to the Political and Opinion Pages, the Scientific Context Falls Away, Unraveling Darwin. Columbia Journalism Review, 31-39. [Cover article] [PDF] [HTML]

• Nisbet, M.C., Brossard, D., & Kroepsch, A. (2003). Framing Science: The Stem Cell Controversy in an Age of Press/Politics. Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics,8 (2), 36-70. [PDF]

• Fahy, D. & Nisbet, M.C. (2011). The Science Journalist Online: Shifting Roles and Emerging Practices. Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism, 12: 778-793. [HTML]

• Brossard, D. (2013). New Media Landscapes and the Science Information Consumer Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [HTML]

• Bubela, T., Nisbet, M.C. et al. (2009). Science Communication Re-Considered. Nature Biotechnology, 27,514-518. [PDF]

• Caulfield, T. (2005). ”Popular Media, Biotechnology and the ‘Cycle of Hype’.” Journal of Health Law and Policy 213-233. [PDF]

• Nelkin, D. (1992). Controversy: The Politics of Technical Decisions. Third Edition. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

• Sarewitz, D. (2004). How Science makes environmental controversies worse. Environment Science and Policy, 7:385-403. [PDF]

• Kahan, D. (2012, Aug. 15). Why We Are Poles Apart on Climate Change. Nature. [HTML].

• Besley, J. & Nisbet, M.C. (2013). How Scientists View the Media, the Public, and the Political Process. Public Understanding of Science, 22: 644-659. [PDF] [HTML summary]

Public engagement: Advantages and pitfalls

• Labov, J. and Pope, B.K. (2008). Understanding our audiences: The design and evolution of Science, Evolution, and Creationism. CBE Life Sciences Education, 7(1): 20-24.

• Scheufele, D. A. (2013). Communicating science in social settings. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [HTML]

• Maibach EW, Roser-Renouf C, Leiserowitz A (2008). Communication and Marketing as Climate Change Intervention Assets: A Public Health Perspective. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 35(5), 488-500. [HTML]

• Maibach, E. W., Leiserowitz, A., Roser-Renouf, C., & Mertz, C. (2011). Identifying like-minded audiences for global warming public engagement campaigns: An audience segmentation analysis and tool development. PloS One, 6(3), e17571. [HTML]

• Nisbet, M.C. & Kotcher, J. (2009). A Two Step Flow of Influence? Opinion-Leader Campaigns on Climate Change. Science Communication, 30, 328-358. (PDF).

• Myers, T., Nisbet, M.C., Maibach, E.W., & Leiserowitz, A. (2012). A Public Health Frame Arouses Hopeful Emotions about Climate Change. Climatic Change Research Letters, 1105-1121. [PDF]

• Nisbet, M.C. (2009). The Ethics of Framing Science. In B. Nerlich, B. Larson, & R. Elliott (Eds.). Communicating Biological Sciences: Ethical and Metaphorical Dimensions (pp 51-74). London: Ashgate. [HTML] [PDF].

• Einsiedel, E. and Eastlick, D.L. (2001). Consensus conferences as deliberative democracy: A communications perspective. Science Communication 21 (4):323-343. [PDF]

• Einsiedel E. (2008). Public Engagement and Dialogue: A Research Review. In Bucchi M., Trench, B. [Eds.], Handbook of Public Communication on Science and Technology, 173-185. Routledge, London, UK [PDF].

• Besley, J. C., McComas, K. A. & Trumbo, C. W. (2012). Citizen views about public meetings. Journal of Risk Research, 15(4), 355-372.

• Besley, J. C., Kramer, V. L., Yao, Q. & Toumey, C. P. (2008). Interpersonal discussion following citizen engagement on emerging technology. Science Communication, 30(4), 209-235.

• Binder, A. R., Scheufele, D. A., & Brossard, D. (2012). Misguided science policy? The pitfalls of using public meetings as surrogate gauges of public opinion. The Scientist magazine [HTML].

• Scheufele, D.A. (2011). Modern Citizenship or Policy Dead End? Evaluating the Need for Public Participation in Science Policy Making, and Why Public Meetings May Not Be the Answer. Discussion Paper. Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and the Press. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. [PDF]

• World Wide Views of Global Warming

• World Wide Views of Biodiversity

Sustainability science and lay expertise: Promise and challenges

• Hall, D.M, Silka, L., & Lindenfield, L. (2012). Advancing Science and Improving Quality of Place: Linking Knowledge with Action in Maine’s Sustainability Solutions Initiative. Maine Policy Review 21.2, 22-29. [PDF]

• Lindenfeld, L.A., D.M. Hall, B. McGreavy, L. Silka, D. Hart. 2012. Creating a place for Communication Research in Sustainability Science. Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature & Culture. Volume 6 (March), pp. 23-43 [PDF].

• Noblet, C.L., Lindenfeld, L.A., & Anderson, M. (2013). Environmental Worldviews: A Point of Common Contact or Barrier? Sustainability, 5(11), 4825-4892. [PDF]

• University of Maine’s Sustainability Solutions Institute and Sen. George Mitchell Center

• MPBN Sustainable Maine series