Problem with science today and the war on reason

In summary, a recent Guardian article discusses the problem with science today and the war on reason. The article highlights the "scicomm" effect as a contributing factor to people being less willing to accept science, but also points to phenomena like confirmation bias and the "boy cried wolf" factor. Other factors such as growing distrust of authority and exposure to mass media also play a role. Scientists themselves may also be partly to blame for not carefully distinguishing varying levels of confidence in different parts of science. In order to combat these issues, there are efforts being made to educate the public on how to decipher the truth and combat "BS." However, there is still a massive task in front of science educators and communicators in order to gain the trust of
  • #36
PeterDonis said:
I'd be interested to look into this. Do you have any references that discuss it?

A Sourcebook in Medieval Science edited by Edward Grant. Page 275 contains excerpts from Buridan's treatise on the subject.
 
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  • #37
Dr. Courtney said:
Of course. Null results should be published. But it seems to me that this requirement should be supported and enforced by the funding agencies rather than by external authorities. And in a business environment, why does one company who funded drug research care if another (competing) company wastes money on a dead end product?

But maybe running science like a business is part of the problem. I think that science would operate best if researchers could transcend capitalism. Knowledge for knowledge's sake! Hard to imagine getting back to that without scientists just being independently wealthy, but the profit motive of research is another one of the contributing factors to public distrust and dislike of science. I recall hearing years ago that certain drugs were being intentionally held back from the public because of patents. I don't know how true this is, but a quick google search uncovers a lot of popular articles on the subject.
 
  • #38
What I see is that people doubt everything they hear or read - and this is a good thing.

Human civilization had HUGE problems when people were required to unquestioningly accept prevailing beliefs (religion, "the King has a divine right to rule over us", etc). It took many centuries to get rid of that.

Of course, in the population of billions of people, there will be crackpots which see a conspiracy and lies everywhere. (I just watched a flat earther youtube video which was discussing recent SpaceX launch and how "obviously fake" it is). Ignore the nutty ones (but accept that they will always exist); argue with those having doubts who nevertheless look rational.
 
  • #39
Choppy said:
Other factors:
- growing distrust of authority in general
- exposure to mass commercial media makes people skeptical of just about everything they hear
- binary vs spectral conditions: whether you accept creation or not is reasonably black and white, with climate change there are different positions: the climate isn't changing at all, the climate is changing, but humans aren't at fault, the climate is changing and humans are part of the problem, the climate is changing and carbon emission from human activities is the primary reason, etc.
I think you're on the right track. I attempt similar analysis, but my perspective is a bit different.

The most notorious clash between science and the public has to do with climate change. Climate science is one thing. Remedial actions (including possibly no action at all) is not science, it is a moral question having to do with values. Some scientists say publicly, "We predict climate change. Therefore you better do what we say regarding renewable energy or else you are an anti-science denier," I view that as scientific malpractice that misrepresents their opinions on human behavior and morality as being scientifically based. Even scientists whose field has nothing to do with climatology, are telling the public that only scientists should be allowed to have valid opinions about climate or climate remedies.

Another case. I know of a young girl studying MWI at Dartmouth. She plans to make MWI study her career. That means a lifetime living on public money, having no accountability or ever being required to produce a deliverable that advances the state of the art. When taxpayers object, they are told to shut up. As non-scientists they are not entitled to voice opinions. The public views science as yet another special interest group with their hands out demanding public money, but refusing to justify their demands except to fellow scientists. If you disagree, show me a scientific community that does not believe that more money, more power, more influence, more fame for themselves would not be a good thing.

I would not use the word authoritarian. I think "scientific priesthood" is a better description. Some in the public fear such a priesthood and imagine (rightly or wrongly) that they are being told by this priesthood "Hear, believe, and obey us on all matters that we deem science-related."

I also believe that we need a bit of realism in what we expect from public behavior. Public opinion is an extremely blunt instrument. There is no mechanism to accurately articulate the what and why of public opinion. When the public is angry at some group, their ire has no surgical precision, they simply lash out regarding anything and everything the target group does or says, often quite irrationally. By analogy, when lovers spat, it is common for them to say hurtful things that make no sense. Critics of the public focusing on such irrationality fail to address the root issues that cause the public anger in the first place.
 
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  • #40
anorlunda said:
I would not use the word authoritarian. I think "scientific priesthood" is a better description. Some in the public fear such a priesthood and imagine (rightly or wrongly) that they are being told by this priesthood "Hear, believe, and obey us on all matters that we deem science-related."

Agreed. We have to reject attempts to construct and defend the "scientific priesthood" that is only accountable to other members of the "scientific priesthood." Some years ago, in arguing to retain Popper's falsifiability and Feynman's view experiment as the ultimate arbiter of science, a colleague and I wrote:

Defining science as “observationally constrained model building” is barely more specific than defining science as “what scientists do.” How far is this from defining sound science as “what scientists say” (with appropriate homage to peer review)? At this point, is science really a powerful, objective epistemology for exploring natural law, or have we merely replaced one set of authorities (the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages) with another (the scientists of the 21st century)?

See: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0812/0812.4932.pdf
 
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  • #41
Dr. Courtney said:
I think we can all agree that validated predictions of the future emergence of new species would be more impressive
Genetic changes are random and the long term natural process which selects them, leading to enitrely new species, is an interaction with a changing environment and other species which is non linear and chaotic. Predictions are not possible under those conditions. That is, sometimes KT impacts happen.

That said, I agree with the points above about predictive power association with the best science. If Evolution is weak in that regard, no apologies to Darwin.
 
  • #42
Dr. Courtney said:
Our understanding will be much better when we can say, "Given your genome, you will (100%) or will not (0%) develop lung cancer if you smoke ZZ packs a day."
If anybody ever says that then they are lying. That is not a reasonable expectation to set, we can't even say 100% that the sun will come up tomorrow.

There is nothing wrong with a probabilistic prediction. It is still predictive, and is more honest for inductive reasoning.
 
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  • #43
I think that there are three issues here, all three of which are contributors to a growing distrust of scientific institutions:

The first is an education problem. A lot of science instruction is teaching a collection Scientific Facts instead of teaching the scientific method and general inductive reasoning.

The second is the communication issue that has been hit on in the scicom discussion above.

The third is the current "replicability crisis". This is the one that I believe this generation of scientists most needs to address. However, I would take it in context. Scientific practice has been substantially refined over the years. Even a century ago it was uncommon to include error bars in any charts, today it is mandatory in many fields as a generation of scientists understood the importance. Similarly, statistical, reporting, and experimental methods addressing replicability are known within the community, and can be broadly adopted as their importance is recognized.
 
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  • #44
anorlunda said:
I would not use the word authoritarian. I think "scientific priesthood" is a better description. Some in the public fear such a priesthood and imagine (rightly or wrongly) that they are being told by this priesthood "Hear, believe, and obey us on all matters that we deem science-related."
I think it's a bit more difficult than that. If one wants to compare this to religious examples, then most scientists are not 'priests', but 'hermits' or 'saints' who study and develop the mystic knowledge. The priesthood was always a different class, which was expected to interpret and convey the mystic knowledge to the masses - but as can be seen in history this kind of relationship always ended in something else and so 'religion' (this case: science) always became a tool to keep up, promote or create authority.

Just look at the situation around GW and environmental protection...
 
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  • #45
Dale said:
If anybody ever says that then they are lying. That is not a reasonable expectation to set, we can't even say 100% that the sun will come up tomorrow.

There is nothing wrong with a probabilistic prediction. It is still predictive, and is more honest for inductive reasoning.
I agree with your point, but would clarify: "the sun will rise tomorrow" is not a probabilistic prediction, it is an exact calculation with a [small] potential experimental error in that the test might get interrupted by, say, Planet X careening through the solar system and splitting Earth in half. So it isn't a great example of a similar probability issue.

"Your odds of getting Type 2 diabetes are 95%" is a probabilistic prediction of exactly the same type as "This Pd103 atom has a 95% chance of decaying in 63 days." It is inherrently impossible for a probability to ever be 100% even excluding experimental error. That's just their nature -- they don't give exact answers. But if the question is framed differently, they can give predictions that are extraordinarily precise: "50% of the atoms in this 1g sample of Pd 103 will decay in 17 days".

So (agreeing with you) it is unfair to expect the prediction "95% of people with this gene sequence will get type 2 diabetes" to enable a high precision result for an individual in that population -- even setting aside confounding factors in the population, such as the individual subjects' ability to affect the outcome of the experiment!

@Dr. Courtney - the silver lining on your bad news that you are very likely to get type 2 diabetes is that your level of uncertainty is actually pretty low compared to others who get similar news: Angelina Jolie removed her breasts on more uncertain odds than that!

TL;DR - Probabilistic predictions can be extremely accurate, but they have to be used properly.
 
  • #46
russ_watters said:
@Dr. Courtney - the silver lining on your bad news that you are very likely to get type 2 diabetes is that your level of uncertainty is actually pretty low compared to others who get similar news: Angelina Jolie removed her breasts on more uncertain odds than that!

When someone assigns a 0% or 100% probability to an event, I give them the benefit of the doubt and do not assume dishonesty any more than I would if they assigned a 50% probability to an event. My tentative assumption is that they are rounding, hopefully using the rules of significant figures. This leads me to begin considering the uncertainty in the predicted probabilities.

But, being an optimist, I think there is a very good chance that behavioral modifications can put me in the 5% who do not get type 2 diabetes. Rather than take the science as an unavoidable sentence, I've used it to motivate effective action (which should be a big goal of most medical science). The error bars are bigger, but with exercise, dietary modifications, and weight loss, I can reduce my odds to well under 50%, at least within the first decade after a pre-diabetic diagnosis. And the way diabetes works, is an initial diagnosis at 60 rather than at 50 likely results in a much higher quality of life for the remaining years.

So, in some ways, it is about understanding the probabilities. In other ways, it is about reducing the uncertainties. Science is always better if scientists can better understand the probabilities and reduce the error bars. However, in a lot of fields, having an estimate of a probability with large error bars is great progress compared with the earlier state of affairs where there are no quantitative predictions or the quantitative predictions are really only guesses.
 
  • #47
If I correctly interpret the subject of this thread is the public reputation of science. There are two themes running in the thread. Both are relevant to the thread's topic..
  1. The difficulty of accurately conveying scientific knowledge to a public audience. Obviously, this applies only to the tiny subset of scientific knowledge that the public is interested in hearing about.
  2. The public nonscientific behavior of some scientists acting individually or as a community. Science is but one of many communities vying for public trust and authority. In that sense, science competes with politicians, celebrities, journalists, religions, and others in a non-zero-sum-game of winning public trust.
The difference between the reputation of science and the reputation of scientists is a hair that I don't think is worth splitting.
 
  • #48
Dr. Courtney said:
When someone assigns a 0% or 100% probability to an event, I give them the benefit of the doubt and do not assume dishonesty any more than I would if they assigned a 50% probability to an event. My tentative assumption is that they are rounding, hopefully using the rules of significant figures. This leads me to begin considering the uncertainty in the predicted probabilities.
Ok...
But, being an optimist, I think there is a very good chance that behavioral modifications can put me in the 5% who do not get type 2 diabetes. Rather than take the science as an unavoidable sentence, I've used it to motivate effective action (which should be a big goal of most medical science). The error bars are bigger, but with exercise, dietary modifications, and weight loss, I can reduce my odds to well under 50%, at least within the first decade after a pre-diabetic diagnosis.
Agreed. But that's just a matter of how the doctor frames the discussion: indeed, that's probably the primary reason for having it!

The doctor is telling you the odds (if you don't attempt to change them) and telling you that you can change the odds. That isn't a flaw in the science, it is a separate/special power you are being given, to change the experiment!
So, in some ways, it is about understanding the probabilities. In other ways, it is about reducing the uncertainties. Science is always better if scientists can better understand the probabilities and reduce the error bars.
I don't want to make this pedantic, but it seems to me that the issue is more about understanding probabilities and therefore properly framing the question than about "error bars". Stating a half life of an isotope isn't a massively wide error bar (50% +/-50%?), it is extraordinarily precise probability. So:
However, in a lot of fields, having an estimate of a probability with large error bars is great progress compared with the earlier state of affairs where there are no quantitative predictions or the quantitative predictions are really only guesses.
I'd be curious as to what other issues/fields you would characterize probabilistic data/predictions as having wide "error bars" in a way similar to your genetic odds of diabetes... If you say "social sciences", then I think we really do disagree...
 
  • #49
russ_watters said:
I agree with your point, but would clarify: "the sun will rise tomorrow" is not a probabilistic prediction, it is an exact calculation with a [small] potential experimental error in that the test might get interrupted by, say, Planet X careening through the solar system and splitting Earth in half. So it isn't a great example of a similar probability issue.

"Your odds of getting Type 2 diabetes are 95%" is a probabilistic prediction of exactly the same type as "This Pd103 atom has a 95% chance of decaying in 63 days." It is inherrently impossible for a probability to ever be 100% even excluding experimental error. That's just their nature -- they don't give exact answers
I think I understand what you are saying. You are drawing a distinction between cases where the uncertainty is due to lack of knowledge of the sources (experimental error) but the laws are exact compared to cases where the uncertainty is part of the laws themselves.

I am a "moderate" Bayesian, and the Bayesian approach strongly informs my thinking about the process of inductive reasoning. So, what I was getting at is that there is never a 100% posterior, regardless of the likelihood and the data (assuming an uncertain prior). This applies both to deterministic hypotheses and probabilistic hypotheses.
 
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  • #50
:smile:
Dale said:
I am a "moderate" Bayesian

That would make an awesome t-shirt :smile:
 
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  • #52
russ_watters said:
I don't want to make this pedantic, but it seems to me that the issue is more about understanding probabilities and therefore properly framing the question than about "error bars". Stating a half life of an isotope isn't a massively wide error bar (50% +/-50%?), it is extraordinarily precise probability. So:

I'd be curious as to what other issues/fields you would characterize probabilistic data/predictions as having wide "error bars" in a way similar to your genetic odds of diabetes... If you say "social sciences", then I think we really do disagree...

No, I am thinking about most medical science and biomechanical risk of injury. Stuff like LD50 for toxins or overdoses. (Lethal Dose 50%, the dose that is expected to cause death 50% of the time.) The head acceleration that is expected to cause a given level of traumatic brain injury (mild, moderate, or severe) 50% of the time. The force on the heel that will break the tibia 50% of the time. The height of a fall onto a hip that will fracture the femur of an "average" 70 year old woman 50% of the time. The blast wave parameters that will cause lung injury (or brain injury) 50% of the time. The probability of incapacitating an enemy soldier with a torso hit of a given bullet and a given impact energy.
 
  • #53
Dr. Courtney said:
No, I am thinking about most medical science and biomechanical risk of injury. Stuff like...
Ok, then I think we do agree. It seems to me in medicine there are a lot of probability based statistics/predictions that don't have clear-cut cause-effect relationships or have a lot of factors that may influence the probability significantly, making it hard to isolate the impact of one in particular. I don't think your example is necessarily a great one, but I do agree the issue exists.

Those examples are ones where I'd say there are so many confounding factors with major influences that they often aren't useful...except as motivational talking points during a doctor's visit.
 
  • #54
Greg Bernhardt said:
I can make that happen!
I'll take 5: XL, 1 black, 1 white, and 3 pink.
 
  • #55
The title of this thread is "Problem with science today and the war on reason " Does anybody have any data on the escalation of the implied distrust science in recent years. I have seen articles that say that about 20 years ago 70 - 80% of people trusted science. Is this "war" just a noisy refusal of a previously silent minority to accepts some facts from a few sciences that do not agree with their world view?
 
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  • #56
I don't think the war is on reason, it is about having "them" imposing a way of life on people. There are more and more laws constraining our daily behaviors and too often while invoking the name of science. It's really fun when the laws go our way, not so much when they don't. It's even worst if you're told you can't have a say because you are not an "expert".

That is what the war is about. Science is sadly caught in the middle.
 
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  • #57
jack action said:
I don't think the war is on reason, it is about having "them" imposing a way of life on people
I think that is a good point. There would probably be far fewer climate change objections if the climate change science were not being used politically to push through expensive policies. That is just a personal guess
 
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  • #58
Dale said:
I think that is a good point. There would probably be far fewer climate change objections if the climate change science were not being used politically to push through expensive policies.

We may be coming to a consensus. Such abuse of science for political purposes is an example of what I called scientific misbehavior. It tarnishes the reputation and credibility of the entire science community.

By the way, science will never reconcile with their public critics by using pejorative language like "war on reason." The people are sovereign. Problems are never solvable by insulting the sovereigns.
 
  • #59
Dale said:
There would probably be far fewer climate change objections if the climate change science were not being used politically to push through expensive policies.

I'm missing something. How expensive might it get if the issues which science predicts are not addressed. Or are you saying there are no scientific issue to be addressed. Isn't it why we have a government so as to address problems when the citizenry is adversely affected.

anorlunda said:
We may be coming to a consensus. Such abuse of science for political purposes is an example of what I called scientific misbehavior.
So what abuse for political purposes can you identify out side of the current administration's denial of CC.
 
  • #60
gleem said:
So what abuse for political purposes can you identify out side of the current administration's denial of CC.

The IPCC's perceived mission to persuade governments to adopt certain policies. Climate change science ends with predictions of future climates under a range of assumptions. Policy, any policy, is not science. Anyone advocating or opposing any policy when acting as a scientist and not just an ordinary citizen, is abusing science.
 
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  • #61
anorlunda said:
Anyone advocating or opposing any policy when acting as a scientist and not just an ordinary citizen, is abusing science

Are you saying that if a policies for whatever reason are inappropriate with regards to the science that scientists should not speak out as scientists?
 
  • #62
gleem said:
So what abuse for political purposes can you identify out side of the current administration's denial of CC.
Do you think that acceptance of CC is not used the similar way to achieve political/economical/whatever goals?

But it stands for genetics too. Or nuclear physics. Computer science. Chemistry. Astrophysics.
 
  • #63
Dale said:
There would probably be far fewer climate change objections if the climate change science were not being used politically to push through expensive policies. That is just a personal guess

My personal guess is actually the other way around: there would probably be very different climate change science if climate change science were not being used politically to push through certain policies. But either way, the fundamental problem is the same: science being done, not to figure out what model makes the best predictions, but to serve predetermined political ends.
 
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  • #64
gleem said:
I'm missing something. How expensive might it get if the issues which science predicts are not addressed.
Nobody knows how much or when, and that's a lot of the problem. But even if we knew, that wouldn't necessarily cause people to address it. See: Social Security and the New Orleans dike system
So what abuse for political purposes can you identify out side of the current administration's denial of CC.
You mean what issues? There are lots that should be obvious:
-Anti-Vax
-Anti-GMO/"organic"
-Anti-Nuclear
-Anti-abortion
-Herbal/natural remedies/supplements
Somewhat both sides of:
-Fracking
-Pipelines
-Clean energy
-Environmentalism in general

Some are of course interconnected.
 
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  • #65
gleem said:
Are you saying that if a policies for whatever reason are inappropriate with regards to the science that scientists should not speak out as scientists?

Yes that's almost right. But I said all policies, not just policies relevant to the science.

You can take off your Nobel-laureate-hat and put on your joe-sixpack-hat to speak about policy and politics. But when speaking in a public setting where scientists are afforded great deference and respect, you should utter only the science of your field, and not a word more.

"I want to leave this world a better place for my grandchildren." Many people feel that way. It is a moral choice. But a scientist's moral voice should not be any louder than any other citizen's moral voice. I am arguing for egalitarianism in morality and politics. I oppose elitism.

town meeting.jpg
 
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  • #66
anorlunda said:
But when speaking in a public setting where scientists are afforded great deference and respect, you should utter only the science of your field, and not a word more.

I could not agree with you more.
 
  • #67
russ_watters said:
You mean what issues? There are lots that should be obvious:
-Anti-Vax
-Anti-GMO/"organic"
-Anti-Nuclear
-Anti-abortion
-Herbal/natural remedies/supplements
Somewhat both sides of:
-Fracking
-Pipelines
-Clean energy
-Environmentalism in general

Yes, sure these are issue that can have political motivations insofar as they are use to ingratiate and curry favor with the electorate. But my question had to do with actual policies that misused science for political purposes. I mentioned climate change i.e. anti CC position of the current administration for the rescinding of environmental regulations as one,
 
  • #68
gleem said:
Yes, sure these are issue that can have political motivations insofar as they are use to ingratiate and curry favor with the electorate. But my question had to do with actual policies that misused science for political purposes. I mentioned climate change i.e. anti CC position of the current administration for the rescinding of environmental regulations as one,

I don't see a difference. For example, efforts to label GMOs are based on bad "science."
 
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  • #69
gleem said:
Yes, sure these are issue that can have political motivations insofar as they are use to ingratiate and curry favor with the electorate. But my question had to do with actual policies that misused science for political purposes. I mentioned climate change i.e. anti CC position of the current administration for the rescinding of environmental regulations as one,
Yes, as Student100 says, it's the same list. When politics and science mix on an issue, one side all but HAS to be on the side against science and sometimes both sides are.
 
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  • #70
gleem said:
I'm missing something. How expensive might it get if the issues which science predicts are not addressed. Or are you saying there are no scientific issue to be addressed.
I am saying that people generally don't care about your reasons when your action is to take money or power from them. The objection is to the action and not to the reason.
 
<h2>What is the problem with science today?</h2><p>The problem with science today is that it is often under attack from those who reject scientific evidence and reasoning. This can lead to a disregard for facts and a lack of trust in the scientific community.</p><h2>What is the "war on reason"?</h2><p>The "war on reason" refers to the increasing trend of dismissing scientific evidence and rational thinking in favor of personal beliefs and opinions. This can lead to a dangerous disregard for facts and a lack of critical thinking.</p><h2>How does the war on reason impact society?</h2><p>The war on reason can have damaging effects on society as it can lead to misinformation, ignorance, and a lack of progress. Without the use of reason and evidence-based thinking, important issues such as climate change, public health, and technological advancements may not be properly addressed.</p><h2>What can be done to combat the war on reason?</h2><p>To combat the war on reason, it is important for individuals to educate themselves on scientific principles and evidence-based thinking. It is also crucial for leaders and policymakers to prioritize and support scientific research and education. Additionally, promoting critical thinking and fact-checking can help combat misinformation.</p><h2>How can scientists and the scientific community address the problem with science today?</h2><p>Scientists and the scientific community can address the problem with science today by actively engaging with the public and promoting the importance of evidence-based thinking. They can also work towards improving communication and transparency in their research and findings. Additionally, scientists can advocate for policies that support science and combat the war on reason.</p>

What is the problem with science today?

The problem with science today is that it is often under attack from those who reject scientific evidence and reasoning. This can lead to a disregard for facts and a lack of trust in the scientific community.

What is the "war on reason"?

The "war on reason" refers to the increasing trend of dismissing scientific evidence and rational thinking in favor of personal beliefs and opinions. This can lead to a dangerous disregard for facts and a lack of critical thinking.

How does the war on reason impact society?

The war on reason can have damaging effects on society as it can lead to misinformation, ignorance, and a lack of progress. Without the use of reason and evidence-based thinking, important issues such as climate change, public health, and technological advancements may not be properly addressed.

What can be done to combat the war on reason?

To combat the war on reason, it is important for individuals to educate themselves on scientific principles and evidence-based thinking. It is also crucial for leaders and policymakers to prioritize and support scientific research and education. Additionally, promoting critical thinking and fact-checking can help combat misinformation.

How can scientists and the scientific community address the problem with science today?

Scientists and the scientific community can address the problem with science today by actively engaging with the public and promoting the importance of evidence-based thinking. They can also work towards improving communication and transparency in their research and findings. Additionally, scientists can advocate for policies that support science and combat the war on reason.

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