Trust and the scientific process
Trust is hard won – bloody hard if, in my case, you are communicating complex and controversial science. Worse is that it is all too easy to lose that trust, or never get it in the first place.
Tangly trust
Trust sounds a relatively simple concept, but it is cloaked in a tangle of ethical and psychological threads that challenge us science communicators.
I am at the Australian Science Communicators conference where more than a handful of presenters and discussions in possibly the majority of sessions have raised this point.
OK, it is hardly a revelation that trust is important. As communicators we want to know how to gain this trust. Obviously, if you work for Monsanto or Exxon, even using the Pope (or Charles Darwin) as your PR front man, you are going to struggle to gain even your Mum’s trust.
Honest, transparent….blah, blah is easy to be, but you still have to get your audience to believe that you are open and honest.
Vaccination
The governments’, or their health-related agencys’, battle with anti-vaccination groups is an example that has been used at the conference. The science is pretty conclusive about the safety and benefits of vaccination, but it only takes a small element of uncertainty to be introduced by those who oppose vaccination to make parents question vaccination as a concept. If there is any risk to my child why would I take it? The point was raised that parents today lack any first-hand knowledge of the diseases we are vaccinated against; their devastation and often crippling affects on the family and economy. Thus they have only conflicting information as their only reference point. But this drives home the difficulty of our task of establishing trust. One only has to look at the dramatic drop in MMR (mumps, measles, rubella) vaccine in Europe following the press conference announcing the apparent link between the vaccine and autism – a link that no scientist since has been able to confirm – to see what uncertainty can do. Check what the Guardian’s Ben Goldacre has to say
Who do you believe?
Why would parents in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence choose to place trust is the anti-vaccination crowd? I suspect that generally it is not that parents trust the anti- crowd, or distrust the government (or the science, which is a separate issue), it is just that now doubt exists that relates to the health of their children and that doubt is sometimes enough to make the risk unacceptable. Parents also have a wealth of information from a variety of, often conflicting, sources readily accessible on the Internet; information that was not available or accessible even 30 years ago. And we all have an established moral/ethical position formed from years of experience (and genetics?) that influences what information we accept or reject: It is well established that we will often seek information that supports our view or ethics and use that as justification for our decisions. I could go on….This New Scientist article explores this a bit.
Trust me, I am with the GNTIS
So simply working to make people trust me is suddenly more complex. Fortunately, my role with the GNTIS (or techNyou as we are about to become) does not require me to try and convince you that you need to get your child vaccinated, or that GM foods and nanoparticles are safe. I just facilitate the debate and help you make up your own mind. But why would you believe that.