Dec 4, 2016 06:03 PM
Reading Literature Won’t Give You Superpowers
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archi...on/509405/
EXCERPT: Psychologists have failed to replicate a famous study suggesting that short fiction improves readers’ abilities to read the emotional states of others. [...] Though Goldstein’s group didn’t replicate the more famous finding of the original study, they did find a common result: People who were lifelong readers of fiction [...] had significantly higher scores on the RMET. “But this is a correlation”—not a causation!—“and it falls under all the caveats that we need to put on a correlational finding,” Goldstein added. [...] a completely unrelated variable might explain the correlation. Along with raising objections from the authors of the original study, this newer paper is a reminder of the way reporting can reshape scientific ideas. Most popular coverage of the original study talked about this work in terms of “empathy,” but the researchers themselves say that’s not quite the same thing as theory of mind....
How Will Trump Use Science to Further His Political Agenda?
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archi...ss/508916/
EXCERPT: [...] about Clinton’s appeal to science as a partisan rallying cry way back in July. It was clearly in response to the mockery of Trump and his supporters as “anti-science.” But “anti-science” is a dangerously simplistic label. [...] In fact, the right and so-called alt-right is happy to appeal to science’s prestige when pushing their own views. [...] The trappings of science can be decoupled from the actual rigor of science. In a post-fact, post-expert world, science still holds currency. It just has to be your facts and your experts.
Stephen Colbert, who famously coined “truthiness,” less famously also came up with “factiness.” If “truthiness” is a feeling of truth with a disregard for the facts, then “factiness” is using actual facts to paint a misleading truth. [...] The morning after the election, Nathan Jurgenson also wrote, independently it seems and in less absurdist terms than Colbert, about factiness on the left:
I’ll suggest that factiness doesn’t actually cleave neatly across the left and the right. It’s an outgrowth of our cognitive biases. We often make decisions emotionally, sometimes based on tribal affiliations; then we marshall the facts that prove us right while discarding the ones that prove us wrong.
As such, throwing more facts at climate deniers hasn’t convinced them. [...One study...] found that scientific literacy did not correlate with perceiving climate change as a greater risk. Rather, higher scientific literacy made people more extreme in how they viewed climate change—on both sides. Expressing a view on climate change is often a statement of identity, more than anything else.
Factiness is why using the veneer of science to rationalize an idea is dangerous, making the idea appear more justified than it really is. It is pro-science in appearance, but anti-science in spirit....
That brings to me a troubling response I saw to Clinton’s DNC speech, that “science is not a belief.” In theory, science provides an objective framework for finding truths about the world. I think that’s what these responses were getting at. But in practice, science is conducted by humans with biases, often blind to them. To ignore how the practice of science is intertwined with politics is to be blind, in turn, to the coming changes. As a President Trump pulls the discourse in his direction, the ground will shift slowly but surely shift underneath our feet....
How Trump Could Wage a War on Scientific Expertise
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archi...se/509378/
EXCERPT: The mechanics of stripping empiricism out of America’s regulatory systems. [...] It is clear where president-elect Donald Trump stands. “The monstrosity that is the Federal Government with its pages and pages of rules and regulations has been a disaster for the American economy and job growth,” he said during his campaign. Come January, he will have the power to take on that perceived monster. [...] The list includes the FDA’s ban on chemicals in antibacterial soaps. It includes EPA rules on methane and ozone emissions, formaldehyde levels in wood products, and efficiency standards for heavy vehicles. It includes rules on drilling for Arctic oil, managing wastewater from fracking, and protecting elephants from poaching. “There’ll be strong incentive for the Republicans to go after as many regulations as they can,” says Amit Narang, a regulatory policy advocate at Public Citizen....
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archi...on/509405/
EXCERPT: Psychologists have failed to replicate a famous study suggesting that short fiction improves readers’ abilities to read the emotional states of others. [...] Though Goldstein’s group didn’t replicate the more famous finding of the original study, they did find a common result: People who were lifelong readers of fiction [...] had significantly higher scores on the RMET. “But this is a correlation”—not a causation!—“and it falls under all the caveats that we need to put on a correlational finding,” Goldstein added. [...] a completely unrelated variable might explain the correlation. Along with raising objections from the authors of the original study, this newer paper is a reminder of the way reporting can reshape scientific ideas. Most popular coverage of the original study talked about this work in terms of “empathy,” but the researchers themselves say that’s not quite the same thing as theory of mind....
How Will Trump Use Science to Further His Political Agenda?
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archi...ss/508916/
EXCERPT: [...] about Clinton’s appeal to science as a partisan rallying cry way back in July. It was clearly in response to the mockery of Trump and his supporters as “anti-science.” But “anti-science” is a dangerously simplistic label. [...] In fact, the right and so-called alt-right is happy to appeal to science’s prestige when pushing their own views. [...] The trappings of science can be decoupled from the actual rigor of science. In a post-fact, post-expert world, science still holds currency. It just has to be your facts and your experts.
Stephen Colbert, who famously coined “truthiness,” less famously also came up with “factiness.” If “truthiness” is a feeling of truth with a disregard for the facts, then “factiness” is using actual facts to paint a misleading truth. [...] The morning after the election, Nathan Jurgenson also wrote, independently it seems and in less absurdist terms than Colbert, about factiness on the left:
Quote:Factiness is the taste for the feel and aesthetic of “facts,” often at the expense of missing the truth. From silly self-help-y TED talks to bad NPR-style neuroscience science updates to wrapping ourselves in the misleading scientism of Fivethirtyeight statistics, factiness is obsessing over and covering ourselves in fact after fact while still missing bigger truths.
I’ll suggest that factiness doesn’t actually cleave neatly across the left and the right. It’s an outgrowth of our cognitive biases. We often make decisions emotionally, sometimes based on tribal affiliations; then we marshall the facts that prove us right while discarding the ones that prove us wrong.
As such, throwing more facts at climate deniers hasn’t convinced them. [...One study...] found that scientific literacy did not correlate with perceiving climate change as a greater risk. Rather, higher scientific literacy made people more extreme in how they viewed climate change—on both sides. Expressing a view on climate change is often a statement of identity, more than anything else.
Factiness is why using the veneer of science to rationalize an idea is dangerous, making the idea appear more justified than it really is. It is pro-science in appearance, but anti-science in spirit....
That brings to me a troubling response I saw to Clinton’s DNC speech, that “science is not a belief.” In theory, science provides an objective framework for finding truths about the world. I think that’s what these responses were getting at. But in practice, science is conducted by humans with biases, often blind to them. To ignore how the practice of science is intertwined with politics is to be blind, in turn, to the coming changes. As a President Trump pulls the discourse in his direction, the ground will shift slowly but surely shift underneath our feet....
How Trump Could Wage a War on Scientific Expertise
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archi...se/509378/
EXCERPT: The mechanics of stripping empiricism out of America’s regulatory systems. [...] It is clear where president-elect Donald Trump stands. “The monstrosity that is the Federal Government with its pages and pages of rules and regulations has been a disaster for the American economy and job growth,” he said during his campaign. Come January, he will have the power to take on that perceived monster. [...] The list includes the FDA’s ban on chemicals in antibacterial soaps. It includes EPA rules on methane and ozone emissions, formaldehyde levels in wood products, and efficiency standards for heavy vehicles. It includes rules on drilling for Arctic oil, managing wastewater from fracking, and protecting elephants from poaching. “There’ll be strong incentive for the Republicans to go after as many regulations as they can,” says Amit Narang, a regulatory policy advocate at Public Citizen....
