How Big Tobacco invented Donald Trump and Brexit (and what to do about it)

[coherent_light]

@wysinwyg

The problem with the emotional connection is that the whole point of science is to suppress the emotional connection to try to prevent the scientists’s pre-existing beliefs and biases from interfering with the results. This is incredibly hard to do – hence the replication crises among all the social sciences and even much of medical and nutrition research. Once you reintroduce an emotional connection to scientific conclusions, you also reintroduce motivated reasoning which undermines people’s abilities to change their minds in response to evidence – probably the most important thing anyone can do in science. It also creates a sense of understanding where all you’ve really understood is the explanation, not the evidence behind it. As a result, it creates epistemic arrogance on the part of the junior science fan “I fucking love science” types.

Point, but the idea isn’t to alter the way the science is conducted, just explained.

And you already have that epistemic arrogance. Why not use it for things which are broadly true, like climate change, evolution, and vaccinations—things which have serious/considerable implications for public policy?