Public hesitant to believe scientists, says study
OTTAWA — A newly released American study suggests the public often rejects the opinions of scientific experts.
The public tends not to trust scientists, says research from California – but there’s a twist. People are mainly reluctant to believe good news, it turns out – such as the message that a flu vaccine is safe. But the public is more likely to trust the researchers who frighten with bad news.
Overall, the study, published in a research journal called Public Understanding of Science, concludes that “scientists’ efforts to influence public opinion have a limited effect.”
The work is based on a public opinion survey of 1,475 Californians to assess whether people trust safety studies on offshore oil drilling. It predates this summer’s massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, but offshore oil drilling has been a hot political issue in California for years.
The analysis from professors at the University of California at Santa Barbara found that people tended to disregard much of what the safety studies found. The limited amount they did believe tended to be the parts that showed dangers were worse than they had feared.
The study suggests one reason why conspiracy theories spread so easily on the Internet: they’re often based on scary scenarios, such as the mind-control chemicals that governments are allegedly spraying from commercial airliners.
Last winter, Ottawa’s public health leaders met an unexpected hurdle: many people refused to trust the H1N1 vaccine’s safety despite reassurances from the medical establishment.
“People were dubious. There was a healthy dose of people who were concerned about the vaccination and didn’t have confidence in it,” said City of Ottawa Coun. Diane Deans, who chairs Ottawa’s protective services committee.
That distrust kept many people away from vaccination clinics. “We had one of the highest rates of vaccination in the entire province but we certainly didn’t vaccinate anywhere near everybody. We got 50 per cent, if I recall,” Deans said.
Scientists have worried for years about surveys that show the public doesn’t always trust them. The public tends to be suspicious about the motives of science, thinking that industrial research leads to pollution, and government research may have hidden political motives.
This study is the first to show evidence that the amount of suspicion depends on what the scientific message is saying.
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