Science Denial: Why It Happens and What to Do About It w/ Gale Sinatra and Barbara Hofer

On this edition of Parallax Views, in the age of issues likes pandemics and climate change the subject of science has increasingly become divided along partisan political lines. We live in a moment where portions of the population are anti-vaccination or believe that climate change is a hoax. Science, it appears, has become a topic to avoid as taboo, much like politics and religion, in social interactions. And that has major implications for society. How did this all happen? And, perhaps more importantly, what can be done about it? Joining us to tackle those questions are psychologists Gale Sinatra and Barbara Hofer, authors of Science Denial: Why It Happens and What to Do About It. Among the topics broached during this conversation are: the importance of science communicators like Stephen Jay Gould, Gould's idea of the non-overlapping magisteria, the relationship between big tech algorithms and science denial, storytelling and finding ways to communicate with people who engage in science denial, skepticism vs. denial, the replication crisis, science as a social enterprise, cognitive psychology and science denial, and much, much more.