Friday 20th November 2015
Science denial in its various forms has numerous negative impacts on society, whether it be denial of vaccination, climate science, evolution, or so on. The most common response to science denial is to throw more science at people. However, presenting scientific evidence to science denialists can be ineffective, or even counter-productive. Instead, a growing body of evidence indicates the way to stop the spread of science denial is, counter-intuitively, by exposing people to a ‘weak form of science denial’. Decades of psychological research into ‘inoculation theory’ finds that by warning people of the threat of misinformation and explaining the techniques of denial, people can develop immunity to misinformation. This approach may hold the key to neutralising the influence of science denial.
John Cook is the Climate Communication Fellow for the Global Change Institute at The University of Queensland. He created the website Skeptical Science.com, which won the 2011 Australian Museum Eureka Prize for the Advancement of Climate Change Knowledge. John co-authored the college textbook Climate Change Science: A Modern Synthesis and the book Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand. He won an award for Best Australian Science Writing for 2014, published by UNSW. He is currently completing a PhD in cognitive psychology, researching how people update their beliefs in response to climate information. He also developed the Massive Online Open Course (or MOOC), Making Sense of Climate Science Denial, released in April 2015.
