Level 5 Reading 3A

Reading 3A

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THE AGE OF DISBELIEF We are surrounded by science and technology like never before, yet increasing numbers of people doubt the claims of scientists. Writer Joel Achenbach investigates the reasons for a rising tide of skepticism. We live in an age when all manner of scientific knowledge— from the safety of vaccines to the reality of climate change— faces organized and often angry opposition. Doubters have declared war on the consensus of experts. There are so many of these controversies these days, you'd think an evil villain had put something in the water to make people argumentative. In a sense all this is not surprising: our lives are affected by science and technology as never before. For many of us this new world is comfortable and rich in rewards— but also more complicated and sometimes unnerving. We now face risks we can't easily analyze. We're asked to accept, for example, that it's safe to eat food containing genetically modified organisms. Experts say there's no evidence that it isn't safe, and no reason to believe that altering genes in a lab is more dangerous than altering them through traditional breeding. But to some people the very idea of transferring genes between species brings up images of mad scientists running wild. The world seems full of real and imaginary hazards, and distinguishing the former from the latter isn't easy. Should we be afraid that the Ebola virus, which is spread only by direct contact with bodily fluids, will mutate into an airborne super-plague? The scientific consensus says that's extremely unlikely: No virus has ever been observed to completely change its mode of transmission in humans. But if you type "airborne Ebola" into an Internet search engine, you'll find that some people believe that this virus has almost supernatural powers. ln this often confusing world we have to decide what to believe and how to act accordingly. In principle, that is what science is for. "Science is not a body of facts," says geophysicist Marcia McNutt, who once headed the U.S. Geological Survey and is now editor of the journal Science. "Science is a method for deciding whether what we choose to believe has a basis in the laws of nature or not." But that method doesn't come naturally to most of us.

难以置信的时代 我们被前所未有的科学技术包围着， 然而，越来越多的人怀疑科学家的说法。 作家乔尔·阿肯巴赫调查了怀疑主义浪潮兴起的原因。 我们生活在一个充满各种科学知识的时代-- 从疫苗的安全性到气候变化的现实-- 面对有组织且经常愤怒的反对派。 怀疑论者对专家的共识宣战。 这些天有很多这样的争议， 你会认为一个邪恶的恶棍把什么东西放进水里，让人们争论不休。 从某种意义上说，这一切都不足为奇： 我们的生活受到科学技术前所未有的影响。 对我们中的许多人来说，这个新世界很舒适，回报丰厚-- 但也更复杂，有时令人不安。 我们现在面临着难以分析的风险。 例如，我们被要求接受， 食用含有转基因生物的食物是安全的。 专家表示，没有证据表明它不安全， 没有理由相信在实验室里改变基因 比通过传统育种改变它们更危险。 但对一些人来说，在物种之间转移基因的想法 让人想起疯狂的科学家们疯狂奔跑的画面。 这个世界似乎充满了真实和想象中的危险， 区分前者和后者并不容易。 我们是否应该担心埃博拉病毒， 这种只通过直接接触体液传播的病毒会变异成空气传播的超级瘟疫吗？ 科学界普遍认为，这极不可能： 从未观察到任何病毒完全改变其在人类中的传播方式。 但如果你在互联网搜索引擎中键入“空气传播的埃博拉病毒”， 你会发现，有些人认为这种病毒几乎具有超自然的力量。 在这个经常令人困惑的世界里，我们必须决定相信什么，以及如何采取相应的行动。 原则上，这就是科学的目的。 地球物理学家Marcia McNutt说：“科学不是一堆事实。”， 他曾担任美国地质调查局局长，现在是《科学》杂志的编辑。 “科学是一种决定我们选择相信什么的方法 是否有自然法则的依据。" 但这种方法对我们大多数人来说并不自然。

Making Sense of the World The trouble goes way back, of course. The scientific method has led us to truths that are less than self-evident, often mind-blowing, and sometimes hard to accept. For example, both the sun and moon appear to cross the sky above the Earth, but while the moon does indeed circle our world, the Earth circles the sun. Although the roundness of the Earth has been known for thousands of years, alternative geographies persisted even after trips around the world had become common. Nineteenth-century flat-Earthers, for example, believed that the planet was centered on the North Pole and bounded by a wall of ice, with the sun and moon traveling only a few hundred kilometers about the Earth. Even when we intellectually accept the precepts of science, we cling to our intuitions— what researchers call our naive beliefs. As we become scientifically literate, we repress our naive beliefs, but never eliminate them entirely. They remain hidden in our brains as we try to make sense of the world. Most of us do that by relying on personal experience, anecdotes, or stories rather than statistics. If we hear about a cluster of cancer cases in a town with a hazardous waste dump, we assume pollution caused the cancers. Yet just because two things happened together doesn't mean one caused the other, and just because events are clustered doesn't mean they re not still random. We have trouble comprehending randomness; our brains crave pattern and meaning. Science warns us, however, that we can deceive ourselves. To be confident there's a causal connection between the dump and the cancers, you need statistical analysis showing that there are many more cancers than would be expected randomly, evidence that the victims were exposed to chemicals from the dump, and evidence that the chemicals really can cause cancer. Even for scientists, the scientific method is a hard discipline. Like the rest of us, they're vulnerable to confirmation bias— the tendency to look for and see only evidence that confirms what they already believe. But unlike the rest of us, they submit their ideas to formal peer review before publishing them. Once their results are published, other scientists will try to reproduce them— and, being skeptical and competitive, will be very happy to announce that they don't hold up. Struggling for Truth Sometimes scientists fall short of the ideals of the scientific method. Especially in biomedical research, there's a disturbing trend toward results that can't be reproduced outside the lab that found them. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, worries about the "secret sauce"— specialized procedures and customized software— that researchers don't share with their colleagues. But he still has faith in science. "Science will find the truth," Collins says. "It may get it wrong the first time and maybe the second time, but ultimately it will find the truth." That aspect of science is another thing a lot of people have trouble with. To some climate change skeptics, for example, the fact that a few scientists in the 1970s were worried (quite reasonably, it seemed at the time) about the possibility of a coming ice age is enough to discredit the concern about global warming now. In 2014, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which consists of hundreds of scientists, released its fifth report in the past 25 years. This one repeated louder and clearer than ever the consensus of the world's scientists: The planet's surface temperature has risen by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 130 years. Moreover, human actions—including the burning of fossil fuels— are extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the warming since the mid- 20th century. Many people, however, retain doubts about that consensus. Americans, for example, fall into two basic camps, says Dan Kahan of Yale University. Those who are more egalitarian and community-minded are generally suspicious of industry. They tend to think it's up to something dangerous that calls for government regulation; they're likely to see the risks of climate change. In contrast, people with a hierarchical and individualistic mindset respect leaders of industry and don't like government interfering in their affairs. They tend to reject warnings about climate change because they know that accepting them could lead to some kind of tax or regulation to limit emissions.

理解世界 当然，问题可以追溯到很久以前。 科学方法使我们发现了一些不那么不言而喻的真理， 经常令人震惊，有时很难接受。 例如，太阳和月亮似乎都穿过地球上方的天空， 但是，虽然月球确实绕着我们的世界转，但地球绕着太阳转。 虽然地球的圆度已经知道了几千年， 即使在环游世界变得普遍之后，另类地理仍然存在。 例如，19世纪的扁平地球人， 认为这颗行星以北极为中心，以冰墙为界， 太阳和月亮绕地球只有几百公里。 即使我们在理智上接受了科学的戒律，我们也坚持自己的直觉-- 研究人员称之为我们的天真信念。 当我们具备科学素养时，我们会压抑自己的天真信念， 但永远不要完全消除它们。 当我们试图理解这个世界时，它们仍然隐藏在我们的大脑中。 我们大多数人依靠个人经验、轶事或故事而不是统计数据来做到这一点。 如果我们听说在一个有危险垃圾场的小镇上发生了一系列癌症病例， 我们假设污染是导致癌症的原因。 然而，仅仅因为两件事同时发生并不意味着一件事导致了另一件事， 仅仅因为事件是集群的，并不意味着它们仍然是随机的。 我们很难理解随机性；我们的大脑渴望模式和意义。 然而，科学警告我们，我们可以欺骗自己。 为了确信垃圾场和癌症之间存在因果关系， 你需要统计分析表明，癌症的数量比随机预期的要多得多， 受害者暴露于垃圾场化学物质的证据， 以及这些化学物质真的可以导致癌症的证据。 即使对科学家来说，科学方法也是一门很难的学科。 和我们其他人一样，他们也容易受到确认偏见的影响-- 倾向于只寻找和看到证实他们已经相信的证据。 但与我们其他人不同， 他们在发表想法之前，会将想法提交给正式的同行评审。 一旦他们的研究结果发表，其他科学家将试图复制它们-- 而且，出于怀疑和竞争，他们很乐意宣布他们不会坚持下去。 为真理而奋斗 有时科学家达不到科学方法的理想。 特别是在生物医学研究中，有一种令人不安的结果趋势 这在发现它们的实验室之外是无法复制的。 美国国立卫生研究院院长弗朗西斯·柯林斯， 对“秘方”的担忧——专业程序和定制软件-- 研究人员不与同事分享。 但他仍然相信科学。 柯林斯说：“科学会发现真理。”。 “第一次可能会出错，第二次也可能会出错， 但最终它会找到真相。" 科学的这一方面是很多人遇到的另一个问题。 例如，对于一些气候变化怀疑论者来说， 20世纪70年代的一些科学家对此感到担忧（当时似乎相当合理） 关于即将到来的冰河时代的可能性 这足以让人们怀疑现在对全球变暖的担忧。 2014年，联合国政府间气候变化专门委员会， 该组织由数百名科学家组成，发布了过去25年来的第五份报告。 这比以往任何时候都更响亮、更清晰地重申了世界科学家的共识： 在过去的130年里，地球的表面温度上升了约1.5华氏度。 此外，人类行为，包括燃烧化石燃料-- 极有可能是20世纪中叶以来全球变暖的主要原因。 然而，许多人对这一共识仍持怀疑态度。 例如，耶鲁大学的Dan Kahan说，美国人分为两个基本阵营。 那些更平等和有社区意识的人通常对工业持怀疑态度。 他们倾向于认为这取决于需要政府监管的危险因素； 他们可能会看到气候变化的风险。 相比之下，具有等级和个人主义心态的人尊重行业领导者 不喜欢政府干涉他们的事务。 他们倾向于拒绝接受有关气候变化的警告 因为他们知道接受它们可能会导致某种税收或监管来限制排放。

ln the United States, an individual's view on climate change tends to identify them as belonging to one or the other of these two opposing tribes. When we argue about it, Kahan says, we're actually arguing about who we are, what our crowd is. We're thinking: People like us believe this. People like that do not believe this. For a hierarchical individualist, Kahan says, it's not irrational to reject established climate science. This is because accepting it wouldn't change the world, but it might get them thrown out of their tribe. Science appeals to our rational brain, but our beliefs are motivated largely by emotion— and the biggest motivation is remaining tight with our peers. The Implications of Doubt Doubting science has consequences the anti-vaccine movement, for example, has been going strong since the respected British medical journal the Lancet published a study in 1998 linking a vaccine to autism. Although the article was discredited, the notion of a vaccine-autism connection has been endorsed by celebrities and reinforced through Internet sources. This has implications for the "herd immunity" of populations. When a significant portion of a population is vacinated, it provides a measure of protection for individuals who have not developed immunity. Increasing vaccine skepticism threatens to undermine the herd immunity of communities against diseases such as whooping cough and measles. Investigations into the "science communication problem" have given us insights into how people decide what to believe— and why they so often don't accept the scientific consensus. It's not that they can't grasp it, says Kahan; it's because of confirmation bias— the tendency of people to use scientific knowledge to reinforce beliefs that have already been shaped by their worldview. Meanwhile the Internet has made it easier than ever for climate skeptics and doubters of all kinds to find their own information and experts. Gone are the days when a small number of powerful institutions— elite universities, encyclopedias, major news organizations— served as gatekeepers of scientific information. The Internet has democratized information, which is a good thing, but along with cable TV, it has made it possible to live in a "filter bubble" that lets in only the information you agree with. How to penetrate this bubble? How can scientists convince skeptics? Throwing more facts at people may not be enough. Liz Neeley, who helps train scientists to be better communicators, says that people need to hear from believers they can trust, who share their fundamental values. She has personal experience with this: Her father is a climate change skeptic and gets most of his information on the issue from conservative media. One day she confronted him: "Do you believe them or me?" She told him she believes the scientists who research climate change, and knows many of them personally. "If you think I'm wrong" she said, "then you're telling me that you don't trust me." Her father's position on the issue softened—but it wasn't the facts that did it.

在美国，个人对气候变化的看法 倾向于认为他们属于这两个对立部落中的一个或另一个。 Kahan说，当我们争论这个问题时，我们实际上是在争论我们是谁，我们的群体是什么。 我们在想：像我们这样的人相信这一点。 这样的人不相信。 Kahan说，对于一个等级森严的个人主义者来说， 拒绝公认的气候科学并非不合理。 这是因为接受它不会改变世界， 但这可能会让他们被赶出部落。 科学吸引了我们的理性大脑，但我们的信念在很大程度上是由情感驱动的-- 最大的动力是与同行保持紧密联系。 怀疑的含义 怀疑科学会产生后果，例如反疫苗运动， 自从备受尊敬的英国医学杂志《柳叶刀》问世以来，它一直表现强劲 1998年发表了一项将疫苗与自闭症联系起来的研究。 尽管这篇文章的可信度不高， 疫苗与自闭症联系的概念得到了名人的认可 并通过互联网资源得到加强。 这对人群的“群体免疫”有影响。 当很大一部分人口被抽真空时， 它为尚未产生免疫力的个人提供了一定程度的保护。 越来越多的疫苗怀疑论可能会破坏社区对疾病的群体免疫力 例如百日咳和麻疹。 对“科学传播问题”的调查 让我们了解人们如何决定相信什么-- 以及为什么他们经常不接受科学共识。 卡汉说，这并不是说他们无法理解；这是因为确认偏差-- 人们倾向于用科学知识来强化信仰 这些已经被他们的世界观所塑造。 与此同时，互联网使气候怀疑论者和各种怀疑者比以往任何时候都更容易 寻找自己的信息和专家。 少数强大机构的日子一去不复返了-- 精英大学、百科全书、主要新闻机构-- 担任科学信息的把关人。 互联网使信息民主化，这是一件好事，但随着有线电视的普及， 它使生活在“过滤泡”中成为可能 这只允许你同意的信息进入。 如何穿透这个泡沫？ 科学家如何说服怀疑论者？ 向人们抛出更多的事实可能还不够。 Liz Neeley帮助培训科学家成为更好的沟通者， 说人们需要听取他们可以信任的信徒的意见， 他们有着共同的基本价值观。 她对此有个人经验： 她的父亲对气候变化持怀疑态度 他关于这个问题的大部分信息都来自保守派媒体。 有一天，她质问他：“你相信他们还是我？” 她告诉他，她相信研究气候变化的科学家， 并且亲自认识他们中的许多人。 “如果你认为我错了，”她说， “那你是在告诉我你不信任我。” 她父亲在这个问题上的立场有所软化，但事实并非如此。

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