Rebuilding Trust in a Polarized World | Dr. Rick Lindroth

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So, to recap, so far this evening I've talked about what science is, how it's contributed to the flourishing of the world, how by its very nature it's subject to denial, and how distrust has escalated in recent years.
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I've said that distrust is in science is often not so much about the science itself, rather, it's about identity, moral frameworks, and perceived threats to the things that we value.
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And I wish that the distrust of science was simply due to insufficient information.
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That would be so much easier to address.
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But it's not.
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So how do we address the problem?
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That's what we'll consider now.
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And this third talk has lots of information, as if the other two didn't.
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I'll be targeting my comments to different groups of people.
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So I don't want you to check out or to be frantically taking notes.
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So we'll be pro we'll be providing access to a PDF of this third lecture to everybody who's registered.
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If you haven't registered, just see me, see one of the upper house staff, and we'll make sure that you get those notes.
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All right.
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Reestablishing trust in a polarized world.
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Let's build a framework for science communication.
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Remember that distrust and denial are more about identity than they are about information.
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Our instinctive response is just to dump information, but that's not helpful.
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We know that to combat denialism, rational intelligence alone won't work, but emotional intelligence might.
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Our goal should be to help denialists and dismissives switch perspectives without threatening their identity.
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They likely already have the values needed to care about the particular scientific issue.
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We need to model humility, curiosity, interest in others, lifestyle consistent with our convictions.
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So the framework is this: first of all, be aware of my own values and how they color my perceptions, know my audience, build trust, use empathy, tell my personal story, use moral framing to connect with the person's identity and values, and provide a threatening, a non-threatening message that show, yeah, not a threatening message, a non-threatening message that shows that the person's beliefs about an issue conflict with their own moral values.
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And finally provide meaningful next steps that a person can take starting close to home.
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Kurt Gray is a moral psychologist at UNC, University of North Carolina, who recently published the book Outraged, Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and How to Find Common Ground.
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He makes similar recommendations for how to have civil discourse about polarized issues.
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He advances what he calls the Civ model.
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Again, the goal is not to win, but to create a bridge for mutual understanding and further conversation.
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C stands for connect, understand our own starting point, our own moral frameworks, our own fears, find common ground, those values that we share in common.
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I is invite.
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Approach with empathy, encourage sharing, listen actively, be genuine.
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And finally validate, acknowledge their perspective, discuss the shared values, and question but avoid judgment.
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These guidelines will not make conversations about controversial science issues easy, but they will make them easier.
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And the key to this entire process is respect.
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As leadership guru Joseph Grenny has written, respect is like air.
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When it's present, nobody thinks about it.
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But when it's not, it's all anyone can think about.
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So respect is key.
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Let me give you an example.
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A few years ago, I was fly fishing in this beautiful mountain stream in North Carolina.
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At the end of the day, I climbed out of the stream, walked back to my car, and found this vehicle parked in front of me.
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All kinds of stickers on the back of this vehicle.
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The gun vote, the Statue of Liberty holding an assault rifle, but also stickers about fly fishing, about conservation organizations that I support.
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And I carry a mental image of this photo with me all the time.
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Because what does it tell me?
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It tells me that every person is a complex mixture of different values.
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And it tells me that some of those values we likely share in common.
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Now, I would like to say that I saw the fishermen and we had a really great conversation.
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I didn't.
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But I've talked to many other fishermen and outdoorsmen who would be happy and proud to drive that truck.
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And the key to connecting with them is finding those common values, those values that we, those values and affections that we share in common.
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Now I've argued that the path to re-establishing trust in science is through building trusted relationships, and that's true, across ideological divides.
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That approach is absolutely essential, I think, for moving forward.
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But sadly, it's way too slow.
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It presents a problem because building relationships is slow, demanding, people-intensive work.
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And that process is way too slow to address some of our imminent crises, such as climate change.
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So what are we to do?
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Well, as David Brooks said recently, trust is built by relationships, and relationships don't scale.
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That's the problem.
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The solution?
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Norms scale.
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Relationships don't scale, but norms do.
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What do I mean by norms?
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Norms are standards that provide a sense of moral obligation to act in a particular manner.
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Norms tell us what people like us do and should do.
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Norms secure group belonging, and they can change behavior.
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We learn norms from our social groups, from broader culture, from authority figures, and from social institutions.
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To change culture then, to change culture rapidly, we should think about changing norms.
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The norms approach to changing behavior works this way.
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It doesn't attempt to directly change what people believe and do.
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Rather, and this is key, it attempts to change what people think others like them believe and do.
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So you get that?
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I'm not trying to change what you think about yourself or an issue.
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I'm trying to change what you think other people think about that issue.
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And that will help you to change much more readily.
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People are motivated to change their beliefs and behaviors to fit in with their social groups.
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Norms mediated value formation is happening all the time all around us.
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It's in the water that we swim in.
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The norms approach can be intentionally used, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad.
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If you've been paying attention to the news, you could pick up on some of these that have happened just in the last few weeks.
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What did we learn a week ago?
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That the Pentagon has secretly installed military influencers with large social media followings into civilian roles in order to amplify their current warrior rhetoric.
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That is a norms approach.
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So the process, select and empower influencers, there's that word again, and authority figures, engage institutions, education, religious, community institutions, etc.
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Provide, hopefully, accurate information, stories, and training, leverage policy and legislation.
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I can give you an example close to home.
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The LOCA initiative is part of UW's Center for Healthy Minds, and one of their ongoing projects is Creation at the Crossroads.
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C at C Creation at the Crossroads is a program that targets leaders of evangelical churches.
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It provides training, resources, feedback, and peer cohorts to help church leaders incorporate creation care, climate change, and related issues into their ministries.
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Here is a state-funded university using grants and philanthropic money to reach out to pastors of conservative churches.
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I've been involved in a number of the teaching sessions, and they're really rich.
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This is a norms approach.
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Selecting and training respected authorities, providing reliable information, providing resources, and targeting a particular institution, in this case, the church.
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So then, how do we reestablish trust in science?
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Here are some suggestions, first of all, for all of us.
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The first group, all of us.
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Consider how to connect science to everyday lived experience.
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This is what I'm going to encourage all of you to do.
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Develop an appreciation for science that's vital to your well-being and to those you love.
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Cultivate a scientific mindset.
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Practice skepticism and evidence-based reasoning.
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Resist the efforts of politicians, organizations, etc., to exploit low scientific literacy.
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In fact, this can be quite fun.
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Sometimes you I'll read ads, I'll listen to ads on TV or something, which is just there are things that are completely scientifically bogus.
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And I love to tell my family about how crazy or stupid these things are.
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My family can kind of probably vouch for that.
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One of the things I was talking, just as a very brief aside, to two of my buddies, uh, one of whom was here tonight a couple weeks ago when we were fly fishing in Idaho, is my pet peeve about energy drinks.
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Zero calorie energy drinks.
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It makes no sense.
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There cannot be a zero calorie drink that provides energy.
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It's impossible, right?
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But okay, sorry.
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That's that's a complete aside.
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That's bonus.
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Understand your moral frameworks.
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Learn to detect to detect ideological triggers.
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What is it that I'm fearing?
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What's setting me off?
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What's causing this unrest in my heart, in my stomach?
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As the book of James says, be quick to listen or to learn, slow to speak, slow to anger.
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Share scientific information responsibly, especially on social media.
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Before you repost something, ask the question: Is this really scientifically verifiable?
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Support scientific literacy in our schools, in our libraries, churches, community groups, etc.
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Get to know a scientist.
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We're really not all that scary.
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We're real people, right?
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All of the scientists I know here at UW are very much real people.
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Get to know one.
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Engage in citizen science projects.
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The UW has lots of them, or the Arboretum, or parks, or schools, or non-government organizations like whatever, the Ottoman Society, Nature Conservancy.
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Engage in citizen science projects.
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Participate in local community discussions about scientific matters.
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So those are suggestions for everyone.
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And again, you'll get these as a PDF if you want after after tonight.
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Suggestions now for scientists and science communicators.
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Here, I think the key question is how do we conduct science in a manner that generates trust and goodwill?
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Well, first of all, connect with your audience.
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Be human.
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Acknowledge the uncertainties, failures, and limits of science.
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I should have said with a connect, one of the major mistakes that scientists make in public communication is assuming that the audience is as interested in science as they are.
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Likely not the case.
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I've had to remind myself about that about tonight many times.
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We need to find points of commonality, and one of the best ways to do so is to tell stories.
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Stories are more compelling than facts and help people to remember information.
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As my wife has been telling me for now probably about six months.
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Do you have any stories?
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Do you have any stories?
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About tonight.
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All right.
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Acknowledge the uncertainties, as I mentioned, in retrospect, as I said earlier, the leaders of our federal medical institutions, especially NIH and CDC, blew it in their comp communications during the COVID pandemic.
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Francis Collins has very fully and publicly acknowledged that.
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In being unclear and evasive about the uncertainties of vaccines and the uncertainties of masking, they actually contributed to the growing distrust.
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That was a harsh lesson, hopefully a lesson learned.
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We need to model the trustworthiness of science, transparent reporting, publicly accessible data, internal critique, replication of studies.
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Accept public participation in the oversight of science we were talking about just a bit ago.
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Develop public communication skills and use them.
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Most scientific societies have programs for helping scientists to develop good public speaking skills.
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The AGU, for example, has a science and society program that goes around the country offering workshops.
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Don't confuse trust with influence.
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Build compelling narrative models about societal benefits and tell them over and over and over again.
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Tailor your science communication to the audience belief systems.
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How do we do that?
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Well, here is a suggestion.
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I talked in the last lecture about moral foundations theory.
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We can use it.
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In fact, we can we can reverse engineer moral foundations theory to improve our science messaging.
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And in fact, that is now being done in all kinds of science for communicating difficult science across a variety of controversial issues, from climate change to pandemics to medicine to communication science, all using Moral Foundations theory as a way of communicating the science to the broader public.
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Finally, use your expertise to engage in local science issues.
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Those issues don't have to necessarily be in your specific area of interest or expertise, but simply bringing your scientific training and your scientific mindset to an issue can be helpful to the local public.
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I was in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
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We have scientists who are working all over the state, all over the nation, all over the world, who are engaging with local issues of importance.
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My friend and colleague Ken Rafa here in the audience was a very vital partner with the Wisconsin DNR for many, many years on issues related to forest health and invasive species.
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Many of the others of you involved with the UW and in this room tonight probably have some element of your work in which you can engage with the public.
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But for this example, I thought I'd step outside of the university because that's the most logical thing, the university.
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And I'm going to talk to you briefly about Black Earth Creek, a premier trout stream just west of Madison.
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And yes, that is my hand holding that beautiful brown trout.
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This is what Black Earth Creek normally looks like.
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This is what it looked like in August of 2018, after 14 inches of rain fell in a single night and flooded the Black Earth Creek watershed.
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Black Earth Creek has been subject to all kinds of damage in recent years: flooding, manure spills, insecticide pollution, invasive species, land development.
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It's a very high-quality stream that is teetering on the edge of ecological collapse.
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And this is my friend Andy Morton.
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I warned him I would embarrass him.
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I didn't actually think he was going to be in the audience tonight, but he is or he was.
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There he is, Andy.
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Sorry.
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Andy spent his career with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
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He was a regional supervisor, worked on water quality, pollution, watershed management in southern Wisconsin.
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But today he has a full second career volunteering his scientific expertise to benefit the Black Earth Creek watershed.
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He works on biodiversity monitoring, fish surveys, he organized a symposium on insecticide pollution, and he advises local municipalities such as the village of Cross Plains regarding land development.
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So, in short, Andy is an ambassador for science because he is using his scientific training for the benefit of local communities and environments.
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Finally, some thoughts for faith leaders.
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What I have to say here is relevant to all people of faith, but especially to faith leaders, and that is faith leaders of all religions.
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Key question, whoops, forward.
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Key question is how do we engage science in a manner consistent with religious values?
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First, I would say commit to the pursuit of truth.
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As I said earlier, the process of science is slow, difficult, complex, and occasionally errant.
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But in the end, truth wins.
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The entire system is set up to achieve that end.
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The deepest values of science ensure that end.
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The commitment to truth supersedes individual egos, competition, pride, resources, and entrenched power structures.
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Those exist for sure, but the system is set up so that despite them, truth prevails, and in the end, scientists unite around the truth.
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Imagine this.
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What if we could say the same about religious institutions?
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In my case, the Christian Church.
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What if we could say that the process of spiritual transformation is slow, difficult, complex, occasionally errant, but in the end we unite around the truth.
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That commitment, I believe, is essential for effective ministry.
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A few years ago, I was having coffee with a graduate student at UW, who told me he had been to church that last week, and that the pastor was um professing uh scientific nonsense from the pulpit.
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And this young graduate student, who's now a professor here in the Midwest, said to me, if I can't trust my pastor to tell me the truth about science, how can I trust him to tell me the truth about religion?
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So you might ask, how do you know what is true?
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How do you know what is true science versus false?
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Well, I'm happy to say that there are lots of trustworthy organizations whose purpose is just that, to help you figure it out.
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Here are some of them.
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For example, the dozer component of AAAS or BioLogos or Science for the Church or the Faraday Institute or any of many other organizations that have that that promote and advance and provide access to reputable science.
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Number two, again, this is for faith leaders.
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Normalize science and scientists.
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Take opportunities to platform scientists in your faith communities, help others get to know them and to trust them, treat them like regular people, build trust.
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Talk about controversial science issues.
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Faith leaders are viewed as authorities, and as I mentioned earlier, they help establish norms, but they're typically Fearful about addressing scientifically controversial topics.
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In the Christian tradition, the health and well-being of people, the planet, are gospel issues.
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Don't avoid them.
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Leaders can provide a framework for how to do it to address them apart from the common culture wars.
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Here's an example.
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A recent study published in PNAS, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show that 90% of Christian religious leaders believe anthropogenic climate change is real.
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Who knew?
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90%.
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But most never or rarely mention it.
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As a consequence, Christians vastly underestimate their leaders' belief in climate change.
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And so they too consider it unimportant.
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But when religious leaders address the topic, it changes what the church members think other members believe.
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That's that norms approach.
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It changes what church members think other people think, and so they're more inclined to change their own thinking as well.
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It makes them more willing to talk about it.
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Next, faith leaders should combat identity idolatry.
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In this culturally fragmented world, alignment with partisan politics has become one of the most important factors defining personal identity.
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The questions of who am I and who are my people are now strongly defined by political affiliation.
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In Christianity, there's a word that describes a person's willing submission to an earthly entity that they believe provides ultimate meaning, belonging, and protection.
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That word is idolatry.
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More than anyone else, faith leaders have the moral authority to push back against identity idolatry.
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So let's use it.
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And here's a way to fight identity idolatry.
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Model love across cultural and ideological divides.
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The book of Luke describes a conversation between Jesus and an expert in the Jewish law.
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Jesus summarizes the whole law to be loving God with your whole being and loving your neighbor as yourself.
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The expert then asks, who's my neighbor?
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Jesus proceeds to tell what we become has become known as the parable of the Good Samaritan.
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Those of you who are familiar with the story remember that a Jewish man was beaten, robbed, and left to die on the side of the road.
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A Jewish priest sees him but passes by on the other side.
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Then a Jewish Levite sees him and passes by on the other side.
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But a Samaritan comes upon him, cares for him at his own expense.
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Now the Jews and the Samaritans were mortal enemies.
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They hated each other.
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The moral of this story, then, is that it's more important to demonstrate God's love across societal ideological divides than it is to adhere to one's own cultural identity.
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So to wrap up, a couple minutes early, I hope I've helped move you to believe that the answer to the question, can science be trusted, is a resounding yes.
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Science is not a perfect way of understanding the world, but it is the best.
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I'm advocating, am I advocating blind trust?
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Not at all.
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Science needs scrutiny, it operates best in that environment.
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And science needs the guidance of moral standards.
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But science is, I would argue, deserving of our critically informed trust.
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And I don't want to stop there, because to do so would be a disservice to science and to you.
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Because science, saying that science can be trusted is too little.
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Not only can science be trusted, but it must be trusted with appropriate safeguards if we are to build a safer, healthier, and more sustainable world for ourselves and for the generations that come after us.
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So let me close, as those of you who are familiar with my speaking are probably anticipating, with a benediction, meaning good word.
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May we grow in our appreciation for science as a means to understand and improve the planet that we share.
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May we develop our capacity to use evidenced-based reasoning for navigating our complex world.
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May our identities be shaped foremost by commitment to truth and ethics rather than to in-group loyalty.
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May we be wise, winsome, and respectful in communicating across cultural and ideological divides.
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And may we take delight in bringing the power of science to bear on the grand challenges that confront us today, and the wisdom to know when science alone is not enough.
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Thank you.