A few years ago, I took up the regular practice of meditation. Sitting in a quiet room, outside at a park, or on the train to work, I would assume an upright relaxed position and focus on my breath. The practice was not about making my mind empty or blank but simply letting my mind be at rest.

As thoughts or feelings inevitably arose, I would observe them without judging them. For example, if a thought about the need to finish a column for this magazine popped into my head, I would silently label the thought “worry,” before returning to focus on my breath. I learned, as psychologists describe, that the contents of my conscientiousness could be observed, and that the accompanying emotional reactions to them were seldom grounded in reality (Brown et al. 2007).

After several months of daily meditation, I noticed significant benefits. Meditation seemed to slow time down, enabling me to live and work in the present rather than worry about the future. I was quicker and more adept at recognizing how unrealistic expectations or unfounded worries were causing unnecessary stress. My sleep and mood improved. I felt happier, more content, and more at ease.

Inspired by my own experience, I began to read widely on the history, philosophy, and science of mindfulness. The story of the movement’s origins, the process by which it has gained scientific legitimacy, and its rise to popularity among well-educated, affluent Americans is fascinating and revealing.

Gaining Popularity and Legitimacy

With its roots in Buddhism, meditation is used widely by health professionals to treat depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, pain, insomnia, eating disorders, relationship problems, and other conditions. Professional athletes use meditation to improve their performance, as do CEOs and Silicon Valley programmers. Meditation is similarly taught in schools and colleges as a way to help students (and teachers) better regulate their emotions, to improve concentration, and to manage stress and anxiety (Harrington and Dunne 2015).

The concept of “mindfulness” traces to the Pali words sati, which in the Indian Buddhist tradition implies awareness, attention, or alertness, and vipassana, which means insight cultivated by meditation. But as the University of British Columbia’s Jeff Wilson (2014) detailed in his book-length study of America’s mindfulness movement, similar breath-attention techniques are found in Tibetan Buddhism and in the Japanese Zen meditation practice of zazen. All three strands of Buddhism influence approaches to mindfulness today.

Historically, in Asian Buddhist cultures, monks and nuns practiced meditation, not the broader population. For the ordained seeking the path to enlightenment, meditation was an instrument to facilitate asceticism, detachment, and renunciation, wrote Wilson (2014). During the mid-nineteenth century, as trade with Asia increased, Westerners began to take an interest in Buddhist teaching by way of pamphlets, books, and journals. Yet despite this interest, meditation did not emerge as a focus in the United States and Europe until the 1960s.

During this decade, reforms in immigration policy enabled hundreds of thousands of Asians to emigrate to the United States, including several prominent Tibetan and Zen missionaries who founded Buddhist centers and toured college campuses. Courses on Buddhism at the university level soon followed, offerings that were popular among students seeking counterculture alternatives to Western paradigms. Some of these students traveled to South Asia to study Buddhism or discovered meditation as part of the Peace Corp. By the 1970s, three main sources of meditation-focused teaching appeared “that would become the most important wellsprings of the American mindfulness movement,” wrote Wilson (2014, 31).

In 1976, Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield, and Sharon Salzburg founded the Insight Meditation Center in Barre, Massachusetts. Having studied Buddhism in South Asia, their goal was to create a retreat center that could emulate in an American context what they had experienced. In their teachings, articles, and books, Kornfield, Goldstein, and Salzburg deliberately downplayed elements of chanting, ceremony, and cosmology, noted Wilson (2014). Instead, they focused on meditation and mindfulness, integrating elements of Western psychology and psychotherapy.

The second main force in the rise of mindfulness was the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. Exiled from Vietnam, he gained prominence as a speaker and activist against the war during the 1960s. By the mid-1970s, he shifted to focus on the promotion of mindfulness and meditation, publishing the Miracle of Mindfulness and more than 100 subsequent books. Today, some 350 official meditation practice groups are affiliated with Hanh’s teachings. Along with the Dalai Lama, he is the world’s best known Buddhist, noted Wilson (2014), having appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show numerous times and annually touring the United States.

Yet the most influential figure in the acceptance of mindfulness as a secular and scientific practice has been Jon Kabat-Zinn. As a student at MIT, Kabat-Zinn was introduced to meditation by a Zen missionary. He went on to study at the Providence Zen Center, at the Insight Meditation Center, and with Thich Nhat Hanh, drawing on these and other traditions to inform his own approach to teaching mindfulness. After earning a doctorate in molecular biology, Kabat-Zinn in 1979 started a stress reduction center at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, developing an eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course.

Kabat-Zinn’s key innovation, noted Wilson (2014) was to take the traditional week-long meditation retreat, inaccessible to those with busy lives, and to offer participants classes that took place once a week for two months. Participants, who usually numbered between thirty-five and forty per course, were assigned guided meditation recordings to use at home for forty-five minutes each day for the duration of the course. They were also instructed on how to be mindful of their breath during their daily activities, expanding the “thread of meditative awareness” into every aspect of their lives (Kabat-
Zinn 2013).

Just as important, the course was able to be offered across clinical and institutional settings. Instructors, many with advanced degrees in the mental health professions, were required to complete an intensive certification process and to keep their training up to date. With the practice of meditation transformed into a clinical intervention, the effects on a range of mental, physical, and behavioral outcomes could be evaluated and published in the peer-reviewed literature.

According to historians Ann Harrington and John Dunne (2015), Kabat-
Zinn recognized that in a secular society, the health sector was where he could have the greatest impact as a Buddhist teacher. “Hospitals and medical centers in this society are Dukkha magnets,” he told a Buddhist magazine in 1991, using the Pali word for suffering. “People are drawn to hospitals primarily when they’re suffering, so it’s very natural to introduce programs to help them deal with the enormity of their suffering in a systematic way—as a complement to medical efforts” (Graham 1991).

Yet to gain legitimacy within the medical community, Kabat-Zinn understood that he needed to strip his approach of any overt religious connections, framing mindfulness as a mental skill acquired through meditation that involves “paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally” (Kabat-Zinn 2005). By promoting mindfulness, meditation could help patients manage the suffering associated with illness, reasoned Kabat-Zinn, by enabling them to be more accepting of their experience, which in turn would lessen pain, anxiety, and depression. Most would still need traditional medical treatment, but meditation could help speed the recovery process and prepare them to successfully navigate future experiences and decisions (Harrington and Dunne 2015).

Kabat-Zinn had transformed meditation from a practice rooted in Buddhism to that of a scientifically based form of health promotion. Meditation was now the “property of psychologists, doctors, scientists, and diet counselors and to be engaged in by clients rather than believers, who are not expected to take refuge, read scriptures, believe in karma or rebirth, or to become Buddhist,” wrote Wilson (2014).

Technology, the Market, and Mindfulness

Popular interest in meditation and mindfulness blossomed during the 1990s. At Barnes & Noble and Borders, Americans could purchase previously difficult to find magazines such as Tricycle: The Buddhist Review and the Shambala Sun along with books by Goldstein, Kornfield, Salzburg, Hanh, Kabat-Zinn, and many other authors. The Chinese occupation of Tibet, noted Wilson (2014) brought worldwide media attention to the Dalai Lama along with acclaimed Hollywood movies about Tibet such as Seven Years in Tibet, Little Buddha, and Kundun. The 1993 Bill Moyers PBS special Healing and the Mind featured Kabat-Zinn and his MBSR approach, turning his books into best sellers. For sports fans and athletes, Phil Jackson, coach of the champion Chicago Bulls, related in interviews how he had encouraged Michael Jordan and other players to practice meditation.

During the 2000s, with books, talks, and documentaries about mindfulness instantly available via Amazon, Netflix, and YouTube and guided meditations downloadable to smart phones, public interest in mindfulness was set to explode. By 2012, an estimated two million American adults reported having practiced some form of meditation within the past twelve months (Monroe et al. 2017).

Today, more than 600 studies are published annually on meditation and mindfulness. Observational studies evaluate the efficacy of meditation on health-related outcomes and school performance. Other studies investigate how meditation might influence parts of the brain linked to positive emotions, cause some parts of the brain to grow, and be related to changes in brain wave activity among experienced practitioners (Ricard et al. 2014).

Yet as widespread as meditation has become in clinical settings, schools, and the business sector, many of the scientific findings have not yet been sufficiently replicated. Most researchers in the field are enthusiastic meditators themselves, enabling them to apply important insights but also potentially biasing their conclusions. Like in psychology more generally, there is a strong bias toward publication of positive or significant results. The methodological rigor of many studies also remains low with few longitudinal control studies conducted (Tang et al. 2015).

As scientists and researchers continue to resolve uncertainties about the effects of meditation on the brain and health, outside the community of practicing Buddhists, the mindfulness movement remains multidimensional and varied, noted historians Harrington and Dunne (2015). Many health professionals view mindfulness as a powerful medical intervention best taught by trained and credentialed clinicians. Still, many other Americans have come to see it as a form of mental fitness training, applicable in varied ways to boost performance in school, business, or athletics or advance their careers. Other Americans have come to embrace meditation as a practice similar to yoga that is related to overall health or emotional resilience. A few notable others, including Kabat-Zinn, have even started to promote mindfulness as an antidote to our polarized, fractured politics, providing a common basis for recognizing shared values and goals. From this perspective, a sense of interconnectedness begins with mastering the art of conscious living.

Citation:

Nisbet, M.C. (2017). The Mindfulness Movement: How a Buddhist Practice Evolved Into a Scientific Approach to Life. Skeptical Inquirer, 41 (3).

References

• Brown, K.W., R.M. Ryan, and J.D. Creswell. 2007. Mindfulness: Theoretical foundations and evidence for its salutary effects. Psychological Inquiry 18(4): 211–237.
• Graham, B. 1991. In the Dukkha magnet zone: An interview with Jon Kabat-Zinn. Tricycle. Available online at http://www.tricycle.com/interview/dukkha-magnet-zone.
• Harrington, A., and J.D. Dunne. 2015. When mindfulness is therapy: Ethical qualms, historical perspectives. The American Psychologist 70(7): 621–631.
• Kabat-Zinn, J. 2005. Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World through Mindfulness. United Kingdom: Hachette.
• ———. 2013. Full Catastrophe Living, Revised Edition: How to Cope with Stress, Pain and Illness Using Mindfulness Meditation. United Kingdom: Hachette.
• Monroe, N.E., C.G. Moore, and C.M. Greco. 2017. Characteristics of adults who used mindfulness meditation: United States, 2012. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. doi:10.1089/acm.2016.0099.
• Ricard, M., A. Lutz, and R.J. Davidson. 2014. Mind of the meditator. Scientific American 311(5): 38–45.
• Tang, Y.Y., B.K. Hölzel, and M.I. Posner. 2015. The neuroscience of mindfulness meditation. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 16(4): 213–225.
• Wilson, J. 2014. Mindful America: Meditation and the Mutual Transformation of Buddhism and American Culture. Oxford University Press.

May 1, 2017– On April 22, thousands of scientists and their supporters gathered in Washington, D.C., and at more than 600 other locations across the world to participate in the March for Science. Pegged to Earth Day, protesters voiced their opposition to proposed federal cuts to funding for scientific research and the planned rollback of environmental rules and public health regulations. They raised alarm over the appointment of political officials dismissive of climate change and of President Donald J. Trump’s false claims about vaccines and global warming.

Previous Democratic administrations have made questionable decisions on science policy, but regardless of where you stand politically, the actions so far of the Trump administration should be deeply disturbing to anyone who cares about the future of the scientific enterprise, much less the planet. Yet it is unlikely that the March for Science will have much of an impact on federal policy over the next few years. Instead, in the long run, the March for Science may have only deepened partisan differences, while jeopardizing trust in the impartiality and credibility of scientists.

Blind to mistakes

“When you become scientifically literate, I claim, you become an environmentalist,” Bill Nye, an honorary cochair of the March for Science told the Washington Post (Gibson 2017). Many signs carried by protesters echoed that assumption, emphasizing themes like “Make America Smart Again,” “Science is the cure for bullshit,” and “Knowing stuff is good.”

Another March for Science sign quoted astrophysicist Neil de Grasse Tyson admirably stating that “I dream of a future where the truth is what shapes people’s politics, rather than politics shaping what people think is true.” Yet as risk communication expert David Ropeik (2017) countered, decades of social science research suggests that human cognition and decisions rarely if ever work in that way.

Humans are not robots. A deficit in science literacy is not why political leaders and the public disagree over climate change, vaccines, or government funding. By fundamentally misdiagnosing the causes of political conflict today, March for Science advocates may be undermining their own cause. Numerous studies show it is often the best educated and most scientifically literate who are prone to biased reasoning and false beliefs about contentious science issues. The reason for this surprising paradox is that individuals with higher science literacy tend to be more adept at recognizing arguments congenial to their partisan identity, are more attuned to what others like them think, are more likely to react to these cues in ideologically consistent ways, and tend to be more personally skilled at offering arguments to support their preexisting positions (National Academies 2017; Nisbet 2016).

For example, studies find that better educated conservatives who score higher on measures of basic science literacy are more likely to doubt the human causes of climate change. Their beliefs about climate science conform to their sense that actions to address climate change would mean more government regulation, which conservatives tend to oppose (Kahan 2015). Similarly, better educated liberals engage in biased processing of expert advice when forming opinions about the risks of natural gas fracking, genetically modified food, and nuclear energy. In this case, liberal fears are rooted in a generalized suspicion of technologies identified with large corporations (Nisbet et al. 2015).

The same relationship holds in relation to support for government funding of science. Liberals and conservatives who score low on science literacy tend to hold equivalent levels of support for science funding. But analysis shows that as science literacy increases, conservatives grow more opposed to funding while liberals grow more supportive, a shift in line with their differing beliefs about the role of government in society (Gauchat 2015).In sum, our beliefs about contentious science issues reflect who we are socially and politically. The better educated and more literate we are, the more adept we are at recognizing the connection between a political issue and our group identity and interests (Kahan 2015).

Similar factors influence policy decisions. As the late sociologist Dorothy Nelkin (1978) observed nearly forty years ago, political disputes such as those over climate change, vaccination, and scientific funding are fundamentally controversies over political control: Who gets to decide the priority that these issues should take over others, or the actions and costs taken to address problems? Which values, interpretations, groups, and worldviews matter and which should be given greatest weight?

For these reasons, much of the rationale behind the March for Science is not only off target, but the event itself and similar future activities may only intensify political deadlock rather than overcome it.

Staying credible

Although the March for Science was framed as nonpartisan, the messaging leading up to and during the event was anything but helpful. Early on, reflecting contemporary debates on college campuses, organizers were besieged by concerns over issues related to inclusion and identity. Some criticized the organizers for not paying enough attention to these topics, which prompted the posting online of a diversity statement. In response, cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker tweeted: “Scientists’ March on Washington plan compromises its goals with anti-science PC/identity politics/hard-left rhetoric” (Sheridan and Facher 2017).

Twitter remained a source of controversy for organizers. A few days before the event, the official March for Science account declared that the U.S. bombing of an ISIS compound in Afghanistan was an example of how “science is weaponized against marginalized people.” The Tweet was later deleted, earning ridicule from right-wing bloggers (Kelly 2017).

On the day of the march, across cities, some participants donned pink “brain caps,” a reference to the pink “pussy caps” worn at the January 2017 Women’s March. In a similar tribute, T-shirts and signs declared “Keep your tiny hands off my science.” Many signs played on the official Hillary Clinton campaign theme “I’m with her,” with an arrow pointing to planet Earth instead. Some signs mocked Trump by employing allusions to science, referencing him as an “absolute zero” and “black hole.” Other cheeky slogans included “Less invasions, more equations,” and “I’ve seen smarter cabinets at IKEA” (Politi 2017).

In these cases, the March for Science constitutes a potentially hazardous misfire. By choosing public protest as a main strategy, and by voicing messages that have an obvious partisan and ideological slant, the March for Science made it that much easier for Americans to lean on their group identities in forming opinions about contentious issues.

A much discussed recent study published in Environmental Communi­cation, a journal where I serve as editor-in-chief, suggests that scientists may have more discretion to advocate on behalf of policy positions than they assumed, without hurting their credibility (Kotcher et al. 2017). Yet the preliminary study did not test what happens to the perceived credibility of scientists when those policy positions are argued in the context of clear partisan messages communicated by way of protests such as the March for Science.

Since the 1970s, public confidence in almost every major institution has plummeted. Yet confidence in the leadership of the scientific community has remained strong (Funk and Kennedy 2017). As a consequence, scientists in society today enjoy almost unrivaled communication capital. The challenge they face following the March for Science is how to use this capital wisely and effectively.

Citation:

Nisbet, M.C. (2017, July/August). The March for Science: Partisan Protests Put at Risk Public Trust in Scientists. Skeptical Inquirer Magazine. 

References

• Funk, C., and B. Kennedy. 2017. Public confidence in scientists has remained stable for decades. Pew Research Center (April 6).
• Gauchat, G. 2015. The political context of science in the United States: Public acceptance of evidence-based policy and science funding. Social Forces 2: 723–746.
• Gibson, C. 2017. The March for Science was a moment made for Nye. The Washington Post (April 23).
• Kahan, D. 2015. Climate science communication and the measurement problem. Political Psychology 36(S1): 1–43.
• Kelly, J. 2017. March for science: Sympathy for our Enemies. National Review (April 1).
• Kotcher, J.E., T.A. Myers, E.K. Vraga, et al. 2017. Does engagement in advocacy hurt the credibility of scientists? Results from a randomized national survey experiment. Environmental Communication 11(3): 415–429.
• National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2017. Communicating Sci­ence Effectively: A Research Agenda. Wash­ington, DC: The National Academies Press.
• Nelkin, D. 1978. Controversy: Politics of Technical Decisions. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publicans.
• Nisbet, M.C. 2016. The science literacy paradox: Why really smart people often have the most biased opinions. Skeptical Inquirer 40(5): 21–23.
• Nisbet, E.C., K.E. Cooper, and R.K. Garrett. 2015. The partisan brain: How dissonant science messages lead conservatives and liberals to (dis) trust science. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 658(1): 36–66.
• Politi, D. 2017. Here are some of the best signs from the March for Science. Slate.com (April 22).
• Ropeik, D. 2017. Why the March for Science failed as demonstrated by its own protest signs. Medium.com (April 24).
• Sheridan, K., and L. Facher. 2017. Science march on Washington, billed as historic, plagued by organizational turmoil. STAT.com (March 22).

April 1, 2017— In 2013’s Informing the News, the eminent journalism scholar Thomas Patterson comprehensively reviewed the evidence in support of the well-worn criticisms of our contemporary news system. Journalists too often: give equal weight to accurate representations and faulty facts and flawed opinions, focus on conflict and strategy over substance, and favor personalities, dramatic events, and infotainment over big picture analysis and context. These trends are unlikely to change unless journalists more deeply understand the subjects they cover and how their stories can affect societal decisions, he concluded. Patterson called for a new “knowledge-based journalism” in which reporters excelled not only at interviewing, investigating, and storytelling but also in applying relevant specialized expertise. “If news is to be a means of getting people to think and talk sensibly about public affairs, it needs to contain the contextual information that enables citizens to make sense of events” he urged.^[1]

The challenge for news organizations, argued Patterson, is not to cater to audience interests but to take important issues such as climate change and make them interesting. News organizations investing in knowledge-based journalism are more likely to produce content that audiences search for and recommend to others.  Such high quality content can help repair news organizations’ sagging reputations and boost their finances by giving an outlet enduring relevance and audience share in an ultra-competitive world of many online choices, he argued.

From across the Atlantic, the late German communication researcher Wolfgang Donsbach echoed Patterson’s call for journalism to stake out its role as society’s “new knowledge profession.” A specialized understanding of an expert field enables journalists to make “sound judgments on the newsworthiness of events,” he wrote. “Only then can they ask critical questions to the actors, find the right experts, and only then can they resist infiltration of non-professional factors into their decision-making.”^[2]  Not only is “content” knowledge of a subject such as economics or environmental science needed, argued Patterson and Donsbach, but so too is “process” knowledge. This second dimension includes recognition of the factors that influence journalists’ news judgments, as well as the effects of news coverage decisions on audiences. Process knowledge can, for example, be applied by journalists to guard against personal biases and mistakes, to choose among different storytelling techniques that more effectively engage audiences, and to take advantage of various digital tools to enhance understanding and reach.

Building on these seminal ideas, in a 2015 essay we identified specific knowledge-based journalistic practices and media structures that might enable more constructive debate in science controversies. In doing so, we introduced three complementary models for doing knowledge-based journalism on which we elaborate in this chapter: the knowledge broker, dialogue broker, and policy broker. By combining these approaches in coverage of politicized debates, journalists and their news organizations can contextualize and critically evaluate expert knowledge and competing claims, facilitate discussion that bridges entrenched ideological divisions, and promote consideration of a broader menu of policy options and technologies.^[3]

To further illuminate these models, in this chapter we draw on examples of veteran journalists whose work can serve as an inspiration for new generations of professionals. Because they are experts in their fields and have years of experience covering relevant topics or beats, these veteran journalists are able to fuse complex knowledge and on-the-ground reportage into a storyline that is clear, readable, and engaging to a broader audience. They connect the dots for readers, offering a wider lens, bigger picture, and evaluation of complex ideas and fast-moving trends. As knowledge-based journalists they often engage in deductive analysis across cases and issues, working from the top down, drawing connections, making inferences, theorizing about causes and solutions, and offering judgments. They combine the habits of mind of a scholar with the skills of a master storyteller, providing the context and explaining the ideas that enable citizens to make sense of complex science controversies and trends.

Knowledge Brokers

In the first model, journalists play an essential role as “knowledge brokers,” unpacking the process of expert knowledge production for their readers, examining how and why scientific research was done, sometimes positing alternative interpretations or drawing connections to ongoing debates about a complex problem such as mental health, climate change, or infectious disease. Knowledge brokers focus on the institutions, assumptions, ideologies, political factors, and personalities that influence the production and interpretation of scientific research. Through this perspective, readers learn not only about the basic facts of science, but also how scientific research is conducted, interpreted, communicated, and contested. These veteran journalists often apply “weight-of-evidence reporting,” a technique in which journalists seek out and convey where the preponderance of expert opinion lies on an issue.[4] Yet most journalists who apply this valuable idea strongly defer to expert judgment and do “not get into the weeds of the scientific evidence.”[5] Knowledge brokers go further, probing deeper into the specialized research they write about, examining how and why it was produced, synthesizing and comparing findings across disciplines, and evaluating its usefulness when applied to proposed solutions.

Somewhat paradoxically, only by way of this critically motivated reporting can public trust in science be maintained. Rather than portray science and scientists as truth’s ultimate custodians, knowledge brokers reveal for readers how science really works. When controversies related to fraud, bias, interpretation, scandal, hype, honest errors, or conflicts of interest emerge, those who are attentive to this form of journalism are more likely to be able to judge when such behaviors are outliers or the norm. Just as peer-review and other established norms within science serve as correctives to such failures, as outsiders knowledge brokers fulfill a similarly vital and complementary role.

Across several decades, as a prototypic knowledge broker, Scientific American staff writer John Horgan pioneered a valuable style of science criticism. Dissatisfied with the constraints of traditional reporting, he turned to more opinion-based, interpretative reporting while also looking for “exaggerated or erroneous scientific claims” to question and debunk. “I convinced myself that that was actually a good thing to do because science had become such an authority that there was a need for a scientific critic …,” he noted.  “It’s a paradox: it’s using subjectivity to ultimately get a more clear, objective picture of things.”^[6]

In his award winning reporting, Horgan not only skewered the exaggerated claims of scientists who promised world-changing discoveries, but also grappled with ideas of philosophers of science. These themes coalesced in the 1996 best-seller The End of Science in which Horgan argued that science was so successful in its description of the natural world that it had reached the limits of its knowledge. No new scientific frameworks will surpass the explanatory power of Darwinian natural section and genetics in biology or the standard model in physics, he argued.^[7]  The End of Science crystallized Horgan’s signature critical perspective which offered readers a consistently skeptical evaluation of the limitations of scientific knowledge. In 1999, Horgan expanded on this perspective in The Undiscovered Mind, arguing that behavioral genetics, evolutionary psychology, cognitive science and other fields had still not delivered a conclusive theory of consciousness and personality, or provided satisfying answers to other big questions.

The author of two subsequent books, Horgan also applies his critical approach in his long-running Scientific American “Cross-Check” blog, a format that benefits from his strong personal voice and trademark skepticism.  “I think that science is ill-served by its own public relations…,” he says. “I actually like to think that I’m doing good deeds for science itself and helping dispel some of these illusions that people have about science . . . I think science needs it.”^[8] Inspired by the philosopher Karl Popper’s insights on the tentative, provisional nature of science, Horgan’s longstanding goal is to impart a form of hopeful skepticism which can “protect us from our own lust for answers while keeping us open-minded enough to recognize genuine truth if and when it arrives.”^[9]

Veteran environmental journalist Andrew Revkin, who currently writes for ProPublica, is a second example of a knowledge broker. At his former New York Times “Dot Earth” blog, he frequently warned about the tendency for research institutions and journals to hype scientific findings about climate change and to overlook the inherent uncertainty in research. This hyping becomes amplified by advocates, journalists, and bloggers on either side of an environmental debate and by news organizations and reporters who have a strong incentive to always search for “the front page thought.” Consider the role that Revkin played as a knowledge broker in relation to a 2015 study published by the climate scientist James Hansen. Using evidence from complex computer modeling, Hansen and his sixteen co-authors warned that polar ice sheets are likely to melt at a far faster rate than previously estimated. Within a few decades, coastal cities from Boston to Shanghai could be under water, risking military conflict, mass migration, and economic collapse that “might make the planet ungovernable, threatening the fabric of civilization,” warned Hansen and his colleagues.^[10]

Despite the alarming conclusions, Hansen’s study occupied an ambivalent, unsettled position within the tradition of peer-reviewed publication. It was submitted to the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics where much of the peer review process occurs online in an open-access format. Over a period of months, experts are asked to read the paper and post substantive online comments. Only after reviewing the amassed expert comments do the editors decide whether the paper will be accepted for formal publication. But before the paper was posted online to undergo review, Hansen worked with a public relations firm to distribute the paper to journalists and to hold a telephone press conference at which they could ask questions. His goal, he told reporters, was to influence the outcome of international climate change negotiations to be held at the end of the year.

“Climate Seer James Hansen Issues His Direst Forecast Yet,” was the over-the-top headline of a Daily Beast article that followed the press conference. The implications of Hansen’s findings are “vast and profound,” wrote the reporter. The “blockbuster study” and its “apocalyptic scenario” presents a “huge headache for diplomats,” exploding the all too modest goals of climate diplomacy.^[11]  “Earth’s Most Famous Climate Scientist Issues Bombshell Sea Level Warning,” was the same-day headline at Slate magazine. The implications of Hansen’s “breathtaking new study” are “mindboggling,” Slate told its readers. “New York City—and every other coastal city on the planet—may only have a few more decades of habitability left.”^[12]

Journalists at The New York Times, Associated Press, the BBC, and The Guardian were among those who chose not to cover the paper, judging it premature to run a story before peer review had begun. Revkin at his Dot Earth blog chose an alternative strategy. In two lengthy posts, he did not merely report the specific findings of the study; instead he analyzed the authors’ apparent motivations, relating to readers Hansen’s career arc as “climatologist-turned-campaigner.” Revkin also identified key differences between arguments in the online discussion paper posted at the journal and the supporting materials supplied to journalists, which included claims that dramatic sea level rise was “likely to occur this century.” He also posted replies to emails he had sent requesting reactions to the paper from leading climatologists, many of them critical of the assumptions employed by Hansen and his colleagues.

Drawing on correspondence with two geologists, Revkin filed a review at the journal’s site arguing that Hansen’s paper contained geological evidence that could be considered too one-sided.  Other commenters at the journal subsequently questioned Revkin’s expertise. “Scientific review,” wrote one, “is for those who *know the topic* to comment, and it’s abundantly clear, that ain’t you.” Revkin in response asked the journal to clarify who was included in the “scientific community,” and who had authority to comment as part of the open review process. He then related this exchange back to the readers of his New York Times blog, including excerpts and links so that readers could follow up in more detail.^[13]

As scholar Morgan Meyer writes, journalists as knowledge brokers can do more than just assess or critique science: they can also transform expert knowledge by offering new interpretations and conclusions that subsequently influence the thinking of scientists.^[14]  Laurie Garrett is a leading example of this knowledge broker function. Her early-career reporting from the frontlines of global public health threats culminated in the 1994 book The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance. That book told the story of the global spread of viruses such as HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, and Ebola, detailing how humans abetted the rise and resurgence of these infections through weak global public health systems, misuse of antibiotics and antivirals, local warfare, and refugee migration.

In The Coming Plague, Garrett integrated a diversity of disciplines into a new way of understanding infectious diseases, framing them as a unified problem manageable only by approaches that are informed by interdisciplinary research. Her work raised public awareness of infectious disease by showing readers the devastation wrought by these new plagues, boosting the profile, prestige, and funding of researchers and organizations combating diseases.^[15] In 2000, Garrett followed with Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health where she argued for a systemic solution to protect populations around the world from lethal epidemics.^[16]  The book’s critique of health policy moved her work into the political realm. In 2004, she became a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, where she combines the roles of reporter, researcher, and expert commentator, authoring popular articles, policy reports, and even serving as a script consultant to the 2011 Hollywood thriller “Contagion.”

 Dialogue Brokers

As news organizations invest in a range of innovative digital and online initiatives, a second complementary strategy for doing knowledge-based journalism is likely to prove particularly relevant. In this “dialogue broker” model, an expert journalist uses blogging, podcasts, video interviews, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media tools to convene discussions among a network of professionally and politically diverse contributors and readers.

This approach that connects a range of contributors is an example of networked journalism.[17] But the dialogue broker method is driven also by a view that dialogue can help readers to understand the viewpoint of others and accept the fact that they disagree. New York University’s Jay Rosen argued that complex, polarized debates such as those over climate change or biotechnology are unlikely to reach political consensus. But he wrote: “what’s possible is a world where different stakeholders ‘get’ that the world looks different to people who hold different stakes.”^[18]

In this scenario, what are needed then are knowledge-based journalists who convene discussions that force critical reflection and examination, rather than playing to an ideologically like-minded audience. By way of blog posts and other digital tools, dialogue brokers feature multiple, contrasting perspectives, while offering context on the scientific and policy arguments made. Their original posts are often updated in light of new developments, reactions from other journalists and experts, and feedback from readers. This is “a journalism of linking rather than pinning things down, that is situated within a model of knowledge-as-process rather than knowledge-as-product,” writes new media scholar Donald Matheson.^[19]

A dialogue-based form of networked journalism reflects many of the arguments of social theorists studying the politically contested terrain of issues such as climate change. As Rayner argues, progress lies not in staking out a hardline position on a contested terrain and then castigating those that are in disagreement, but in recognizing and understanding multiple positions, and finding ways to negotiate constructively among them. Dismissing alternative perspectives not only weakens our ability to understand the complexity of these issues but also risks the loss of legitimacy and trust among key constituencies, he warns.^[20]

Revkin at his New York Times’ Dot Earth blog not only functioned as an explainer and informed critic of science (knowledge broker), but also served as a skilled convener (dialogue broker), using his blog and a variety of other digital tools to facilitate discussions among experts, advocates, and readers while contextualizing specific claims. His role as convener and dialogue broker at Dot Earth was informed by his reading of research in the social sciences which challenged his long held assumption as a journalist that the “solution to global warming was, basically, clearer communication: …If we could just explain the problem more clearly, people would see it more clearly, and then they would change.”^[21]  At Dot Earth, to foster a dialogue with readers, he prefered posing questions, describing answers from experts and others. Revkin viewed his role as “interrogatory – exploring questions, not giving you my answer…I think anyone who tells you they know the answer on some of these complex issues is not being particularly honest.”^[22]

Nathanael Johnson’s 2013 Grist.org series on genetically modified (GM) food is a second example of the dialogue broker approach. His goal in the series was to go beyond the polarized thinking on the topic and he ended up brokering a conversation between critics and proponents of the technology. Through that dialogue, he promoted a shared understanding of why people disagree so strongly on the subject. As Johnson wrote, there is obvious value to journalists attempting to broker such a conversation for their audiences, especially on an issue such as GM food in which many Grist.org readers tend to doubt its safety and distrust the scientists who argue on behalf of the technology. He wrote:

“If you try to cross-check the claims of people on either side of the GM debate, you  run into problems, because these warring clans speak different dialects. Their foundational assumptions point them in opposite directions, facing different landscapes and talking past each other. This can leave outsiders feeling that someone is lying. But often the miscommunication comes down to a difference in  perspectives.”^[23]

Policy Brokers

Given the complexity of science controversies, and the difficulty involved in falsifying predictions about the future, it is possible for equally plausible narratives about effective policy options and solutions to exist. This ambiguity presents the opportunity for advocates to promote prescriptions that align with their vision of a “good society.” As environmental studies scholar Roger Pielke Jr. aptly notes, wickedly complex problems such as  climate change become “a bit like a policy inkblot on which people map onto the issue their hopes and values associated with their vision for what a better world would look like.”^[24] In the face of such ambiguity, journalists play a key role by helping to construct a common outlook and language among networks of experts, advocates, and political leaders that aids in the coordination of decisions and actions. Yet if one problem definition and set of solutions is prioritized in news coverage to the exclusion of others, such influence can lock in powerful forms of groupthink that dismiss valuable alternative interpretations and courses of action.^[25]

What is needed then is a style of knowledge-based journalism that can counter groupthink and diffuse polarization in science controversies by expanding the range of policy options and technologies under consideration by the public and political community.  This policy broker model for journalists is informed by research by Pielke Jr., who demonstrates through a series of case studies that the broader the menu of policies and technologies available to decision-makers in science-related debates, the greater the opportunity for decision-makers to reach agreement on paths forward.^[26]  Writing about the climate change debate, he argued that much of the political argument over scientific uncertainty would fade — once new technologies are available. These advances would make it easier to conduct low-cost meaningful action on climate change. It would be then easier to gain support from across the political spectrum and from developed and developing countries. For example, he argued in a 2013 coauthored article that carbon capture that limits emissions from coal and natural gas power plans could “transform the political debate”. This is because the technology “does not demand a radical alteration of national economies, global trade, or personal lifestyles” and therefore “enfranchises the very groups that have the most to lose from conventional climate policies.”[27]

These conclusions are similar to those of Dan Kahan and colleagues studying the process by which the public forms opinions about controversial science topics (see Kahan, chapter…). Their findings suggest that perceptions of culturally contested issues such as climate change are often policy and technology dependent and that polarization is likely to be diffused under conditions where the focus is on a diverse rather than a narrow set of options. “People with individualistic values resist scientific evidence that climate change is a serious threat because they have come to assume that industry-constraining carbon emission limits are the main solution,” argues Kahan. “They would probably look at the evidence more favourably, however, if made aware that the possible responses to climate change include nuclear power and geoengineering, enterprises that to them symbolize human resourcefulness.”^[28]

Consider how these principles apply to the role of journalists as policy brokers in the debate over climate change. Between 2007 to 2010, among those lobbying for action to address the issue, the focus was on setting a global price on carbon that would catalyze a “soft energy path” revolution, shifting the economy from a reliance on fossil fuels to dependence on wind, solar, and energy efficiency technologies. In contrast, there was much more limited attention to advanced “hard energy path” technologies such as nuclear energy or carbon capture and storage that would help to reduce emissions in ways far less transformative to the global economy.^[29] In the years since, several journalists serving in the role of policy broker have helped to diversify the range of technological options considered in the climate debate, calling greater attention to hard energy path technologies and government-led innovation strategies. These journalists challenged longstanding claims by many environmentalists and activists that solar, wind, and other renewables are the only energy technologies needed to combat climate change. In doing so, they shifted policy debate away from the narrow goal of making fossil fuels more costly to a broader focus on making a diverse portfolio of low carbon technologies less expensive.^[30]

In a series of columns leading up to and during the 2015 United Nations summit on climate change, The New York Times’ “Economic Scene” columnist Eduardo Porter was among the more prominent journalists playing the role of policy broker by questioning the conventional assumptions of climate advocates. Porter brought a unique perspective and background to the topic. Holding two degrees in physics, the twenty-year veteran reporter had covered business, finance, and politics from Brazil, Tokyo, London, Mexico, and Los Angeles before joining The Times in 2004 as an editorial specialist on economics.

In his columns, Porter critically assessed arguments that narrowly focused on soft energy paths and energy efficiency strategies. He also strongly challenged journalists and academics on the left flank of the environmental movement who argued that solving climate change also necessitated a halt to economic growth and an end to the global capitalist system. These longstanding arguments had recently gained considerable attention by way of Naomi Klein’s 2014 international best-seller This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate.[31]

Porter countered that proposals like Klein’s pushing a 100 percent renewables and efficiency strategy “too often lack strong analytical foundations, and are driven more by hope than science.” In this case, “the goal of bringing the world’s carbon emissions under control is put at the service of other agendas, ideological or economic, limiting the world’s options,” he concluded. As an alternative path, Porter wrote that success on climate change “requires experimenting intensely along many technological avenues, learning quickly from failures and moving on.”^[32] Drawing on various studies and analyses, Porter argued for investment in carbon capture and storage technologies and for the expansion of nuclear power. These technologies in combination with renewables would be needed to rapidly decarbonize the world economy while meeting the demands for growth from India, China, Africa and the rest of the developing world. They will also be required as backup power sources for intermittent solar and wind technologies.

Porter similarly warned that arguments promoting the need for negative economic growth threatened to derail the UN climate negotiations. “Whatever the ethical merits of the case, the proposition of no growth has absolutely no chance to succeed,” he wrote. Interviewing historians and economists, he noted that by reducing the competition for scarce resources, economic growth over the past century had delivered enormous societal benefits, helping to reduce war and conflict, enabling consensual politics and democracy, and empowering women.  Even if Klein and her allies were correct that climate change meant the upending of capitalism and globalization, Porter doubted “it would bring about the workers’ utopia” they imagined. Instead in a world without economic growth, the conflict for scarce resources would mean that the powerless and most vulnerable were the most likely to suffer, he warned. Rather than putting an end to capitalism, the world’s poor could best be served by developing a broad menu of new energy technologies that shift the world away from fossil fuels.^[33]

Journalism in Turbulent Times

The advent in recent years of several innovative digital news ventures focused on deeper forms of explanatory, analytical, and data-driven journalism suggests that at least some news industry leaders, investors, and philanthropists have recognized the need for new forms of knowledge-based journalism. In 2015, the billionaire owner of The Boston Globe launched STAT, a deep vertical digital news organization covering the health, medical, and life sciences. “Over the next 20 years, some of the most important stories in the world are going to emerge in the life-sciences arena,” said STAT founder John Henry. The goal of STAT is to be “the country’s go-to news source for the life-sciences.”^[34] To report on and analyze the life sciences, STAT hired a roster of knowledge-based journalists with dozens of years of combined experience covering the beat. Examples include regular columnists Sharon Begley who “who goes behind the headlines to make sense of scientific claims” and Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus of the Retraction Watch blog who focus on issues of misconduct, fraud, and scientific integrity.

In other examples, the startup news site Vox.com, co-founded in 2014 by former Washington Post “Wonkblog” writer Ezra Klein, focuses on explanatory journalism with a type of Wikipedia-like tagging of terms and concepts that gives readers in-depth background on an issue, delivered by way of the latest digital design techniques.^[35]  Launched in 2014, “The Upshot” at the New York Times is a blog-like section that aims to enhance reader understanding of news through analysis and data visualization with contributions from journalists and academics, enabling readers to “grasp big, complicated stories so well that they can explain the whys and how’s of those stories to their friends, relatives and colleagues.”^[36]  The Washington Post.com soon followed, creating a series of science, technology, and environment-focused blogs in which journalists contribute daily reporting, analysis, and commentary. The online startups Buzzfeed and Mashable have hired veteran science journalists to contribute deeper reported news stories. Bloomberg, Politico, and Energy & Environment News have invested in deep vertical coverage of science, technology, and environmental policy respectively, funded by way of subscriptions and advertising that target the business, advocacy, and lobbying communities. Philanthropists and foundations have also underwritten the launch of notable non-profit news ventures such as Grist.org, Inside Climate News, Climate Central, and The Conversation, while continuing support of coverage at outlets like Mother Jones, The Nation, and public radio.

These for-profit and non-profit news ventures are not without their limits and trade-offs, have yet to prove their sustainability, and deserve critical scholarly analysis. Among the relevant questions: how do audiences interpret the mix of news, analysis, and opinion found across these outlets, especially as content is accessed, shared, and commented on by way of social media? How do knowledge-based journalists gain and maintain their credibility and following in an era of partisan audiences? What influence does the advertising, subscription, and funding model of a news organization have on journalistic decisions and the interpretation of complex issues like climate change or food biotechnology?

For many university journalism programs, these new media ventures and questions are the latest evidence that they need to rethink their traditional trade school focus on interviewing and storytelling skills. Indeed, with journalism programs under pressure because of languishing enrollment, their future may depend on shifting to more effectively meet the needs of society and the profession. Their future may depend less on enrolling undergraduate majors and Masters students, but in retraining students and professionals with backgrounds in specialized fields, offering them a variety of minors, certificates, badges, short courses, and fellowships. In this regard, philanthropists can play a vital role, underwriting specialized programs that meet the need for a new kind of knowledge-based journalist and communicator. At the University of Toronto, for example, a unique program recruits academics and professionals with existing subject matter expertise and trains them to pitch stories to news organizations as freelance journalists covering their own disciplines.^[37]  In all, the complementary models and examples of knowledge-based journalism that we describe in this chapter are a starting point to learn from and evaluate. Research, vision, and leadership will be needed to bring about the shifts needed in how journalism covers science and its various controversies, but, in the process, there are already many bright examples to build on.

Citation:

Nisbet, M.C. & Fahy, D. (2017). Models of Knowledge-based Journalism. In Jamieson, K.H., Scheufele, D.A. & Kahan, D. (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Science of Science Communication. New York: Oxford University Press, 273-282.

References

[1] Patterson, Thomas E. Informing the news. Vintage, 2013, p. 93.

[2] Donsbach, Wolfgang. “Journalism as the new knowledge profession and consequences for journalism education.” Journalism 15, no. 6 (2014): 661-677, 668.

[3] Nisbet, Matthew C., and Declan Fahy. “The Need for Knowledge-Based Journalism in Politicized Science Debates.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 658, no. 1 (2015): 223-234

[4] Sharon Dunwoody. “Weight-of-evidence reporting: What is it? Why use it? Niemen Reports 59, no. 4 (2005): 89-91.

[5] Kohl, Patrice Ann, Soo Yun Kim, Yilang Peng, Heather Akin, Eun Jeong Koh, Allison Howell, and Sharon Dunwoody. “The influence of weight-of-evidence strategies on audience perceptions of (un)certainty when media cover contested science. Public Understanding of Science (2015) DOI: 10.1177/0963662515615087

[6] Fahy, Declan, and Matthew C. Nisbet. “The science journalist online: Shifting roles and emerging practices.” Journalism-Theory Practice and Criticism 12, no. 7 (2011): 778-93, 787.

[7] Horgan, John. The end of science: Facing the limits of knowledge in the twilight of the scientific age. Basic Books, 2015.

[8] Personal interview with second author, January 2014.

[9] Horgan, J. (2000). The Undiscovered Mind: How the Human Brain Defies Replication, Medication, and Explanation. Simon and Schuster, 13.

[10] Hansen, James, Makiko Sato, Paul Hearty, Reto Ruedy, Maxwell Kelley, Valerie Masson-Delmotte, Gary Russell et al. “Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2◦ C global warming is highly dangerous.” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions 15, no. 14 (2015): 20059-20179.

[11] Hertsgaard, Mark, “Climate Seer James Hansen Issues His Direst Forecast Yet,” The Daily Beast, July 20, 2015, accessed January 15, 2016,http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/20/climate-seer-james-hansen-issues-his-direst-forecast-yet.html.

[12] Holthaus, Eric, “Earth’s Most Famous Climate Scientist Issues Bombshell Sea Level Warning,” Slate.com, July 20, 2015, accessed January 15, 2016, http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/07/20/sea_level_study_james_hansen_issues_dire_climate_warning.html.

[13] See Andrew C. Revkin, “Whiplash Warning When Climate Science is Publicized Before Peer Review and Publication,” The New York Times.com, July 23, 2015, accessed January 16, 2016 http://nyti.ms/1JBfH4j and Andrew C. Revkin, “A Rocky First Review for a Climate Paper Warning of a Stormy Coastal Crisis,” The New York Times.com, July 25, 2015, Accessed January 16, 2016 http://nyti.ms/1Iv5sEc.

[14] Meyer, Morgan. “The rise of the knowledge broker.” Science Communication 32, no. 1 (2010): 118-127.

[15] Garrett, Laurie. The coming plague: newly emerging diseases in a world out of balance. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994.

[16] Garrett, Laurie. Betrayal of trust: the collapse of global public health. Oxford University Press, 2003.

[17] Adrienne Russell. (2011). Networked: A Contemporary History of News in Transition. London: Polity.

[18] Jay Rosen, “Covering Wicked Problems: Keynote address to the 2nd UK Conference of

Science Journalists,” PressThink Blog, June 25, 2012, Accessed January 15, 2016 http://pressthink.org/2012/06/covering-wicked-problems/.

[19] Matheson, Donald. “Weblogs and the epistemology of the news: Some trends in online journalism.” New media & society 6, no. 4 (2004): 443-468, 458.

[20] Steve Rayner, Wicked problems: clumsy solutions—diagnoses and prescriptions for environmental ills. Jack Beale Memorial Lecture on Global Environment, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, July, 2006. Accessed January 15, 2016

http://www.insis.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/InSIS/Publications/Rayner_-_jackbealelecture.pdf.

[21] Revkin, Andrew C. “My climate change.” Issues in Science and Technology, Winter (2016): 27-36, 32.

[22] Curtis Brainard, “Dot Earth Moves to Opinion Section,” Columbia Journalism Review Online. 2010, April 1, Accessed January 15, 2016

http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/dot_earth_moves_to_nyt_opinion.php?page=all&print=true.

[23] Nathanael Johnson, “The GM safety dance: What’s rule and what’s real,” The Grist.org, 2013, July 10, Accessed January 15, 2016 http://grist.org/food/the-gm-safety-dance-whats-rule-and-whats-real/.

[24] Pielke Jr., Roger A, 2010. The climate fix: what scientists and politicians won’t tell you about global warming. Basic Books, 62.

[25] Nisbet, Matthew C. “Disruptive ideas: public intellectuals and their arguments for action on climate change.” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 5, no. 6 (2014): 809-823.

[26] Pielke Jr., Roger A. The honest broker: making sense of science in policy and politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

[27] Sarewitz, Daniel and Pielke Jr. Roger. “Learning to live with fossil fuels.” The Atlantic, April 24, 2013. Accessed January 15, 2016 http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/05/learning-to-live-with-fossil-fuels/309295/.

[28] Kahan, Dan. “Fixing the communications failure.” Nature 463, no. 7279 (2010): 296-297, 297. For more specific to how Pielke and Kahan’s research can be applied to specific strategies in science policy debates, see Nisbet, Matthew C. “Engaging in science policy controversies.” Routledge Handbook of Public Communication of Science and Technology (2014): 173.

[29] Nisbet, Matthew C. “Climate shift: Clear vision for the next decade of public debate.” American University School of Communication (2011). Accessed January 15, 2015 http://climateshiftproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/ClimateShift_report_June2011.pdf.

[30] Nisbet, “Disruptive Ideas”.

[31] Klein, Naomi. This changes everything: capitalism vs. the climate. Simon and Schuster, 2014.

[32] Eduardo Porter, “Climate Change Calls for Science Not Hope,” The New York Times, June 23, 2015, Accessed January 15, 2015 http://nyti.ms/1Hd5RII.

[33] Eduardo Porter, “Imagining a World Without Growth,” The New York Times, December 1, 2015, Accessed January 15, 2016 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/02/business/economy/imagining-a-world-without-growth.html.

[34] Healy, Beth. “Globe’s owner unveils site focused on health, life-sciences,” The Boston Globe, November 4, 2015, Accessed January 15, 2016 https://goo.gl/29yuou.

[35] Klein, Ezra, Melissa Bell, and Matt Yglesias, “Welcome to Vox: A work in progress,” Vox.com, April 6, 2014, Accessed January 15, 2016 http://www.vox.com/2014/3/30/5555690/welcome-to-vox.

[36] Leonhardt, David, “Navigate news with the upshot,” The New York Times, April 22, 2014, Available at http://nyti.ms/1nlJHL6.

[37] Rosenstiel, Tom, “Why we need a better conversation about the future of journalism education,” Poynter.org, April 15 2013, Accessed Rosenstiel, Tom. 15 April 2013. Why we need a better conversation about the future of journalism education.

[38] Poynter.org. Accessed January 15, 2016 http://www.poynter.org/2013/why-we-need-a-better-conversation-about-the-future-of-journalism-education/210196/.

January 1, 2017 —As newly elected president Donald Trump takes office, the scientific community faces the likelihood not only of unprecedented cuts in government funding for research, but also of bold new attacks on scientific expertise as a basis for policy making and decisions.

Trump campaigned on a pledge to eliminate as much as $100 million in “wasteful climate change spending,” and there have been reports of plans to severely cut funding for NASA and other agencies. For the National Institutes of Health, Trump and the Republican-led Congress are likely to revisit funding for embryonic stem cell research and to take a closer look at restricting gene editing.

Major regulations designed to protect the environment and public health will also come under fire. Environmental Protection Agency rules limiting emissions from coal plants, which President-elect Trump has called “job destroying,” may be rescinded; current bans on oil and gas drilling may be lifted; and the United States’ participation in the historic United Nations climate change agreement may be canceled.

Behind the scenes at scientific and regulatory agencies, political appointees are likely to block or delay other environmental and public health regulations, to edit or censor scientific agency reports, and to restrict the ability of federal scientists to communicate with the public and the media. By way of his speeches and Twitter remarks, President-elect Trump will likely spread dangerous scientific falsehoods and conspiracy theories, similar to his past claims that climate change is a “hoax,” or that childhood vaccination is linked to autism.

Some among scientists might dismiss the brutal 2016 election and Trump’s victory as an aberration and historical outlier. The next four years or more will be tough times, they might say, but as has been the case in the past, some areas of science will thrive, others will struggle, but ultimately better times will come again. They may argue that no major course correction, new way of advocating for scientific funding, or emphasis on communicating the importance of expertise is needed.

But such arguments are grossly misguided. The 2016 election should be a wake-up call for the scientific community and its leaders. We are not living in normal times. Over the next few years, if there is to be any possible silver lining, it will be that leaders of the scientific community break out of a culture of complacency, ending a long-standing reticence to confront the profound, dire problems we now face.

An examination of the deeper trends that have enabled Trump’s election to the presidency reveals troubling signs that America’s civic capacity to engage in informed decision-making has been overrun by widening income and educational disparities, anxiety over the speed of cultural and technological change, and critical weaknesses in our mainstream news media system.

Each of these problems is too complex for the scientific community to try to manage and mitigate on its own, but for the most part scientists and their organizations have watched on the sidelines as other sectors of civil society have tackled these issues. Yet, in fact, there is much that scientists and their organizations can contribute, and they can do so in a manner that remains nonpartisan.

Over the past decade, many scientists have enthusiastically sought out communication training opportunities, honing their skills at presentations, media interviews, and social media. Social scientists have joined the effort, systematically studying the “science of science communication,” evaluating the many factors that shape individual and societal decisions, and considering the implications for effective communication. During the Trump years, enthusiasm for these activities and new directions will justifiably deepen.

But each of these tools and insights remain just tactics, limited in their effect, if they are not applied and coordinated on behalf of a larger vision of social change. What is needed is broader strategic thinking about the handful of policy goals and investments that scientists can join with others in pursuing that would have an enduring impact on problems such as income inequality and political polarization, and on the threat they pose to the scientific enterprise.

Tackling Inequality

Consider first the challenge of economic inequality, particularly how the problem has manifested itself in recent politics. The past year has brought wider attention to the deep anxiety among less-educated, predominantly white Americans about their economic security in a world that seems to have left them behind. These anxieties have fueled support for right-wing populist leaders such as Trump, as well as extreme distrust of what they see as institutional elites, including scientists and other experts.

The struggles and anxieties of working class whites are not unique to the United States and are reflective of global dynamics and trends. In the May 2016 “Brexit” vote in the United Kingdom, those without a university degree voted in a large majority to leave the European Union, whereas the better-educated individuals in cosmopolitan London voted to remain.

Despite an overwhelming consensus among experts that leaving the European Union would severely damage the UK economy, a leader of the Leave campaign rallied public support by declaring that the “people of this country have had enough of experts.” Trump and his surrogates expressed similar sentiments during the 2016 election as they railed against political insiders in Washington.

Yet, paradoxically, the very success of scientists and engineers has contributed to these conditions. Scientific innovations have generated vast wealth for those professionals at the top of the knowledge economy, just as those same innovations have eliminated millions of jobs among those at the bottom, transforming entire industries and regions. Those most affected are not only whites without college educations, but also many people of color.

Scientists and their organizations, therefore, have both a strategic and an ethical imperative to help society cope with the negative effects of globalization, forces that some of their advances and innovations have helped set in motion.

So where to begin? Making public higher education more affordable and accessible was a major campaign issue, one that Trump expressed support for, although he did not offer specifics. Republicans in Congress and across state legislatures have also advocated for lowering the cost of higher education, proposing several different plans.

Scientists and their organizations should join with leaders of both parties along with others in refocusing the conversation back to enhanced funding for higher education and related strategies for lowering costs. They can do so by identifying and conveying the various policy choices, benefits, and trade-offs. This focus should go beyond just the STEM fields, to emphasize the need for affordable higher education across majors and careers.

Research suggests that support among non-college-educated whites for anti-establishment rhetoric is rooted in more than just economic anxiety, but also reflects racial resentment and anti-immigration attitudes. It is not just the economy that is changing around us, but also society and culture, challenging conceptions of identity. There is no obvious solution to racial resentment and cultural bigotry, but for future generations, greater access to higher education will help promote more diverse interactions and experiences that may start to erode such feelings.

In addition, the speed of scientific advances and technological innovation may be directly contributing to cultural anxiety and unease in other ways, reflecting concerns that do not conform to traditional left or right political ideologies.

According to one survey analysis, about a third of Americans can be characterized as scientific optimists. They have respect for the intentions of scientists, and they believe that science and technology drive societal progress. Not surprisingly, optimists tend to be highly educated and financially well off, and they are disproportionately white. Most can realistically expect that their careers, fields, and industries will benefit from scientific advances and that, as consumers, they will be able to afford most innovations.

In contrast, about a quarter of Americans can be classified as scientific pessimists. They hold concerns about the speed of change in modern life and have a sense that science poses conflicts with traditional values and belief systems. Compared with optimists, members of this group score much lower in terms of educational attainment and income, are more likely to be female, and are more likely to be minorities.

With advances in gene editing, robotics, and artificial intelligence, and the likely return of debates over stem cell research, scientists and their organizations will need to effectively address the legitimate concerns that such pessimists and others may hold about the social implications of these advances. Like past high-profile debates over stem cell research and cloning, these issues are likely to play an increasingly prominent role in our polarized national politics.

Taking News Local

As they rise to broader attention, however, debates in the national news media over gene editing, stem cell research, climate change, energy, and other topics too often distort these issues; simplistic left-right distinctions are made, which are overhyped by some and dismissed as repugnant by others.

At national and regional newspapers, budget cuts and layoffs limit the opportunity for in-depth coverage and analysis. In recent years, innovative for-profit media organizations such as Vox.com and STAT out of the Boston Globe have been launched to help fill the gap at the national level, expanding ways of covering complex science-related policy debates, although such sites have yet to demonstrate their long-term financial sustainability.

Many more journalistic outlets, however, are needed in order to restore America’s civic capacity to engage in respectful debate about complex problems and trends and what they mean for society. The place to start may be in the cities and regions where, because of the decline of local newspapers, the information needs of local residents and voters are not being met. In these communities, people lack a trusted local source of news that can explain, contextualize, and vet conflicting claims and interpretations.

When news consumers become skeptical of “elite” outlets such as the New York Times, without other known sources to trust, it becomes that much easier for them to turn to their ideologically preferred outlet, whether a cable news network such as Fox News, a talk radio show, an online site such as Breitbart News, or a fake news story circulated on their social media feeds.

To begin to meet the information needs of communities across the country, scientists need to join with others in calling for greater financial investment in local nonprofit media. One place to start is public radio stations that are expanding their reach by way of digital news platforms. Examples of other promising nonprofit ventures include the Texas Tribune, an online newspaper that runs the largest statehouse bureau in the country.

Another endeavor, launched in 2010, is Midwest Energy News, which features a staff of six journalists reporting on the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy across Midwestern states. Their stories are freely syndicated and republished by newspapers and other outlets.

Many research universities also have the capacity to launch their own digital nonprofit news organizations, seeding partnerships between journalism schools and computer science departments, and drawing on the perspectives of expert faculty as contributors.

For example, since 2013 the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota has published Ensia, a multimedia magazine featuring originally reported stories and commentaries focused on environmental problems and solutions, articles that can be freely republished by other media organizations. In a second example, Yale Climate Connections produces daily 90-second radio shorts about climate change that air on 260 public, university, community, and alternative radio stations nationwide.

But sparking substantive growth in the nonprofit news sector will take money. Lots of it. In the wake of massive layoffs at regional and local newspapers, a 2011 Federal Communications Commission report estimated that somewhere between $265 million and $1.6 billion is needed annually to fill the gaps in just local public affairs reporting alone, without consideration of the cost of meeting national needs.

Yet funding agencies and philanthropic organizations make risky investments when they devote, for example, billions of dollars to research on climate change or biotechnology, or millions of dollars to training scientist communicators and funding communication research, but they do not also invest in making sure that major cities and regions across the country have full-time, experienced reporters who can draw attention to these issues, explain their complexity, and hold those in power accountable, including scientific institutions.

Mobilizing scientists and their organizations to coordinate their actions on behalf of combating economic inequality, promoting affordable higher education, addressing emerging concerns about scientific advances, and investing in local nonprofit media are just a few examples of goals that might define broader, longer-term thinking. The path forward is ultimately up to scientists and their leaders. But to stay focused on tactical approaches, rather than on social change, puts much at risk.

–This article originally appeared in the January/February 2017 issue of American Scientist magazine.

Citation:

Nisbet, M. (2017). Ending the Crisis of Complacency in Science. American Scientist, 105 (1), 18.

Bibliography

• Drutman, L. 2015. The Business of America Is Lobbying: How Corporations Became Politicized and Politics Became More Corporate. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
• Inglehart, R., and P. Norris. 2016. Trump, Brexit, and the rise of Populism: Economic have-nots and cultural backlash. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Working Paper. https://ces.fas.harvard.edu/uploads/files/events/Inglehart-and-Norris-Populism.pdf
• Nisbet, M. C., and D. Fahy. 2015. The need for knowledge-based journalism in politicized science debates. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 658:223–234.
• Nisbet, M., and E. M. Markowitz. 2014. Understanding public opinion in debates over biomedical research: Looking beyond political partisanship to focus on beliefs about science and society. PLoS ONE 9(2):e88473.
• Thurber, J. A., and A. Yoshinaka (eds). 2015. American Gridlock: The Sources, Character, and Impact of Political Polarization. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
• Waldman. S., and the Working Group on Information Needs of Communications. 2011. Information needs of communities: The changing media landscape in a broadband age. Washington, D.C.: Federal Communications Commission.

 

January 1, 2017 — As millions of Americans visit their health care providers this winter complaining of a cold, surveys suggest that one in four will be expecting their provider to prescribe them an antibiotic, falsely believing that the antibiotic will help them recover more quickly from the virus (Watkins et al. 2015). The demand for antibiotics by patients is not surprising, considering other survey findings. Only about half of Americans know correctly that antibiotics kill bacteria but not viruses, a proportion that has remained relatively stable for more than a decade (Hwang et al. 2015).

In recent decades, similarly false beliefs across countries have contributed to a dangerous rise in antibiotic use. Between 2000 and 2010, worldwide sales of antibiotics by pharmacies and hospitals increased 36 percent. Overall, India, China, and the United States use the most antibiotics, though Americans are by far the highest per capita consumers (Van Boeckel et al. 2014). In fact, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) (2013) estimates that 50 percent of all antibiotics prescribed in the United States are not warranted.

The overuse of antibiotics in the United States and other countries combined with the rapid growth in the use of antibiotics to grow livestock has led to the evolution of lethal “superbugs,” bacteria that are resistant to most antibiotics. When people overuse antibiotics, they are more likely to kill off “good” bacteria in their bodies that protect them from infection. Drug-resistant bacteria are then more likely to take over, festering in places such as the gut. These superbugs can spread to other people at home and at work or in a hospital.

The rise of superbugs and the loss of antibiotic effectiveness not only makes it more difficult to combat common threats, such as urinary tract infections or pneumonia, but those patients undergoing joint replacements, dental surgery, cancer therapy, and other procedures—who often depend on antibiotics to recover—are also put at high risk.

Each year at least 2 million Americans battle serious bacterial infections that are resistant to one or more antibiotics, and at least 23,000 die annually as a direct result of those infections (Centers for Disease Control 2013). In a recent report, the World Bank (2016) warned that by 2050 the growth in drug-resistant infections, if not contained, would cause a level of global economic damage equivalent to, if not worse than, the 2008 financial crisis.

Responding to the threat, in 2015 the Obama administration set a goal of by 2020 cutting inappropriate use of antibiotics in hospitals by 20 percent and in other health care settings by 50 percent. Recognizing that antibiotic resistance is an international problem that cannot be solved by the actions of a single country, a United Kingdom report last year called for a “massive global public awareness campaign” so that patients no longer demand—and health care providers do not prescribe—unnecessary anti­biotics (Review on Antimicrobial Resistance 2016).

Communicating in the Dark

To be sure, more than just public education is needed. The widespread and unnecessary use of antibiotics in agriculture must be ended; sanitation and clean water systems must be built in poorer countries; drug companies must step up to develop new antibiotics; and health agencies need funding for the early detection of emerging superbugs, concludes the recent U.K. report.

But changing the beliefs of the public is also essential. Health care providers are under immense pressure from patients to provide antibiotics for treatment of colds and other viral illnesses. A 2012 survey found that half of U.S. health care providers say that their patients expect an antibiotic when visiting for a viral infection. Research shows that a health care provider’s perceptions of patient expectations are important, since they tend to be a reliable predictor of over-prescribing. Patients also report other means by which they obtain antibiotics, using prescriptions left over from past visits or using those obtained by a family member or friend (Watkins et al. 2015).

The problem in mounting a public education campaign is that only a handful of quality studies and surveys exist that evaluate public attitudes and beliefs, providing little basis by which to design and target messages or to plan other persuasion strategies. Those few studies available reveal a variety of substantial communication challenges and barriers.

In the United States and Europe, members of the public still do not see antibiotic resistance as a personally relevant problem that poses risks to their health or that is a function of their own choices as a health consumer. Instead, they tend to blame doctors, hospitals, and the government. They also believe that science is likely to find a solution in the form of new antibiotics and, as of yet, do not see the need for major changes in individual behavior, health care practice, or policy (McCullough et al. 2016; Wiklund et al. 2015).

The 2016 U.K. report estimates the budget for a global public education campaign at $100 million, an absurdly low figure. The research costs of adequately mapping and evaluating the views of different segments of the public across countries, identifying the types of messages that are likely to be persuasive, the sources that they trust for information, and the local channels by which to reach people would alone easily exceed that figure. The budget for the actual advertising and campaign efforts would be much greater.

In September 2016, all 193 member countries of the United Nations signed a declaration committing to a process that sets goals and timelines for reducing the use of antibiotics in medicine and agriculture. The model for the process reflects past UN efforts on climate change.

However, for decades on the topic of climate change, world governments and scientific bodies were slow to recognize the need to invest in social science-based research to inform public communication efforts, and they continue to underfund initiatives aimed at engaging the public on actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Hopefully we have learned a lesson. In combating the superbug threat, we cannot afford to delay investing in the communication research and activities needed to decrease the overuse of antibiotics.

Citation:

Nisbet, M.C. (2017). The Superbug Crisis: False Beliefs about Antibiotics Are a Global Threat. Skeptical Inquirer, 41 (1).

References

• Centers for Disease Control. 2013. Antibiotic Resistance Threats in the United States, 2013. Atlanta, GA: US Department of Health and Human Services. Available online at http://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/pdf/
ar-threats-2013-508.pdf.
• Hwang, T.J., K.A. Gibbs, S.H. Podolsky, et al. 2015. Antimicrobial stewardship and public knowledge of antibiotics. The Lancet Infectious Diseases 15(9): 1000–1001.
• McCullough, A.R., S. Parekh, J. Rathbone, et al. 2016. A systematic review of the public’s knowledge and beliefs about antibiotic resistance. Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy 71(1): 27–33.
• Review on Antimicrobial Resistance. 2016. Tackling Drug-Resistant Infections Globally: Final Report and Recommendations. Available online at https://amr-review.org/sites/
default/files/160525_Final%20paper_with
%20cover.pdf.
• Van Boeckel, T.P., S. Gandra, A. Ashok, et al. 2014. Global antibiotic consumption 2000 to 2010: An analysis of national pharmaceutical sales data. The Lancet Infectious Diseases 14(8): 742–750.
• Watkins, L.K.F., G.V. Sanchez, A.P. Albert, et al. 2015. Knowledge and attitudes regarding antibiotic use among adult consumers, adult Hispanic consumers, and health care providers—United States, 2012–2013. MMWR-Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 64(28): 767–770.
• Wiklund, S., I. Fagerberg, Å Örtqvist., et al. 2015. Knowledge and understanding of antibiotic resistance and the risk of becoming a carrier when travelling abroad: A qualitative study of Swedish travellers. Scandinavian Journal of Public Health43(3): 302–308.
• World Bank. 2016. Drug-Resistant Infections: A Threat to Our Economic Future (Discussion Draft). Washington, DC: World Bank. Available online at http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/527731474225046104/AMR-Discussion-Draft-Sept18updated.pdf.

November 1, 2016 — Since the 1960s, high rates of childhood vaccination in the United States have led to dramatic declines in cases of polio; measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR); chicken pox; and other diseases. The benefits to society have been overwhelming. Over the past two decades alone, vaccines have prevented an estimated 322 million disease cases, 730,000 early deaths, and $1.4 trillion in related costs (Whitney et al. 2014).

Government-led vaccination programs have been so effective that many Americans aged forty-five and younger have little to no comprehension of the lethal threats that these diseases once posed, contributing to their doubts about vaccine safety and their opposition to government mandates. In a 2015 national survey, 41 percent of eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds and 35 percent of thirty- to forty-nine-year-olds said that parents should be able to decide whether to vaccinate their children. In comparison, only 23 percent of fifty- to sixty-four-year-olds and 20 percent of those sixty-five and older said the same. These differences are likely partially explained by the comparatively greater proportion of younger Americans who believe that vaccines are unsafe (Pew Research Center 2015).

Yet despite these troubling trends, in 2015 the rate of vaccination for infants and kindergartners in the great majority of states and communities remained at or above 90 percent. At such rates that approach “herd immunity,” it is difficult for infectious diseases such as measles to spread, enabling outbreaks to be contained. But according to 2015 estimates, some states and communities remain dangerous outliers. In Arizona, it is estimated that only 84 percent of infants are vaccinated for MMR. In Michigan, only 59 percent are covered for rotavirus. Moreover, across states, poor communities tend to have disproportionately low rates of infant vaccination (Elam-Evans et al. 2014). At the other end of the spectrum, in some wealthy communities in California, the rate of vaccination for kindergartners is only 50 percent (Yang et al. 2016).

Overall, these statistics paint a complicated portrait. Vaccination rates remain strong in the great majority of U.S. communities, suggesting that vaccine doubts among parents are not translating into a national-level problem. Yet in some communities, childhood vaccination rates are dangerously below herd immunity levels. To counter these trends, research suggests that a nationally focused education and media campaign could create awareness among parents of a false “controversy” that backfires by generating greater doubt and concerns (see Nyhan et al. 2014).

Instead, what are needed are carefully evaluated communication strategies tailored to the dynamics of doctor-parent interactions and to specific communities, regions, and school districts that have high rates of non-vaccination. Policy measures, such as changes in state laws and programs that make it more affordable or easier to access vaccination services, are also needed. In each approach, the complexity of parent attitudes and decisions needs to be carefully considered. Simplistic characterizations of parents as either antiscience “deniers” or pro-science “believers” are misleading and counterproductive.

Health Care Providers and Access to Services

Not surprisingly, the most relevant population to target from a communication standpoint is parents with young children. In this case, a 2010 nationally representative survey of parents provides several tentative insights. That year, more than 80 percent of parents with children under age six said that they had already vaccinated their children, and another 11 percent said they planned to vaccinate their kids with all recommended vaccines (Kennedy et al. 2011).

Despite a high rate of reported compliance, only 23 percent of parents said that they had no concerns about childhood vaccines. Many, even if deciding to vaccinate their children, harbor a variety of questions, concerns, and even doubts. Top concerns included that it might be painful for children to receive so many shots (38 percent of parents); that children were receiving too many shots in one doctor’s visit (36 percent); that children are getting too many vaccines during the first two years of life (34 percent); that vaccines might cause fevers (32 percent); that vaccines may cause learning disabilities and autism (30 percent); and that the ingredients in vaccines are unsafe (26 percent) (Kennedy et al. 2011).

When asked which sources they are most likely to turn to for advice, 85 percent of parents mentioned health care providers, and 80 percent said that they trusted their advice. No other source came close. Surprisingly, despite fears about the spread of misinformation online, parents were far less likely to say that they turn to the Internet. The authors of the study conclude that “the Internet probably supplements, but does not replace, direct communication with a health care provider or other trusted individual” (Kennedy et al. 2011).

Given the central role that health care providers play, there is some debate over the best approaches they should adopt in communicating with parents. Some experts argue for a “presumptive” approach in which health care providers assume during routine visits that parents agree to the recommended schedule of vaccinations. In the presumptive approach, providers broach the topic by simply saying, “Well, we have to do some shots,” and may follow by adding, “So, we’ll do three shots and the drink. Is this okay?” Research suggests that this approach results in the highest rate of vaccination compliance among parents and their children (Opel et al. 2013).

Others argue for a “participatory” approach in which health care providers actively volunteer to address any concerns or questions that parents might have about vaccination. Research suggests that this approach results in a lower vaccination rate than the presumptive strategy, or may delay vaccination as parents put off the decision for a later visit. But advocates of the participatory approach argue that it reduces feelings of possible alienation or distrust among parents and avoids a possible backlash against overly presumptive health care providers (see Hendrix et al. 2016 for discussion).

Apart from the communication approach used by health care providers, other strategies are needed to increase vaccination rates among children from low-income households. These may include eliminating co-payments for vaccination-related doctor’s visits, implementing home visits by health care providers, providing vaccination services at day care facilities and schools, and including vaccinations as part of other government benefits provided to low-income women and children (Community Preventive Services Task Force n.d.).

Engaging ‘White Privilege’ Communities

Several studies have identified the socio-demographic correlates of those outlier schools or districts with high rates of parents seeking vaccine exemption for religious or philosophical beliefs. For these parents, cost or access to health care is not the problem. Indeed, belief exemptions are most likely to occur in communities of so-called “white privilege,” defined by their economic affluence and overwhelmingly white populations.

For example, in California, between 2007 and 2013, the percentage of religious and philosophical exemptions for children statewide is estimated to have increased from only 1 percent to 3 percent, but some suburban communities in the state are estimated to have exemption rates close to 50 percent. Within these mostly white communities, non-vaccination rates tend to be highest in smaller private and charter schools. Studies have found similar correlates of nonexemption rates in several Midwest areas (Yang et al. 2016).

There is no silver-bullet approach to shifting the views of parents in these affluent communities. Each needs to be more carefully studied, identifying the specific parental concerns and beliefs unique to each context. Research should also examine how information about vaccination is shared among parents within the community, including the role of local health care providers, schools, churches, parent groups, elected officials, the news media, and social media.

Several legislative and policy strategies are perhaps even more likely to be effective. For example, in 2015 California joined other states in no longer allowing parents enrolling their children in schools and day cares to claim a religious or philosophical exemption. Following the adoption of the rule, the percentage of vaccinated kindergartners entering the state’s schools was the highest in a decade (Pearlstein 2016).

More research, data, and time are needed to fully assess the impact of the California mandate and similar actions in other states. Such mandates are likely to be legally challenged and may reinforce distrust and alienation among parents. An alternative is to require that parents opting for a belief exemption pay an annual processing fee, set at a sliding scale based on income. The goal is to make a belief exemption by parents less convenient and more burdensome. The strategy is not only likely to increase vaccination rates but also generate revenue for vaccine education and outreach programs. More analysis of this strategy is merited (Billington and Omer 2016).

Citation:

Nisbet, M.C. (2016). Winning the Vaccine War: Focus on Local Communities and Avoid Denigrating Parents. Skeptical Inquirer, 40 (6).

References

• Billington, J.K., and S.B. Omer. 2016. Use of fees to discourage nonmedical exemptions to school immunization laws in US states. American Journal of Public Health 106(2): 269–270.
• Community Preventive Services Task Force. N.d. Increasing appropriate vaccination: universally recommended vaccinations. The Guide to Community Preventive Services. Available online at http://www.thecommunityguide.org/vaccines/universally/index.html.
• Elam-Evans, L.D., D. Yankey, J.A. Singleton, et al. 2014. National, state, and selected local area vaccination coverage among children aged 19–35 months—United States, 2013. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 63(34): 741–748.
• Hendrix, K.S., L.A. Sturm, G.D. Zimet, et al. 2016. Ethics and childhood vaccination policy in the United States. American journal of Public Health106(2): 273–278.
• Kennedy, A., M. Basket, and K. Sheedy. 2011. Vaccine attitudes, concerns, and information sources reported by parents of young children: Results from the 2009 HealthStyles survey. Pediatrics 127(Supplement 1): S92–S99.
• Nyhan, B., J. Reifler, S. Richey, et al. 2014. Effective messages in vaccine promotion: A randomized trial. Pediatrics 133(4): e835–e842.
• Opel, D.J., J. Heritage, J.A. Taylor, et al. 2013. The architecture of provider-parent vaccine discussions at health supervision visits. Pediatrics peds-2013.
• Pearlstein, J. 2016. California’s pro-vaccination law may be working. Wired (January 21). Available online at http://www.wired.com/2016/01/californias-pro-vaccination-law-may-be-working/.
• Pew Research Center. 2015. Americans, Politics, and Science Issues. Washington, DC. Available online at http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/07/01/chapter-5-public-views-about-biomedical-issues/.
• Whitney, C.G., F. Zhou, J. Singleton, et al. 2014. Benefits from immunization during the Vaccines for Children Program era—United States, 1994–2013. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 63(16): 352–355.
• Yang, Y.T., P.L. Delamater, T.F. Leslie, et al. 2016. Sociodemographic predictors of vaccination exemptions on the basis of personal belief in California. American Journal of Public Health 106(1): 172–177.