applause thank you it is great to see such a robust crowd and energetic crowd, i have been a fan of them since inception, ten years ago i moderated my first about Climate Change so im happy to be back, im happy to introduce errol conway hes a historian of science and technology and the eco author merchants of doubt how a handful of scientists obscure the truth about tobacco smoke and global warming. Then we have the director of science and Society Research at the pm resort center and she offers reports about the public trust in science including views ranging from energy and climate to vaccines and gene and last but not least we have jeff from usc l. A. , hes a sociologist, he said he is why people care about what they care about and how moral concern relates to issues of science and religion, and went to john brian we are gathered this week during the anniversary of humankinds scientific achievements, you cant escape, the apollo moon landing to discuss this issue of whether and why americans are turning against science. I would like to start with the panelist by asking is this new or something long been with us . Has americas relationship with science been changing over time . I would like to ask erik to start . I asked for this start. People seem to think this idea that americans are turning against science is kind of new. But social Science Surveys that have been done for decades and one study from the 2012 dug into this idea of whether this is a new idea. Using the general sciences, social Science Survey data from 1974 to 2012. And in the works, it was founded that back in 1974, people were skeptical of science and people who defined themselves as political moderates. Which opened my eyes, im like, i would have never thought. People, were selfdefined conservatives and liberals thought about the same. And what has happened, the rules maintained the same level of trust and science. Moderates had the same distrust but just plummeted. So its far well below now what the moderate distrust is. Why does it happen and thinking about it has been the root of my work. During the actual apollo years of the 1960s, the general public opposed it. And didnt reach the majority approval and sixmonth window of that within that mission. We have rebranded it a Great Success but it was not appreciated by most of the public. It was an enormous amount of money. We dont think hard about this. But what apollo costs in todays dollars, 200 billion and another 250 billion on the missile program. People thought that was an enormous amount of money. There were race riots in the United States throughout the 1960s right around apollo and people said shouldnt we solve these problems on earth. Youre organization has studied science and peoples relationships with it for decades, from numerous post, looking at individual issues and science in general, can you talk about any trends you have seen or surprises that you and your colleagues have unearthed. Yes sure, so the Research Center has done Public Opinion surveys, i think i would like to step back a little bit and talk about the big picture things, number one most americans say when you asked them that they see positive benefits coming from science at the hole and number two you often see this idea of continued optimism for scientific and Technological Developments this based developments may be one of those but other things coming up now, people anticipate continue to change, when it comes to trust often we see more of a mixed pattern, and the whole people have at least a fair amount of confidence and scientists to act in the best interest of the public but its usually a minorities, certainly less than have that have what you might think of strong trust and they may have a great deal of confidence, a larger group has a fair amount of confidence, you might think of that as a soft positive, area greatly brought up we have one kind of survey they look said trust overtime from the 1970s to today, what is surprising there is that what they find confidence in scientists and the leaders of the Scientific Community has been stable over time and that is striking because we are living in an era of lower trust in institutions, particularly lower trust and governments today, that is striking any gives some people relief but stable does it necessarily mean high, there is still room to grow. When you look at different issues say when they use vaccines, it genetically modified food, climate, change or revolutions in schools are all those lumped together what you have people say that they are against science or other things. Its really important to remember that science is a vast enterprise and what we do is really study the pieces of science that are connecting with social issues or ethical issues or policy issues. Its not surprising them that they connect with our political divides and other kinds of divides in society but one of the Key Takeaways that we find again and again is how people think about these science related issues, whether climate related issues or vaccines or so on, there is no single group in society that takes but you might consider a position against the Scientific Consensus or skeptical of a Scientific Consensus spaces in, so it varies, we know that climate issues are highly politically polarized, that is not a big surprised but not everything is politically polarized, that is whats interesting. We are living in a time where we do have a lot of uncertainty in the future, we are looking at global climate, change we have these powerful tools and people or editing the genomes of human embryos and as you said some of these issues have Strong Political religious overtones, is it politics and religion that are polarizing people further, you studied fundamentalist christians, which do you do you see the simple religion versus science axis in your work . Thats a great question and by the way thank you so much everyone for coming out tonight, i really appreciate it, im used to teaching ucla undergraduate so the fact that this is a full crowd is that its a fine or in doing something differently so, yeah this is a great question, and it dovetails with what carrie was talking about, you know we find that there is not really a desire from any americans that we interview either qualitatively or quantitatively that dont like science, science won the game, of science is extremely popular in america and thats part of the problem because as a historian of science will tell you we dont actually know what science is if you talk to any sociologist or historian of science and you say theres a thing called science their head will explode, they will get very upset, because science is so chaotic they might not even think there is something called physics were biology, they are so diverse and there so many people doing different things, yet i found in my work in two creationist protestant and muslim high schools they were very comfortable talked about a thing called science, they were convinced signs proved evolution of rock, now i dont think thats true but i do think that it is interesting that they feel they need to use science to make their case, you can imagine another universe where they say this is what the corona says and thats it but they dont, so its interesting, when people hear the word creationist science the thing that they often hear is creationist and really what you need to here is science, they think science is necessary and that is actually super interesting for me as a sociologist and so to answer your question, you know we really think those of us that study this stuff, it really has to do with eight amenity and so basically there is a lot of complicated jargon on this but essentially if something is important for your identity you dont want to change your mind, if something is not important for your identity you will get new data and you will think okay, sure, i guess i will go there or all through this thing, but if its not relevant for your identity you were very unwilling to change and you actually think lots of complicated ways around trying to keep thinking what he wanted to think to maintain that piece of great entity, so generally when people dislike multiple elements of science its not because they are more or less committed to science its because those elements of science together all conflict with different parts of their identity. Stuff and not really aboutntity rational thinking or capacity to like understand or deal with science, and factoids of state these studies in my own work in creationists ghouls they did very well in science tests, they knew all the answers they just thought they were wrong. So, what do you do with that . So its a complicated problem. You maam, i think its such an interesting point you raise, what do people mean by science . Because its this big monolithic structure trusted or not trusted but you have written some provocative pieces, wine i recommend to everyone, titled a nation ruled by science is a terrible idea. Can you talk about some of your theses in there and what do we mean by science . I will say that if you want to have a nice day on twitter do not pick a fight from neil disgrace tyson. That is a poor human life choice, again i just got a leather secede from the chancellor of ucla how i should and be allowed to call myself a scientist or social scientist which is in a science, but that is kind of true but thats a whole separate conversation. The point is, science, there is this huge debate that goes all the way back, he goes back further than him, one of the most famous particulars of this is a philosopher david him who talks about the distinction between what is and what ought to be, there is big question of can you derive and heart from an is, can you drive all we should do based on what we can see . It is a complicated question and theres a lot of people with different thoughts on this, im pretty much in the school, which is a substantial school that you cant or at least its very hard, so if we have 1000 dollars as a city council and hopefully we get some more money but what can we do with that thousand dollars . Are you going to build a library, a park . Are we going to get a tax cut . Science can tell us what to do but they can tell us whether kids a better life outcomes whether they are in parks or libraries, maybe there is more jobs if we lowered taxes, that is a great bow whether or not the beauty of a park is intrinsically better then this sort of joy of all libraries on a scientific question and that is okay, right. But there is something that we call and philosophy of science that is scientists him, not science, but science and rational thinking will solve all or problems, it is frankly anti intellectual, it refuses to recognize the importance of philosophy and poetry and art, of all the literature and all the kinds of ways to think about life that science cant give us access to, it isnt to say that science is in great but it has a specific role to play. I think it also refuses to see that science can be manipulated to, for a lot of reasons, i want to look at Climate Change and that aspect, it seems to be a clear issue where they were upending the debate about what is happening to our planet and how quickly it is happening, here a cure book of doubt discusses this and can you talk a little bit about what you found with your coauthor between the length of that book came out because someone serendipity, my day job is an essay historian and asked me to look about a oceanography director who is a member of the Advisory Council and i was looking to see what his recommendations had been to nasa in the early 19 eighties as to whether Scientific Program should be in the future. I had some free time and i noticed that, i am sorry, i have something stuck in my throat. I hope that works, once before in my life i talk about mars and my voice went away ten minutes into the top and i set their gasping at the ceiling before i could get going again, so lets hope that doesnt happen and i just happened to note is that he had files of correspondence with this organization and that organization i knew of because it had been engaged in some effort to coats dowd on ozone depletion science, and i said what is this guy, the director of one of the major climate Research Center have to do with these guys, the answer is he was one of the founders. That actually was very toxic for me because i could watch and see his records, as a historian you see 20 years of a persons life go by an afternoon, so you can see as science and climate when one way he went the other way and so i met naomi ross case only a few weeks after that in a meeting at the history of meteorology in germany and she is working on, kind of the flip side another senior geophysicist by the name of Gordon Mcdonald who was very involved, he was an early adopter of Climate Change science and he went to his grave rejecting plate tectonics, just utterly rejected it, she was interested in what causes some scientists to accept the conclusion of their peers and what causes them to reject other conclusions, she will never answer that question because i think it depends very much on individuals upbringing and motivation and so forth, but then we got to talk about this issue for climate and one of us, we actually cant agree anymore which discovered the tobacco connection. She thinks i did, i think she, did we did agree to disagree, but then we have something new and ultimately our argument is that what drew them together for those of you have not read the, book is market fundamentalism. The idea that only unregulated free markets could best protect human freedom and that is kind of where we end to that story, along a complicated story but carrie can you talk, you mention this briefly these political acts, political influences that shape and change how people view science and i wonder and the time that ive been covering Climate Change weve got from getting both sides to increasing sophistication that one aside has manufactured and i think the general like what you hear is that humans are responsible for war maine the climate and we are seeing the effects of it in wildfires and glacial melting, that kind of. Vague have pools tracked the evolution thinking on Climate Change or have they been muddy it is still by political thinking on the topic. There are certainly lots of Public Opinion surveys about Climate Change energy and Environmental Issues and perhaps no surprise to that there is a wide political divide on these issues, so what you see is that republicans and democrats take totally different positions, including things like the likelihood of effects on wildlife and other kinds of things, so any kind of questions that you ask related to Environmental Issues you see this kind of divide, we have seen a divide like this, one thing you should keep in mind this is not the only political divide in society we are living in an era of political polarization, what we saw around, particularly around 2004 i think you start to see it where you saw the division in society across a whole range of political and social range wide enough, they called political polarization, at the typical democrat grew further apart from the issue positions of the typical republican and so we are living in an era that we all experience as more polarized and as you know its not just ideological positions that cell brought us there is this sense of animosity that goes as well. And then in the vaccine issued you see the liberals are less likely to vaccinate. We dont so beliefs about childhood vaccines, those are not associated with politics so that is one of the examples, if we are going to go into caveats today, you can find political divides particularly if you raise more policy oriented issues because at the end of the day there is a different policy orientation view about the role of government that drives a lot of these political divisions so if youre framing something in terms of should vaccines be required or not, that kind of raises the notion of government environment, so you are more likely to see that but Something Like our vaccines face, what are the risks and benefits, you do not see any political divide. Do either of you have anything to weigh, we have seen these huge measles outbreaks here in california and i think it seems to me that people are putting others at risk, babies, people with him unit disorders, the refusal to vaccinate remains a very strong opinion among sob. Is there religious reasons, at our know if you studied it particularly or if it has come up in your research . Certainly there is, there are verys religious communities that are opposed to vaccination. He no i would say that, this is not, i mean we are talking about the 19 seventies but this is a very old story, this is a nerd joke but yeah i tripe thing that an academic can do yeah but well this goes back to tokyo and there is this real suspicion of the 30 in the United States and one of the things that led to the second grade awakening in american religious history which is really the kind of, most obvious historical moment that led to the kinds of creationist evangelicals ive studied in this book, the second great awakening came out of the suspicion of ministers, who are they that tell them to read the vital viable, who wear them to tell me how to read the bible, i could redefine on my own and i dont need anyone to tell me how to do it. But historians point out is that this was not just about lawyers, it is really about medical doctors so there is a general suspicion of a leads in this real sense of you think youre better than me, so this is what he talked about in democracy of america, it has this kind of underbelly to it where theres an obsession with a quality and has this lovely effect but it also has this dangerous effect and that it insists on an intellectual equality, such that expertise is suspicious, who are you to tell me the vaccines are not, true i know it is good for my baby. That is not just a religious thing, it is a very old american sensibility that, in some ways predates the jack sony an arab it was very important in the 1800s. Authority is very important, i have seen polls where trusted professionals, firefighters are the pinnacle, but scientists are not much below them, but they are trusted as a good authority, i think about a study i heard about where third grade teachers were told to add students to draw scientists and they were all men in white coasts and crazy here, they werent women, so there is this view of, Charles Darwin we see him older, he had his aides when he was like 23 but its this idea of this white gray bearded authoritative. So it seems like a conflict then, we are a society that doesnt want authority, doesnt want to be told what to do but yet we look up and respect and admire. We love to be told what to do when it tells us what you do anyway, so that is awesome, look this authorities telling me i am rate, is in this authority great, so yeah, in my field work these evolutionists, they are so secular they want to push their secular philosophy on us and that is true about gmos and all sorts of things with a Scientific Consensus can be pretty strong but people will say that you know what, this scientist here, science in general is fine, scientists in general are fine because a look science works, i would rather have an appendix to me from a medical doctor then someone whos a barber, as a rule it seems like a safe bet to me. So i think that people generally have a sense that they like electricity, they like their bridges to carry a certain amount of weight and work in earthquakes, science seems pretty productive but there are these few things that trigger identity and make people think they are not able to live the way they want to live and it makes them very mad, right. So scientists have taken a lot of criticism for hiding in their ivory towers and doing their work and keeping their head down and not speaking in jargon and, then you have these provocateurs, neil de grass tyson, richard dock inns, who are just taking on the creationists, are they hurting or just . I think there are causing more problems than its worth. So you think . So they are not productive, i will change what i was about to say, it is absolutely useless, for a few reasons they are creating needless and as enemies, they are conflating religious people with creationism, which may not be the case, i think they misunderstand studies of creationism which indicate that creationism is not just ignorance which is that generally how they frame it. But it is polemical in a way that doesnt need to be polemical, and like i said, especially for someone like dock and i think it is anti intellectual, i think there is a real and capacity to recognize the specific space that signed contributes to society and it is very important, a very clear space that is under threat in our society so science needs defenders, needs articulate defenders that are not we really hating on philosophy or philosophy. There is a strange intellectuals him that is kind of dystopian, that we can create a rational order that is entirely based on science and we have seen that movie before and it is creepy, so im just not a fan. There is a lot of movies, i want to talk about the issue of gmos and food science and maybe use this as a way to talk about the role the media plays in altering peoples views towards science, i know that im a practitioner of journalism and i get so tired of influence science, the study of the day, coffees good for, you its bad for you, vitamin e causes, cancer like savior bones. Its so episodic and out of context and i think it made people roll their eyes about and you know it is been in their news, theres a lot of fraud, but theres also a lot of really good people working on it. And then gmos there is so much irrational thinking and things on both sides it seems crazy to me, do you see this in youre polling, to see this as an issue because food is something we put in our bodies or is this political . Does the media like muddy the waters. This is good, we hear a lot of concern about food science studies and we tend to be if we asked people they are aware that they are hearing conflicting studies, one day coffee is safe, and then all of a sudden we reversed course. So then there is not a concern about whether or not that might undermine peoples confidence in science or certainly in food science. You know we try to get at that, i would say what we have asked people, what it seems like is that on a whole it doesnt seem to shake peoples confidence but there is a kind of difference in that some people who dont know much about science are more likely to be confused, we asked them do you think you generally understand what is healthy to eat and whats not and we see those people stand out more than those who follow along more, so there is a possibility that it can be a little more confusing but in general i want to circle back because these examples, vaccines, theyre both good examples to remind us that there are complicated ways in which we augment beliefs, so there is an assumption that if we can inform you more than you somehow hold a particular believe, it doesnt work that, way if you examine your own beliefs you will now that it is not just based on information. There are emotions, multiple kinds of information that come into your thoughts, so science, scientists typically just want to tell you want to think at the end of the day by saying why dont you think like me and that is never going to work. Its hard for me to imagine information that would stop making me drink, coffee just to be clear, so you listen to this studies that help you do what you want to do anyway . So you are using science in the proper way. Coffees my identity man. This issue of crisper is in the news and editing genomes and lets end it these mosquitoes so that they can never get military again, lets added this baby so its taller and smarter, so there is this big range, you know science keeps moving along and the things we can do our amazing, at you see davis they are trying to grow human kidneys and pigs and on one hand youre like that is so crazy and on the other hand if youre undergoing dialysis youre like hurry up. You know they are starting to and it people with sickle cell which is scary but could be amazing and review leave a lot of suffering, are we seeing this and how people think, are we accepting more and more things as science progress is or are there anyone can really take this or are these religious snow you will not use fetal tissue for anything or yet you will if it will help her own child . I mean, you are right these are the big issues right now in terms of emerging science, particularly in terms of gene editing and its applications for humans and animals and to some degree crops, so for some of, these what we find again and again is the context matters, maybe we dont know a lot about how you spice a jean but we know that you have opinions about what you would do with it and what the purpose is, so peoples opinion tend to vary a lot. Therapy tends to see strong support but other ideas are, maybe more what used to be called designer babies, the idea that he would do things that people think are trivial and then you see a lot more resistance, we saw the same thing in terms of animal genetic engineering, purpose matters a lot, the most we asked something about oh one thing that is commercially available, the idea of global fish, so widespread kind of opposition, this was really taking technology too far because they didnt see the human value, laden see the animal value, so people saw that as a context that they didnt get behind for that reason but if you ask something more like developing animal cells for human organs, for transplant into human and they understood that value and you saw more support. If i make what the greatest scientist of our Time Character in drastic park, you spend so much time whether you could use something or Something Like that, i cant remember exactly, it was a long time ago, the point is this is again scientists, again science can do a lot of cool stuff but whether or not it should is not a scientific question its a philosophical an ethical question, now this is one place to go for source for those ethics but of course its not the only source, there are a lot of amazing secular ethicists who are thinking hard questions in bio ethics but also in Climate Change ethics. There is this fascinating philosophical questions in philosophy departments about how many lives today matter versus lives 1000 years from, now how obligated are you to the lives of the world today then the lives of thousand years ago, that is a hard ethical question, signs can give us questions answers to, that in my tell us what happens with better or worse capacity but i cant tell us which lives are more valuable, either in this world or thousand years from now so this is one of those things where we do need to push, push scientists and push the state to regulate science or not regulate science, its a case by case basis to think hard questions about these ethical issues before they show up because theyre gonna keep coming and anything too often we think of, of ethics in science bud by ethics, especially genetic engineering, but animals and plants to, that is important but there is a lot of science with potential for great ethical harm and great ethical benefit so its important for us to think about that. Yeah and terms of climate the idea that valuing life is not close to new, they have come up with an, idea, using calculations of the future value of human, life and setting that number is crucial to evaluating the economic costs of Climate Change because Climate Change will go on for centuries, edition know what the value is a very great grandchildren if you want to assess the damage that we are doing to then, this is part of that fields of climate economics slash climate philosophy cars there are certain people that think the discount rate should be zero that every life is worth the same of every other life and lots of people like to believe that biden economists will tell you that is not the way we act, the way we actually act is that we assign less value to our children and ourselves, we use finalize value to our children and our grandchildren and so on, that is what an economist would say and they can back it, up as a historian that is a really interesting philosophical president to take. And its obvious, we value our family more than our velho citizens, we value more of our fellow citizens more than refugees, and we clearly dont value all humans equally and that is a complicated philosophical problem that has vexed religious and nonreligious people for millennia and we are not going to maybe will solve it tonight but probably not, but the point is again, science gives us great data with which we can better understand how to frame those questions and what we need to ask those questions about, it doesnt give us the answer to the questions. We are facing so many crises from migration to climate, what is your work show what youre people need within science and in other areas to make progress, to make the right decisions, you know in a way were in the midst of fighting about Climate Change for Great Strides were made in tobacco, is this, knowledge is it information . Im actually the worst person to ask that question of, my historic job is to struggle with the question of how do i fix this, so the first part of my answer is, information goes so far, lots of people were astonished about what naomi and i found, a doubt we changed too many minds because by and large we are only going to be with people who are sympathetic to book learning anyways because its a book and 200 and something pages long it sometimes stands and then there are other philosophical questions and religious questions that are really not my specialty as a historian of science and so sometimes im encouraged by people i meet and sometimes im terribly scared of it, so i wish we knew this answer because fortunes of doubt was in a popular book but you have to satisfy your editors and it was an appeal to authority, and this ends using the best scientific information as reflected and National Science reports and it was a struggle for us because we are selves now as historians they were injuries rain either, radiation is a big area in which they deliberately misleading the public for a couple of decades with the studies so it was hard for us to make that conclusion but at the same time we have to live in a world where journalists get an article or sometimes listen that, you need to be able to send them to a reliable source of information and that is the best answer we can get but its not a complete answer, is not a full answer and i wish i knew a better answer than that. Do you want to weigh in jeff on what you think Society Needs . Let me tell you what society means. Buckle in folks laughs i mean a new president but i would say, how should we relate to science, you know ideally we relate to science alike we should learn in a good science class switch a simultaneous capacity for amazement, curiosity, and suspicion that we, we stay curious and amazed but were also second guessing and thinking why is that right . Ideally science is deeply democratic, ray, this is what john was obsessed with in science and evolution and hes one of my main intellectual heroes, the whole point is that we are always rethinking our habits, we are always evaluating our habits and trying to push them against things that challenge them so we can rethink how we are living and we are never doing that individually, were always doing it as a group so really thinking of science not as this kind of, thing in labs or done by professors that is far away from us with something that all of us have access to, which is really thinking hard about the world, there is this great philosopher of science name susan hack in, she tribes to work out what the definition of sciences which few even attempt to do because it is so complicated but she says, you know on this most basic level it is rational thinking, thinking that is capable of being corrected and so really sort of, you know i think being open to correcting others and to ourselves being corrected is a place to start. I think that is what keeps me up at, night how polarized we are and how many eco chambers there are, enabled by the media and internet, carry, do you have any thoughts on where we are headed . I mean are we headed towards more division and less agreement on topics or will crises forces to maybe come together, we are really at a polarized time and i dont know if that will just increase. I was going to pick up on just maybe a basic point about how much our information environment has changed. Because that makes it both easier and more difficult so lets just talk about how we are integrating the world of social media as our main channel of information and what that means for us is that on the one hand we have access to actually a much wider array of sources. Because people like me all the grass tyson, an individual, a wellknown, prominent individual. Has millions of followers on a public page like facebook. And many other people. Anyone who wants to build an audience now has an avenue to reach really large audiences so when you look at those public pages and try to see who is out there some of them are what we call traditional legacy Media Outlets and many of those are not and what that means is there are people who are pseudoscience or says an alternative sources. So the range is wider. But on the other hand we are not as beholden as we were many decades ago to someone else is scheduled. To someone else reading whatever they want. Do we have more control. More ability to hear it. The information that we want to Pay Attention to than we ever did before. So what that means is that that can kind of reinforce information and possibly reinforce misinformation about science at the same time. So thats a much more complex world. Terrific. Well i think it has come the time to open this up to our audience. So we are hoping to hear lots of great questions. Before we start that could i get one round of applause for this great. Panel applause so this is the part of the hearing where we get to take questions from the audience. There are macaroons at either aisle on the side. Please raise your hands high and will who come to you. Also we will ask her first and last names before the question. I would greatly appreciated. Keep your questions relatively brief so we could get to as many questions as possible. As part of the program will be published on zocalo Public Square that come. I have a question, im really surprised that you mentioned artificial intelligence. When you mention the human discount theory there are a i models out there that have this theory built in. For return on investment and shareholder value. Should we do, it can we do . It so i was wondering what your ideas were on a. Since i brought up the social discount rate. I hate to say this but i dont know much about it. I cannot, its impossible for me to know everything. Thats the first problem. Im a historian, not a scientist. I guess the sag second thing i would say is im often astonished how dumb a eye is. There is a level of fear in the public about ai. My major fear is that it is too dumb. But i dont know about models in those social discount rate. Other than i hope they didnt use bill version of that. Because that basically makes our grandkids worthless. I could babylon, but i just dont know much about it to answer it. I will say the Silicon Valley can sometimes create a billionaire who thinks that because i have a bunch of money i must be good at everything. Which is not necessarily true. So when i talked to my friends who are neurologist, they are like, we are looking at worms with 40 neurons and we dont know how they work together. And there are folks who download johnny thats rain in three years. So theres all these models of how intellectual life works. And if we keep working at a certain rate, maybe 400 years from now, we will be able to download whoevers brain. Who knows what the future will be. But if you actually look at people who study intelligence as we understand it in extremely simple animals. They are extremely suspicious of the sort of high hopes of ai and silicon. Next question is on your right. Im a strategist. My question about the importance of the science. Why has science been unable to get enough importance in american Popular Culture. I think the question, is why doesnt science get more support in american Popular Culture. And actually, i would like to push back on that because i think there is actually an enormous amount of science in Popular Culture now. Where it has died is in the newspapers, unfortunately. But now the three big networks, they are comedy, one of those comedy shows, that ran a half hour used to be called. Sitcoms. Thats basically been destroyed by internet streaming. Theres actually a lot more content than their ever used to be before and really it is reporting on science it is gone downhill. But theres more Public Interest its just interest that doesnt translate into journalism. I think a more interesting question is why is it so terrible in Popular American culture. My friends who are criminologist find the and see alice effect. Which is where juries say nonsense and say why couldnt you do this and they say why isnt this possible. Theres all this presentation of science in the media thats inflated or inflated. They love science its just not accurate. Hi my name is opal. It was discussed, the divide between republicans and democrats regarding climate, change i was wondering if any of you could speak to why it seems the conservative beliefs dont support the idea of Climate Change. I guess that is all for me. So the answer to that is fundamentally tied into the idea that the state should not regulate business. It comes out of 19th century neoclassical economics of the market should be free and unregulated. And businesses have deliberately sole this through foundations of the 1970s. Im working on a book is about that order back into the 1930s. But because solving climate problem means eight intervention into energy markets. At least, and probably most markets, energy, agriculture,s transportation, they oppose business regulation. And oppose environmental regulation. Because that is business regulation. They do not want Climate Change to be addressed. They dont like the solution, so then they move to represent the science. So we never have a complain about the solution. So when i give climate. Talks i tried to talk to people about solving the problem. Its not about this conflict. Because its a fake conflict. Its invented by industry. So the debate should have moved on 30 years ago on to what should we do about. It not just what can we do about it. There are all types of technological things we can do about it but this brings me back to jeffs point this is actually also a set of philosophical and social problems. And it should be addressed on those terms. But that is how it all came about. Next question is on the right. So im someone who went to a private christian school. And we skipped the chapters on evolution. And i decided to major in biology and thats the first time i discovered evolution and all of that made sense to me. Not only did it make sense to me i wanted to share it to my father, who is a minister, because i was so mind, blown and it became a rift in our relationship. So recently a young person came to me with advice because she discovered all the evidence for human evolution. She wanted to share with her father who is a religious creationist. So i really interesting and hearing for many of you. What is your take on that . When you are faced with this evidence the you have never been taught before and you want to share it. But its our responsibility to open others minds. But is it really opening our minds. Im sorry you had trouble with your father in that relationship. The eye its hard for me to answer that question because as an ethnography are. What im invited into communities i take it serious not to harm them and to honor the trust they have given me by welcoming me to into their communities. So its not my job to change their minds. Its my job to understand how they think and to read about it. But, in terms of my relationship with my family, my family is catholic. My moms brother converted to evangelical Christian Hannity so my family is theistic evolutional they believe god guided evolution. But my uncle is now a creationist. Doesnt believe in evolution. So as a typical sort of young 20 something thought i was smarter than everyone. I remember talking to my brother being like yeah whatever. Hes kind of an arrogant guy. Two so we went back and forth. And then everybody at, one point i sort of stopped, and i said, i just tried to understand the world from his perspective. And i said, okay, just help me understand, if the flood happened so recently, how did all the animals get to where they are in the world . How did that work . Any pauses any says. I thought a lot about that. And he told me this huge story. And i dont think it is an accurate story. But he clearly is a smart guy and thought a lot about this. And that is kind of when i decided i wanted to be enough demographer. I want to understand how people. Think that instead of judging beforehand. And my friend and i think a lot about this. Because its terrible public policy. We ultimately need to make our decisions about who is right and who is wrong. So ethnography areas, the ethnography are hot i wear is not the same had i wear when im in politics. When i do politics i have to make harder moral judgments. And sometimes thats an easy thing. Often. It is an easy thing. But i will say that a. Feel very uncomfortable telling you or anyone how to deal with your. Family but i will say it experiencing my own family, its trying to navigate between a moments in which the better thing is to understand and better thing is to actually make judgments and say what i think youre doing is, wrong for me evolution, leaving it out pollution, i dont think is morally wrong, so if im going to fight with my conservative Christian Family will be much more about gay marriage, right, i will say that is a flight that actually has real stakes in the world, i dont think it causes people real pain, but if you are just my uncle im not worried about it, so for me thats where i go and im not saying its universal rule but thats how i do it. Next question on your left over here. Hello my name is daniel, im a Museum Educator and i have conversations with folks, one of my favorite is talking to someone with beliefs and perhaps a curious, dipping a toe into actually coming to museums, things that we do here every day and its important for me in those conversations and my experience number to just spit facts out them and to try to connect with them as best as i can and those are some of the most worthwhile things but usually when i talk to people, when it comes to things like Climate Change and things like, how much is fear the overarching a motion and that drives some of this denial in science, in your opinion . How much is fear driving. As an emotion. I dont know in terms of quantifying that but it is a good point that emotions are part, they are part of the process right, they are part of how we form attitudes in our underlying beliefs so i havent heard a lot of people talk about fear per se, you mean about the threat of Climate Change . Yeah but also especially when we are talking about autism in terms of vaccines and. Yeah i gotcha, so again its a great example in terms of thinking about vaccines, that there are multiple ways people come added in terms of our research, one of the groups we found that had the most concerns are people who have young children, who are there on the front lines facing those decisions about vaccinations, not just for but for other inoculations, so that it could be part of it, that they are concerned about weighing those risks and benefits for their individual child as well. So on climate, im going to give a little bit of a different answer, that told you before a story about how professional scientists came to help cast doubts on scientists, but there is another angle on that, fear of change as well as the emotional rejection of the idea that we all caused this problem just by going about our daily lives, a guess really the person who pointed this out best to me was a very rightwing republican, one of the few that actually came to except climate, change but at the end the documentary region talks about this, the basic problem that no one wants to get up and look in the mirror and say got him either one doing this . The answer is we all are, we dont want to accept it and we also dont want to accept that we have to change fundamental elements of our lives if we want to help solve that problem and that is an emotional issue to. Last question is on the right. Hi thank you for the panel today, i am a geoscience hissed, a ph. D. Student that has been involved in outreach and i was curious from a social logical and Historical Perspective the amount of science advocacy that has come out from recent political events. What kind of role do you see that playing in the impact that could have on future perceptions of science inside invades policy compared with your expertise and how things have played out in the past. Things like march or signs. Its a really hard question, it remains hard to figure out, there is some concern that there will be further politicize science and drive people further away. Politicized, its always, the philosopher of science right about this, this is not like a new thing but this is kind of a convenient myth that the scientists are neutral arbiters, that it is a usefulness in some ways and so, i dont know. I would like to clarify, we will continue that question, so many important questions and there is a reception just outside so all of our future guests will be there to continue the conversation, before we close thinking to the National History museum, and thank you for cspan for being here and finally a big round of applause to our panelists night, thank you surround for coming. To start a bill called the safe banking act. To protect Financial Institutions that provide for businesses