Great article. Your point about acceptance or skepticism of content from sources viewed outside a person’s ideological framework is very true. I think we are beyond McLuhan’s “the medium is the message” and are in a space where “your channel is your identity.”
Thank you for this and all of your interesting, insightful articles. Two other issues occur to me that contribute to a mistrust in mainstream science: (1) Money trails/conflicts of interest influencing both what science research is funded, by whom (large corporate pharma companies, DuPont, Monsanto, etc), and what is reported because of funding to those journals and media outlets. I understand that pharma is the largest advertising source for most US news sources, but is not allowed to advertise directly to consumers in ANY OTHER country other than NZ. Therefore, there is little financial incentive to study or report, for example, health topics like lifestyle changes vs pills or honey vs neosporin, and perhaps a lot of financial incentive to NOT study or report on such analysis. (2) Perhaps related to point 1 is the paucity of studies that can be replicated. A skeptic might interpret this as pushing an outcome rather than rigorously tracking the inputs and outputs. I look forward to comments from your other readers.
Great article. Your point about acceptance or skepticism of content from sources viewed outside a person’s ideological framework is very true. I think we are beyond McLuhan’s “the medium is the message” and are in a space where “your channel is your identity.”
People don't like science because science is intransigent. You want to believe X or Y, but science doesn't care what you want.
Thank you for this and all of your interesting, insightful articles. Two other issues occur to me that contribute to a mistrust in mainstream science: (1) Money trails/conflicts of interest influencing both what science research is funded, by whom (large corporate pharma companies, DuPont, Monsanto, etc), and what is reported because of funding to those journals and media outlets. I understand that pharma is the largest advertising source for most US news sources, but is not allowed to advertise directly to consumers in ANY OTHER country other than NZ. Therefore, there is little financial incentive to study or report, for example, health topics like lifestyle changes vs pills or honey vs neosporin, and perhaps a lot of financial incentive to NOT study or report on such analysis. (2) Perhaps related to point 1 is the paucity of studies that can be replicated. A skeptic might interpret this as pushing an outcome rather than rigorously tracking the inputs and outputs. I look forward to comments from your other readers.