Trust/distrust judgments and perceptions of climate science: A research note on skeptics’ rationalizations

Abstract

Using interviews with residents of Idaho (a rural northwest US state) who identify as skeptical of climate change, we examine how skeptics rationalize their doubts about climate science. Skeptics tend to question the reality and human causes of climate change by (1) raising concerns about incentive structures in science that could bias climatology, (2) doubting the accuracy of data and models used by climate scientists, and (3) perceiving some practices of climate science and scientists as exclusionary. Despite these concerns, skeptics exhibit deference to scientific authority when using scientific assessments to make policy decisions, including environmental policy. Understanding skeptics’ concerns about climate science and areas where they support science-based policy, will lead to better dialogue between scientists, interest groups, policy makers, and the skeptical public, potentially clarifying avenues to communicate climate information and enact climate policy.

Science-related populism: Conceptualizing populist demands toward science

“…Their decisions are allegedly not guided by objective scientific norms but specific ideological agendas—a “multiculturalist-relativist hegemony” (Ylä-Anttila, 2018: 369), for example—which lead to resources being committed to faulty or even “broken and useless” (Knudsen, 2017: 908) research fields like climate science, gender studies, or the humanities in general. Science-related populism may also portray scientists’ decisions as driven by the aim to further their own careers or realize personal gains (Sarathchandra and Haltinner, 2020). Eventually, science-related populism pictures the “scientific establishment” as a conspiring “big brain league” (Yiannopoulos, 2015) or a “corrupt insiders’ club” (Ylä-Anttila, 2018: 372) which ignores the topical interests of the ordinary people and does not turn to research fields that would contribute substantially to the common good.…”

“…Science-related populism may appear in different topical context s (from strongly politicized topics like climate change or vaccination to less politicized ones like nutrition or homeopathy), may target different epistemic authorities (e.g. individual climate researchers or science in general; see Sarathchandra and Haltinner, 2020), may have different rationales (e.g. ideological agendas or vested interests; see Morgan et al., 2018), and may come in different intensities (e.g.…”

“…Opinion polls (Motta, 2018), experiments (Myrick and Comfort, 2020), qualitative interviews (Sarathchandra and Haltinner, 2020), and discourse analyses (Poberezhskaya, 2018) show that segments of the broader public also criticize scientific research, both on controversial topics like climate change (Ylä-Anttila, 2018) or vaccination (Davis, 2019) and on less politicized topics like nutrition or physical therapy (Harambam and Aupers, 2015). Not all of these criticisms follow the populist logic of portraying the people and the elite as antagonists—but some of them do, accusing climate scientists, for example, of being “part of the ‘elite groups’ who fool people” (Poberezhskaya, 2018: 947), describing climate research as “mob science” that conceals the “truth” (Sarathchandra and Haltinner, 2020: 56) or suggesting that “experts ought to be less trusted than ordinary people” (Motta, 2018: 483). Further scholarship indicates that such anti-scientific positions can be associated with political populism.…”

A revised framework for the investigation of expectation update versus maintenance in the context of expectation violations: the ViolEx 2.0 model

“…Data-oriented immunization influences the evaluation of the experienced situational outcome. This includes ignoring or denying information (Nickerson, 1998), assigning low reliability or credibility to the information source (Dunn & Schweitzer, 2005;Sarathchandra & Haltinner, 2020), and subtyping (categorizing the outcome as exception to the rule; Carnaghi & Yzerbyt, 2007;Riek et al, 2013). Meanwhile, in concept-oriented immunization, the conceptual meaning of a situation-specific expectation is reframed so that it becomes irrelevant for the protected generalized expectation (Greve & Wentura, 2010).…”

From Populism to Climate Scepticism: The Role of Institutional Trust and Attitudes towards Science

“…Moreover, elites are said to pursue their own egoistic interests -even more so, if they are in essence not democratically selected (Castanho Silva, Vegetti, and Littvay 2017), as has been shown in an analysis of the climate change discourse in Russian blogs (Poberezhskaya 2018). Hence, from a populist point of view, scientific knowledge might be used at the expense of "the people" by concealing the "truth" (Sarathchandra and Haltinner 2020). This is also reflected in populists sympathy for conspiracy theories (Castanho Silva, Vegetti, and Littvay 2017; Fraune and Knodt 2018), and their lower trust in universities (Saarinen, Koivula, and Keipi 2019).…”