Some people will literally die rather than change their minds

I have been thinking a lot about the craziness of “re-opening” and how some people refuse to take any precautions. Just a day or two ago, I was imagining asking these people, “What would it take to get you to change your mind, short of you getting hooked up to a ventilator because of COVID-19?”

Then today I saw this. Physician Ryan Morino tweeted (lightly edited):

I’ve been called a lot of names and accused of a lot of things by emergency patients but it’s surreal to have a patient accuse me of falsifying their COVID result – because they don’t believe the virus is real – as I’m actively trying to keep them from dying from multi-organ failure from COVID.

My “short of you getting COVID-19” qualifier turned out to be an unreasonable assumption. I thought that the personal first-hand experience of getting so sick that you are hospitalized would be something would force people to reconsider their views. How wrong I was.

(Aside: Hospitalization is bad, but this description of being on a ventilator proved to me that I had not idea how bad things could while trying to keep you alive from COVID-19.) 

From my experiences trying to talk about evolutionary biology, I know lots of people are intransigent. They not going to change their minds in front of you. People have values and beliefs and community ties that matter to them more than evidence. For a long time, I’d been okay with that.

But these sorts of reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic have shaken me. I’ve never felt so depressed and pessimistic about the prospects for science communication. This is the fight of our lives, and we’re losing.

Another piece that hit me hard was this article by Adrienne LaFrance about conspiracy beliefs, and how one in particular has gained so much traction over the space of three years. For someone like me who had never heard of this much before, the conspiracy stories (I refuse to call them “theories”) are unbelievable. They are inconsistent, and they have consistently failed to say anything meaningful. Edited excerpt:

I asked for examples of predictions that had come true. They could not provide specifics and instead encouraged me to do the research myself. When I asked them how they explained the events (that had been) predicted that never happened(,) they said that deception is part of (the) plan.

It brought to mind this from Jessica Price (emphasis added):

I guess it’s time to repeat the main thing I learned from reading a fuckton of Holocaust memoirs again: propaganda does not need to be persuasive, only pervasive. Its secondary purpose is to convince. Its primary purpose is to exhaust.

LaFrance arrives at a point that I had independently been thinking about before I read her article. People often talk about the “politicization” of events in the US now, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

This moment in American history is better understood as being driven by a new religious movement rather than existing political movements.

I don’t mean “religion” in the usual sense of the major Abrahamic faiths (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) – although those are often intertwined with the new zeitgeist.

Like LaFrance, I mean that people are describing and responding to events in ways that you normally see in religious communities rather than political parties. Such as the unshakable beliefs in things unseen (“COVID-19 isn’t real,” says the one about to die from organ failure from it), belief in prophecies, communities springing up around practices not held by everyone.

And certainly, some political leaders act more like old school gods than traditional politician. They demand tribute, sacrifice, and threaten those who oppose them. A thunderbolt or two aimed at demigods who aren’t “respectful” or grateful enough. They sure aren’t above lying (you know, turning into a swan to get laid).

And they sure as hell don’t care about puny mortals. “So a few humans die. So what?”

It’s a radically different vision than one I have for politics, which is more about negotiation and compromise and trying to make most people’s live better. But probably my view was skewed from living most of my life in a relatively peaceful few decades, and mistaking that as normal.

From my point of view as a scientist who wants to do science communication, I think that treating opposition to COVID19 information as being based in religious opposition (in a secular, non-tradition sense) rather than political opposition changes the dynamic and changes the approach that you take.

It makes it clear that the task ahead of us is far, far harder than we ever could have expected.

Ultimately, I have to believe that at some point, reality will sink in. I hope that many people who aren’t wearing masks today, for instance, will one day look back at their actions and think, “Maybe I should have worn that mask.”

I hoped that we might have gotten to that point by now.

Additional: Just after I posted this, Andrew Thaler wrote:

The mistake we're making is thinking we have a science communication problem when what we have is a terror management problem.

Not sure I agree, but I think we both agree that “science communication” is not what the moment calls for. Science communication is a default mode. We need a crisis mode, and we don’t have one.

More additional: Emily G also has a thread that makes a similar point:

Here’s the thing no one wants to hear: you fight propaganda with propaganda. Unless SciComm can fundamentally scale to address the propaganda machine in sum and substance – and it can’t – then it’s doomed to ineffectiveness.

Even more additional: And just to show that some elements of this problem are widespread and not just an American thing, a new report shows a lot of Canadians have false beliefs about some aspect of COVID-19.

More than a quarter think the virus was made in a Chinese lab.

Almost a quarter thought there were drugs that could treat the disease, notably hydroxychloroquine.

More than one in ten think the virus is a cover-up for 5G wireless.

And just to top it off, there’s a lot of overconfidence to go with the misinformation.

Sarah Everts, a Carleton journalism professor and co-researcher in the study, said she was “floored by the overconfidence Canadians have in their own ability to distinguish conspiracy theories and misinformation.”

For example, 58 per cent of respondents who believe the 5G conspiracy theory also said they could “easily distinguish” between COVID-19 facts and misinformation.

External links

The prophecies of Q

The hard truth about ventilators

Nearly half of Canadians can’t tell coronavirus fact from conspiracy theory: survey

“If you’re in your house, why are there elevators there?”

I’m fascinated by how we make and hold beliefs, often in the light on contrary evidence. You see how easy it is for us to have false belief in many patients with brain injury. Many have false beliefs and explain away contradictory evidence effortlessly, which is called confabulation.

This is one of my favourite examples of confabulation, heard by neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga (from Gazzaniga 2000):

In one patient I had, the patient was a woman who, although she was being examined in my office at New York Hospital, claimed we were in her home in Freeport, Maine. The standard interpretation of this syndrome is that she made a duplicate copy of a place (or person) and insisted that there are two.

This woman was intelligent; before the interview she was biding her time reading the New York Times. I started with the ‘So, where are you?’ question. ‘I am in Freeport, Maine. I know you don’t believe it. Dr Posner told me this morning when he came to see me that I was in Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital and that when the residents come on rounds to say that to them. Well, that is fine, but I know I am in my house on Main Street in Freeport, Maine!’ I asked, ‘Well, if you are in Freeport and in your house, how come there are elevators outside the door here?’ The grand lady peered at me and calmly responded,

‘Doctor, do you know how much it cost me to have those put in?

Gazzaniga goes on to explain the reason for this woman’s false belief, due in part to a lesion in her brain:

Because of her lesion the part of the brain that represents locality is overactive and sending out an erroneous message about her location. The interpreter is only as good as the information it receives, and in this instance it is getting a wacky piece of information.

It’s easy to think of this as just an amusing story of someone with brain injury. I think we all have the same mechanisms in our brain that are making sense of the world as best they can. We can all have beliefs that make perfect sense to us, but seem bizarre to outside observers.

Reference

Gazzaniga MS. 2000. Cerebral specialization and interhemispheric communication: Does the corpus callosum enable the human condition? Brain 123(7): 1293-1326. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/brain/123.7.1293

Photo by Boston Public Library on Flickr; used under a Creative Commons license.

Anything is possible?

Back in April, Nature had an extended podcast with David Eagleman. Eagleman has also been profiled here.

Eagleman described some of his ideas as “possibilianism,” which might be summarized as “Anything’s possible.” He said:

It’s not committing to either of these two sides (Theistic or atheism, apparently - ZF), which I think are way too limited for modern discussion.

It bugged me, and I had been meaning to write a critique of the idea since April. I blogged about other things instead, and Jerry Coyne beat me to it.

As a lover of science fiction, I love exploring possibilities. It’s a great form of intellectual play, and play can lead to serious work. But Eagleman seems think that generating possibilities is enough, and is unwilling to sort through them to determine which is the best that reflects reality. This struck me as throwing your hands in the air and refusing to make a decision. As scientists, the point of generating possibilities is to arrive at a conclusion, not just sit and ooh and aah at all the things that could be in the mind.

Storytelling in science

When I saw the silent film version of The Lost World, I was amazed at how it set the template for monster movies for decades. Watch The Lost World, and you can see the mold being set for King Kong, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Godzilla, Varan the Unbelievable, Valley of the Gwangi, Gorgo, Cloverfield, and on the list goes.

It’s something that Randy Olson talks about in Don’t be Such A Scientist (which I reviewed here): there are a few really strong story narratives that we love to hear over and over again. If you want to have an audience for your science, it helps to know what those are, and tell people a story they want to hear.

I’ve had questions have been bugging me about this. First, why do we seem to have such a limited range of narratives that resonate and stick with us? Why do we love hearing the same basic story over and over again? Can we create new stories that are as powerful as the “hero’s journey”?

Second, do stories have opposites?

I think I need some examples to explain that question.

I read once a claim that any effective messages in advertising or branding has an opposite. If one business advertises low prices, its competitor sells quality. If one corporation pitches itself as family friendly, the other says, “Grow up.”

A recent post on the Respectful Insolence blog talked about a dubious magazine article, and blogger Orac noted:

Journalists do so love that cliché, don't they? It's an irresistable (sic) hook, cliché or not. People love reading about issues that we thought to be true but – surprise! surprise! – turn out not to be true. ... Framing an issue as arguing that conventional wisdom is wrong and highlighting a couple of “lone voices in the wilderness” warning, Cassandra-like, of impending disaster represent a time-honored journalistic trope, not to mention a story structure that goes back thousands of years to, well, Cassandra at least.

Same analysis over at Effect Measure:

Our main point was that it was a straw man argument built around the narrative device of the brave, mavericky truth teller who is shunned by colleagues and has to eat alone at conferences.

The “I’m an oppressed little guy fighting against a hide-bound establishment” is a story that you see when you look at denialists of all stripes.

What’s the counter-story? If the denialists are able to get such mileage out of claiming that they are oppressed by an evil conspiracy (even when they’re not), surely there’s some story that can be used to illustrate the slow, hard-won accumulation of evidence that is the way most science progresses.

How moral thinking affects scientific reasoning

On the TED blog, Jonathan Haidt says something important about how people interact with evidence. I’ve added some bolding for emphasis.

We engage in moral thinking not to find the truth, but to find arguments that support our intuitive judgments, so that we can defend ourselves if challenged. The crucial insight here comes from psychologist Tom Gilovich at Cornell, who says that when we want to believe a proposition, we ask, "Can I believe it?" – and we look only for evidence that the proposition might be true. If we find a single piece of evidence then we’re done. We stop. We have a reason we can trot out to support our belief. But if we don’t want to believe a proposition, we ask, "Must I believe it?" – and we look for an escape hatch, a single reason why maybe, just maybe, the proposition is false. So people who have a negative intuitive reaction to Obama, or who are fearful about the enormous changes going on, are already inclined to believe rumors against him and his plans. They hear about death panels and forged birth certificates and ask “can I believe it?” The answer is usually yes, particularly if Fox News raises these questions and brings on experts who claim that the propositions are true. Even if Fox News presents both sides, the fact that somebody on TV endorsed a proposition gives viewers permission to believe it, if they want to. Conversely, Democrats can give rebuttals till they’re blue in the face, but if people are asking themselves “must I believe it” about the Democrats’ claims then the answer they will usually reach is “no.” Logic and consistency just aren't very important when it comes to morality.

Haidt frames this in the context of moral thinking, but my experience is that these exact same patterns occur in areas that have little moral repercussions at all. For instance, what is the moral or ethical issue involved in accepting that twelve human beings have walked on the surface of the moon? Part of this may be fear of science, as Haidt notes that:

(M)aterialism is deeply and profoundly threatening to many people.

Science is 100% materialism, through and through, beginning to end. This means that, according to Haidt, scientists are going to have an incredible problem putting their message across on any subject.

Of course, with many scientific issues, I can absolutely see where people think there are ethical issues involved. Is there is any way to break through this pattern of thinking? Haidt’s response fills me with dread, frankly.

While it is useful to rebut charges and get your arguments out in circulation, you have to understand that arguments and evidence have little impact on people as long as their feelings tilt them against you. You’ve got to create trust and liking first, and then people will be willing to listen. People can believe pretty much whatever they want to believe about moral and political issues, as long as some other people near them believe it, so you have to focus on indirect methods to change what people want to believe. You have to get them to the point where they ask themselves “can I believe it?” about your claims, rather than about your opponents' claims.

The first likable, apparently trustworthy person you meet who exposes you to an idea has a huge advantage of convincing you of that idea, regardless of whether it’s true or not. This supports a lot of what Randy Olson is arguing in his book (reviewed here).

The ray of hope Haidt offers is faint indeed:

People may not be logical, but few of them are crazy.

Different topic, same problem

As the world prepares to celebrate the 40th anniversary of a human being walking on the Moon, this article looks at those who deny it happened.

Because I am interested in belief, there’s quite a bit to chew on.

Ted Goertzel, a professor of sociology at Rutgers University who has studied conspiracy theorists, said “there’s a similar kind of logic behind all of these groups, I think.” For the most part, he explained, “They don’t undertake to prove that their view is true” so much as to “find flaws in what the other side is saying.”

Mark Fenster, a professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law who has written extensively on conspiracy theories, said he sees similarities between people who argue that the Moon landings never happened and those who insist that the 9/11 attacks were planned by the government and that President Obama’s birth certificate is fake: at the core, he said, is a polarization so profound that people end up with an unshakable belief that those in power “simply can’t be trusted.”

If you took all the people who denied the moon landing, evolution, climate change, that HIV causes AIDS, that vaccines do not cause autism, the Holocaust, and maybe one or two other ideas that require wild conspiracies... I wonder how large a majority they would form.

And is there any way of reaching such people? Sometimes, I despair...

Comfort zones

What do you do to challenge yourself?

What do you do to expose yourself to views besides the ones you already have?

What do you do specifically because you don’t know how to do it very well and you want to get better?

These are not rhetorical questions; I’d really like to know.

For me, one small thing I do it to listen to The Current podcast. Because it’s a general news show, I’m often listening to some story, covered reasonably substantially, that I wouldn’t otherwise hear in the southern U.S.

But I wonder about whether I’m pushing myself enough to do something hard. And whether other people do.

Can “theory” be saved?

Much has been written about how non-scientists don’t exactly understand what the word “theory” means in science. In science, “theory” specifically means a large and well supported organizing principle that predicts, controls, and explains.

Non-scientists typically disparage things called theories, frequently by saying something is “only” a theory. fnord. Indeed, the phrase is used so much that Ken Miller used it as the title of one of his books on creationism in the U.S.

But I think there’s another reason that people outside science attack anything associated with the word “theory” so often. What common English phrase do you most often hear that contains the word “theory”?

How about, “conspiracy theory”?

Is it any wonder that people think scientists are trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the public when they talk about scientific theories, when the only other time they ever hear the word “theory” is next to unsupported, rampant, and usually flat-out freakin’ crazy ideas about secret organizations, the course of history, persecution, and maybe a little dose of bigotry on the side?

Maybe the “theory” is too degraded to be saved for use in discussions with the public. Maybe it’s time for scientists to give up caution and nuance, and just say “true,” as, for instance, Jerry Coyne did in his book title.

Real live robots

Some time ago, I wrote:

Just like cloning mammals arrived sooner than most people expected and left people scrambling for how to deal with the situation, I'm starting to think that we'd better start doing some serious thought about the legal ramifications of robotics.

I'm thinking much the same thoughts after reading this story and accompanying video.



To me, it's no surprise that people will respond emotionally to robots, because people tend to treat everything as alive. Watch the amount of attention people give to their cars sometime. I can't remember if I blogged about it, but I saw some time ago an interview with a researcher who found that the further people were from their computers, the more likely they were to use profanity in describing it -- that is, they were being polite to the computer.

Extra credit is for suckers

I never offer extra credit in my classes any more, but a lot of my colleagues do. And we've all noticed that students will sell their grandmothers for tiny amounts of extra credit. Amounts that almost never impact on their final letter grade.

All in the Mind has an interview this week with author Dan Ariely, who wrote Predictably Irrational. He talks at some length about the persuasive power of “Free!” People will make bad decisions when something is free. A $1,000 discount on a car may not means as much as a few free oil changes – even though that may only total a hundred dollars in value or so.

I suspect that “extra” does much the same thing for students. Somehow, something “extra” has more weight than regular points, even if their tiny.

I’ll let you students in on a secret. You will never, ever be able to talk a professor into changing your final grade is he or she offers extra credit. If you were close to the dividing line and you didn’t take the extra credit, the professor will say, “Your fate was in your hands – you could have got the better grade if only you'd taken the extra credit.” If you did take the extra credit, the professor will say, “Look, you didn't make the grade even with all that extra credit you took.”

Heads I win, tails you lose.

Poor NASA

I'm afraid this article -- "Conspiracy theorists must face the truth of Mars hill" -- is a triumph of hope over experience. Conspiracy theorists do not change their minds in response to evidence. This is one of the things that make them both fascinating and scary at the same time.

It's an excellent example of why, if I were still in psychology, I'd probably be studying the psychology of belief. I find it absolutely fascinating that we have some beliefs based on experience and evidence, some beliefs for which there is not evidence either way, and how some people form beliefs depite evidence to the contrary.

;;;;;

In an earlier post, I mentioned I had a paper accepted for pulication this week. For what it's worth, it'll be:

Espinoza SY, Breen A, Varghese N, Faulkes Z. Loss of escape-related giant neurons in spiny lobsters, Panulirus argus. The Biological Bulletin: in press.

No big surprise there, as I've had abstracts about it published in 2004 (Society for Neuroscience meeting) and 2005 (Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting). I'm expecting it'll be out early 2007. Ack, that means I'l have been working on this simple project for how long? Four years?

One thing I'm pleased about it that the three first authors all worked on the project as undergraduates, and the first, Sandra, has also worked on it as a graduate student.