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To Restore Trust in Science, We Need Great Storytellers

In the disinformation war, scientists will fail if their only weapons are critical thinking and a respect for evidence. To Restore Trust in Science, We Need Great Storytellers.

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Restore Trust in Science | Donald Trump

In one sense, Trump has done the world of intellectual inquiry a service: He is forcing those fighting disinformation to engage on a much broader front than just relying on critical thinking and a respect for evidence. To Restore Trust in Science, We Need Great Storytellers | Flickr: Gage Skidmore

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In the disinformation war, scientists will fail if their only weapons are critical thinking and a respect for evidence. We must engage more broadly.

All good scientists are sceptics. Scepticism is central to the scientific method, which is basically designed to prevent the most human of all errors: fooling yourself and, in turn, fooling others.

That's why the rules of science, set-up in the 17th century by Britain's National Academy of Science, the Royal Society of London, require that all acceptable scientific work must (after critical peer-review) be published for anyone interested to read.

But while the scientific method relies on rigorous investigation to reach our best possible understanding of the underlying reality, society does not treat all scientific findings equally. 

As we have seen over several decades, there is a polarising division in society around what can be thought of an ‘inconvenient science, linked to a sustained attack on some forms of scientific research.

This trend has continued in alarming fashion in recent years, as we have entered an era of "fake news" and compulsive lying in politics.

Science that is difficult to swallow is less readily welcomed

In 2015, I published a book called The Knowledge Wars, laying out a short history of modern science and seeking to explain how science works. The book examined how society variously receives, and deals with, a diversity of information that is of intense human concern.

As I wrote then, when it comes to public perception, medical discoveries and innovations improve lives and are generally welcomed. Antibiotics, for

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