It isn’t what you know, it’s what you think you know: Survey of over 2,000 adults in the UK identifies potential pitfalls of science communication

Whether it be vaccines, climate change or GM foods, societally important science can evoke strong and opposing attitudes. Understanding how to communicate science requires an understanding of why people may hold such extremely different attitudes to the same underlying science. The new study performed a survey of over 2,000 UK adults, asking them both about their attitudes to science and their belief in their own understanding. A few prior analyses found that individuals that are negative towards science tend to have relatively low textbook knowledge but strong self-belief in their understanding. With this insight as foundational, the team sought to ask whether strong self-belief underpinned all strong attitudes.

The team focused on genetic science and asked attitudinal questions, such as: “Many claims about the benefits of modern genetic science are greatly exaggerated.” People could say how much they agreed or disagreed with such a statement. They also asked questions about how much they believe they understand about such science, including: “When you hear the term DNA, how would you rate your understanding of what the term means.” All individuals were scored from zero (they know they have no understanding) to one (they are confident they understand). The team discovered that those at the attitudinal extremes — both strongly supportive and strongly anti-science — have very high self-belief in their own understanding, while those answering neutrally do not.

Psychologically, the team suggest, this makes sense: to hold a strong opinion you need to strongly believe in the correctness of your understanding of the basic facts. The current team could replicate the prior results finding that those most negative tend also not to have high textbook knowledge. By contrast, those more accepting of science both believe they understand it and scored well on the textbook fact (true/false) questions.

When it was thought that what mattered most for scientific literacy was scientific knowledge, science communication focused on passing information from scientists to the public. However, this approach may not be successful, and in some cases can backfire. The present work suggests that working to address the discrepancies between what people know and what they believe they know may be a better strategy.

Professor Anne Ferguson-Smith, President of the Genetics Society and co-author of the study comments, “Confronting negative attitudes towards science held by some people will likely involve deconstructing what they think they know about science and replacing it with more accurate understanding. This is quite challenging.”

Hurst concludes, “Why do some people hold strong attitudes to science whilst others are more neutral? We find that strong attitudes, both for and against, are underpinned by strong self confidence in knowledge about science.”