The study’s authors examined people’s attitudes towards eight topics: climate change, nuclear energy, genetically modified foods, the big bang, evolution, vaccination, homeopathic medicine, and COVID-19. They discovered a pattern: people’s attitude towards the problem is becoming more and more distant from science, but at the same time they are beginning to think they know more, but actually less real knowledge.

Details of the study

An example of the phenomenon is given by vaccines against COVID-19. The less a person agrees with the vaccine, the more often they think they know everything about it, but the actual knowledge turns out to be scant.

Opposition to the scientific picture of the world is an extremely important issue. Popularizers for many years [науки] He thought it necessary to just give information to people. Unfortunately, the training measures did not work as we would like. Our research shows that overconfidence hinders learning. If people think they know too much, they have minimal motivation to learn more. People with extreme anti-scientific views may need to learn about their own relative ignorance before being taught the characteristics of established scientific knowledge.
Associate Professor Nick Light says.

Religious or political identity is very important. For example, the scientific view on climate change is often held by liberals. But when it comes to GMOs, scientists haven’t found patterns in political preferences.

The consequences of spreading anti-scientific views can be serious, including destruction of property, famine and economic problems.

What should I do

Educational programs alone may not attempt to change attitudes, the researchers say, unless people get an accurate picture of their own knowledge of the complexity of the problem.

The challenge, then, is to find appropriate ways to convince people who do not accept the scientific worldview that they are probably not as knowledgeable as they think.
said Light.

One solution is to publish the scientific picture of the world by influential people. Despite personal opinions, the strength of social norms is of great importance. For example, many people in Asia wore masks to comply with social norms, not to reduce the risk of infection and transmission of the coronavirus. “People tend to do what they think their community expects them to do,” Light concludes.