Einstein Effect: People accept more absurd phrases when attributed to scientists
nradmin
i
Your Reading indicates how much you are informed about a given subject according to the depth and contextualization of the contents you read. Our team of editors credits 17, 17,
, 29 or 60 points for each content – those that help the most in understanding the country’s moment receive more points. Over time, this score is reduced, as newer content also tends to be more relevant in understanding the news. Thus, your score in this system is dynamic: it increases when you read and decreases when you stop being informed. At the moment the score is being made only in content related to the federal government.
Close
The article you are reading right now+0
Information is part of the exercise of citizenship. Here you can see how well informed you are about what happens in the federal government.
How about knowing more about this subject?
“Depth”: nonsense phrases become believable when said by scientists| Photo: Pixabay
For decades, spiritual gurus, postmodern thinkers, and pseudo-intellectual charlatans in general have been criticized by philosophers and scientists for producing meaningless pseudo-deep sentences. Philosopher Daniel Dennett coined the term “deepity” to label the problem. Scientist Richard Dawkins has derided feminists who claim that fluid physics has made less progress than solids because fluids represent female physiology and solids represent the male erectile organ. Philosopher Harry Frankfurt released a book with a technical definition of this type of deceptive language:
(in free translation). Now, a large study published in the journal Nature Human Behavior involving more than thousand people in 19 countries (Brazil included) complicates the issue: people are more likely to accept small talk if it comes from scientists.
The study, first authored by Suzanne Hoogeveen of the Department of Psychology at the University of Amsterdam, used an old debater acquaintance on the internet: an automatic bullshit generator (bullshit
). The one used in the study was produced by programmer Seb Pearce. In Brazil, we have different versions of the Lero-Lero Generator. Here is an example of a sentence generated by these algorithms: “Consciousness consists of frequencies of quantum energy. ‘Quantum’ means a call to the unrestricted. We exist in the form of supercharged electrons.”
Scientist vs. Guru
Hoogeveen and the other researchers involved argue that it is inevitable that we depend on trust in authorities. Most of us are unable to explain how Einstein arrived at the equation E=mc², but we trust his intelligence and the consensus produced after debating the question in physics. But there is a difference between not understanding a proposition for lack of prerequisite knowledge and not understanding a proposition because it is intrinsically incomprehensible. In the latter case, trust in authorities increases obscurantism in the world.
The great novelty of the study is precisely that the figure of the scientist today carries a greater load of authority than the figure of the spiritual guru. For both, the ten thousand participants gave notes for the importance and credibility of the messages. The two measures proved to be highly positively correlated with each other in both cases. The effect that best explains the results is that the scientist’s credibility when issuing the small talk was considered greater than that of the guru.
Scientists also evaluated whether the religiosity of recipients of the nonsense message would be a factor that influences their acceptance of the assigned message the guru or the scientist. The reason they chose spiritual guru instead of religious leader was the cultural diversity of the 14 sampled countries, as this would create acceptance bias, for example if it was a message attributed to a bishop and the majority of a country was Catholic. In fact, religiosity was predictive for the credibility attributed to the guru, but not for an attribution of less credibility to the scientist.
In the case of Brazil, the study shows that the scientist’s small talk was considered more credible than that of the guru, regardless of of the participants’ religiosity. The most religious individuals among Brazilians consider the scientist and the guru equally trustworthy in their nonsense, without placing the guru above the scientist.
The analysis also delved into the processing time and memory of small talk: participants spent more time trying to decipher the “depth” of what was attributed to the scientist rather than the guru. Brazil was at the top of the countries where people spent the most time processing small talk, behind only Croatia, China and Spain. Were included 214 Brazilians. As for memory, the participants showed no difference in the ability to remember what was said by the two authorities.
The study turns on its head the growing perception that the solution to the problem of disinformation is to have more “reliable sources”. After all, people tend to believe whatever is attributed to a scientific authority regardless of the content of the message. If the content of the message is irrelevant, the emphasis on “reliable sources” does not serve to combat disinformation, which concerns the content.
The results of the study were corroborated by an additional analysis in a database of more than 64 thousand people incountries.
Scientism
The mistake of flattering science and scientists is known as scientism. In a book on the subject, British pragmatist philosopher Susan Haack, who teaches at the University of Miami, gives six diagnostic signs for scientism:
The use of terms like “science” and “scientific” as automatically honorable. The problem here is that there is bad science, being scientific is no guarantee that it was well done or true.
Scientific embellishments inappropriately adopted. Here, common practices in science, such as tables and equations, are used to give an air of respectability to something that may not be respectable. For example, identity activists seek to alter the definition of racism with the “formula” racism = prejudice + power. There is also a lot of inappropriate use of graphics in journalism and advertising.
Concern with separating science of what is not science. Here, Haack suspects that anyone who places too much emphasis on distinguishing the scientific from the unscientific is assuming that the unscientific is necessarily worse or false.
The search for a single “scientific method”. Different sets of rules have already been proposed to try to describe how scientists act when producing knowledge. None of them are without controversy. For Haack, there is no foolproof cake recipe for doing science, it depends on the area. What is valid in molecular biology may not be valid in astrophysics.
Search the sciences for answers beyond its scope. For example, who searches scientific articles for data on the consequences of public policies, to claim that those with fewer negative consequences are necessarily preferable. It so happens that this “scientific” solution may be a violation of a principle of individual freedom. These questions involve ethics, political thinking, and cannot be answered only by scientific data analysis.
Denigrating the unscientific. This is the other side of flattering science and scientists: devaluing knowledge and practices produced by methods that are not scientific, such as philosophical debate, cuisine, art, jurisprudence, etc.
Receive Our News
Newsletter
Get our newsletters
By registering for our newsletters, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, including receiving content and promotions from Gazeta do Povo. Unsubscribing can be done at any time at this link.
