Peter J. Verovšek, Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Politics/International Relations at the University of Sheffield and British Academy Mid-Career Fellow, joined us in a conversation about the challenges facing Europe’s unity. In this interview, he sheds light on the factors preventing intellectuals from actively and effectively addressing these challenges.
“If you have a kind of conception of democracy based on a national popular sovereignty, then you do not necessarily see populism as a problem.”
What is dividing Europeans and what is holding them together?
I believe that the biggest thing uniting Europeans is the awareness that Europe is becoming an ever-smaller part of the world both economically and (geo-)politically. I think that many Europeans are aware of the fact that in order to keep punching above their economic and political weight, they must do it through Europe, in the form of the EU; in other words, they must work together. Unfortunately, I think what so often divides Europe is precisely a lack of agreement on what the EU should be doing in common. There is not so much disagreement on external policies like trade, but rather more on the enforcement of domestic norms, on how to protect democracy at home, and on how regional funds should be spent. The agreement holding Europeans together is by and large found within the international challenges with which the EU is confronted.
“Until we have a common conception of what it means to have democracy both at home and the European level, it will be difficult to reach agreement on what the EU’s role is.”
Which role do different narratives of democracy play in this respect?
I am convinced that different conceptions of democracy have developed in Western and Central Europe; populism, even the conceptualisation of it, is an obstacle in this regard. If your central point of reference is 1989, with the experience of Communism fresh in your mind and body, of being under the thumb of Moscow and with a feeling of not having control, then it is very easy to interpret populism not as a problem, but instead as an expression of popular sovereignty, of the desire of control on the part of the people of the national community that fought so much against the external control of the Soviet Union. They [the post-Communist states] did not fight so hard to get out from under the thumb of Moscow merely to once again cede power to Brussels. If you have a conception of democracy based on a national popular sovereignty, then you do not necessarily see populism as a problem. Whereas the Western perspective, which comes out of 1945 and is defined by the importance of individual rights like press freedom and rights to assembly rather than popular sovereignty, has been institutionalised at the European Union and various international organisations in the West. In that liberal perspective and conception of the rule of law and democracy, it is very clear that even the slightest thought of populism is problematic. Until we have a common conception of what it means to have democracy both at home and the European level, it will be very difficult to reach an agreement on what the EU’s role is in Europe and how the EU should relate to its own member states.
“We [academics] complain a lot about ‘fake news’ and the degradation of public discourse. I believe in many ways it is an obligation for those of us who … have the luxury and privilege of being able to think about these things for a living, to actually enter into the public sphere …”
What could and should the scientific community and academies do to deal with this challenge?
The academic community has an important role to play. We [academics] complain a lot about ‘fake news’ and the degradation of public discourse. I believe that in many ways it is an obligation for those of us who approach these issues academically – who have the luxury and privilege of being able to think about these things for a living – to actually enter into the public sphere and provide our own perspectives in order to ensure that these issues are heard and are debated in a productive manner. This would help to ensure that a deliberative debate is occurring and not just polarisation or mere shouting. Therefore, I think there is an important role for public intellectuals to play in this process. Unfortunately, a lot of the ways intellectuals are educated these days do not help with that. We are trained to be scholars, there is a lot of pressure for publication and a lot of institutional incentives that push against our entrance into the public sphere and against us taking the time to engage in things like deliberative polling in town halls, as well as to engage in public debates when we are under an incredible pressure to produce research ‘outputs’, to teach more and to confront more administration at the university level. Economic factors and obligations push intellectuals against getting engaged with the public sphere.
“Academies provide fora for academics to engage with the public, to do more deliberation about important public affairs and stimulate public discourse that is more about reaching an agreement than merely about fake news and polarisation.”
Perhaps European academies could play a bigger role here, by helping to raise the profile of that kind of public engagement for academics. Academies provide fora for intellectuals to engage with the public, to do more deliberation about important public affairs and stimulate public discourse that is more about reaching an agreement than merely about fake news and polarisation.
This interview was originally conducted at the conference ‘Europe on Test: The Onus of the Past – and the Necessities of the Future’, organised by the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) and ALLEA in October 2019.
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Food insecurity and sustainability are among the most significant global challenges facing humanity today. They are linked to a range of other challenges including malnutrition, biodiversity loss, climate change, soil degradation, and water quality.
The new SAPEAreport on “A Sustainable food system for European Union”addresses these questions and considers how a socially just and sustainable food system for the EU can be best defined and attained.
The reportwas coordinated by ALLEA, the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities, and was written by a multidisciplinary group of15 leading scientistsnominated by academies across Europe. This report was requested by the Group of Chief Scientific Advisors to the European Commission and it informs theirScientific Opinion, which contains a set of recommendations for the European Commission. The two documents were published recently.
We are talking with Peter Jackson, the chair of the SAPEA expert group who wrote the report. Peter Jackson is aProfessor of Human Geography at the University of Sheffield in the UK and co-Director of the Institute for Sustainable Food.
Transcript of the interview
Good morning.Today we will discuss food sustainability and a new SAPEA report on that topic.We are talking with Peter Jackson, the Chair of the SAPEA expert group who wrote the report.Peter is a Professor of Human Geographyat the University of Sheffield in the UK and the co-Director of the Institute for Sustainable Food.Peter, thank you for being here with us!And the first question I wanted to ask you is that the report saysthat a shift to a sustainable food system in Europe is necessary. Could you tell us why?
Yes, thank you. The current food system is widely acknowledged to be unsustainable, and that’s because of a number of reasons.The food system is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for more than a third of total global greenhouse gas emissions.It’s also a major contributor to soil depletion, to soil quality impoverishment, and a rage of other ecological consequences, including the loss of biodiversity.
For all these reasons we think the food system is unsustainable.It’s also unsustainable in terms of food waste:as much of a third of the food we produce is lost to human consumption at various points along the supply chain.And lastly, in terms of food security, there’s been an alarming increase in the number of people needing access to emergency forms of food aid, such as food banks. So across all those criteria, it’s fair to say that the current food system is unsustainable.
And howcan we make this shift towards sustainability happen? What does evidence say about it?
Conventional approach to solving food system challenges is framed in terms of sustainable intensification.And that means using agri–tech and other scientific interventions to grow more food using less land and fewer inputs. Others disagree with that approach, and suggest we need to focus on agroecology, or organic farming, or to support a return to more local and seasonal food supplies. We clearly also need a concerted approach to reduction offood loss and food waste, but others would also say we need to explore alternative forms of protein, or a move to more plant-based diets.
So there are a whole range of solutions being advocated, and our report tries to weigh up the scientific evidence for one or more of those approaches. Generally though, we support a system-wide and radical change to the current food system, exploring all those options.
TheSAPEA report that you worked on sets down key messages for policy-makers, which are then used by the Scientific Advisors to develop recommendations for the European Commission.But this time, we wanted to ask about your personal opinion as an expert: what would be the most important step towards a sustainable food system in Europe?
It’s actually hard to separate more a personal opinion from the conclusions we came to in the report as a whole.But our main approach has been to suggest that no single actor, or single action,holds the key to transitioning to a more just and sustainable food system.
We argue in the report that we need to combine so-called hard and soft measures.So the hard measures would include taxation and legislation, and the softer measures would include consumer education, health campaigns and behaviour change approaches.
But we suggest that the evidence leads us to the conclusion that combination of hard and soft measures is likely to be more effective than single measures taken on their own.
SAPEA is known for bringing together scientists from all disciplines and across Europe. What was it like to work in such a group? Was there anything that surprised you in this way of working?
It was actually a pleasure to work with members of the Working Group. We worked very well together and were able to combine a whole series of different disciplinary approaches, including psychology and sociology, geography, economics, and some natural science.
So the lessons on the whole were very positive, in terms of collaboration across disciplinary boundaries.Where there were differences, they were mostly resolved through mutual understanding and cooperative learning. So for example some would advocate quantitative others more qualitative approaches, or some might take a more individualistic, psychological approach, whereas others would think more sociologically about the need for addressing collective behaviour and a more social practice approach. But on the whole we came to a consensus view, the report is signed by all of us collectively, and it was a good lesson I think in terms of the need for interdisciplinary approaches to food system challenges.
And Advisors to the European Commission have explicitly asked for the social sciences perspective in this report. Why is that? What makes this perspective so important in this project?
The scoping paper to which we responded refers to a social science deficit in current approaches to the food system. And by that it argued that across the sciences in general there was a good degree of agreement on what was needed, in terms of dietary change for example, or in terms of more sustainable agricultural production.
But what was lacking was a sense of what works in terms of different policies,and that’s where social science perhaps can contribute most. So through the systematic review process that underpinned our report, we were able to identify scientific work which had evaluated the effectiveness of different kinds of policies. And that then provides an evidence-based approach to what works.
We also used the systematic review process to identify a series of case-studies, ofbest practice, ofthings that might work at the local scale or within a single nation, but which might be scaled-up, or rolled out across Europe more generally.
Well thank you very much!
Thank you!
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ALLEA is pleased to share a PEriTiA Call for Papers for the upcoming international workshop “Social Indicators of Trust in Experts” to be held in Paris on 1-2 October 2020. The deadline for submission of abstracts has been extended to 30 April. The aim of this event is to help understand what informal social indicators people use in order to evaluate the trustworthiness of experts.
PEriTiA International Workshop: Social Indicators of Trust in Experts
Date: October 1-2 2020
Organizer(s): Gloria Origgi and Ty Branch, PEriTiA
Location: Paris, Institut Jean Nicod, Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS)
Keynote speakers: Dan Sperber, Mark Alfano, Cristina Bicchieri
Call for Papers
When we are not competent enough ourselves, we rely on experts to advise us and to act in our best interest, with the vulnerability involved in such a dependence on the competence and goodwill of others. How do we evaluate the trustworthiness of experts? Since we appeal to experts when we lack relevant epistemic competence, we cannot judge their trustworthiness on direct epistemic grounds. Reliance on experts and appeal to their domains of expertise extends well beyond traditional measures of impact, authority, and ranking. Formal indicators are complemented by informal social indicators (quality, credibility and trustworthiness), which work as cues of reputation that are distributed in a social environment.
The aim of this conference, as part of the EU funded project PEriTiA – Policy, Expertise, and Trust in Action, is to help understand what informal social indicators people use in order to evaluate the trustworthiness of experts. Among the informal social indicators there are emotions, gossip, authority, social status and the biases that underscore them. For example, when lay persons rapidly estimate the credibility of a doctor, they rely on informal social indicators like recommendations from trusted individuals (word-of-mouth), perceived social prestige (social status), and emotional response to the doctor. Such examples show how social indicators can combine and conflict in expected and unexpected ways, the consequences of this socially shaped reliance on expertise, and their overall social impact.
On the subject of informal social indicators, we welcome theoretical and empirical contributions (including case studies) addressing epistemic, normative and practical aspects of trust in experts. Questions/topics for consideration include, but are not limited to:
How do people use reputation in order to establish the epistemic credibility of experts?
What is epistemic authority and when is it reasonable to attribute it to experts?
How status relations influence the credibility of experts?
To what extent can gossip be a reliable way of extracting information from an epistemic social environment?
What are the social biases that participate into the formation of credibility deficits of a group?
What are the emotional aspects that influence the attribution of epistemic authority and status to experts?
Papers will be presented in sessions of 40 minutes and a selection of papers will be published in a journal.
Abstract submission details
We invite abstracts of 500-1000 words by 30 April 2020.
Information regarding acceptance should be available by mid-May.
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Europe’s top scientists agree that a radical change is coming in how we produce and distribute food, to ensure food security and deliver healthy diets for all.
Now a new report from SAPEA lays out the social science evidence on how that transition can happen in an inclusive, just and timely way.
The Evidence Review Report ‘A sustainable food system for the European Union’ was coordinated by ALLEA and it provides an evidence base for the scientific opinion of the European Commission’s Chief Scientific Advisors. It was requested by the College of Commissioners and written by a multidisciplinary group of leading scientists, nominated by academies across Europe.
Based on the best available evidence and supported by a detailed systematic review, the report concludes that the key steps towards the new model are not only to reduce food waste and to change our consumption patterns — but also to recontextualise how we think about food in the first place.
Professor Peter Jackson, the chair of the working group that wrote the report, said:
“Food is an incredibly complex system, with social, economic and ecological components. Yet, it contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions and plays a key role in driving climate change. The food system is responsible for around a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates the annual financial cost of wasted food to be €900 billion in economic costs and an additional €800 billion in social costs. That’s why ‘business as usual’ is no longer an option.
“Our report doesn’t stop at highlighting the problems, which are now widely recognised. It also provides a range of evidence-based examples about how the transition to a sustainable food system can happen.”
Among the report’s other main conclusions are:
The transition to a more just and sustainable food system needs to be coordinated at multiple levels of governance and involve a range of actors in both land-based and marine environments.
To change how our society consumes food, we must first change people’s routines, habits and norms. Behaviour change is best effected with joined-up actions, addressing groups rather than individuals.
Taxation and legislation are key ways to drive change, while European policies in agriculture and fisheries offer great opportunities for developing robustness and sustainability in food production.
The report informs the Scientific Opinion from the European Commission’s Group of Advisors, which is also being published today which in turn will inform the Commission’s new ‘Farm to Fork strategy for a sustainable food system’.
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European scientific and research community organisations are invited to nominate outstanding candidates for membership of the Group of Chief Scientific Advisorstothe European Commission.
The deadline for submissions is 15 June 2020 (12:00 CET). These submissions should be sent to EC-SAM@ec.europa.eu with “GCSA Nominations 2020” in the subject line. Details of the submissions process can be found on the website of the European Commission.
According to the European Commission website, the identification committee will consider specific factors and criteria for the selection process. Gender balance, the reflection of the breadth of the research community across Europe and consideration of younger next-generation leaders, are among these.
The Group of Chief Scientific Advisors provides high quality, timely and independent scientific advice to the College of European Commissioners on any subject when requested to do so by the College. Its seven members are appointed by the Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation from a short list established under the responsibility of an independent, high-level identification committee. Learn more here.
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ALLEA welcomes in a new statement the progress of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and highlights its great potential to accelerate the transition towards open science. The document presents a set of legal instruments and technical considerations which aim to reinforce the sustainability of EOSC.
Data are vital resources for research and technological development and the lifeblood of artificial intelligence. DeployingEOSC, an open platform of research tools, infrastructures and procedures for data and research sharing across borders and scientific disciplines, can significantly foster knowledge exchange and facilitate the quicker uptake of scientifically informed policies to tackle major societal challenges like climate change or health threats.
Such an ambitious and wide-ranging endeavour can only succeed with appropriate legal and technical instruments which ensure an encouraging research environment for individual researchers and high-risk research investments in today’s global and competitive world.
“The deployment of the European Open Science Cloud is clearly needed for accelerating the sharing of data and research results within the scientific community in Europe and beyond. Together with other measures favouring open science, this will help to find fact-based responses to major societal challenges such as fighting the spread of coronavirus. Interoperability with other data clouds should be ensured, and, where necessary, reciprocity of access or other conditions could be required to promote the progress of science while supporting investments in research”, says Alain Strowel, Chair of the Permanent Working Group Intellectual Property Rights.
IPR and strategic considerations
ALLEA was amongst the first endorsers of the EOSC declaration in 2017 and since then has closely monitored deliberations and developments regarding its implementation. This statement points to still unaddressed questions especially in the area of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs). It also advocatesthat the Rules of Participation (RoP) should further define access conditions in line with the EOSC principles to make the cloud “as open as possible and as closed as necessary”.
Thoseregulations should set proportionate limitations in “duly justified cases” of IPR concerns, national security, and alike. In particular, the statement notes that the current RoP only consider ‘copyright’ as a category of IPRs and disregards patents, the most important tool for protecting research inventions, and for incentivising and securing high-risk investments in research and development, both in the public and private sectors.
ALLEA’s statement presents necessary considerations to establish a solid legal and technical framework for an effective and sustainable open science cloud, including among others:
An overall legal design that ensures reciprocity of access for participating researchers submitting data according to the EOSC RoP and to EOSC compliant users of data stored elsewhere.
Interoperability with other regional data clouds which also promote interoperability and development of common global standards enabling scholarship and science to be shared as public goods for the benefit of all.
Staggered security regulations as regards data and processes, with due consideration of all relevant aspects (i.e. machines, tools, people), while different requirements, depending on the security level, must also be foreseen.
Open source should be promoted as a standardto ensure security.
Licensing models should be harmonised so that detrimental effects ofdifferent types of open source licences are mitigated.
Data should be stored, unless it is proven impossible,on servers and equipment operated in Europe and subjectto EU rules.
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The deadline for nominations for the 2021 Breakthrough Prizes has been extended to 10 April 2020. The Breakthrough Prize honours outstanding, primarily recent, achievements in the categories of Fundamental Physics, Life Sciences and Mathematics. The Prize includes special categories to honour junior researchers (New Horizons) and lifetime achievements.
Visit https://breakthroughprize.org to view prize rules, register to nominate or login to renominate past candidates.
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Due to the ongoing restrictions on public gatherings as a result of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, ALLEA and the hosting academies have made the decision to cancel all physical meetings in the context of this year’s ALLEA General Assembly.
We are therefore announcing that the public symposium Research Collaboration in Changing Timeson 4 June at the Royal Society will regrettably not take place.
The business meeting for ALLEA delegates, originally scheduled for 3 June at the British Academy, will be reorganised to take place by correspondence. Member Academies and their delegates will be informed about the procedures in due course.
This is a difficult decision for ALLEA and the hosting academies in Ireland and the UK, but the health and safety of participants and staff remain our top priority.
We are asking for your understanding and we are hoping to be able to welcome you on another occasion.
Picture credit: Eric Schmidt
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PEriTiA – Policy, Expertise and Trust in Action – has been launched today with the inaugural symposium ‘Trust in a Changing World’ hosted by University College Dublin (UCD). Funded for three years by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme, the project addresses the rise of an anti-elitist discourse questioning the trustworthiness of scientific expertise. Researchers will explore the conditions under which people trust expert opinion that shapes public policy.
Keynote speakers of today’s multi-disciplinary symposium include David Farrell (UCD/Royal Irish Academy), José van Dijck (Utrecht University/KNAW), Bobby Duffy (King’s College London), Susan Owens (University of Cambridge/British Academy), and Judith Simon (University of Hamburg).
The discussion will help illuminate the main topics to be further investigated by PEriTiA in the next 3 years. You can follow the discussions on Twitter and Facebook under the hashtag #TrustInAction. The lectures will be made available on PEriTiA’s website.
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Maria Baghramian, Professor of American Philosophy at the University College Dublin, is Project Leader and Coordinator of PERITIA (Policy, Expertise and Trust in Action), an EU-funded research programme exploring the conditions under which people trust expertise used for shaping public policy. In this interview, she presents the rationale behind the project and argues for a re-examination of the role of experts in democratic governance.
As a principal investigator of the Irish project “When Experts Disagree” and as a core member of the ALLEA Working Group Truth, Trust and Expertise (TTE) you have already investigated questions regarding trust in science and expertise quite extensively. What are the main unanswered questions from these experiences which motivated you to initiate PERITIA?
Maria Baghramian: The research project ‘When Experts Disagree’ (WEXD, 2015-2017), funded by the Irish Research Council’s New Horizons scheme, was an attempt to come to terms with the complexities of peer expert disagreement.
However, with the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s election, both happening within a few months of the launch of WEXD, the nature as well as the socio-political importance of the questions we were asking began to change. The question confronting us all, and not just our research project, is not how to deal with difficult cases of peer expert disagreements but, more crucially, how to deal with a populist backlash against experts who have become identified with elitism and intellectual arrogance.
The ALLEA Working Group Truth, Trust and Expertise, which began its work in 2017 under philosopher Onora O’Neill’s guidance, produced three working papers on questions of trust in science and the impact of the new media and modes of communication on trust. But the group had a strong sense that it was only scratching the surface of some difficult and urgent questions and that a great deal of work was still to be done.
“The question confronting us all is how to deal with a populist backlash against experts who have become identified with elitism and intellectual arrogance”
How will you and your colleagues in PERITIA answer these questions?
M.B.: PERITIA specifically seeks to understand and illuminate the conditions for the establishment and recognition of trustworthy expertise in the context of a changing socio-political landscape. The project develops the theoretical work of the ALLEA TTE working group but goes further by adding an empirical as well as an ameliorative element to its theoretical concerns. It is a fully multidisciplinary study of epistemic trust in expert opinion in the context of policy formation, and relies on the expertise of philosophers, sociologists, cognitive psychologists, economists, physicists, climate scientists, ethicists, and public policy experts.
PEriTiA will be conducted in three main phases. What are these phases and how will they reach out to and benefit the target groups?
M.B.: The first phase of the project, as I mentioned, will build on the theoretical work of the two previous projects and its findings should be useful to all those interested in achieving a deeper understanding of the philosophical, social, and psychological underpinnings of public trust and trustworthiness. The second phase will be an empirical test on the theoretical findings of the project. This stage will be developed through surveys conducted across seven countries participating in the project as well as data collected through experiments conducted in economics labs in Dublin and Milan. The data from this phase will shed light on both the trends and the specific individual factors contributing to relations of trust and mistrust in experts. Finally, in Phase 3, the citizens’ fora hosted in five countries will provide an opportunity for direct engagements between the public, climate scientists, policy-makers on environmental matters. The data we collect in this phase should help us gain a better qualitative understanding of public trust, but it should also be of use to those directly involved in policy-making. (Learn more about PERITIA’s Research Design)
“PEriTiA specifically seeks to understand and illuminate the conditions for the establishment and recognition of trustworthy expertise in the context of a changing socio-political landscape.”
In the third phase, climate change and climate science will be used as a test case for the project. Why have you chosen them and how are you going to assess trustworthiness and its role for political decision-making regarding climate governance?
M.B.: Climate change is undoubtedly the most pressing issue facing humankind. We believe that our multi-disciplinary and three-tiered approach to the trust in the science of climate change can make a positive contribution to the ongoing discussions about the topic. A great deal of research has already been carried out on the question of the interface between climate science and policy-makers but much of its focus has been on the highly vocal climate denialists in the US. Various attitude surveys in Europe, on the other hand, indicate that in Western European countries, over 90% of the population believe that the world’s climate is changing, and this is, at least partly, due to human activity.
But the question of public trust in climate science when it comes to climate policies is not settled. There is a disparity between expressions of trust in scientists’ views on the causes of climate change and an apparent lack of support for the policies that might help to reduce and counter the change. The apparent tension, if not the outright contradiction, between the avowed agreement with experts regarding the cause of climate change and the reluctance to act on the warnings about its potentially catastrophic consequences for humanity shows that the issue of trust in experts cannot be reduced to a positive or negative response to a questionnaire about trust in science. The issue is more complex.
Our study aims to investigate this complicated and complicating feature of trust in science. So, our focus is not going to be on the question of trust or distrust in the science of climate change only, but also on the more crucial question of trust in the intersection of climate science and the policy decisions based on expert advice. However, I should add that the project is using climate science as its test case, but the aims of the project are broader, and we hope that our conclusions will have more general applicability.
“Our focus is not going to be on the question of trust or distrust in the science of climate change only, but also on the more crucial question of trust in the intersection of climate science and the policy decisions based on expert advice.”
Many would argue that we are living in a ‘post-truth’ world, where scepticism towards expert opinion and political institutions is rising. However, problems like ‘fake news’ and propaganda have long been an integral part of social history. How are today’s challenges facing trust in institutions, particularly science and scientific expertise, different to those in the past? How are digital transformations changing the nature of belief, public opinion and political communication?
M.B.: The rhetoric of populism is one of the common denominators binding various dimensions of what rightly has been described as a crisis of democracy. The expression of scepticism about experts and their opinions is a feature of populist politics but is not backed by surveys regarding levels of trust in science. The latest IPSOS survey of levels of trust in various professions shows that scientists (at 60%) are the most trusted group of professionals, followed closely by medical doctors (56%), and teachers (52%). Only 11% of those surveyed find scientists untrustworthy. Similar results have been shown by other surveys.
So, it is interesting to ask why there is such a widespread perception that there is a lack of trust in science. One reason is that lack of trust in some specific areas of scientific advice like vaccination is a case in point. Since 2010, the uptake of measles-containing vaccines such as MMR has decreased in 12 EU member states: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. There is little doubt that the echo chambers produced by social media, in particular, the algorithms used by Facebook, have had an immense impact on spreading the false data about linkages between vaccines and various illnesses. This is where we clearly see the impact of digital media on the old phenomenon of disinformation and propaganda for political and monetary gains.
These ‘localised’ breakdowns of trust are also taken as indicators of a general crisis of trust, in part because of the very public expressions of scepticism about science and expertise by populist political figures and their followers and thus the narrative of the untrustworthiness of the experts is perpetuated and generalised. One of the main focuses of our project is on the role of social media on building or diminishing the reputation of opinion makers in science and in policy decisions. We will be holding a workshop and a conference on these topics and we hope that the publication of their findings will help to address this pressing issue.
“One of the main focuses of our project is on the role of social media on building or diminishing the reputation of opinion makers in science and in policy decisions.”
Critical thinking and media literacy programmes have long fostered a critical approach towards sources, particularly those found on the internet and media. Philosophers too have had a role in provoking scepticism even towards the most basic notions of truth. Did this create unintended consequences regarding the development of distrust towards experts and professionals in parts of society? Do you think there is any way to circumvent this problem and (re)build ‘justified’ trust, while simultaneously maintaining a healthy distance from accepting information at face value? M.B.: I think scepticism, at least the type that philosophers advocate, helps rather than hinders the search for truth by fostering anti-dogmatism and open mindedness. The so-called era of post-truth, in my view, should not be equated with scepticism or critical thinking but with what the philosopher Harry Frankfurt has called ‘bullshitting’. There are important differences between lies, other falsehoods, and bullshits. Liars try to misrepresent facts and to negate or distort what they think is true; they are attempting to distort what they believe to be true. Bullshiters, on the other hand, are simply unconcerned about the truth. Bullshitters, as Frankfurt puts it are “indifferent to how things are”, they are not just attempting to distort the truth but to undermine the very distinction between truth and falsehood. So, as Frankfurt rightly points out, they present a far greater threat to truth than mere lies.
A further element of what is called ‘post-truth’ is the conflation of belief with feelings and freedom of opinion with the freedom of choosing to believe whatever may seem most palatable irrespective of any justifying or contrary evidence. Again, these are not epistemic attitudes that can be identified with philosophical scepticism, in fact they are its very anti-thesis. The sceptic, at its most extreme, claims that we cannot know anything. The ‘post-truth’ attitude claims that anything that seems right to us, or is to our liking, is true. They mistake truth with strength of conviction and feelings of certainty.
As to remedies, in the long run, unless we bring about our own self-destruction, truth will win because the world resists the imposition of false narratives on it. False theories do not work and sooner or later we are going to find out that they do not. Refusing vaccination in large numbers kills, believing that climate change is a Chinese hoax will not stop the impact of global warming on our habitats. The famous quip by the great American philosopher Willard van Orman Quine that “creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a pathetic but praiseworthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind” doubly applies to the case of truth. The challenge facing us is to make sure that we do not hasten our demise by ignoring the hard facts of a world that will survive long after we are gone. Establishing direct two-way dialogues between scientific experts and the general public is one of the key aims of PERITIA, which I think can help in countering this danger.
“It is not so much trust in experts that is at issue but trust at the nexus of experts and policymaking that creates serious concern about the role of experts in democratic governance.”
A project exploring “how emotions and values influence the process of placing or refusing trust in expertise that shapes public policies” might be perceived as attempting to (re)establish a kind of authority in experts and professionals which recent ‘populist’ movements have termed ‘elitist’. PEriTiA’s mission explicitly states that public trust in expertise has a clear role in democracy, which is supposedly threatened by populist politics. Alluding to Plato, placing trust in experts can easily be perceived as technocratic and anti-democratic. How will PEriTiA avoid or deal with retracing a perceived border between ‘experts’ and the ‘general public’ without feeding the anti-elitist narrative?
M.B.: There is something very basic and inescapable in our reliance on experts. Division of cognitive labour, which comes with the division of other types of labour, is essential to the functioning of complex societies. A distinction between experts or specialists and novices is an inevitable consequence of this division. The idea that we can have an ‘equality’ of knowledge but also a complex social order does not make sense. The headlines about the breakdown of trust in experts distort the plain fact that we rely on experts on daily basis – we take our cars to the mechanics, our children to the dentist and our computers to the IT people.
It is not so much trust in experts that is at issue but trust at the nexus of experts and policymaking that creates serious concern about the role of experts in democratic governance, so much so that the sociologist of science, Steven Fuller claims that widespread dependence on experts is “the biggest single problem facing the future of democracy”. The concern, as you suggest, goes back to Plato but has resurfaced in the work of quite diverse philosophers in the 20thcentury – the American Pragmatist John Dewey, the German critical theorist Hannah Arendt and the French postmodernist Michel Foucault are some examples. The main concern common to these critics is that the role of and potential rule by experts fundamentally lacks an ethical grounding and has no genuine interest in the common good.
The emphasis that PERITIA places on the unavoidable affective and normative dimensions of trust goes some way towards addressing this concern. In my own work, and contribution to the project, I explore the ways in which science is value-laden and how the acceptance of this fact will allow us to step out of the dichotomy of thinking in terms of objective scientific facts vs the subjective, or at best intersubjective world of values. The approach, championed among others by feminist epistemologists, allows us to think about the role of values in making scientific decisions, for example in deciding about the costs and benefits of taking an inductive leap in theory construction and theory acceptance. Some of the publications of PERITIA over the next three years will deal with this question.
“In my own work, and contribution to the project, I explore the ways in which science is value-laden and how the acceptance of this fact will allow us to step out of the dichotomy of thinking in terms of objective scientific facts vs the subjective, or at best intersubjective world of values.”
This article was originally published on PERITIA’s website here.
https://allea.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/expertise400.png400428alleaadminhttps://allea.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/allealogo-1-300x83.pngalleaadmin2020-03-01 19:54:532020-06-23 20:40:11Dealing with a populist backlash against experts
Diverging Narratives of Democracy in Europe
What is dividing Europeans and what is holding them together?
I believe that the biggest thing uniting Europeans is the awareness that Europe is becoming an ever-smaller part of the world both economically and (geo-)politically. I think that many Europeans are aware of the fact that in order to keep punching above their economic and political weight, they must do it through Europe, in the form of the EU; in other words, they must work together. Unfortunately, I think what so often divides Europe is precisely a lack of agreement on what the EU should be doing in common. There is not so much disagreement on external policies like trade, but rather more on the enforcement of domestic norms, on how to protect democracy at home, and on how regional funds should be spent. The agreement holding Europeans together is by and large found within the international challenges with which the EU is confronted.
Which role do different narratives of democracy play in this respect?
I am convinced that different conceptions of democracy have developed in Western and Central Europe; populism, even the conceptualisation of it, is an obstacle in this regard. If your central point of reference is 1989, with the experience of Communism fresh in your mind and body, of being under the thumb of Moscow and with a feeling of not having control, then it is very easy to interpret populism not as a problem, but instead as an expression of popular sovereignty, of the desire of control on the part of the people of the national community that fought so much against the external control of the Soviet Union. They [the post-Communist states] did not fight so hard to get out from under the thumb of Moscow merely to once again cede power to Brussels. If you have a conception of democracy based on a national popular sovereignty, then you do not necessarily see populism as a problem. Whereas the Western perspective, which comes out of 1945 and is defined by the importance of individual rights like press freedom and rights to assembly rather than popular sovereignty, has been institutionalised at the European Union and various international organisations in the West. In that liberal perspective and conception of the rule of law and democracy, it is very clear that even the slightest thought of populism is problematic. Until we have a common conception of what it means to have democracy both at home and the European level, it will be very difficult to reach an agreement on what the EU’s role is in Europe and how the EU should relate to its own member states.
What could and should the scientific community and academies do to deal with this challenge?
The academic community has an important role to play. We [academics] complain a lot about ‘fake news’ and the degradation of public discourse. I believe that in many ways it is an obligation for those of us who approach these issues academically – who have the luxury and privilege of being able to think about these things for a living – to actually enter into the public sphere and provide our own perspectives in order to ensure that these issues are heard and are debated in a productive manner. This would help to ensure that a deliberative debate is occurring and not just polarisation or mere shouting. Therefore, I think there is an important role for public intellectuals to play in this process. Unfortunately, a lot of the ways intellectuals are educated these days do not help with that. We are trained to be scholars, there is a lot of pressure for publication and a lot of institutional incentives that push against our entrance into the public sphere and against us taking the time to engage in things like deliberative polling in town halls, as well as to engage in public debates when we are under an incredible pressure to produce research ‘outputs’, to teach more and to confront more administration at the university level. Economic factors and obligations push intellectuals against getting engaged with the public sphere.
Perhaps European academies could play a bigger role here, by helping to raise the profile of that kind of public engagement for academics. Academies provide fora for intellectuals to engage with the public, to do more deliberation about important public affairs and stimulate public discourse that is more about reaching an agreement than merely about fake news and polarisation.
This interview was originally conducted at the conference ‘Europe on Test: The Onus of the Past – and the Necessities of the Future’, organised by the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) and ALLEA in October 2019.
How can we make Europe’s food system sustainable?
Food insecurity and sustainability are among the most significant global challenges facing humanity today. They are linked to a range of other challenges including malnutrition, biodiversity loss, climate change, soil degradation, and water quality.
The new SAPEA report on “A Sustainable food system for European Union” addresses these questions and considers how a socially just and sustainable food system for the EU can be best defined and attained.
The report was coordinated by ALLEA, the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities, and was written by a multidisciplinary group of 15 leading scientists nominated by academies across Europe. This report was requested by the Group of Chief Scientific Advisors to the European Commission and it informs their Scientific Opinion, which contains a set of recommendations for the European Commission. The two documents were published recently.
We are talking with Peter Jackson, the chair of the SAPEA expert group who wrote the report. Peter Jackson is a Professor of Human Geography at the University of Sheffield in the UK and co-Director of the Institute for Sustainable Food.
Transcript of the interview
Good morning. Today we will discuss food sustainability and a new SAPEA report on that topic. We are talking with Peter Jackson, the Chair of the SAPEA expert group who wrote the report. Peter is a Professor of Human Geography at the University of Sheffield in the UK and the co-Director of the Institute for Sustainable Food. Peter, thank you for being here with us! And the first question I wanted to ask you is that the report says that a shift to a sustainable food system in Europe is necessary. Could you tell us why?
Yes, thank you. The current food system is widely acknowledged to be unsustainable, and that’s because of a number of reasons. The food system is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for more than a third of total global greenhouse gas emissions. It’s also a major contributor to soil depletion, to soil quality impoverishment, and a rage of other ecological consequences, including the loss of biodiversity.
For all these reasons we think the food system is unsustainable. It’s also unsustainable in terms of food waste: as much of a third of the food we produce is lost to human consumption at various points along the supply chain. And lastly, in terms of food security, there’s been an alarming increase in the number of people needing access to emergency forms of food aid, such as food banks. So across all those criteria, it’s fair to say that the current food system is unsustainable.
And how can we make this shift towards sustainability happen? What does evidence say about it?
Conventional approach to solving food system challenges is framed in terms of sustainable intensification. And that means using agri–tech and other scientific interventions to grow more food using less land and fewer inputs. Others disagree with that approach, and suggest we need to focus on agroecology, or organic farming, or to support a return to more local and seasonal food supplies. We clearly also need a concerted approach to reduction of food loss and food waste, but others would also say we need to explore alternative forms of protein, or a move to more plant-based diets.
So there are a whole range of solutions being advocated, and our report tries to weigh up the scientific evidence for one or more of those approaches. Generally though, we support a system-wide and radical change to the current food system, exploring all those options.
The SAPEA report that you worked on sets down key messages for policy-makers, which are then used by the Scientific Advisors to develop recommendations for the European Commission. But this time, we wanted to ask about your personal opinion as an expert: what would be the most important step towards a sustainable food system in Europe?
It’s actually hard to separate more a personal opinion from the conclusions we came to in the report as a whole. But our main approach has been to suggest that no single actor, or single action, holds the key to transitioning to a more just and sustainable food system.
We argue in the report that we need to combine so-called hard and soft measures. So the hard measures would include taxation and legislation, and the softer measures would include consumer education, health campaigns and behaviour change approaches.
But we suggest that the evidence leads us to the conclusion that combination of hard and soft measures is likely to be more effective than single measures taken on their own.
SAPEA is known for bringing together scientists from all disciplines and across Europe. What was it like to work in such a group? Was there anything that surprised you in this way of working?
It was actually a pleasure to work with members of the Working Group. We worked very well together and were able to combine a whole series of different disciplinary approaches, including psychology and sociology, geography, economics, and some natural science.
So the lessons on the whole were very positive, in terms of collaboration across disciplinary boundaries. Where there were differences, they were mostly resolved through mutual understanding and cooperative learning. So for example some would advocate quantitative others more qualitative approaches, or some might take a more individualistic, psychological approach, whereas others would think more sociologically about the need for addressing collective behaviour and a more social practice approach. But on the whole we came to a consensus view, the report is signed by all of us collectively, and it was a good lesson I think in terms of the need for interdisciplinary approaches to food system challenges.
And Advisors to the European Commission have explicitly asked for the social sciences perspective in this report. Why is that? What makes this perspective so important in this project?
The scoping paper to which we responded refers to a social science deficit in current approaches to the food system. And by that it argued that across the sciences in general there was a good degree of agreement on what was needed, in terms of dietary change for example, or in terms of more sustainable agricultural production.
But what was lacking was a sense of what works in terms of different policies, and that’s where social science perhaps can contribute most. So through the systematic review process that underpinned our report, we were able to identify scientific work which had evaluated the effectiveness of different kinds of policies. And that then provides an evidence-based approach to what works.
We also used the systematic review process to identify a series of case-studies, of best practice, of things that might work at the local scale or within a single nation, but which might be scaled-up, or rolled out across Europe more generally.
Well thank you very much!
Thank you!
PEriTiA Call for Papers: Social Indicators of Trust in Experts
ALLEA is pleased to share a PEriTiA Call for Papers for the upcoming international workshop “Social Indicators of Trust in Experts” to be held in Paris on 1-2 October 2020. The deadline for submission of abstracts has been extended to 30 April. The aim of this event is to help understand what informal social indicators people use in order to evaluate the trustworthiness of experts.
PEriTiA International Workshop: Social Indicators of Trust in Experts
Date: October 1-2 2020
Organizer(s): Gloria Origgi and Ty Branch, PEriTiA
Location: Paris, Institut Jean Nicod, Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS)
Keynote speakers: Dan Sperber, Mark Alfano, Cristina Bicchieri
Call for Papers
When we are not competent enough ourselves, we rely on experts to advise us and to act in our best interest, with the vulnerability involved in such a dependence on the competence and goodwill of others. How do we evaluate the trustworthiness of experts? Since we appeal to experts when we lack relevant epistemic competence, we cannot judge their trustworthiness on direct epistemic grounds. Reliance on experts and appeal to their domains of expertise extends well beyond traditional measures of impact, authority, and ranking. Formal indicators are complemented by informal social indicators (quality, credibility and trustworthiness), which work as cues of reputation that are distributed in a social environment.
The aim of this conference, as part of the EU funded project PEriTiA – Policy, Expertise, and Trust in Action, is to help understand what informal social indicators people use in order to evaluate the trustworthiness of experts. Among the informal social indicators there are emotions, gossip, authority, social status and the biases that underscore them. For example, when lay persons rapidly estimate the credibility of a doctor, they rely on informal social indicators like recommendations from trusted individuals (word-of-mouth), perceived social prestige (social status), and emotional response to the doctor. Such examples show how social indicators can combine and conflict in expected and unexpected ways, the consequences of this socially shaped reliance on expertise, and their overall social impact.
On the subject of informal social indicators, we welcome theoretical and empirical contributions (including case studies) addressing epistemic, normative and practical aspects of trust in experts. Questions/topics for consideration include, but are not limited to:
Papers will be presented in sessions of 40 minutes and a selection of papers will be published in a journal.
Abstract submission details
We invite abstracts of 500-1000 words by 30 April 2020.
Abstracts should be sent to SocialIndicatorsParis2020@gmail.com.
Information regarding acceptance should be available by mid-May.
The shift to a more sustainable food system is inevitable. Here’s how to make it happen
Europe’s top scientists agree that a radical change is coming in how we produce and distribute food, to ensure food security and deliver healthy diets for all.
Now a new report from SAPEA lays out the social science evidence on how that transition can happen in an inclusive, just and timely way.
The Evidence Review Report ‘A sustainable food system for the European Union’ was coordinated by ALLEA and it provides an evidence base for the scientific opinion of the European Commission’s Chief Scientific Advisors. It was requested by the College of Commissioners and written by a multidisciplinary group of leading scientists, nominated by academies across Europe.
Based on the best available evidence and supported by a detailed systematic review, the report concludes that the key steps towards the new model are not only to reduce food waste and to change our consumption patterns — but also to recontextualise how we think about food in the first place.
Professor Peter Jackson, the chair of the working group that wrote the report, said:
Among the report’s other main conclusions are:
The report informs the Scientific Opinion from the European Commission’s Group of Advisors, which is also being published today which in turn will inform the Commission’s new ‘Farm to Fork strategy for a sustainable food system’.
Call for nominations for the Group of Chief Scientific Advisors
European scientific and research community organisations are invited to nominate outstanding candidates for membership of the Group of Chief Scientific Advisors to the European Commission.
The deadline for submissions is 15 June 2020 (12:00 CET). These submissions should be sent to EC-SAM@ec.europa.eu with “GCSA Nominations 2020” in the subject line. Details of the submissions process can be found on the website of the European Commission.
According to the European Commission website, the identification committee will consider specific factors and criteria for the selection process. Gender balance, the reflection of the breadth of the research community across Europe and consideration of younger next-generation leaders, are among these.
European Open Science Cloud needs improved legal and technical foundations to go global
ALLEA welcomes in a new statement the progress of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and highlights its great potential to accelerate the transition towards open science. The document presents a set of legal instruments and technical considerations which aim to reinforce the sustainability of EOSC.
Data are vital resources for research and technological development and the lifeblood of artificial intelligence. Deploying EOSC, an open platform of research tools, infrastructures and procedures for data and research sharing across borders and scientific disciplines, can significantly foster knowledge exchange and facilitate the quicker uptake of scientifically informed policies to tackle major societal challenges like climate change or health threats.
Such an ambitious and wide-ranging endeavour can only succeed with appropriate legal and technical instruments which ensure an encouraging research environment for individual researchers and high-risk research investments in today’s global and competitive world.
“The deployment of the European Open Science Cloud is clearly needed for accelerating the sharing of data and research results within the scientific community in Europe and beyond. Together with other measures favouring open science, this will help to find fact-based responses to major societal challenges such as fighting the spread of coronavirus. Interoperability with other data clouds should be ensured, and, where necessary, reciprocity of access or other conditions could be required to promote the progress of science while supporting investments in research”, says Alain Strowel, Chair of the Permanent Working Group Intellectual Property Rights.
IPR and strategic considerations
ALLEA was amongst the first endorsers of the EOSC declaration in 2017 and since then has closely monitored deliberations and developments regarding its implementation. This statement points to still unaddressed questions especially in the area of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs). It also advocates that the Rules of Participation (RoP) should further define access conditions in line with the EOSC principles to make the cloud “as open as possible and as closed as necessary”.
Those regulations should set proportionate limitations in “duly justified cases” of IPR concerns, national security, and alike. In particular, the statement notes that the current RoP only consider ‘copyright’ as a category of IPRs and disregards patents, the most important tool for protecting research inventions, and for incentivising and securing high-risk investments in research and development, both in the public and private sectors.
ALLEA’s statement presents necessary considerations to establish a solid legal and technical framework for an effective and sustainable open science cloud, including among others:
Download Statement
Breakthrough Prize: Deadline extended to 10 April
The deadline for nominations for the 2021 Breakthrough Prizes has been extended to 10 April 2020. The Breakthrough Prize honours outstanding, primarily recent, achievements in the categories of Fundamental Physics, Life Sciences and Mathematics. The Prize includes special categories to honour junior researchers (New Horizons) and lifetime achievements.
Visit https://breakthroughprize.org to view prize rules, register to nominate or login to renominate past candidates.
ALLEA General Assembly meetings in London cancelled
Due to the ongoing restrictions on public gatherings as a result of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, ALLEA and the hosting academies have made the decision to cancel all physical meetings in the context of this year’s ALLEA General Assembly.
We are therefore announcing that the public symposium Research Collaboration in Changing Times on 4 June at the Royal Society will regrettably not take place.
The business meeting for ALLEA delegates, originally scheduled for 3 June at the British Academy, will be reorganised to take place by correspondence. Member Academies and their delegates will be informed about the procedures in due course.
This is a difficult decision for ALLEA and the hosting academies in Ireland and the UK, but the health and safety of participants and staff remain our top priority.
We are asking for your understanding and we are hoping to be able to welcome you on another occasion.
Picture credit: Eric Schmidt
‘Trust in a Changing World’ – PEriTiA kicks off with international symposium in Dublin
PEriTiA – Policy, Expertise and Trust in Action – has been launched today with the inaugural symposium ‘Trust in a Changing World’ hosted by University College Dublin (UCD). Funded for three years by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme, the project addresses the rise of an anti-elitist discourse questioning the trustworthiness of scientific expertise. Researchers will explore the conditions under which people trust expert opinion that shapes public policy.
Keynote speakers of today’s multi-disciplinary symposium include David Farrell (UCD/Royal Irish Academy), José van Dijck (Utrecht University/KNAW), Bobby Duffy (King’s College London), Susan Owens (University of Cambridge/British Academy), and Judith Simon (University of Hamburg).
The discussion will help illuminate the main topics to be further investigated by PEriTiA in the next 3 years. You can follow the discussions on Twitter and Facebook under the hashtag #TrustInAction. The lectures will be made available on PEriTiA’s website.
Learn more about PEritiA
Follow the project on Twitter and Facebook
Dealing with a populist backlash against experts
As a principal investigator of the Irish project “When Experts Disagree” and as a core member of the ALLEA Working Group Truth, Trust and Expertise (TTE) you have already investigated questions regarding trust in science and expertise quite extensively. What are the main unanswered questions from these experiences which motivated you to initiate PERITIA?
Maria Baghramian: The research project ‘When Experts Disagree’ (WEXD, 2015-2017), funded by the Irish Research Council’s New Horizons scheme, was an attempt to come to terms with the complexities of peer expert disagreement.
However, with the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s election, both happening within a few months of the launch of WEXD, the nature as well as the socio-political importance of the questions we were asking began to change. The question confronting us all, and not just our research project, is not how to deal with difficult cases of peer expert disagreements but, more crucially, how to deal with a populist backlash against experts who have become identified with elitism and intellectual arrogance.
The ALLEA Working Group Truth, Trust and Expertise, which began its work in 2017 under philosopher Onora O’Neill’s guidance, produced three working papers on questions of trust in science and the impact of the new media and modes of communication on trust. But the group had a strong sense that it was only scratching the surface of some difficult and urgent questions and that a great deal of work was still to be done.
How will you and your colleagues in PERITIA answer these questions?
M.B.: PERITIA specifically seeks to understand and illuminate the conditions for the establishment and recognition of trustworthy expertise in the context of a changing socio-political landscape. The project develops the theoretical work of the ALLEA TTE working group but goes further by adding an empirical as well as an ameliorative element to its theoretical concerns. It is a fully multidisciplinary study of epistemic trust in expert opinion in the context of policy formation, and relies on the expertise of philosophers, sociologists, cognitive psychologists, economists, physicists, climate scientists, ethicists, and public policy experts.
PEriTiA will be conducted in three main phases. What are these phases and how will they reach out to and benefit the target groups?
M.B.: The first phase of the project, as I mentioned, will build on the theoretical work of the two previous projects and its findings should be useful to all those interested in achieving a deeper understanding of the philosophical, social, and psychological underpinnings of public trust and trustworthiness. The second phase will be an empirical test on the theoretical findings of the project. This stage will be developed through surveys conducted across seven countries participating in the project as well as data collected through experiments conducted in economics labs in Dublin and Milan. The data from this phase will shed light on both the trends and the specific individual factors contributing to relations of trust and mistrust in experts. Finally, in Phase 3, the citizens’ fora hosted in five countries will provide an opportunity for direct engagements between the public, climate scientists, policy-makers on environmental matters. The data we collect in this phase should help us gain a better qualitative understanding of public trust, but it should also be of use to those directly involved in policy-making. (Learn more about PERITIA’s Research Design)
In the third phase, climate change and climate science will be used as a test case for the project. Why have you chosen them and how are you going to assess trustworthiness and its role for political decision-making regarding climate governance?
M.B.: Climate change is undoubtedly the most pressing issue facing humankind. We believe that our multi-disciplinary and three-tiered approach to the trust in the science of climate change can make a positive contribution to the ongoing discussions about the topic. A great deal of research has already been carried out on the question of the interface between climate science and policy-makers but much of its focus has been on the highly vocal climate denialists in the US. Various attitude surveys in Europe, on the other hand, indicate that in Western European countries, over 90% of the population believe that the world’s climate is changing, and this is, at least partly, due to human activity.
But the question of public trust in climate science when it comes to climate policies is not settled. There is a disparity between expressions of trust in scientists’ views on the causes of climate change and an apparent lack of support for the policies that might help to reduce and counter the change. The apparent tension, if not the outright contradiction, between the avowed agreement with experts regarding the cause of climate change and the reluctance to act on the warnings about its potentially catastrophic consequences for humanity shows that the issue of trust in experts cannot be reduced to a positive or negative response to a questionnaire about trust in science. The issue is more complex.
Our study aims to investigate this complicated and complicating feature of trust in science. So, our focus is not going to be on the question of trust or distrust in the science of climate change only, but also on the more crucial question of trust in the intersection of climate science and the policy decisions based on expert advice. However, I should add that the project is using climate science as its test case, but the aims of the project are broader, and we hope that our conclusions will have more general applicability.
Many would argue that we are living in a ‘post-truth’ world, where scepticism towards expert opinion and political institutions is rising. However, problems like ‘fake news’ and propaganda have long been an integral part of social history. How are today’s challenges facing trust in institutions, particularly science and scientific expertise, different to those in the past? How are digital transformations changing the nature of belief, public opinion and political communication?
M.B.: The rhetoric of populism is one of the common denominators binding various dimensions of what rightly has been described as a crisis of democracy. The expression of scepticism about experts and their opinions is a feature of populist politics but is not backed by surveys regarding levels of trust in science. The latest IPSOS survey of levels of trust in various professions shows that scientists (at 60%) are the most trusted group of professionals, followed closely by medical doctors (56%), and teachers (52%). Only 11% of those surveyed find scientists untrustworthy. Similar results have been shown by other surveys.
So, it is interesting to ask why there is such a widespread perception that there is a lack of trust in science. One reason is that lack of trust in some specific areas of scientific advice like vaccination is a case in point. Since 2010, the uptake of measles-containing vaccines such as MMR has decreased in 12 EU member states: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. There is little doubt that the echo chambers produced by social media, in particular, the algorithms used by Facebook, have had an immense impact on spreading the false data about linkages between vaccines and various illnesses. This is where we clearly see the impact of digital media on the old phenomenon of disinformation and propaganda for political and monetary gains.
These ‘localised’ breakdowns of trust are also taken as indicators of a general crisis of trust, in part because of the very public expressions of scepticism about science and expertise by populist political figures and their followers and thus the narrative of the untrustworthiness of the experts is perpetuated and generalised. One of the main focuses of our project is on the role of social media on building or diminishing the reputation of opinion makers in science and in policy decisions. We will be holding a workshop and a conference on these topics and we hope that the publication of their findings will help to address this pressing issue.
Critical thinking and media literacy programmes have long fostered a critical approach towards sources, particularly those found on the internet and media. Philosophers too have had a role in provoking scepticism even towards the most basic notions of truth. Did this create unintended consequences regarding the development of distrust towards experts and professionals in parts of society? Do you think there is any way to circumvent this problem and (re)build ‘justified’ trust, while simultaneously maintaining a healthy distance from accepting information at face value?
M.B.: I think scepticism, at least the type that philosophers advocate, helps rather than hinders the search for truth by fostering anti-dogmatism and open mindedness. The so-called era of post-truth, in my view, should not be equated with scepticism or critical thinking but with what the philosopher Harry Frankfurt has called ‘bullshitting’. There are important differences between lies, other falsehoods, and bullshits. Liars try to misrepresent facts and to negate or distort what they think is true; they are attempting to distort what they believe to be true. Bullshiters, on the other hand, are simply unconcerned about the truth. Bullshitters, as Frankfurt puts it are “indifferent to how things are”, they are not just attempting to distort the truth but to undermine the very distinction between truth and falsehood. So, as Frankfurt rightly points out, they present a far greater threat to truth than mere lies.
A further element of what is called ‘post-truth’ is the conflation of belief with feelings and freedom of opinion with the freedom of choosing to believe whatever may seem most palatable irrespective of any justifying or contrary evidence. Again, these are not epistemic attitudes that can be identified with philosophical scepticism, in fact they are its very anti-thesis. The sceptic, at its most extreme, claims that we cannot know anything. The ‘post-truth’ attitude claims that anything that seems right to us, or is to our liking, is true. They mistake truth with strength of conviction and feelings of certainty.
As to remedies, in the long run, unless we bring about our own self-destruction, truth will win because the world resists the imposition of false narratives on it. False theories do not work and sooner or later we are going to find out that they do not. Refusing vaccination in large numbers kills, believing that climate change is a Chinese hoax will not stop the impact of global warming on our habitats. The famous quip by the great American philosopher Willard van Orman Quine that “creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a pathetic but praiseworthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind” doubly applies to the case of truth. The challenge facing us is to make sure that we do not hasten our demise by ignoring the hard facts of a world that will survive long after we are gone. Establishing direct two-way dialogues between scientific experts and the general public is one of the key aims of PERITIA, which I think can help in countering this danger.
A project exploring “how emotions and values influence the process of placing or refusing trust in expertise that shapes public policies” might be perceived as attempting to (re)establish a kind of authority in experts and professionals which recent ‘populist’ movements have termed ‘elitist’. PEriTiA’s mission explicitly states that public trust in expertise has a clear role in democracy, which is supposedly threatened by populist politics. Alluding to Plato, placing trust in experts can easily be perceived as technocratic and anti-democratic. How will PEriTiA avoid or deal with retracing a perceived border between ‘experts’ and the ‘general public’ without feeding the anti-elitist narrative?
M.B.: There is something very basic and inescapable in our reliance on experts. Division of cognitive labour, which comes with the division of other types of labour, is essential to the functioning of complex societies. A distinction between experts or specialists and novices is an inevitable consequence of this division. The idea that we can have an ‘equality’ of knowledge but also a complex social order does not make sense. The headlines about the breakdown of trust in experts distort the plain fact that we rely on experts on daily basis – we take our cars to the mechanics, our children to the dentist and our computers to the IT people.
It is not so much trust in experts that is at issue but trust at the nexus of experts and policymaking that creates serious concern about the role of experts in democratic governance, so much so that the sociologist of science, Steven Fuller claims that widespread dependence on experts is “the biggest single problem facing the future of democracy”. The concern, as you suggest, goes back to Plato but has resurfaced in the work of quite diverse philosophers in the 20thcentury – the American Pragmatist John Dewey, the German critical theorist Hannah Arendt and the French postmodernist Michel Foucault are some examples. The main concern common to these critics is that the role of and potential rule by experts fundamentally lacks an ethical grounding and has no genuine interest in the common good.
The emphasis that PERITIA places on the unavoidable affective and normative dimensions of trust goes some way towards addressing this concern. In my own work, and contribution to the project, I explore the ways in which science is value-laden and how the acceptance of this fact will allow us to step out of the dichotomy of thinking in terms of objective scientific facts vs the subjective, or at best intersubjective world of values. The approach, championed among others by feminist epistemologists, allows us to think about the role of values in making scientific decisions, for example in deciding about the costs and benefits of taking an inductive leap in theory construction and theory acceptance. Some of the publications of PERITIA over the next three years will deal with this question.
This article was originally published on PERITIA’s website here.
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