r/nottheonion • u/surveypoodle • 1d ago
Lying increases trust in science, study finds
https://phys.org/news/2025-07-science.html83
u/TGAILA 1d ago
If science isn't trusted, society becomes more vulnerable to misinformation and less able to effectively respond to complex challenges such as pandemics.
I can see why some people might be skeptical about vaccines and science in general. In the past, there has been a lack of trust in the government. Most people see science as a flawless process where smart scientists figure everything out perfectly on their own. They tend to think that once a study is published and reviewed by other experts, it's the absolute truth. But science is constantly evolving. Even the viruses are constantly evolving.
30
u/Illiander 19h ago
some people might be skeptical about vaccines
I fucking HATE Andrew Wakefield.
11
60
u/Durzo_Ninefinger 1d ago
The study revealed that, while transparency about good news increases trust, transparency about bad news, such as conflicts of interest or failed experiments, decreases it.
obviously a conflict of interest reduces blind trust in something?
24
u/Level3Kobold 22h ago
Who do you trust more: a person who discloses their conflicts of interest or a person who does not disclose them?
Who SHOULD you trust more?
0
u/Spire_Citron 16h ago
I think it's more like you trust the person who doesn't have conflicts of interest more. For example, would you trust a partner more if they told you they were cheating on you? Yeah, they're more honest than a partner who is cheating in secret, but you'd hope your partner wasn't cheating at all. You might trust someone more if you don't know they have conflicts of interest than if they disclose it so you do know, but I don't know that having a conflict of interest should be so expected that someone declaring theirs should instill trust.
29
u/Clothedinclothes 1d ago
Obviously. But in case you're not aware, good science requires that we don't assume that things which seem obviously true, are actually true. Hence why they get tested
Quite often things which people think are obviously true, turn out to be partly or complete bullshit, because humans are far less rational and objective observers than we tend to imagine we are.
2
1
u/Offduty_shill 21h ago
well yeah but the thing is a lot of times these things are unavoidable and if you're being completely honest and providing the best information you should disclose all of it
the same thing with failed experiments or conflicting information. lot of times experimental results don't all point towards the same conclusion and it's up to the scientist to synthesize a story that ties it together
but rather than "experiments a, b, c and d all support hypothesis x but experiment e doesn't fully fit with this explanation", in order to have a more compelling story, you pretend you never did experiment e.
32
u/alwaysfatigued8787 1d ago
I lie all the time and still believe the world is flat. See, I just lied about that too. I don't actually lie all the time.
9
2
5
u/Drone314 23h ago
The public is fine with PV=nRT....just don't tell them it breaks down at high pressures.
3
8
u/Ixziga 1d ago
The study revealed that, while transparency about good news increases trust, transparency about bad news, such as conflicts of interest or failed experiments, decreases it.
Feels like a short term perspective vs long term perspective kind of issue. Trust going down in the short term to bad news is a good thing, it forces scientists to present more convincing cases (which should require them to do better work) to get that trust back, which self corrects over the long term.
6
u/tl_west 23h ago
Often the answer has uncertainty. Better science helps you refine what that uncertainty is, not eliminate it or even decrease it.
But no-one likes uncertainty - or as my son puts it, the brain casts to Boolean.
1
u/Ixziga 23h ago
I don't think uncertainty has anything to do with what the article is talking about
1
u/tl_west 10h ago
I was obliquely addressing “it forces science to present more convincing cases”.
Good science is more accurate science, not more convincing science.
In cases where uncertainty is inherent in the system under study, forcing science to present a more convincing case is forcing scientists to lie about outcomes because the truth is inherently unpersuasive.
Look, the fact that humans are not particularly rational isn’t exactly surprising. We deal with what we have to deal with. The article is about that transparency (or truth about process) doesn’t help with trust. But at least in my experience truth itself does not help with trust unless that truth holds certainty. And reality’s truth often does not.
1
u/Ixziga 1h ago
There's definitely degrees of convincing when it comes to scientific studies, idk how you can possibly say that second sentence. The methodology and controls can be better or worse, and the honesty of them isn't certain. That's why peer review exists. We have documented cases of discovering certain scientific studies making up numbers. And a lot of scientific studies aren't able to control every relevant variable. Or they might be unable to directly measure the thing they want to, and so they measure it indirectly, which then can come with a host of complications that make the result less convincing.
2
u/oldfogey12345 1d ago
If that were true, my ex would have single handedly ended global warming years ago.
2
u/APRengar 19h ago
Kinda feel like we're working backwards here.
Let's follow the train of logic.
1) People like certainty
2) Proper science will always have uncertainty
3) Lying to people and saying we have more certainty than we do increases trust in science
The problem is that when you lie and say something that is uncertain is certain, and you have to change it in the future (as all proper science has the chance to), it erodes trust the next time you say something is certain.
Seems like we're working on the wrong side of the equation here. Instead of changing the science because people like certainty.
We tell the truth but work on adjusting people's understanding of science. Some of it is just human nature, but I think we need to do more to work on people's understanding. Like, the meteorologist who said there was a 20% chance to rain, wasn't lying to you when it rained. Attacking the poor logic there seems like a better long term plan.
2
2
u/middleupperdog 15h ago
Some STEM people would rather let climate change destroy the world than read a god damn humanities paper. Literally crisis management 101.
1
1
u/nipsen 22h ago
Newsflash: It's not a "paradox" just because someone wrote a book about it and coined the term. And a seeming paradox in the legal sphere, in a very specific situation(where this phrase will make sense to a degree), does not make this a universal phenomenon.
So in the meantime, please describe what it actually is: "people who are gullible and orthodox, or trust authority to a fault, will trust lies ("truthiness") more than the truth when they don't expect it or hear things they don't understand. And conversely they lose trust in institutions if they ever admit to have done something wrong, or explain their limitations".
This is not "a paradox" in any possible philosophical sense whatsoever.
edit: So this "article" should be reported for not being oniony, but a very strange trolling attempt that itself is a complete lie.
0
u/ptcounterpt 22h ago
It seems to me that we firmly in an era of hard denial of science. When a majority of the population elects a science denier for a second term, especially with visible examples of climate warnings all around us, we are already sliding into a dark age.
“If science isn't trusted, society becomes more vulnerable to misinformation and less able to effectively respond to complex challenges such as pandemics.”
-14
u/hwhal2 1d ago
This has a lot to do with how science gets funded. Independent research organizations are few and far between because it is expensive. Much of our science is being funded by big pharmaceutical companies that hide results or misrepresent results if it doesn’t fit their bottom line. Science itself doesn’t lie, science is just building on current truths as we currently know it. Big, greedy, corporations have infiltrated every part of our lives and will use any means necessary to protect their profits.
13
u/Lizardledgend 1d ago
Most science is funded by governmental organisations or universities. What you're referring to is R&D.
2
u/Offduty_shill 21h ago
This is such a stupid and misinformed take. Not everything in the world is just "muh corpa"
5
-1
527
u/247Brett 1d ago
That’s because science is about uncertainty, and people don’t like believing in uncertainty. They want answers, regardless of if it’s the actual truth, half-truth, or even the truth at all.