WP1: Misplaced Trust (University of Genoa – Unit 1)

WP1 develops a nuanced framework of the epistemic motivations underpinning misplaced trust, i.e., laypeople’s proneness to pseudoscientific theories and impostors. The proposed hypothesis is that three sources of problems jointly explain this phenomenon: 

(i) The credentials problem: It is standardly accepted that laypeople ought to individuate experts by appealing to indirect markers, such as track record, formal qualifications, informal reputation, expert consensus, communication skills, and professional conduct (Anderson 2011; Baghramian & Croce 2021, Goldman 2001; Martini 2019; Origgi 2019). We will argue that a revision of these markers is needed: in the current form, unreliable sources such as pseudo-experts (Fuhrer et al. 2022; Sorial 2017), impostors, and epistemic trespassers (Ballantyne 2019; Gerken 2021) share enough features with the real experts to leave laypeople unable to solve the credentials problem. Prominent cases of unreliable sources who satisfy several markers include biochemist Robert Malone who, despite his work on mRNA technology, spreads misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines; and pseudo-scientist David M. Jacobs who, despite formal training as a historian, became a prominent ufologist and taught academic courses on human abductions by UFOs. 

(ii) Poor understanding of how science works: We shall argue that the second source of misplaced trust lies in the fact that laypeople often lack adequate scientific education to understand how researchers make scientific progress. In particular, the fallible nature of the scientific enterprise remains a challenge to its public understanding (Bromme & Goldman 2014). When disagreement in science manifests itself in the public eye, it is then perceived as strange and unsettling, with people feeling disconcerted about the tentativeness of empirical approaches to currently uncharted issues (Kreps & Kriner, 2020). This hypothesis is supported by recent Pew Research Center surveys (2019, 2020), according to which more than a third of Americans think that the scientific method can be used to produce any result the researchers favor, and about a third of Americans do not understand that the scientific method is an iterative process.

(iii) The structure of pseudo-science: A final source of misplaced trust concerns the appeal of pseudo-science (Fuhrer et al. 2022; Hansson 2021; Sorial 2017). We shall individuate and discuss three features that make pseudo-science attractive in laypeople’s eyes: faking epistemic authority, simplicity, and resistance to refutation. First, pseudo-science earns the public’s trust by selling itself as “facsimile science” (Oreskes 2019): that is, pretending to possess the same epistemic authority we commonly attribute to science by creating alternative qualifications, training programs, and ways to assess one’s track record (Blancke et al. 2017). Second, pseudo-scientific theories rely on the fact that no training or special education is required to understand their claims. Their explanation of reality is simpler and more accessible than anything scientific research can offer. The revived flat-Earth theories, for example, appeal to the fact that our eyes cannot see the horizon curve to support the claim that our planet must therefore be flat. Finally, pseudo-scientific theories appear to be more reassuring than science itself either because they are not falsifiable, or because they disregard refuting information as conspiracy thinking fueled by corrupted scientists and institutions (Popper 1962; Mahner 2013). 

WP2: Identity-Protective Distrust (University of Pavia – Unit 3)

WP2 gives center stage to the notion of social meaning (Kahan 1997) and the psychological theory of motivated reasoning and identity-protective cognition (Kahan et al. 2012; Kahan 2016; Kunda 1990). The proposed hypothesis is that a distrustful attitude towards science may have acquired a social meaning that renders it a suitable means to signal or affirm one’s social identity. On this hypothesis, science-averse beliefs and behaviors do not stem from a distrustful attitude; rather, they are grounded in social dynamics of self-affirmation through which people seek recognition qua members of a social group. This hypothesis comes in two possible incarnations:

(i) Identity-protective cognition: Individual members of a social group may act upon anti-scientific beliefs that they have acquired via identity-protective cognitions, namely by processing the available evidence in a way that is (implicitly) motivated by the desire to defend or support the views that are constitutively involved in their social identity (Piazza and Croce 2021). A useful vignette that exemplifies the target of this hypothesis involves a Republican in the U.S. who is faced with an impressive amount of publicly available evidence that climate change has anthropogenic causes, but who has also access to a tiny bit of misleading evidence saying that climate science is internally divided. Since they are motivated by the desire to protect their social identity qua Republicans, they take the latter evidence to outweigh the former evidence and discard as unwarranted the claim that the Earth is warming due to human activities.

(ii) Membership signaling: Individual members of a social group may merely behave as if they held the relevant beliefs, while maintaining a more neutral stance toward the relevant issues, as a way of signaling their membership, affirming their affiliation, and cheerleading for their favored political party (Hannon 2021). A useful vignette that exemplifies the target of this kind of identity-protective distrust is a social media user who deploys the social meaning of climate change denialism and routinely shares disinformation about the deliverances of climate science as a way of expressing their support for the Republican party, while not having formed a settled opinion about this issue. 

WP3: Reasonable Distrust (Roma Tre University – Unit 2)

WP3 aims to explain anti-scientific attitudes by considering the historical roots of these phenomena. According to the reasonable distrust hypothesis, people can indulge in anti-scientific behavior not because they distrust science, but because the social groups to which they belong have epistemic and social reasons to distrust the relevant institutions based on a history of marginalization, oppression, and even science-based exploitation (an example of this being the infamous USPHS Syphilis Study at Tuskegee). We shall investigate two––possibly compatible––dimensions of this hypothesis:

(i) Doubting the goodwill of the institutions: The fact that in the past the institutions issuing a given measure have shown little concern for the well-being of the members of targeted social groups can fuel doubt about their real intentions and justify refraining from relying on their goodwill (Gluer & Wikforss 2022; Simion forthcoming). In this case, members of the relevant group have reasons not to comply with the relevant measure, not because they fail to trust the scientific grounds of the measure, but because they doubt the motivation and concerns of the institution that issues such measure. An instance of the target of this diagnosis would be a trans person who is reluctant to join a vaccination campaign launched by the government based on the bad memories of how medical institutions of her country have treated LGBT+ community members.

(ii) The pragmatic defeat of trust: Members of marginalized groups in society are more fragile: hence, when they address questions about their well-being, they stand to lose more than privileged members of the society if they misrepresent the opportunities at their disposal. As a result, they often find themselves in high-stakes. According to pragmatic encroachers (e.g., Stanley 2005; Fantl & McGrath 2009), members of these groups need more evidence than usual to justifiably rely on the goodwill of the institutions that present a given measure as beneficial to them. This generates an epistemic pressure not to rely on the institutions unless there is extremely good evidence that the measures that they propound will be beneficial and that the institutions are well-intentioned (Piazza 2021). An instance of the target of this diagnosis would be the same trans person who is wondering whether they should join the vaccination campaign launched by the government. The social fragility stemming from a history of marginalization raises the stakes and, in turn, the epistemic bar they need to surpass to justifiably rely on the goodwill of the institutions, thereby making non-reliance a reasonable option. 

WP4: Therapeutic measures (Unit 1, 2 and 3)

WP4 develops the constructive side of the project. As the proposed explanations of distrust in science reveal, the mainstream diagnosis of anti-science behavior is too coarse-grained to disentangle the various dimensions of this problematic phenomenon. Unsurprisingly, the remedies offered within the standard framework typically amount to debunking and prebunking strategies, that is, educational interventions aimed at strengthening the public’s ability to discriminate reliable information from bad information (Lewandowsky et al. 2012; Piazza & Croce 2022; Roozenbeek & Van der Linden 2019). The three-fold diagnosis articulated in the first WPs allows us to show that a sound therapeutic approach should address the relevant breakdowns of trust with tailored measures, without reducing one problem to another.

(i) Individual therapies (University of Genoa – Unit 1): We shall argue that debunking and prebunking strategies fail to motivate citizens toward checking their sources and cultivating critical thinking attitudes. As recent work in applied virtue theory shows (Heersmink 2018; Orona & Pritchard 2021; Smart 2018), strengthening civic and epistemic character traits can counter the risks of incurring the aforementioned pitfalls of trust. By relying on our team’s expertise in virtue theory and education (Croce & Vaccarezza 2017; De Caro, Marraffa, & Vaccarezza 2021; De Caro, Vaccarezza, & Niccoli 2018; Vaccarezza & Croce 2021), we shall propose a virtue-based strategy aimed at helping people understand the importance of devoting time and effort to check sources and cultivate critical thinking attitudes. As a way to avoid misplacing trust, we suggest ways of cultivating epistemic autonomy (Matheson 2021) and intellectual courage (Roberts & Wood 2007) to develop healthy skeptical attitudes towards pseudo-science and conspiracy theories as well as to decide whom to trust and when to do it. Cultivating civil deliberation and, in particular, deliberative conscientiousness (Vaccarezza & Croce 2021) plays a key role in helping citizens become aware of the problems underlying identity-protective distrust. Developing open-mindedness through cognitive flexibility training (Sassenberg et al. 2022; Simion & Kelp 2022) can be beneficial against forms of reasonable distrust. After inquiring into the proposed virtues and related epistemic vices, we shall outline an educational framework to be subsequently developed in synergy with educational theorists, based on the project’s results.

(ii) Social therapies (University of Pavia – Unit 3): As the diagnostic part of this project reveals, educational measures aimed at improving citizens’ character cannot restore trust in science on their own. Both identity-protective and reasonable distrust require interventions aimed at eradicating the social sources of anti-science behavior. We shall investigate and propose two measures against distrust generated by forms of identity-protective cognition. First, promoting a social epistemic reboot (Nguyen 2020; Piazza & Croce 2021), namely a procedure that puts people in a position to reassess available evidence without giving primacy to any consideration that promotes or protects the opinion shared in one’s group. Second, revising social and epistemic norms to reduce people’s desire to defend their social identity. Borrowing from extant work on social norms (Bicchieri 2016), this measure purports to gradually modify the key features of some group’s role models as a way to induce a shift in the group members’ opinion.

(iii) Systemic therapies (Roma Tre University – Unit 2): As regards reasonable distrust, we shall argue that cognitive flexibility training should be coupled with more systemic interventions aimed at enhancing the social epistemic environment (Berdini & Bonicalzi 2022). Following recent work on evidence rejection (Simion forthcoming), we shall outline a combination of quantitative and qualitative measures that can counter the reasons for distrusting science available in evidence-resistant communities by providing them with rebutting and undercutting epistemic defeaters. We suggest that exposing the members of these communities to an enhanced flow of reliable evidence provided by sources they trust has good prospects to counter episodes of reasonable distrust.