Public Understanding of Stem Cells

Rebranding Reality.
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This isn't exactly disagreeing with you, but assumptions in your post are something I've been commenting about for months. It's more of an appeal to look deeper.

I wrote this exercise out yesterday afternoon and later saw this topic. I'm posting it here as an illustration that it's impossible to have informed citizens participating in a kind of national seminar on issues. The second person voice isn't meant personally, but generically. Also, one tactic of the far right is to blend social and political issues into one. The winners are now setting election agendas decades in advance, so it's wise to think this way about larger social issues also.

In a sentence. Scientists, the left/opposition have an particular blind spot that they are irrational about, where they're highly reluctant to challenge themselves.

In a paragraph. Yes. Voters/citizens not understanding key electoral issues is very disturbing. Reality is things are going from very bad to much worse. Everyone smugly insists they understand why. Few do.

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Here's the exercise.

Over a few days, generate a list of what you think are those key issues. Be thorough.

When that's complete, then posit a completely uninformed but responsible voter who wants to understand "both sides". Maybe college educated at best, but no science beyond high school bio and chemistry twenty years previously. What do they need, what knowledge, etc., to be informed enough to vote on the issue? Make another list, over time, of such details for each issue. Be thorough.

When that's complete ask -- where do they get that knowledge? If you want to be more realistic, suggesting they read books is off-limits. Americans don't read books. Nobody's going to change that. Make the two lists, what and how, for each issue in the first list.

When you're done, think about the typical American's life, maybe 5 hours a week available to the most responsible and consccientous. Then contemplate that context, the issues in a real life. If there's any chance for an average American to be such an informed citizen, they'd essentially have to "go to school" with every hour of free time they could muster. All year. Year after year. Ain't gonna happen.
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There's not a chance Americans will understand stem cells. Ever. This was made an issue, and adopted by leadership of groups, without the slightest understanding of the science or the issue by constituent membership. This has nothing to do with science. It's a political issue, it's a symbolic cause. It's designed as one of many tools to inculcate "life begins at conception" into society, just like the idea pharmacists have the right to diagnose and prescribe/unprescribe on the fly. Manufactured. The far right does this to cultivate a constituency as a way to power. They couldn't care less about zygotes. It's not an issue that's rational, but emotional. And at this level emotional always wins. Our society and it's issues will only get more complex, offering myriad opportunities to turn science into "issues". There is no way to educate the country out of that.

Thinking it possible any significant fraction of Americans will rationally understand such issues is, well, irrational. I've become convinced this is a huge psychological hurdle, THE hurdle, for the right's opposition. It's preventing any sort of effective response.

I know the question this raises. So we're screwed?

No. But there are two things that have to be accepted to get our heads in the game. Unfortunately, this isn't a political or knowledge problem. It's a psychological one.

One, the reality of how the evolved human brain processes environmental information must be accepted. We must work with the evolved human brain, not against it.

Two, it's is no longer possible to get any sort of message to the American public except through conduits, which are rapidly filling up everyone's life. Conduits are technology, and they have individual strengths and weaknesses. We must work with conduits, not against them. This means tailoring content to them. No not manipulating, lying etc. That's the challenge. But, the opposition to the right seems stuck in the 70s. Media competition is more abundant, more brutal, and much smarter. Not inside the public's brains, as in the 70s, but just to get their attention. Then you have to hold it long enough to deliver the message. Then you fight it out inside their brain, and the other side is super-sophisticated and two decades ahead in there.

The right is using state-of-the-art science and applications to subconsciously change the way Americans see reality. In a metaphor, they are rebranding reality. Study another rebranding, the "death tax" debacle. The left, the Dems, stood around and watched that happen because they had no idea what was transpiring, and still don't. I've still seen little awareness of how one side changing a name accomplished so much, and that failure of understanding is a worse indicator than the original act. Even I could have given the Dems instructions on countering such a basic psychomarketing campaign. Extend that as a model back over 30-years. That's pretty close to reality.

Rebranding Reality. Anybody, anybody, who threatens that strategy will be pulverized, so extrapolate that out to various institutions. If we guess and pontificate and sloganize and wallow in ignorance about how to counter that, they'll shift America right out from underneath all of us. Scientist would never consider approaching another area of science in such a manner. Nothing anyone has done in 30 years has effected the far right's progress. The only suggestion I've been making in my multiple comments is that this brain/conduit problem be approached scientifically. I'm completely confident that will lead to correct action.

I've seen many people on scienceblogs, among environmentalists, and the left, as far as I've looked, who THINK they understand the persuasion industry and how it works, and demonize it. I only know a bit about the area from some professional experience and decades of analytical interest, but I know enough to say something about smoke and orifices and such attitudes.

I'm familiar with Miller's findings, and Gross's article. 20-25% of adult Americans think the sun revolves around the Earth. The idea of, the very vocabulary of "public education campaign" should be erased and forgotten. There's no possibility of "a little understanding" if one ignores, or fights against, the reality of brains and conduits, and they mitigate against such approaches. This goes way beyond science. The far right has proven the strategy that any and every thing can be politicized now as tools. There are ways to counter what's been happening, but success will have to start with every concerned person saying, and accepting, "I don't know."

Both of you have interesting points. This discussion seems to have landed us at the reason we still have an electoral college - because people who pay attention to the way politics and elections work realize that the public, no matter how interested they may be in topics of debate, are on the whole incapable of fully grasping the issues. Besides the issues of intelligence and education, it's simply a full-time job to understand and forecast the implications of public policy.

Anyway, I do find it amusing, SkookumPlanet, whenever I hear someone confidently proclaim that only they (and a select few) truly understand something, while the majority are ignorant of the "truth". Have you ever heard of the phrase "Unskilled and Unaware of it"? In an article of the same name, Kruger and Dunning found that, on average, the most unqualified people tend to overestimate their competence in a given domain, while the most qualified tend to *underestimate* their performance compared to others (known as the false consensus effect). These findings are something to keep in mind before you start boldly proclaiming that you understand something very well, while the majority of people do not.

DIB
The points in your second paragraph I'm extremely aware of and agree with. My own background is not explainable succinctly enough to include in posts. I hope I compensate some by using, as teaching examples, the same analysis repetitively on what is current in the blog, comments, or their external reference. In several hundred comments over the last 6 months, my intent isn't to proclaim or debate but provide thesis and evidence. And model a bit of the techniques as best I can.

But "unskilled" I'm not. I was trained [2 degrees] in an odd production-oriented content analysis, then forced to use it to learn six different media fields well-enough to produce content or, once, teach it. That training, expanded by that breadth of production experience, I've used on all content I come across for forty years. Such as advertising. I read text and watch video deconstructively automatically, subconsciously, to understand the techniques it uses to produce effects inside it's audience. I actually do this to my dreams while I'm dreaming. Eventually this approach leads into the minds of the creators, and then into the chain of minds behind them if there is such a chain. [Everything has to be in the content.]

Right now I'm writing, not for posting, about my background in all this, but the subject -- me -- isn't relevant to what I'm doing, except as the issue of authority you point out. My goal is modest, to reach a few people in a simple way. Credentials have been a non-issue from the start, but one I'm aware of.

Without many confirmations of my analysis over many years, I wouldn't be discussing this with anyone.

To illustrate I'll note the most recent. Roughly 15 years ago it became obvious the far right was engaged in a long-term, primarily psychological, sociopolitical campaign to change America. Their approach was like a Coca-Cola or an Exxon or a Microsoft, like an ideally run U.S. corporation. Their goal was to change how citizens perceived and thought about reality. I saw this through analyzing mass media content and events. I'm not a political junky. [And a decade ago it was clear the left wasn't responding in kind, I assumed from ignorance, which I became certain of watching the "death tax" unfold.]

Knowing nothing about Justice Powell's memo, even it's existence, I read it four months ago. It confirms exactly my conclusions of 15 years ago, which in the interim I'd been confirming as new content materialized. Improving at this type of content analysis demands finding avenues for verifying conclusions. That search, in turn, led me to analyzing campaigns through the content they produce. After a couple decades of practice, I'm pretty good at it but not anywhere near perfect.

Time may prove me a BSer, but the few specialists responding have confirmed my analysis. Essentially, there are no domain experts in the left's conversation and I'm only a poor substitute. At times I'm acutely aware I'm lecturing scientists that they don't know jack sh*t, but avoid dwelling on that in order to proceed. I'm the opposite of a categorical person but come from a family of such, so I had to train myself out of it. This makes me hyper-sensitive to the fallacy you speak of and without good evidence for my certainty I'd be silent. I've explicitly, repeatedly mentioned my broad, not in-depth background and frequently urge readers not to believe me but investigate for themselves. Indeed, that's my goal.

I certainly draw conclusions as that's necessary for the analysis to make sense. But I'm speaking to a universal omission of a topic so there's little discussion to discuss. That topic is the "how" of the country's transformation. Mass communications, most simplified. No one has argued it's unimportant in politics and social issues. I'm eager to discuss anyone's evidence showing the right's opposition succeeding, or even holding it's own, over the three decades. I can't see it. Until six months ago I spoke only to a few friends about this.

I have no position or solution, only an analysis via persuasive-message content combined with real world events, built from details up to very large scale over decades. I've seriously attempted to understand the genesis of this omission. But I can't give pop quizzes so I infer people's thinking and knowledge and trust I'll hear about it if I'm wrong. As basically you are doing with your warning. So, thank you for taking the time to do so. I assume up to a fifth, a quarter, of my examples are flawed -- hundreds of unplanned examples each done in less than 24 hours.

Here's a thread with examples of this content analysis applied and a bit about how I ended up here. You'll see I had to invent terminology to discuss some of this. I have no professional TV, advertising, nor political background, yet I'm 100% certain of my "proximity soundbite" analysis. I observed it for five months while polling data updated us all on the results. The industry has jargon, no doubt, but researching industry nomenclature and practice for simple examples is an unworkable approach.

Content is content, be it a novel or a music video or a publication design or a television commercial or a corporate logo or the paintings on the walls of Lascaux. It's all persuasive content and the tools and decisions have to be in that content. Media-specific constraints aside, it all works the same way.

Happenstance put me here doing this -- how Google sorted results of a search I made last fall. Writing about this subject never occurred to me before then. I simply found myself doing it, saw a great need, and had the resources. By an unpredictable path through life, analyzing and explaining the nuts and bolts of fake reality, and inferring the minds of the creators, has become what I do best. And creating it. Unexpectedly, sharing this approach has become a moral obligation. Otherwise, I have many other things I'd rather do. That's how important the problem is.

SP,

Wow, all your "comments" are incredibly long. You should definitely start a blog and document your thoughts/ideas and analyses. (I would be a reader ...) I must tell you that I am a VERY busy postdoc. I spend my time sitting around trying to figure out the Golgi, RNA and other topics. This blog is just a collection of notes and thoughts.

I understand that the left, and the scientific community, has been inept at fully using all its potential resources to get its message(s) across to the general public. However, I am just wishing that people would be better informed. I am not scolding people, but wishing. Miller's studies have generally led to one conclusion, university educated citizens are scientifically literate, everyone else isn't. I guess we can lower our expectations and "give up". But I really hate that. Having lived in Canada and the US I can tell you that this is a big difference between the two cultures. In Canada there is a deep seeded sense of civic duty. People are expected to be informed, are expected to vote, are expected to participate. In the US there is a deep sense of individualism that can be sometimes expressed as "leave me alone". I guess the right has fed into this when it has suited their needs, and at other times has tried to destroy it (e.g. the patriot act). Yes they are very organized and their tactics do resemble a psychological mind game that is used to manipulate people. But I'm not so sure that it would work in Canada. Whenever conservatives up north have tried to sound and act like the GOP, voters flee.

I guess I just wish that US society would adapt some traits of Canadian society. I have worked as a canvasser in the last primary, knocking door to door in New Hampshire, and I was shocked by some of the individuals and their beliefs. Totally uninformed irrational, incapable of placing themselves in other's shoes. Mostly the "leave me alone" types. You never find people like that in Canada in great amounts ...

(just another thought)

Alex
I'm thoroughly amazed any of you find time to blog. I don't intend to weigh bloggers down and try not to address them or commenters personally. In fact, I didn't expect a direct response per se, which I could have said more directly. As for Canada vs. U.S., Canada sounds nice but I've only vacationed there. I grew up in the environment you discuss, so perhaps it's difficult for me to imagine not being immersed in such attitudes.

In my usually sporadic commenting I try to stick to evo/ID and global warming as in both scientists were caught flat-footed by well-financed, communication-savvy, political opposition and I'm familiar with the science. But examples abound everywhere and I often stop myself responding disproportionately to topic or blogger midway through a comment or even when done. My guard is let down occasionally and then I want an "Unpost" button next to "Preview" and "Post".

The length of my posts is a writing defect. To a lesser amount from "teaching" an odd approach to ever-changing content. My fiction-writer's exhaustive first drafts, a 2-day comment deadline, and being a night owl on the west coast don't mix well. I help readers through the verbiage as best I can, but given two weeks I'd take half the space.

Others have suggested blogging too, but I doubt it would work. My comments are reactive and one idea repeated. I'm demonstrating an analytical technique that uses iterations of content to reverse engineer the decisions that created it. Basically to illustrate only one, albeit important, conclusion of mine derived that way. My experience is broad but in-depth very selectively, so to blog knowledgeably would take more research than I'm willing to do. My commitment is finite and my own neglected nature writing awaits.

I too mourn Americans' sciencelessness. But I see a third option between science literacy for most or giving up on half. Psychomarketing can persuade and inform at the same time. A middle way, analogous to science classes for liberal arts students, an option beyond courses designed for subject majors or none at all.

I know that option exists and get frustrated that the good guys resist when they must pursue it. Otherwise the bad guys have it to themselves and they will do much worse than no classes at all.

PS. Two recent comments I had time to do well. Frontal Cortex. A week ago I was excerpting earlier work when Jason's and my topic co-oincided the same day. It took 15 minutes to prep. Also an ID satire posted at PZ's. I use my own long-windedness as material. [http://scienceblogs[dot]com/pharyngula/2006/06/ann_coulter_no_evidence_…] Both are better written and organized than usual.

I've downloaded some of your gogli material but like PZ's evo devo posts, it sits waiting for me to have time.