Scientists were perceived as more credible than government officials, but were not more credible than businesspeople or issue advocates.Scientists were viewed as more credible when discussing technological issues than when discussing non-technological social issues such as health, education and employment.Three forms of distrust – concerns abo...
It’s a simple matter if incentives. Businessmen need to understand enough of social reality to leverage it for profit. Scientists only need to understand the smallest most myopic slice of social reality to publish a paper on it to maintain their tenure track. While businesses have been successfully making money repeatedly from society for a few centuries, researchers have produced a reproducibility crisis where their findings are obviously specious and meet the much lower standard of convincing some gatekeepers to publish them.
Yup, they do, but even their lies are useful signal. Social researchers incentivized by the tenure system and publish-or-perish have no reason to lie to you because they have no idea whether the lies are even inaccuracies. The only people they care about informing are the gate keepers. Academica have been totally kneecapped by the for-profit system and very little of what they do is related to the real world anymore.
It’s a simple matter if incentives. Businessmen need to understand enough of social reality to leverage it for profit. Scientists only need to understand the smallest most myopic slice of social reality to publish a paper on it to maintain their tenure track. While businesses have been successfully making money repeatedly from society for a few centuries, researchers have produced a reproducibility crisis where their findings are obviously specious and meet the much lower standard of convincing some gatekeepers to publish them.
Businessmen also have every incentive to lie to you and everyone else.
Yup, they do, but even their lies are useful signal. Social researchers incentivized by the tenure system and publish-or-perish have no reason to lie to you because they have no idea whether the lies are even inaccuracies. The only people they care about informing are the gate keepers. Academica have been totally kneecapped by the for-profit system and very little of what they do is related to the real world anymore.