On the risk of seeming to ride a hobby horse (which I don't) I post this:
Is there any risk that we (as a society) may lose science (or rather scientific literacy) in the medium run to religous or other anti-science factions?
This can actually happen and did happen more than once during human history. As a data point take this:
Frederick Starr: Lost Enlightenment
A very interesting account of the rise and fall of the arab enlightenment in central asia.
First chapter here: http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s10064.pdf
From that chapter:
There is no more vexing question regarding the flowering of intellectual and cultural life in the era of Ibn Sina and Biruni than the date of its end. The most commonly accepted terminus point is the Mongol invasion, which Chinggis Khan launched in the spring of 1219. But this turns out to be both too early and too late. It is too early because of the several bursts of cultural brilliance that occurred thereafter; and it is too late because the cultural and religious crisis that threw the entire enterprise of rational enquiry, logic, and Muslim humanism into question occurred over a century prior to the Mongol invasion, when a Central Asian theologian named Ghazali placed strict limits on the exercise of logic and reason, demolished received assumptions about cause and effect, and ruthlessly attacked what he considered “the incoherence of the philosophers.”1 That he himself was at the same time a subtle and nuanced thinker and a genuine champion of the life of piety made his attack all the more effective.
It is quite possible to use science and reason to destroy it (or at least diminish it for some time).
Funny that I get the chance to post this off-track quote two times in a row.
Is there any risk that we (as a society) may lose science (or rather scientific literacy) in the medium run to religous or other anti-science factions?
This has been a background worry for me ever since I saw C.S. Lewis bring up the possibility.
Science is essentially a moral enterprise-- scientists (and those who fund them and those who use scientific results) need to engage with the difficult real world rather than just seek status and convenience.
I'm more concerned about science just deteriorating to the point where it isn't useful (we see a fair amount of that in medical research already) rather than it being taken down by active opposition.
Paper by the Cultural Cognition Project: The culturally polarizing effect of the "anti-science trope" on vaccine risk perceptions
This is a great paper (indeed, I think many at LW would find the whole site enjoyable). I'll try to summarize it here.
Background: The pro/anti vaccine debate has been hot recently. Many pro-vaccine people often say, "The science is strong, the benefits are obvious, the risks are negligible; if you're anti-vaccine then you're anti-science".
Methods: They showed experimental subjects an article basically saying the above.
Results: When reading such an article, a large number of people did not trust vaccines more, but rather, trusted the American Academy of Pediatrics less.
My thoughts: I will strive to avoid labeling anybody as being "anti-science" or "simply or willfully ignorant of current research", etc., even when speaking of hypothetical 3rd parties on my facebook wall. This holds for evolution, global warming, vaccines, etc.
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Also included in the article: references to other research that shows that evolution and global warming debates have already polarized people into distrusting scientists, and evidence that people are not yet polarized over the vaccine issue.
If you intend to read the article yourself: I found it difficult to understand how the authors divided participants into the 4 quadrants (α, ß, etc.) I will quote my friend, who explained it for me:
I was helped by following the link to where they first introduce that model.
The people in the top left (α) worry about risks to public safety, such as global warming. The people in the bottom right (δ) worry about socially deviant behaviors, such as could be caused by the legalization of marijuana.
People in the top right (β) worry about both public safety risks and deviant behaviors, and people in the bottom left (γ) don't really worry about either.