There is a pernicious belief spreading within the skeptic community that it’s a waste of time to talk to science deniers, so our efforts are better spent, well, doing what, exactly? I’ve been to plenty of skeptic conferences where we all talk to each other and pat ourselves on the back in recognition of just how cleverly we know how to debunk Gwyneth Paltrow’s latest Goop nonsense. Meanwhile, Paltrow keeps laughing all the way to the bank.
A major reason advanced by some skeptics for why it is a waste of time to talk to what ought to be our primary target audience is an empirical finding known as the backfire effect. This is the alleged phenomenon by which if people who are firmly convinced of a certain notion are presented with contrary evidence, they will dig in more deeply. Thus, the lamentable result of activities such as fact checking is actually to reinforce the very beliefs we skeptics attempt to undermine.
Except, as my colleague Lee McIntyre of the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University has pointed out in an enlightening article in Nature (McIntyre 2021), the original research, published in 2010, “demonstrating” the backfire effect has proven to be unreproducible (just like about half of research in psychology more generally; see Weir 2015). Oops.
Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth College has carried out research, mentioned by McIntyre, showing that media outlets jumped on the backfire effect, distorted the original findings, and spread the notion that it is far more powerful and generally applicable than even the original authors had suggested (Nyhan 2021). In fact, Nyhan documents that corrective information does, in part, counteract belief inaccuracy. The problem, it turns out, is a different one: the effects of fact checking do not last and they do not appear to be cumulative. Why? Because they are diluted or begin to decay as a result of active misinformation originating with political leaders and the media.
This means that our concern as skeptics shouldn’t be with the alleged backfire effect but rather with the originators of distorted narratives and the purveyors of inaccurate beliefs. Nyhan writes:
The best approach is to disrupt the formation of linkages between group identities and false claims and to reduce the flow of cues reinforcing those claims from elites and the media. Doing so will require a shift from a strategy focused on providing information to the public to one that considers the roles of intermediaries in forming and maintaining belief systems.
McIntyre makes another evidence-based suggestion for skeptics: shift from content to technique rebuttal. Content rebuttal is a form of argumentation that we are all familiar with: presented with a given claim, say that homeopathic “cures” work, we deploy several facts about chemistry and biology aiming at arguing that no, they don’t. There is evidence that this may work, but it requires a certain degree of technical knowledge on behalf of the skeptic and, arguably, from our audience.
Technique rebuttal, by contrast, focuses on more general principles, challenging believers to explain why they think something is the case. The reason this is easier is that science deniers tend to rely on a small set of techniques that are easily challenged: cherry-picking of the evidence, conspiracy theories, fake experts, and insistence that science must provide unchanging and complete answers. Indeed, making people reflect on their epistemic practices is arguably far more important and wide ranging than making them reflect on individual claims, as the practices apply across the board no matter what the claim.
McIntyre cites Philipp Schmid and Cornelia Betsch at the University of Erfurt (Germany), who have conducted a series of experiments to determine which strategies are effective in rebutting science denialism (Schmid and Betsch 2019). The first finding was that not responding to the claims of deniers has a negative impact on behaviors that we favor, such as getting vaccinated. By contrast, both providing facts (content rebuttal) and exposing the rhetorical moves of deniers (technique rebuttal) had a positive effect. Interestingly, Schmid and Betsch found no evidence of a backfire effect and also no evidence that complex rebuttal strategies are more effective than simple ones. Apparently, what is needed is a wedge that makes deniers uncertain about the basis of their beliefs. The authors conclude: “As science deniers use the same rhetoric across domains, uncovering their rhetorical techniques is an effective and economic addition to the advocates’ toolbox.” It’s not rocket science, folks!
Here is another evidence-based piece of advice from McIntyre: listen more than you talk. He refers us to Thomas Lemaitre and collaborators at the Centre de Recherche du Centre Hospitalier Universitaire in Sherbrooke (Quebec, Canada), who have analyzed the impact of a twenty-minute session, during which they listened to parents’ concerns and provided basic information about vaccines, on the parents’ subsequent decision to vaccinate their newborns (Lemaitre et al. 2019). Children from the experimental group (whose parents had been exposed to the session) had a 9 percent increased chance to arrive at a complete vaccination status between three and twenty-four months compared to children from the control group (no twenty-minute session). Nine percent may not seem like a lot, but not only is it enough to save a significant number of lives, the figure was the result of a single short intervention. Likely, repeated interventions would bring the percentage further up.
McIntyre even did something I bet few skeptics have ever done: he went to a flat-earthers conference, not to make fun of those people but to earnestly engage them in conversation, Socratic-style. Instead of delivering sarcastic remarks and canned lectures on how silly and unfounded flat-earthism is, McIntyre asked his interlocutors what sort of evidence might possibly change their minds. When they said something like, well, I need proof, he would come back and ask them why, exactly, currently available evidence was judged insufficient. He also asked them why they trusted the sources that they tended to rely on. And so forth.
Did he manage to convert any flat-earthers on the spot? Of course not. Then again, people rarely change their minds about something they care deeply about and on which they have invested a significant amount of time. But he learned how to listen to them, showing them that a skeptic can be someone knowledgeable and respectful to talk to. Who knows how many of those people, perhaps for the first time in their lives, went home and finally started doubting their own certainties.
Of course, you don’t have to attend flat-earth conferences to practice field skepticism. You can talk to neighbors, friends, and relatives or volunteer for local events in your community, especially in schools. The trick, again, is not to give a lecture projecting the vibe of an all-knowing sage but rather to engage in Socratic dialogue with others. The Stoic philosopher Zeno of Citium used to say that the reason we have two ears and one mouth is because we should listen twice as long as we speak. As an account of the evolution of our sense organs, Zeno’s idea is off the mark. But as advice on how to constructively interact with others, it’s golden.
By the way, McIntyre has written an entire book based on his Socratic conversations: How to Talk to a Science Denier: Conversations with Flat Earthers, Climate Deniers, and Others Who Defy Reason (MIT Press, 2021). It would make a valuable entry in your skeptic library.
References
Lemaitre, Thomas, et al. 2019. Impact of a vaccination promotion intervention using motivational interview techniques on long-term vaccine coverage: The PromoVac strategy. Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics 15(3): 732–739. Available online at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21645515.2018.1549451.
McIntyre, Lee. 2021. Talking to science deniers and sceptics is not hopeless. Nature 5 (August). Available online at https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02152-y.
Nyhan, Brendan. 2021. Why the backfire effect does not explain the durability of political misperceptions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118(15). Available online at https://www.pnas.org/content/118/15/e1912440117.
Schmid, Philipp, and Cornelia Betsch. 2019. Effective strategies for rebutting science denialism in public discussions. Nature Human Behavior 3: 931–939. Available online at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0632-4.
Weir, Kirsten. 2015. A reproducibility crisis? The headlines were hard to miss: Psychology, they proclaimed, is in crisis. Monitor on Psychology 46(9): 39. Available online at https://www.apa.org/monitor/2015/10/share-reproducibility.