Standard Research: Consensus, Democracy, and the Public Understanding of Science

标准研究：共识、民主和公众对科学的理解

• 批准号: 1922424
• 负责人: James Weatherall
• 金额: $ 43.19万
• 依托单位: University of California-Irvine
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-09-01 至 2023-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1922424&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Standard; Research; Consensus; Democracy; Public

This award supports a research project that studies how changing social networks influence public belief about science; it will focus specifically on how false beliefs can persist and spread even in evidence-rich environments, and how these beliefs in turn feed back into collective decision-making through democratic institutions. The results of this project will provide a better understanding of the drivers that shape public belief about matters of scientific facts and how those influences interact with democratic institutions. The results will be relevant to academics across the social sciences and humanities, and they will have immediate social significance particularly to policy makers, including those working in the government and those shaping social media sites. The PIs also have plans to develop an intervention that may serve to improve public uptake of data through social media, to disseminate their results to general audiences, and to develop new programs to mentor graduate and undergraduate students on producing their own public philosophy. In addition, they will develop an integrative teaching plan that incorporates their research outcomes into teaching and mentoring at the undergraduate and graduate levels, with an emphasis on mentoring members of underrepresented minorities in philosophy.The proposed research will explore a cluster of topics related to the social dynamics of false belief and the public understanding of science in democratic societies. The PIs will explore these issues from the perspectives of philosophy of science and social epistemology, drawing on formal tools developed by economists, biologists, and philosophers, including epistemic network models and agent-based modeling techniques. They will use these methods to address several questions concerning how journalistic practices bear on public understanding of science, the role of influencers (such as propagandists from foreign governments, domestic political groups, and industry) in shaping the public understanding of science, how social dynamics interact with individual cognitive biases to shape belief and consensus, and how consensus over scientific belief emerge among the public and policy makers. The results of this research will be published in professional journals in philosophy of science and in social epistemology. The project dovetails with related projects from other disciplines including economics, political science, psychology, and sociology; the results of this project should be of substantial interest to researchers in those disciplines.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该奖项支持一个研究项目，该项目研究不断变化的社交网络如何影响公众对科学的信念；它将特别关注错误信念如何在证据丰富的环境中持续存在和传播，以及这些信念如何通过民主机构反过来反馈到集体决策中。该项目的结果将有助于更好地理解塑造公众对科学事实问题的信念的驱动因素，以及这些影响如何与民主制度相互作用。研究结果将与社会科学和人文学科的学者相关，并且将具有直接的社会意义，特别是对政策制定者，包括那些在政府工作的人和塑造社交媒体网站的人。 PI 还计划制定一项干预措施，以提高公众通过社交媒体对数据的吸收，向普通受众传播他们的研究结果，并开发新项目来指导研究生和本科生产生自己的公共哲学。此外，他们还将制定一项综合教学计划，将其研究成果纳入本科生和研究生的教学和指导中，重点是在哲学领域对代表性不足的少数群体成员进行指导。拟议的研究将探讨一系列与错误信仰的社会动态和民主社会中公众对科学的理解相关的主题。 PI将从科学哲学和社会认识论的角度探讨这些问题，利用经济学家、生物学家和哲学家开发的正式工具，包括认知网络模型和基于主体的建模技术。他们将利用这些方法来解决一些问题，包括新闻实践如何影响公众对科学的理解，影响者（例如来自外国政府、国内政治团体和工业界的宣传者）在塑造公众对科学的理解中的作用，社会动态如何与个人认知偏见相互作用以形成信仰和共识，以及公众和政策制定者如何形成对科学信仰的共识。这项研究的结果将发表在科学哲学和社会认识论的专业期刊上。该项目与经济学、政治学、心理学和社会学等其他学科的相关项目相吻合；该项目的结果应该引起这些学科的研究人员的极大兴趣。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并且通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

项目成果

Epistemic advantage on the margin: A network standpoint Epistemology

边缘认知优势：网络立场认识论

• DOI: 10.1111/phpr.12895
• 发表时间: 2022
• 期刊: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
• 影响因子: 1.5
• 作者: Wu, Jingyi

How should we promote transient diversity in science?

我们应该如何促进科学的短暂多样性？

• DOI: 10.1007/s11229-023-04037-1
• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: Synthese
• 影响因子: 1.5
• 作者: Wu, Jingyi;O’Connor, Cailin
• 通讯作者: O’Connor, Cailin

Prediction with expert advice applied to the problem of prediction with expert advice

专家建议预测应用于专家建议预测问题

• DOI: 10.1007/s11229-022-03809-5
• 发表时间: 2022
• 期刊: Synthese
• 影响因子: 1.5
• 作者: Herrmann, Daniel A.

Moral Judgments Impact Perceived Risks From COVID-19 Exposure

道德判断影响因接触 COVID-19 而感知的风险

• DOI: 10.1525/collabra.74793
• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: Collabra: Psychology
• 作者: O’Connor, Cailin;Relihan, Daniel;Thomas, Ashley;Ditto, Peter H.;Stanford, P. Kyle;Weatherall, James O.
• 通讯作者: Weatherall, James O.

Interdisciplinarity can aid the spread of better methods between scientific communities

跨学科性可以帮助科学界之间传播更好的方法

• DOI: 10.1177/26339137221131816
• 发表时间: 2022
• 期刊: Collective Intelligence
• 作者: Smaldino, Paul E;O’Connor, Cailin
• 通讯作者: O’Connor, Cailin