Thread by @Helenreflects

Have been pondering the following: if people are vulnerable/susceptible to misinformation due to a polarized anti-science stance in their communities (which long predates Covid) would we call this a violation of their epistemic rights, and a form of epistemic injustice? 1/

https://twitter.com/dkiesow/status/1474831126246170625

I am inclined to see the lack of scientific literacy and polarized anti-scientific literacy in some communities here as a violation of people's epistemic rights, drawing on this book by Lani Watson (which is awesome)
routledge.com/The-Right-to-K… 2/

For Watson, an epistemic right is "a complex entitlement that provides justification for the performance and prohibition of actions and omissions concerning epistemic goods", such as true beliefs, being guarded from false beliefs, understanding etc. 3/

We have these rights by virtue of being epistemic agents. We need access to epistemic goods to make good decisions, both as democratic citizenry. John Dewey already pointed at this --Dewey thought scientific knowledge should be available to all 4/

And it should *not* be the case that you only get access to scientifically accurate information if you happen to be a political progressive/liberal. People of all political persuasions ought to have access to good scientific information. This is a problem in the US... 5/

In this paper, Gauchat reviews how from 1974 to 2010 " Conservatives began the period with the highest trust in science, relative to liberals and moderates, and ended the period with the lowest." 6/

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00…

So, the lower trust in science/less scientific knowledge among conservatives is fairly recent, only becoming prominent in the 1970s. It has been stirred on/strengthened with the alliance of big oil and the right in their attack on mainstream climate science in the 2000s 7/

So, conservative Americans have been subject to a long and sustained assault on their epistemic rights, in the form of anti-science (anti-climate science among others) propaganda
E.g., journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00…
and an onslaught of manufactured doubt 8/
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10…

This is a long-burning sustained attack on people's accurate knowledge of science. The alliance of religion and the right (specifically white evangelical Christianity) does not help. This was specifically a path chosen by fundamentalists in late 19th c 9/
hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?is…

Now, it may seem strange to see people who wield so much political power (and who also have a culture of power and toughness, with their gun pics in front of x-mass trees etc) are victims, and yet, in a sense they are victims of deliberate misinformation 10/

In a standard sense, epistemic injustice (as defined by Fricker and others) that epistemic injustice occurs when "someone is wronged specifically in their capacity as a knower, wronged therefore in a capacity essential to human value."
oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/a… 11/

Here, people are being wronged by being withheld basic scientific knowledge by virtue of their political alliance. You might say: but they can simply google it! Or go to the CDC website etc. But, they come to these sources of mainstream science with an attitude of distrust 12/

Imagine if you were told, from the pulpit, from the media you consume that scientists can't be trusted? And if everyone around you distrusted scientists? Then, you would end up believing ideas that are very fringe (e.g., denialism about climate science, covid denialism) 13/

The problem here is one of epistemic luck, analogous to moral luck. In moral luck cases you have e.g., someone who drunk drives and comes home safely, and someone who drunk drives and kills a person. Though similar behavior, one person was lucky, the other wasn't. 14/

@NeilLevy10 argues in this recent book that a lot of bad beliefs happen because the person is unlucky. They are in a bad epistemic environment, i.e., their social and media milieu (Fox News etc) predisposes them to hold denialist science views 15/

global.oup.com/academic/produ…

A former student I recently saw in person has conservative Christian parents, who are lovely people. He told me "Ehm I don't know what to do my parents have gone anti-vaxx. I try to talk them out of it but they won't listen. And my mom has pre-existing conditions, I'm worried"16/

I met the parents 2 years ago and they seem smart and thoughtful folks (certainly not the cartoon of conservative Christians here often put up), yet I was unsurprised, given their milieu that they would fall victim to anti-vaxx propaganda and not protect themselves 17/

They are victims of epistemic injustice. Are those who accept the science so much more diligent? These people aren't less intelligent and thoughtful than e.g., my parents (working-class folk in Belgium, where, thank God, vaccination isn't politically polarized) 18/

The situation is not helped (as @Ljiljana1972 pointed out) that we simply don't have a good trusting relationship in matters of expert communication to the public, e.g., CDC is not transparent about which masks work best, not treating people as grown-up epistemic agents 19/

I see people in discussion here (thanks for discussion! I'm working on a paper on scientific knowledge in American lay Christians, so it's very helpful) saying they are willing and participant. But you can be so, and yet be used as a means to an end by unscrupulous people 20/

That's why I'm not rejoicing when there's the nth story of a conservative person or evangelical Christian becoming ill and dying on a ventilator. Indeed, the deaths of these people illustrates that epistemic goods are precious 21/

nytimes.com/2021/11/08/bri…

And should be available to all. This is why Dewey argued (against e.g., Lippmann) that scientific knowledge should not be restricted to experts, because we can only make good democratic decisions and behave as a demos if we have good information available to us. 22/

Scientific information should be disseminated in a dispassionate, clear, and easy to understand manner, from school on but also in media, should not be filtered/guarded by political entities, and scientists ought to strive for epistemic goods (truth, understanding etc) 23/

I'm more and more convinced WEB Du Bois is right and scientists should try not to have an agenda in their scientific work but aim for truth. Especially do so in science communication. See here awesome paper by @lastpositivist
link.springer.com/article/10.100… 24/

The current situation will be difficult to fix but we must try. More transparent and honest science communication. Fixing scientific literacy at schools. Depolarizing science. Actively countering misinformation, specifically politically motivated misinformation 25/

Everyone, regardless of political orientation, is an epistemic right holder and thus has the right to true beliefs, to be safeguarded from false beliefs (esp if harmful to health) /end