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Scientists trusted less than businessmen when discussing social issues, study finds
(www.manchester.ac.uk)
I always have my poles reversed on these types of stories.
this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2026
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What the fuck is wrong with people?
they are stupid and don't even believe basic history like palestine for the last 150 years
- people are very stupid and gullible, on average, and groups of people even moreso
- business people have (or are) marketing people, which is effectively the discipline of socially engineering people to buy your shit
Corporations own the media, not scientists.
People are emotionally driven. Everyone is, to an extent. Scientists are less likely to use that to support their point, or they'll have emotionally displeasing things to say.
I'm a scientist, can confirm.
I think the people of this country have had enough of experts
Michael Gove
Eh… shitty people exist outside of the United States. We just happen to be very loud about it.
Take, for example, the British. They’re huge assholes, too. Have been for centuries. And everyone hated them the most long before we Americans came along. And, of course, it makes total sense that our country is one of their offspring, so to speak. Funny how the Canadians turned out to be so polite. The jury is still out on the Australians…
Australians are the Gen X of the world, a bunch of cunts, best ignored.
Canadian politeness is founded on ignoring the genocide at home.
The Australian jury has gone down to the pub.
Not really sure what that has to do with my comment.
On a side note Australians are known to be racist cunts. New Zealander's are by accounts the equivalent of Canadians
Rich people own and run the media. That's just one thing that's wrong with them.
People who study how to convince people are more trusted than people trained to talk in technical jargon about specific fields. Shocker there.
The corpo propaganda is working.
because scientists are autistic and businesss men are sociopaths
50% Aspie supremacist nonsense, 50% truth.
Business leaders tell people what they want to hear, scientists typically bring bad news.
Unless they're paid off by big corporations to do studies favorable to a company's products, in which case they bring nice sounding lies. Like how Monsanto wrote entire passages of the paper supposedly proving the safety of their glyphosate.
This shit killed my grandma in her late 60s along with millions of others worldwide.
But I think this is due to a broader incentive problem in science. There's incentive to find new and interesting things to publish or die. There's no incentive (in fact strong incentives against) replicating other studies to see if their results hold up to external verification.
Absolutely. All the Parkinsons cases from people who've lived next to agricultural land and golf courses, all from 'safe' products.
Business leaders: "Our product is going to murder humanity."
That one is for investors in the ponzi scheme. Don't forget 'your self driving car will earn taxi fare while you sleep' and 'AI will usher in the 3-day work week'.
this sounds like restating the title rather than supporting it
But capitalism isn't a problem
people in general hate feeling dumb, and are taught by sick society early that ignorance and stupidity are the same.
Being reminded they aren't the smart one leads to anger often.
This is difficult for me to believe, honestly.
At least here in the US, there is outright hostility to Big Business, and in particular, Big Tech. We are collectively very sick of the price gouging that's been rampant for the last five years and also the egregious treatment of local communities by companies trying to build data centers. We're reaching a point where they can't even gaslight us into supporting it by promising tax breaks to homeowners anymore.
Also, we're increasingly learning that the engagement of people who are anti-science is astroturfed, and that was put on display in a big way last week when Russian bots were silenced temporarily. There's still a chunk of people who are anti-science, and they happen to be very loud, but their opinions are amplified artificially, not representative of the whole.
Maybe it's different in the UK and Sweden, but I'm skeptical.
Zero surprise for me. Capitalist media constantly promotes rich people as honest sources of information... and these are the same people constantly attacking science.
It's that but not just that.
Notice people paying attention to actors and musicians on social subjects, even though the domain expertise of those people is acting and music respectivelly, not sociology.
(You can even see it here in Lemmy: some actor or other says something on a social subject somebody agrees with and they make a post here about it, under which tons of people write about how they totally agree and it's so good that said person talked about it. If anybody points out "they're an actor, not a domain expert" they're assumed to be of an opposite opinion, even of an opposite political side)
I think there is a broader problem of people's trust on certain subjects being far more highly positivelly correlated with the fame of the advice/opinion giver than with domain expertise.
Your point about rich people does dovetail with this - rich people are often treated as celebrities by the media.
PS: Also there are a bunch of interesting effects around this - for example the more somebody's opinion on something is talked about on the media, even negativelly, the more they are perceived as having a relevant opinion on that subject (the so-called "Halo Effect").
* study financed by the fascist businessmen