Lay beliefs about scientists’ relations with their employers

Abstract

Lay beliefs about scientist-employer relations may affect public attitudes toward science. A representative sample of US residents characterized scientists’ relations with one of four employers: federal government agency, large business corporation, advocacy group (nonprofit seeking to influence policy), or university. Overall, they held moderate views of how much scientists and employers shared motivations, interests, and values, and of whether employers tried to change—and succeeded in changing—how scientist employees did their scientific work. Judgments differed little across employers. Best predictors of these views were belief in scientific positivism, subjective knowledge of science, and age. These findings suggest scientific authority in the United States is not immediately threatened by public beliefs that employers skew their scientific employees’ work, although that might differ for specific topics or demographic sub-groups.

Americans’ views of scientists’ motivations for scientific work

“…Descriptive ratings for both motivation types were enhanced by religiosity and belief in scientific positivism. There is no obvious post hoc explanation for these global associations, although positivism also enhanced lay ratings for all putative reasons for scientific disputes (Dieckmann and Johnson, 2019; Johnson and Dieckmann, 2018) and beliefs about scientist–employer relations (Johnson and Dieckmann, 2019), suggesting there is some response bias or unmeasured third variable associated with these positivist beliefs that warrants qualitative study. The lower descriptive ratings for intrinsic motivations from those familiar with scientific reasoning may reflect greater familiarity with mixed motivations of scientists in practice (see literature review), although intriguingly there is no such effect on extrinsic descriptions.…”

“…However, in pursuing such research we must acknowledge that lay beliefs about motivations are only one component of their summary judgments about science and its value to society. For example, people may see scientists’ motivations as appropriate, but their work as taking place in an employment context that distorts its content or use (Critchley, 2008; Johnson and Dieckmann, 2019). In addition, people may determine whether to support science based on criteria quite other than the fitness of individual scientists’ motivations.…”

“…They responded to questions “How much do you think this goal motivates/influences scientists working for a typical [organization] ?” and “How much do you think this goal should motivate/influence scientists working for a typical [organization] ?” on each motivation before moving to the next. Results from subsequent questions about scientist–employer relations are reported separately (Johnson and Dieckmann, 2019).…”

How people decide who is correct when groups of scientists disagree

“…We would argue that most of these cues focus on ability (Mayer et al., 1995): information quality, experience, replication, and degree source. The employer cue seems to evoke integrity instead, as it might imply greater attention by the scientists to the interests of their employer than to the public interest (Johnson & Dieckmann, 2021 found little effect of employer on perceived scientists’ motivations, but their experiment was not topic‐specific, so those findings might not generalize to the specific topics raised in the current experiment). The remaining two cues deployed here are difficult to classify within the Mayer et al.…”

“…Lay perception of scientists’ self‐oriented motives (e.g., financial rewards, demonstrating skill or competence, gaining power in society; Benson‐Greenwald et al., 2023) reduce trust in science and decrease willingness to allocate more research funding relative to the perception of other‐oriented motives (e.g., helping society, working face‐to‐face with others). Other observational and experimental studies also point to the effect of perceived interests as affecting public reactions to conflict (e.g., Bubela et al., 2009; Collins & Evans, 2007; Goldman, 2001; Irwin & Wynne, 1996; Kutrovátz, 2010; Maxim & Mansier, 2014; but see Johnson & Dieckmann, 2020, 2021).…”