Today's post is by Vanessa Schipani (University of Pennsylvania) who discusses a recent open access paper on journalism and public trust in science published in Synthese . A version of this post has appeared on the LSE blog on 2 September 2024. Vanessa Schipani During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, I was hired as a journalist to report on politicians’ claims about science for FactCheck.org . Coming off of finishing a master’s in the history and philosophy of science, my eye for stories was a bit more philosophical than most. Starting with my first article on whether climate science was pseudoscience (spoiler: it’s not), I noticed a trend in how politicians misunderstood the scientific process, especially when arguing for policy inaction: They set the bar for action at certain results, and condemned researchers when they offered their opinions about policies. Now on the cusp of finishing a dissertation on trust in science, I see more clearly the trick these po...
A blog at the intersection of philosophy, psychology, and mental health