QDIS Blog

Polarization!

by Ed Vawter @ 1:30 pm. Filed under Science

It seems everything these days is becoming more and more polarized and it has me concerned. There are a whole variety of issues where this has come to the fore.

Stem Cells
Drug Pricing
Global Climate Changes
Alternative Fuels
Drug Safety
Teaching Evolution

I’m sure there are many more but these are the ones that came to mind that relate to issues I discuss here.

I am disturbed by the observation I’ve made that it seems that those who speak out loudest and most often are “right”. It seems many people don’t want to stop and think and just accept whatever they hear. Also, more and more, neither side is really interested in truly listening and hearing what the other side is saying. They are only concerned with being the loudest and getting heard as often as possible.

I think major media contributes to this problem. They want short, concise, black and white views put forth that fit into the 2-3 minutes they allot to each issue. This contributes to everyone speaking in sound bites and no real meat being added to the bones of the issue. Other than a few non-major media outlets, there is no real discussion of the issues. Some exceptions are Democracy Now and Radio Open Source.

Another issue that concerns me is all the talk about being “fair and balanced”. It seems no matter what the topic, you have to have a so called expert from each side. Now for some topics this may be appropriate but for other topics it gives a very misleading representation of where things stand. Take global climate change as an example. Almost every TV show wants to have someone from “each side” and they always seem to be able to dig up the one or two people who (for a variety of reasons I won’t go into) who disagree with the majority of scientists. This leads

All of this leads me to be less trusting of any source and to have to do research to find out where the “truth” lies. Fortunately, I am an information professional and so have experience in evaluating sources, but not every does that.

I am hopeful that things may change in the future but it will likely not be the near future. Maybe in the future there will be true debate on issues instead of the talking points and sound bites we currently get.

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