Threats to Science: Politicization, Misinformation, and Inequalities

• DOI: 10.1177/00027162221095431
• Author: James N. Druckman
• Published date: 01 March 2022
• Date: 01 March 2022
• Subject Matter: Introduction

8 ANNALS, AAPSS, 700, March 2022

DOI: 10.1177/00027162221095431

Threats to

Science:

Politicization,

Misinformation,

and Inequalities

By

JAMES N. DRUCKMAN

1095431ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYTHREATS TO SCIENCE

research-article2022

Science is often considered the best available route to

knowledge and, thus, essential for societal progress. Yet

contemporary science faces several challenges. These

challenges include politicization, misinformation, and

inequalities. I outline each of these threats, detailing

the ways in which they can undermine the optimal

production and application of science. I provide an

overview of various research agendas on each, as cov-

ered in this volume. Without minimizing the serious-

ness posed by each threat, I also suggest that existing

work provides reason for hope that the scientific enter-

prise can address these challenges and continue to

improve societal well-being.

Keywords: politicization of science; misinformation;

inequality; scientific progress

The scientific enterprise leads a precarious

existence. It produces systematized knowl-

edge that constitutes an unrivaled information

source on which to base decisions. Yet science

also incentivizes criticism, cannot provide

definitive proof, and is practiced by a relatively

small, homogenous group of experts. These lat-

ter features make science vulnerable to threats

that undermine its usefulness. These threats

include the misappropriation of science for

reasons orthogonal to the creation of knowledge

(specifically, political motivations), misinforma-

tion where inaccurate claims appear in the

guise of science, and inequalities of representa-

tion in the scientific enterprise that can lead to

flawed epistemology and group disenfranchise-

ment. While these threats are not new, societal

and technological trends in the twenty-first

James N. Druckman is the Payson S. Wild Professor of

Political Science and a faculty fellow at the Institute for

Policy Research at Northwestern University. He is also

an honorary professor of political science at Aarhus

University in Denmark.

NOTE: I thank Robin Bayes for superb advice on a

prior draft.

Correspondence: druckman@northwestern.edu

THREATS TO SCIENCE 9

century have served as an accelerant. The experience of COVID-19 highlights

this reality—it has been riddled with partisans misusing and misconstruing sci-

ence; misinformation so pervasive that the pandemic was also labeled an info-

demic; and vast inequities in illness, morbidity, and economic hardship. This

volume offers a synthetic treatment of these three threats to science: politiciza-

tion, misinformation, and inequality. It brings together leading scholars in each

area who present empirically grounded discussions of major research agendas.

The articles in each section also build on one another to isolate the distinct nature

of each threat and, perhaps more importantly, to offer insights into what steps can

be taken in response. The hope is that readers are not left feeling deflated by

overwhelming challenges but, rather, are inspired by guidance on how to address

threats to advancing science and improving societal well-being.

The COVID-19 Pandemic Illustrates Threats to Science

How the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded in the United States illustrates how

politicization, misinformation, and inequalities threaten science. An October

2019 Johns Hopkins report concluded that the United States was relatively better

prepared than every other nation to deal with a pandemic in terms of prevention,

detection, response, health care, risk environment, and so on (Nuclear Threat

Initiative and Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security 2019). Yet by September

2020—only six months after cases first started surging—America accounted for

more than 20 percent of all COVID-19 deaths despite accounting for only 4 per-

cent of the world’s population.1 Why did the United States perform so poorly

when it came to saving lives? A large part of the answer concerns a failure to fully

utilize science due to politicized belief systems, misinformation, and inequities.

Consider politicized belief systems. Perhaps more than any other country,

COVID-19 polarized the United States, dividing Democrats and Republicans at

the elite (Fowler, Kettler, and Witt 2021; Lipsitz and Pop-Eleches 2020) and

mass levels (Allcott etal. 2020; Druckman etal. 2021; Gadarian, Goodman, and

Pepinsky 2021; Gollwitzer etal. 2020). This division was exacerbated by the 2020

presidential election and the concomitant challenges to democratic norms. In

summer 2020, one study from Pew Research Center found that 77 percent of

Americans believed that the nation had grown more divided since the arrival of

COVID-19, a response 2.8 standard deviations higher than the mean of the other

thirteen nations in the study and 1.6 standard deviations higher than the second

highest nation, Spain (Dimock and Wike 2020). As a result of this division, poli-

tics, rather than science, drove many decisions about how to deal with the pan-

demic. This is a stark example of how politicization can lead to less than ideal

cientific decision-making; at the same time, though, not all threats stemmed from

politicization.

During COVID-19, other challenges emerged, such as variations in lived expe-

rience that affected trust in scientific institutions and scientific recommendations.

This, along with the circulation of misleading statements with no basis in scientific

principles, created an environment ripe for misinformation—a second threat.