The problems we face are urgent, complex and seemingly overwhelming. To respond to them effectively will require ingenuity, common sense and a thoughtful understanding of the problems, as well as a citizenry from which to draw ethical leaders, flexible thinkers and dedicated implementers. 

We need citizens and leaders who can cope with uncertainty and still retain clear, critical reasoning and the social ethics to imagine the long-term effects of pursuing and technically applying a line of inquiry. 
In today’s world, where polarized beliefs clash with each other and re-enforce extremism on all fronts, dogmatism impedes our efforts to solve intractable global problems—environmental, economic, and social—that confront us all.

With ideologues in positions of power, it is disconcertingly easy to lower standards of scientific rigor and to dismantle the integrity of our public institutions. And with official leaders promoting denialism, such as Tea Party members of Congress, citizens are forced to sift through propaganda and misinformation, rather than focus on urgent issues. 

It is thus no longer possible—if indeed it ever was—to separate the forces that obstruct science from those that undermine our political and economic institutions. Denialism permeates every layer of society. Ideology, knee-jerk reactions, and uninformed opinions have supplanted evidence, particularly in the behavioral and social sciences. 

Science is being ignored by policy-makers in all realms, from how children learn best, to how to prevent violence, to how to address terrorism.

Science, as an honest path to knowledge, is now often blocked by the institutions that structure our society—government, media, corporate, and academic. In recent times, all these have become unmoored from previous standards of accountability and excellence. Without checks and balances, and constant vigilance, the worst characteristics of human distortion are unleashed: denialism, dogmatism, bias, and group-think.
Unfortunately, most decision-makers remain ignorant of research on the limits of human perception, memory, reason, and cognition. We do a poor job, as a society, of electing leaders with the skills, or even with some basic curiosity, to understand more about human nature and apply this knowledge toward improving policies.

Just as democracy requires an informed and active citizenry, committed to maintaining civic checks and balances, a healthy scientific community requires members who can recognize elements of scientific arguments, who understand evidentiary and statistical reasoning, and who have developed an inherent sense of what kind of questions science does and does not answer.

Overcoming Ideological Bias

Debates continue about how to create healthier social structures and avoid past mistakes which led to coercive ideologies or unrealistic utopias.

To solve the ideological impasse, policy-makers need to agree on the criteria for what constitutes evidence of a policy’s effectiveness. 

And to better apply our emerging understanding of human nature, we need to examine the underlying reasons why some policies are effective in certain settings, and not in others.
Policy-makers and politicians need to be asked:
  • What are the sources of information that you find credible, believable and valid?
  • How much of your belief system, policies, platform party line derive from those sources? 
  • Can you trace back experiences in your life that seem to corroborate the views put forth by these sources?
  • How much do you need to know about a topic before you can accurately weigh evidence?

How do we train our leaders to confront evidence that contradicts their invested beliefs?

A multi-pronged approach

  • Ongoing science education for policymakers, especially legislators. Better conduits are needed to ensure that policymakers become aware of—and adequately grasp—research relevant to their policy domains. Nonpartisan experts need to regularly distribute summaries of major findings to legislative offices and provide intensive seminars that present overviews and context.
  • Reinstate strict quality control and review for research and data collection that is used to guide government policy, including a concerted effort to weed out the bad science often promoted by partisan and industry-oriented think tanks.
  • Enforce laws against Corporate Special Interests and Lobbyists to influence policy.
  • Educate citizens and policy makers about human development. Protecting our children from brain injury, exposure to toxins and abuse, and providing optimal conditions for healthy brain and emotional development are paramount for producing a society of fully functioning citizens. 
  • To address such ills as terrorism and collective violence, we need to recognize the effects of social structures and trauma on the brain and body, to alleviate the sense of helplessness and injustice that are the breeding ground for hate, and work to heal the generations of children exposed to war, oppression, abuse, hunger, and deprivation.