To successfully combat science denial and misinformation in the age of social media and online influencers, food scientists need to connect on an emotional level and find shared values before attempting to pepper people with facts, said panelists during a Hot Topics Studio session on Wednesday at IFT FIRST.
“You can’t just talk louder and harder, and offer more facts. You can do that, but that’s not strategic,” said Charlie Arnot, founder and CEO of both The Center for Food Integrity and the Look East strategic communications firm, during the session titled “Myth Busting Misinformation: How to Combat Science Denial,” moderated by Mary Ellen Kuhn, executive editor at Food Technology magazine. “You can embrace and validate someone’s concerns without validating their misinformation. That gives you permission to engage as a trusted, credible authority that they will then interpret as being relevant and valuable to them.”
As fewer people get their news from traditional sources and more turn to online and social media outlets—especially true among younger generations—everyone ends up in an echo chamber of their own preexisting beliefs, said Veronica Jaramillo, cofounder of The Food Truth Project and a food science graduate student at McGill University.
“The algorithm is working a little too well for our own good,” she said. “You’re teaching the algorithm to bring on this information that you’re already believing. It’s very rare that you find something in your feed that’s contrary to your own beliefs.” And when people do, they often greet that information with skepticism or outright hostility, she added.
From the time of Galileo in the 1600s until the dawn of the 21st century, science was widely regarded as the arbiter of truth, yet reliant on communications technologies to spread those truths—such as print publications, radio, or television—which had “some level of informal or formal social control,” Arnot said. The launch of Facebook in 2004 fundamentally changed communication patterns to a “many-to-many” dynamic, which provided “the opportunity to have an infinite number of microcultures” and a “dispersion of authority,” he said.
In spite of that, a recent survey of consumers that asked who they trusted the most on food and nutrition information found that the top three answers were registered dietitians, primary care physicians, and food scientists—a result that heartened Jaramillo. “I thought No. 1 would be social media influencers,” she said. “We’re still in the game. Does that mean people are getting most information from [those three groups]? No.”
To nudge their way toward being more front-of-mind, food scientists need to listen and ask questions—and then share information, Arnot said. “It’s not about correcting individuals,” he said. “If your pitch is, ‘You’re wrong, and here’s why,’ you’re going to immediately alienate the person. If you listen, ask, listen, ask, and then share, you will find a point of connection. … It’s about finding that point of connection and engaging in meaningful dialogue. That takes practice because we’ve been trained to communicate the science: ‘Here’s what the research says.’”
Scientists communicate with each other by sharing data findings and meta-analyses, Jaramillo agreed. “We’re not taught, as scientists, to communicate with the general public. People don’t respond to that,” she said. “If you say, ‘Look at this data,’ [they respond by saying], ‘Why should I care? This doesn’t impact me. Science is for scientists.’ It feeds into the narrative that science and scientists are not accessible. People think scientists are on this high horse and only able to speak to each other.”
Instead of saying “look at this data,” scientists need to tell a story, Jaramillo said, recalling a person who buttonholed her after a workshop to say they didn’t like GMOs because, “I think it changes our DNA.” She listened, asked questions, and understood better what made the person wary—and then told them about Golden Rice, a genetically modified strain that has saved the lives of an estimated 40,000 to 100,000 children who had been facing severe vitamin A deficiency. “That’s a tangible story that connects with their values,” she said. “It’s an example of something we can give them that’s not just, ‘Here are the facts; here are the facts.’”
Another piece of advice Jaramillo shared: don’t get too emotionally invested or take people’s reactions too personally, which she acknowledged struggling with herself. “I felt like an attack against science was an attack against me: ‘You don’t believe in the work I’m doing,’” she said. “I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs. … I get frustrated with people who don’t understand the safety protocols behind our food. But I can’t expect everyone to have the food science background I do. It’s our job—not just the communicators, but everyone in the food industry—to communicate better about what we do.”ft
About the Author
Ed Finkel is a freelance journalist based in Evanston, Ill. ([email protected]).
