Agnotology: The study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt; derived from agnosis, the Greek word for ignorance or “not knowing”.
Stanford University professor Robert Proctor coined the term in his 1995 book(p. 8) that explored the creation and dissemination of false information and intentionally hiding the truth in the interest of power and financial gain.
One example is how the tobacco industry spent billions of dollars to cast doubt on the scientific evidence regarding negative health effects of smoking. It seems to be universally accepted now that smoking has detrimental effects on one’s health, but by purposefully obscuring the truth and keeping people ignorant, the tobacco industry made billions of dollars in the process.
Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister during World War II, said, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” With the prevalence of social media, that statement is clearly relevant today. A complete falsehood based on fictitious information can go viral and be accepted as true by thousands of people, most of whom are unconvinced by clear evidence that contradicts their beliefs.
We are living in what some are calling a “post-truth” or “post-reality” culture, when many people base their beliefs on emotion and what they want to be accurate rather than on actual facts. It’s what comedian Stephen Colbert calls “truthiness.”
Central elements of our democracy are Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Speech. Open, honest exchange of ideas provides citizens with evidence on which to make informed decisions. The question for our time is whether deliberate misrepresentation for financial gain is protected as free speech and, if so, at what cost? We have a responsibility as citizens to discern facts from fiction.
George Orwell’s dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1949, imagined a “Big Brother” government where the government is the master producer of propaganda that casts doubt on scientific facts and sows distrust in science and intellectualism. A privileged elite are in charge and the “Thought Police” punish citizens for independent thinking and individuality. In the novel, the Ministry of Truth is responsible for propaganda and historical revisionism (e.g, deleting or editing news articles to replace the truth with, as Kellyanne Conway would say, “alternative facts.”)
Hm. Leaders who cast doubt on scientific facts? Let’s look at a few of the popular myths in our society today that have no basis in fact.
- Global warming is not real. For a concise, objective representation of what scientists know, see https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ By the way, this week it was reported that carbon dioxide levels in the Earth’s atmosphere have reached the highest levels in 800,000 years.
- If we cut regulations and taxes on big corporations and the wealthy, they will reinvest the savings in more jobs and better wages for employees which will offset the cost of the tax cuts (also known as “trickle-down economics”).
- Adding work as a requirement in order to get “food stamps” will force lazy people to get to a job and enable them to get off government assistance. See Dr. Grace’s recent post on this topic here.
- The state cannot afford high quality child care and preschool for all families in Mississippi.
- (And similarly) If we provide good childcare to all children, other public services will need to be cut.
The work of Nobel laureate Professor James Heckman shows the economic benefits far outweigh the costs of quality child care and education in the form of higher educational attainment and earning potential, lower rates of incarceration, reduced need for special education services, and lower heath care costs. His research has found at whopping 13% annualized return on investment in high quality early learning programs. (The rate of return on government bonds as of today is around 3%).
U.S. News and World Report just issued a report showing Mississippi’s economic growth ranked 46thin 2017. The economy grew at a dismal 0.3% last year. In other words, our state economy is smaller than it was in 2008 when adjusted for inflation.
For almost 14 years we’ve been told the current economic policies implemented by our state’s leaders will grow jobs and invigorate the economy. There’s been plenty of time for that experiment to be proven true. If the strategies were valid, they would’ve worked by now. Winston Churchill also said, “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.” There has been very little attention given to the recent economic report; apparently, we have hurried off as if nothing happened.
So, do we even care about truth anymore? If the truth doesn’t match our political or religious ideology, do we just look the other way? If the truth does really matter, we must not incentivize and perpetuate the intentional misrepresentation and promotion of ignorance. We should all become agnotologists.
In times of universal deceit…telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
George Orwell
By Dr. Melody Musgrove