專家如何重獲大眾的信任？

I wrote recently that with Brexit, the UK is experimenting on itself. The Trump administration is doing something similar: it’s testing the theory that the US can be run without experts. Trump’s point-man for China, Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian question is Jared Kushner, a real estate heir. Scott Pruitt, who heads the Environmental Protection Agency, has no scientific training. The administration seems to be handling North Korea almost without reference to diplomats or Korea experts. And senator Lindsey Graham, who ran the latest Republican push to dismantle Obamacare, admitted afterwards that he’d started from ignorance: “Well, I’ve been doing it for about a month. I thought everybody else knew what the hell they were talking about, but apparently not.”

我最近寫過，英國正在通過脫歐(Brexit)拿自己做實驗。特朗普政府也在干類似的事：他們正在驗證一個理論，離了專家美國也照樣玩得轉(zhuǎn)。特朗普在中國、伊拉克及巴以問題上的偵察兵賈里德•庫什納(Jared Kushner)，是個地產(chǎn)集團繼承人。美國國家環(huán)境保護局(EPA)局長斯科特•普魯伊特(Scott Pruitt)，沒有受過科學訓練。特朗普政府在處理朝鮮問題時看上去幾乎不征詢外交官或朝鮮問題專家們的意見。而最近一次代表共和黨為廢除奧巴馬醫(yī)改計劃(Obamacare)做出努力的參議員林賽•格雷厄姆(Lindsey Graham)后來承認,他開始做這件事時對情況一無所知：“好吧，我干了差不多一個月。我以為別人都知道他們到底在說啥，但顯然不是這么回事。”

Experts are out of fashion. Populists dismiss them as doofus elitists without common sense. But Steven Sloman, cognitive scientist at Brown University, says we’ll always need experts. That’s because most of us are ignorant about almost everything. It couldn’t be otherwise, argues Sloman: the workings of a fridge are complex, let alone the economy or the climate. Common sense usually isn’t enough because complex systems are rarely intuitive. Nor can everyone acquire all-purpose expertise: the brain has only about one-16th the memory storage space of a low-end thumb drive. So a “cognitive division of labour” is essential, says Sloman. We’ll simply have to put our faith in experts. They aren’t wiser than ordinary people — they just have more expertise. Here are some ways that they can restore trust:

專家們過時了。民粹主義者們認為他們是沒有常識的愚蠢精英。但布朗大學(Brown University)的認知科學家史蒂文•斯洛曼(Steven Sloman)則說，我們永遠需要專家。那是因為我們大多數(shù)人幾乎什么都不懂。斯洛曼認為這是必然的：冰箱的工作原理尚且很復雜，更別說經(jīng)濟或氣候問題了。常識往往是不夠的，因為復雜的系統(tǒng)很少是一目了然的。人們也無法獲得萬能的專業(yè)知識：大腦只有一枚低端U盤十六分之一的存儲空間。因此必須要有一種“認知的勞動分工”，斯洛曼說。我們必須相信專家們。他們并不比普通人智慧——他們只是擁有更多的專業(yè)知識。下面幾種方法能讓專家們重新贏得人們的信任：

• Experts should shift the conversation from identity to solutions. When people argue from their identity — “I’m a rural Republican, ergo I oppose Obamacare” — they tend to ignore expertise. But if you make the subject “How to get people healthcare when sick”, they listen.

專家們應(yīng)將談話的重點從身份轉(zhuǎn)移到解決辦法。當人們從他們的身份出發(fā)提出自己的主張時——“我是個鄉(xiāng)下的共和黨人，所以我反對奧巴馬醫(yī)改”——他們往往會忽視專業(yè)知識。但如果將發(fā)言的主題變成“患病時如何讓人們獲得醫(yī)療服務(wù)”，他們就會傾聽。

• Don’t argue with people who reject expert knowledge. Ignore them. Climate rejectionists (often cogs in the fossil-fuel lobby’s anti-expert infrastructure) will never accept scientific opinion, no matter how many facts are given. Debating them in the media only advertises their beliefs, says Stephan Lewandowsky, psychologist at Bristol University. (He and others cited here spoke at a recent conference organised by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre.)

別和拒絕專業(yè)知識的人爭論。不要理他們。氣候反對派們(這些人通常是化石燃料游說團反專家組織的成員)永遠都不會接受科學的觀點，不論給出多少事實。跟他們在媒體上辯論只會為他們的信條增加知名度，布里斯托大學(Bristol University)心理學教授斯蒂芬•萊萬多夫斯基(Stephan Lewandowsky)說。(這里提到的萊萬多夫斯基和其他人在歐盟委員會聯(lián)合研究中心(European Commission Joint Research Centre)最近組織的一次會議上發(fā)了言。)

• Don’t dismiss ordinary people as irrelevant, or suggest that their group will be erased. If you sketch people a future without them in it, they will do everything to stop that future happening. Recall Hillary Clinton saying during her presidential campaign, “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.” Similarly, voters won’t buy an expert-run technocracy in which their own opinions are sidelined.

不要說普通人無關(guān)緊要，或暗示他們所在的群體將會不復存在。如果你向人們勾畫出一個他們不在其中的未來，他們將會盡一切努力阻止這一未來變成現(xiàn)實?；叵胍幌孪＠?bull;克林頓(Hillary Clinton)在競選總統(tǒng)時說過的話，“我們要淘汰眾多煤礦及煤炭企業(yè)。”同樣，選民們也不會為一個不重視他們意見、由專家掌控的技術(shù)官僚體系買賬。

• In a democracy, ordinary people, rather than experts, set society’s goals. They should also help set the scientific agenda on issues such as robotisation, says former European trade commissioner Pascal Lamy. Experts can only advise on how to achieve those goals.

在一個民主國家，設(shè)定社會目標的是普通人，而不是專家。在機器人化這樣的問題上，普通人也應(yīng)該參與科學議程的制定，曾任歐盟貿(mào)易專員的帕斯卡爾•拉米(Pascal Lamy)說。專家們只能建議如何實現(xiàn)這些目標。

• Experts should be humble. If they pretend they’re omniscient, they will be punished whenever they make mistakes — as happened after the financial crisis. They should admit that the scientific process is messy. “We deal with uncertainty, with risk, with failure,” says Johannes Vogel, head of Berlin’s Naturkunde Museum.

專家們要謙虛。如果他們假裝自己無所不知，那他們只要一出錯就會受到懲罰——就像金融危機后的情況一樣。他們應(yīng)當承認科學的過程是復雜的。“我們應(yīng)對的是不確定性、風險和失敗，”柏林自然博物館(Naturkunde Museum)的負責人約翰內(nèi)斯•福格爾(Johannes Vogel)說。

• Despite uncertainty, experts should give clear advice. Lewandowsky advises stating and then repeating findings before qualifying them with uncertainty. His model message is: “We know we are warming the climate. We know we are warming the climate. We are uncertain about how much warmer your backyard will be in 39 years.”

盡管存在不確定性，專家們也應(yīng)該給出明確的建議。萊萬多夫斯基建議，先提出結(jié)論，然后重復一遍，最后再補充說明不確定因素，以便讓結(jié)論更禁得起推敲。他對此作了示范：“我們知道我們正在令氣候變暖。我們知道我們正在令氣候變暖。我們不確定是，未來39年大家的后院將會變暖多少。”

• Purge the failed and corrupt experts. Every expert gets things wrong, because what humankind doesn’t know about any subject always vastly exceeds what we know. However, forecasters who are consistently wrong should be downgraded, says Jonathan Kimmelman, biomedical ethicist at McGill University. Anyone who spent years cheerleading the pre-2008 housing bubble should not now be spouting about the economy. And experts should have to declare their interests whenever they open their mouths.

清除那些失敗和腐敗的專家。每位專家都會出錯，因為在任何學科中，人類未知的部分總是遠遠大于我們已知的部分。然而，那些總是出錯的預(yù)測者應(yīng)該被降級，麥吉爾大學(McGill University)生物醫(yī)學倫理學家喬納森•基默曼(Jonathan Kimmelman)說。任何人如果在2008年以前的數(shù)年里一直為房地產(chǎn)泡沫助陣，那如今就不該再大談經(jīng)濟問題。專家們在開口發(fā)表主張前，應(yīng)該先申明是否利益相關(guān)。

• Experts should respect the practical experience of ordinary people. Fishermen usually know where the fish are, notes Lewandowsky.

專家們應(yīng)該尊重普通人的實踐經(jīng)驗。漁夫往往知道魚在哪里，萊萬多夫斯基指出。

• Experts should speak clearly to ordinary people. “Be open, speak human,” advises Tracey Brown, director of the charity Sense about Science. Vogel thinks 10 to 15 per cent of science funding should be spent on communicating with the public. That still wouldn’t equip everyone with the expertise to make their own judgments. But better communication should reduce distance, and so increase trust. Experts need to learn from Trump, who communicates in stories and images instead of numbers and jargon. In any communication, style matters much more than substance.

專家們應(yīng)當對普通人把話說得清晰易懂。“要開誠布公，用通俗的語言表達。”英國非盈利科普組織Sense about Science的總監(jiān)特蕾西•布朗(Tracey Brown)建議。沃格爾認為，應(yīng)拿出科研經(jīng)費的10%到15%，用于與公眾溝通。但這仍不能使每位民眾都具備專業(yè)知識做出自己的判斷。但更有效的溝通應(yīng)當縮短距離，由此增加信任。專家們要學學特朗普，用故事和形象溝通，而不是數(shù)字和專業(yè)術(shù)語。在任何交流中，風格都要比實質(zhì)內(nèi)容重要得多。

• Experts should advertise their practical uses. US Republicans believed in science as long as science brought technological advances, such as putting men on the moon, says Lewandowsky. As the science-technology link weakened from the 1970s, many Republicans went off science.

專家們應(yīng)當為他們理論的實用性做宣傳。只要科學帶來了技術(shù)進步，如讓人類登上了月球，美國的共和黨人就會信奉科學，萊萬多夫斯基說。20世紀70年代以來，隨著科學與技術(shù)的聯(lián)系減弱，許多共和黨人就對科學失去了興趣。

• Teach schoolchildren sourcing rather than facts. Knowing stuff is overvalued. You can find the facts on Google. The trick is knowing which source to trust: big studies by accredited academics, or some random Facebook post.

讓學生們學會追本溯源而不是僅僅告訴他們事實。我們過于看重是否知道某些事實了。事實用谷歌(Google)就能找到。關(guān)鍵是要知道應(yīng)該相信哪種信息來源：權(quán)威學者們的大型研究，還是Facebook上一些隨機顯示的帖子。