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Cumol  ·  1709 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Climate Skeptics Can be Convinced to Believe in Science (n=700)

I just realized I did this without noticing two months ago.

I was taking a carpool from berlin back to heidelberg with this guy. After a few minutes I find out that he is a "permanent test object". As in, his job is to drive from one Phase I pharamceutical trial to the next, to be a test object. Phase I trials are the first step to approval and only test the safety of the substance, on healthy individuals.

He has been doing that for 20 years and apparently, if you do it right, you can feed a household of 6 by doing that.

We discussed many subjects on this 7 hour ride, including climate change. I was very surprised that, as educated he sounded on the other subject, he was a complete climate change denier. After digging deeper, I found out that he believes in some other, more "simple" explanation for the weather playing crazy that had nothing to do with CO2.

At some point, it led to the core of the problem. He did not trust science. He believed that scientists, world wide, teamed up and fed the CO2-narrative to get funding. After explaining to him that the funding doesn't go into the scientist's pockets and that it is used for research, he mentioned that he did not believe in research...

Quite reactionary of me. And maybe with a slightly angry tone. I asked him, "if you don't believe in research, how do you trust the Phase I trials? How can you trust the substance that is first tested on you to not kill you?"

It did a click. I could literally see it happening. He fell silent for a while and just said "I guess you are right about that".

I thought that this was just a rogue example but according to that article. This is generally a good method!