SCIENTISTS have long had cause to complain about how the public views them and their work. Complaints range from objections to denialism – “they don’t accept evolution” or “they won’t vaccinate” – to more cultural laments: “they always make us look like the bad guys in films” and “they don’t cover us on the news any more”.

Lately, though, the cultural laments seem out of date. In the US, science is becoming cool again among non-scientists. The evidence is all around us, in the form of a popular culture pulsing with content celebrating science.

°äµţł§â€™s The Big Bang Theory is the number one comedy show on TV, watched by about 20 million people per night. This is a show in which sciencey people say sciencey things, and people can’t get enough of it. Fox and National Geographic’s remake of the classic Carl Sagan documentary , fronted by Neil deGrasse Tyson, is making science into a weekly conversation starter. It may not be the number one show in its highly competitive Sunday night slot – Game of Thrones is hard to beat – but every week millions are watching. Heck, you can’t even see a biblical blockbuster like Noah these days without being treated to a surprise montage about the big bang and evolution.

These are strong signs that science is again becoming a pop culture fixture, as it arguably was at the height of Sagan’s influence in the 1980s, and as it certainly was in the 1950s and 1960s. Why?

One part of the reason appears to be that a handful of influential entertainers made up their mind that science rocks, including Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, who made Cosmos happen, and Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert, who regularly featured scientists as guests on The Colbert Report. And they had big enough megaphones to spread the word.

Why did they do it? In MacFarlane’s case, the inspiration is partly political. In a talk he gave last year at the US Library of Congress to mark its acquisition of Sagan’s personal papers, he bemoaned the “politicisation on steroids” of issues such as climate change and evolution. “We took a big, big hit when we lost Carl Sagan,” he said. His answer was to bring back Cosmos.

But here’s where a heavy dose of confusion enters the picture, not to mention some pretty unrealistic expectations. There is no doubt that science is more visible in culture these days. There is also no doubt that MacFarlane and the many fans of Cosmos hope and believe that this will solve the other thing that scientists grumble about: the denial problem. They expect it to make people more rational, more accepting of what scientists have to say about controversial topics, and less willing to dismiss knowledge because it conflicts with their beliefs, values and ideologies.

Dream on. All the evidence suggests that you can have a science-infused popular culture that is also steeped with denialism. One doesn’t negate the other, because the two operate on very different levels.

“All the evidence suggests you can have a science-infused culture that is also steeped with denialism”

I have never heard of a science denier who didn’t claim to be enamoured with science. Deniers invariably cultivate their own “scientists” and “experts” and trot out scientific-sounding arguments to support their contrarian positions. What is more, psychological research suggests that more scientifically literate political conservatives are bigger deniers of climate change than conservatives who don’t know much about science.

Why would a show like Cosmos change this picture? It won’t – and it hasn’t. Little in the political arena has changed for the better for science lately. Climate change denial is riding as high as ever; its staying power, in the face of all the evidence, can only be described as remarkable. Meanwhile, experiments have shown that trying to disabuse vaccine deniers of their misconceptions backfires and makes the misconceptions worse.

And as for the young-Earth creationists? We all cheered when demolished their arguments in a televised debate, but we know that none of them changed their minds.

What this suggests is that getting people to engage with science and scientists in general is a very different endeavour from getting them to accept scientific claims that threaten their political and religious identities. There may be some overlap, in that greater science appreciation on a cultural level ought to translate into a greater valuing of scientific authorities and what they have to say – but that only goes so far.

What we need to do is separate the concept of science engagement from that of science denial – to pull apart dazzling and fascinating from convincing and persuading. Why? Because then we will see that science denial is a personal and psychological phenomenon, rooted in belief and identity, which can’t be washed away by a wave of science boosterism.

Maybe, then, this ends with a message back to science’s influential friends in showbiz. We can’t thank you enough for showing that science is cool again. But if this matters to you as much as it appears to, then please recognise that the task has just begun. Now comes the hard part: show us not just that science is cool and fascinating, but that science denial is destructive or even immoral. Show us that it amounts to succumbing to one of the least flattering aspects of the human psyche: putting self-serving beliefs ahead of facts and ahead of people.

Show us that science denial is unacceptable in a scientifically advanced society. Tell us stories of people overcoming it, and becoming better for it. Because right now it remains far too accepted, far too normalised and far too easy to get away with.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Loved, but still not liked”

JOHN HIBBING used to be a traditional political scientist. He studied elections, ran opinion polls and researched why some politicians opt to retire rather than wait around to be defeated by challengers. “About as traditional as it gets,” he says.

Roughly a decade ago, though, Hibbing shifted to a new approach that is starting to revolutionise how we think about politics. He began to explore whether political preferences might be partly based in biology. The idea initially met with great scepticism from his peers. But Hibbing and his collaborators at the at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln now have a stack of scientific publications backing the idea.

For example, when they measure the physical reactions of liberals and conservatives to aversive stimuli, they find major differences. Tough-on-crime, pro-military conservatives have a more pronounced startle reflex after hearing a sudden loud noise. They also show stronger skin responses when shown threatening images and look at them more rapidly and for longer.

It is conventional to think about political ideology as a set of ideas people consciously hold about the way society should be ordered. A tacit assumption is that we come to these beliefs rationally, by reading and thinking about the issues. If we differ, it is because we reason to different conclusions.

Hibbing’s results suggest otherwise. “One of the things we’re trying to get people to realise is that those who disagree with them politically really do experience the world in a different fashion,” he says.

“Those who disagree with us politically really do experience the world in a different fashion”

Many other seemingly apolitical differences between liberals and conservatives have also been discovered. For example, they tend to organise their living spaces differently, with conservatives favouring tidiness and conventionality, and liberals more tolerant of clutter. They also seem to have different art preferences and even senses of humour.

Most recently, and controversially, focus has shifted to differences in brain structures and functions. In one experiment, conservatives on average had a larger right amygdala, a region of the brain that processes responses to fear and threat. Liberals, in contrast, had more grey matter in the anterior cingulate cortex, an error-detecting region that is thought to be involved in causing us to stop repeated patterns of behaviour and change course.

Results like these need to be treated with caution. They involve relatively small samples and it is far from clear whether your brain causes you to have a particular political outlook or vice versa – or some combination of both. Moreover, in these studies liberalism and conservatism are largely based on self-description, which introduces a fair amount of variability – especially as politically left and right are perhaps better thought of as a continuum than a binary choice.

Nevertheless, the amygdala finding dovetails nicely with Hibbing’s work on startle reflexes. Conservatives on average really do seem to respond to fear and threat differently, and to focus on what Hibbing calls the “aversive” in life, rather than the “appetitive”.

These experiments are themselves an extension of an older and long-standing body of research on personality differences between liberals and conservatives. Across a range of studies, liberals consistently rate higher on a trait called openness to experience. They are both ideologically liberal – comfortable with policy innovation and social and political change – and also personally liberal.

Conservatives, in contrast, tend to be less open and also consistently rate higher on conscientiousness, which means that they tend to prize orderliness and structure. Conscientious people are driven, competent, organised – and, on average, politically conservative.

Finally, there are a substantial number of genetic studies. Again and again, these show that identical twins (who share all of their DNA) tend to be far more politically similar to one another than fraternal twins (who share half of it). The studies suggest that 40 per cent or more of the variance in ideological views may ultimately be rooted in genes.

If all of this is true, it may reflect something we’ve always sort of known, but never really been willing to admit: liberals and conservatives are different sorts of people. Rational thinking about politics is not irrelevant, but seems to be less important than we thought. And this raises some important questions about how the new science of politics could be received and used.

Hibbing is devoted to the idea that his work ought to be used to promote greater political tolerance. “The notion that our opponents are not simply obstinate or uninformed but have this way of experiencing the world that we don’t understand could be useful,” he says.

As far as toleration goes, the research certainly suggests that liberals and conservatives alike have strengths and weaknesses, and ought to fare better in some situations than others. Liberals are better at handling nuance, uncertainty and flexibility, while conservatives do better with leadership, duty and loyalty. There are good things about both ideologies.

The problem with the tolerance approach, though, is that it requires the acceptance of contentious new science on both sides. How do we know that’s going to occur? What’s to say conservatives won’t reject the growing body of science on our political differences – as is their wont – and defensively assume that this is all just a way of putting them down and calling them inferior even though it isn’t? In that case, the research could prove divisive, not helpful.

Frankly, in light of the polarisation of everything else in the US, it’s hard not to fear that outcome.