The recent measles outbreak has highlighted the emerging trend of picking and choosing what you want to believe or what you trust. In teaching the scientific method, one of the first tenets that is taught is skepticism and questioning everything, but it looks like we've taken that a little too far. I first came to the thought of buffet attitudes through my experience with craft beer. In my view, the rise of craft beer (along with unique tastes in other aspects of life, like food, music, etc) is closely linked to our teachings to young children in the late 80s and early 90s, that everyone is special (thanks Barney and Southpark!). Politicians are somewhat dumbfounded by millennial behavior as their beliefs appear to be more liberal (particularly in social issues), yet are more likely to call themselves politically independent. Likewise, millennials are less likely to be religiously affiliated than previous generations (in some areas of religion this has previously been termed Cafeteria Christianity). Common across these trends is the "buffet attitudes" where younger adults are picking and choosing what they want and what they like rather than buying into beliefs or attitudes wholesale. In terms of cognitive biases, "buffet attitudes" may be called cherry picking, figuratively referring to selectively choosing points that affirm their beliefs and refute beliefs they don't hold while ignoring those that don't support their beliefs.
However, contrary to this trend toward special "snowflakness" is the pull towards wanting to be categorized in as part of a group. As Invisibilia recently discussed, when given a chance we'll often jump into one category or another and once in that category fiercely defend it (see the The Robbers Cave; Sherif, 1954; 1961 for some of my favorite social psychology experiments on group affiliation). A recent study in PLoS found that when your social identity (the group you feel you belong to) is threatened by scientific findings, you may come to devalue the findings. More broadly this speaks to a trend in science denialism (here and here).
This begs the question, how do we as scientists move to educate the general public on decisive issues? Putting out research in pay-walled journals doesn't seem to work and neither does trying to communicate that work through traditional public outlets such as radio, magazine or newspapers. Individual blogs, like this one, may have a readership that can be counted on one hand and all of these previously mentioned outlets assume that by simply putting information out there, the public will be able to parse it. We already know from the anti-vaccine movement that just putting research out there won't work (especially when one study that supports a particular position is completely fabricated). Science is built on multiple investigations from many different perspectives, theories and motivations and with the evidence summing to provide evidence that certain ideas are incorrect and other ideas are not incorrect as of yet. Because of the sea of publications each year, it is almost impossible to wade through the evidence and form an informed conclusion about almost any issue, especially when the most accessible avenues for researching scientific issues does so through false equivalencies and "controversies." It seems like many of the problems with science communication stem from issues with how the methods of science is taught. Humans carry out science and humans are messy creatures with their own thoughts, beliefs, wishes, desires and needs. We present science as this noble and true venture that is without influence or problems instead of the complex and sometimes chaotic enterprise that it is.
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