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Updated: Jan 16, 2026

Maintenance of a Drosophila melanogaster Population Cage
Published on: March 15, 2016
Meaning maintenance drives science rejection
Natalia Zarzeczna1, Travis Proulx2
1University of Essex, United Kingdom.
Abstract:
Currently, ideologically-motivated discourses are actively undermining perceived value of science, with evidence-based policy-making being increasingly replaced with antiscience agendas shaped by political, spiritual, or conspiratorial ideologies. We propose that motivated science rejection is driven by compensatory mechanisms serving to maintain a coherent understanding of reality when this understanding conflicts with science. Drawing on the meaning maintenance model and the assumption of fluid compensation-any belief framework can be replaced with another to restore meaning-we argue that when science violates meaning, it is rejected in favour of an alternative framework of ideological beliefs, regardless of their epistemic validity. Interventions that align science with meaning-maintenance needs to minimise compensatory responses may prove promising in reducing science rejection.
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