Slashdot Mirror

I also do find it interesting that the Tea Party has slightly better scientific understanding than the average non-Tea Party-er. But given more data from this link, it seems to me that non-Tea Party Republicans are the true scientific illiterate population (not only do they have to lower their own average, they have to also be low enough to drag down the positive contribution of the Tea Party members).

While Dan has certainly taken pains to show the many correlations between one subset and another, I think the most important one to consider is this:

Those who firmly believe that a "God" was involved in the universe/mankind, were less likely to score at the upper tier of scientific knowledge. Everyone else drew mixed results.

I also like this quote here:
Nevertheless, the subgroup of such students who did back away from two particular beliefs hostile to naturalistic evolution (that the “living world is controlled by a force greater than humans” and that “all events in nature occur as part of a predetermined master plan”) consisted of the students who scored the lowest in critical reasoning skills.

anti-science, you say?

The, a 'Independent' Journal Review is not terribly independent - Pretty Right wing actually, and the article cited has a *lot* of context missing. It's not as bad as some I've read - the basic thesis is true, but statistically neither the Conservatives, the Liberals, or the Tea Party itself are *meaningfully* correlated with better or worse understanding of Science - very slight negatives in the main body of Conservatives, very slight positives in Liberals and Tea Party members, but the correlations are miniscule. The researcher has some choice words to say regarding the attempt to make the Tea part look like hyper-encephalic geniuses here, including a bit of snark along the lines of "Hey Suddenly Eastern Ivy League Studies are completely trustworthy among Tea Party Conservatives - Who Knew!"

Original Post: Some data on education, religiosity, ideology, and science comprehension

His Update with a review of responses: Congratulations, tea party members: You are just as vulnerable to politically biased misinterpretation of science as everyone else! Is fixing this threat to our Republic part of your program?

Pug

The, a 'Independent' Journal Review is not terribly independent - Pretty Right wing actually, and the article cited has a *lot* of context missing. It's not as bad as some I've read - the basic thesis is true, but statistically neither the Conservatives, the Liberals, or the Tea Party itself are *meaningfully* correlated with better or worse understanding of Science - very slight negatives in the main body of Conservatives, very slight positives in Liberals and Tea Party members, but the correlations are miniscule. The researcher has some choice words to say regarding the attempt to make the Tea part look like hyper-encephalic geniuses here, including a bit of snark along the lines of "Hey Suddenly Eastern Ivy League Studies are completely trustworthy among Tea Party Conservatives - Who Knew!"

Original Post: Some data on education, religiosity, ideology, and science comprehension

His Update with a review of responses: Congratulations, tea party members: You are just as vulnerable to politically biased misinterpretation of science as everyone else! Is fixing this threat to our Republic part of your program?

Pug

Or more precisely, most people don't understand it.
The correlation coefficient (which goes from -1 to 1) was 0.05.

I.e. It's VERY CLOSE TO ZERO, meaning that correlation is NEGLIGIBLE.

In other words, when asked if there is ANY relation between science comprehension and considering oneself a "part of the Tea Party movement", the answer was - WE CAN'T FIND ANY.
Same goes for science comprehension and "liberal-conservative ideology and party self-identification" (i.e. science and political conservatism) - only that one is a negative 0.05.
Still comes out to bupkis though.

I wonder how would we measure correlation of this study to attention whoring?

Before more variables are added I want it explained what the study was showing.
Ie: people who leaned liberal are more scientific literate, however those self identifying as Tea Partiers were better versed in science. What the hell does that mean, they sound like the same thing but as stated it reads like it's discussing two different measurements.

So heading over to the actual blog (not the politico page, slashdot editors should learn how to follow links to the actual data instead of being a stupid aggregator).
http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2013/10/15/some-data-on-education-religiosity-ideology-and-science-comp.html
It seems BOTH groups are correlating slightly higher on the "science comprehension" scale.

Which shouldn't be too surprising once one realizes that not all conservatives are tea partiers. After all, the same thing goes for the slight correlation towards science comprension of liberals, given that you can easily find masses of scientifically illiterate liberals. The bar charts themselves are nicely gaussian and in no way show a marked difference between any pair of groups except for college-grad vs non-grad.

"So far it conforms to the cultural expectations."

You mean it conforms to the stereotype promoted by liberals. Not the same thing.

"So when the people who are "conservative" but not "tea party" are included with the people who are "liberal" then that group scores worse than the group that is "tea party"."

No. If you look at his actual comments, you will see that he found no significant difference in Cognitive Reflection Test scores between liberals and conservatives. He DID find a significantly higher score in those who identify with the Tea Party.

So get off your liberal high horse. I have found this smug attitude about IQ on the part of liberals to be [1] not supported by the actual data (see the link above for yet another bit of evidence), [2] unjustified, in my personal experience, and [3] old, tiresome, and offensive.

"Cultural Cognition of Scientific Consensus"

ABSTRACT:

People tend not to listen to your message if they view it as threatening to their livelihood, their community, or their ego.

--
Toro

There seems to be a high noise to signal ratio in their results! Makes me very pleased I don't have to deal with soft sciences..

We conducted a study of the nanotechnology risk- benefit perceptions of a diverse sample of 1,600 americans. The subjects’ worldviews had been previously measured using scales developed for the study of the cultural cognition of risk (Kahan, Slovic, Braman, Gastil & Mertz 2007; Kahan et al. in press). Those scales characterize individuals’ values along two dimensions: “hierarchy-egali- tarianism,” which measures how much subject’s value equality versus clearly delineated forms of social authority; and “individualism-communi- tarianism,” which measures how much they value individual interests versus collective ones.

They framed the questions in what looked like a newspaper article, which I thought was pretty ingenious. The headlines were: "Scientists Call for More Research on Nanotechnology Consumer Goods", "Scientists Call for More Research on Use of Nanotechnology in Government Regulation of Air Pollution", "Scientists Call for More Research on Market Potential of Nanotechnology for Cleaning Environment", and "Scientists Call for More Research on Potential Use of Nanotechnology to Fight Enemies at Home and Abroad"

Then there's a little inset containing the exact same information about Nanotechnology, and the outcomes based on their profiles remained accurate. This is sort of confirmation on the importance of framing questions to get the desired response, but I wouldn't call it a crap study. It shows that we are still a long way from the enlightenment dream of basing our reasoning on hard facts instead of bias and anecdotes. And you can bet your ass that the marketing companies that run the country are all too glad of this fact.

http://www.culturalcognition.net/storage/nano_090225_research_brief_kahan_nl1.pdf