The Motivated Rejection of Science

Layzej writes "New research (PDF) to be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science has found that those who subscribed to one or more conspiracy theories or who strongly supported a free market economy were more likely to reject the findings from climate science as well as other sciences. The researchers, led by UWA School of Psychology Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, found that free-market ideology was an overwhelmingly strong determinant of the rejection of climate science. It also predicted the rejection of the link between tobacco and lung cancer and between HIV and AIDS. Conspiratorial thinking was a lesser but still significant determinant of the rejection of all scientific propositions examined, from climate to lung cancer. Curiously, public response to the paper has provided a perfect real-life illustration of the very cognitive processes at the center of the research."

Comments

Re:Suprising how?

[MightyMartian]

Bullshit. You doubt AGW because it means having to actually do something that costs money.

Re:Suprising how?

[blind biker]

That's strange; I thought it was Timothy Ray Brown the only man to be officially declared cured from AIDS. Apparently, he was cured 3 years ago as a result of a bone marrow transplant (to cure leukemia) from a donor with a rare genetic mutation that makes him/her immune to HIV. Brown was declared cured last July.

A huge conspiracy [Re:Suprising how?]

[Geoffrey.landis]

We doubt AGW because we have been given very solid fact based reasons to.

Let's see: nineteen different institutions on four continents are running global circulation models ("climate models") that show the relationship between human-generated carbon dioxide and temperature. They must all be conspiring to cover up the truth, right? And also to cover up some error in the original 1967 Manabe and Wetherald calculation, the prediction of which fits the data taken over the last fifty years. I know of five different groups doing global temperature measurements, using everything from ship-based measurements to balloons to satellites. They're all in cahoots too, I assume?

Yes, so far I'd say it does look like people-- you-- who reject the findings from climate science tend to also subscribe to conspiracy theories.

We see hacks like Mann protected from the consequences of his fraud with the 'Hockey Stick" and nay, even rewarded for it. Cleared from all wrongdoing by the same corrupt institution that turned a blind eye to Sandusky...

You mean, cleared from all wrongdoing by the eight corrupt institutions. You are aware that there have been eight different investigations of the alleged wrongdoings purportedly revealed by the stolen emails from the CRU at East Anglia, and that all of them said that there was no fraud? So your conspiracy includes the National Science Foundation and the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee.

Yep, you're indeed a data point confirming the study: people who reject the findings from climate science subscribe to conspiracy theories.