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When Beliefs and Facts Collide
schnell writes A New York Times article discusses a recent Yale study that shows that contrary to popular belief, increased scientific literacy does not correspond to increased belief in accepted scientific findings when it contradicts their religious or political views. The article notes that this is true across the political/religious spectrum and "factual and scientific evidence is often ineffective at reducing misperceptions and can even backfire on issues like weapons of mass destruction, health care reform and vaccines." So what is to be done? The article suggests that "we need to try to break the association between identity and factual beliefs on high-profile issues – for instance, by making clear that you can believe in human-induced climate change and still be a conservative Republican."
Humans aren't motivated by logic. Instead, they use logic as a tool to satisfy their emotional needs. No tool suits every problem.
Those damb religio-political dogmatists keep blocking publication of my papers on the theory of anturgic phrogneal boropathy.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"for instance, by making clear that you can believe in human-induced climate change and still be a conservative Republican."
Unsurprisingly, TFA/NYT chose that polarity as an exemplar instead of its opposite.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/05/28/0332258/belief-in-evolution-doesnt-measure-science-literacy?sdsrc=popbyskid
It's not like it was a buried Slashdot post. It had >500 comments to it and has appeared for over a month in the "Stories you Might Like". How about reading Slashdot once in a while, Slashdot editors?
for instance, by making clear that you can believe in human-induced climate change and still be a conservative Republican
How about making it clear that people have a wide variety of views on things like GWT, and its not simply true believers vs deniers. How about making it clear that not all Democrats believe in gun control.
Climate science recognised El Nino/La Nina before the current bunch of "fundamentalists" got popular by blaming the 1906 San Francisco earthquake on Gods will instead of geology. The latest batch of science denialism is just the latest recruiting drive for that bunch of merchants in the temple - all you have to do is deny reality and fill the collection box with cash and a dumbed down cardboard God of an unchanging world will make it all better.
I'll believe in CAGW when the scientists quit fudging the numbers and it still shows it...
They aren't "fudging" numbers. This is climate data, it's HARD to deal with. You're talking about millions, even billions of measurements over periods of centuries. There are more moving parts to this data than you can possible conceive of. And companies that make profits off of fossil fuels have armies of people scouring their data for the tiniest errors. Surprise surprise they find some on occasion.
when they can explain historical data that contradicts the theory...
It doesn't. It's dead on.
and when they can explain why the warming has stopped for the last couple of decades.
It hasn't, at all.
You are confusing local and short term temperature variations with a global, long term problem. People working for... well... whomever doesn't want you to believe in climate change, pick and chose data from a specific time, or location, or both... and show a cooling period in that specific area or at a specific time and then claim "Global warming is reverse! It's all lies" but this isn't about that specific area or time. This is about then GLOBAL AVERAGE temperature of the entire planet. That is, without a doubt, increasing. It's very slow, but it's like compound interest. It just keeps growing and growing, melting ice, heating bogs, and compounding the issue further. Temperatures in North Dakota falling for the past 10yrs is not relevant. The climate is a very, very, complicated machine.
As it is, he fudging is so blatant that "climate science" is nothing of the sort...it's a Trojan horse for the same lod tired leftist government takeoff of economies. That trick never works.
Plenty of scientists are republicans or even further right. Yet, less than 10 (that's ten0 out of hundreds of thousands, disagree with the simple finding that humans are altering the average global temperature of the planet. A global conspiracy to make your gas more expensive could never have that kind of influence. This is a consensus of unquestionable proportions. Either all the wind turbine makers and solar panel manufacturers have a hell of a lot more money than we thought and are using it to bribe the scientific community on a scale unprecedented in human history, or we really do have a problem.
I think that if there's one thing everyone could agree on, dumping crap into our atmosphere is a bad thing. We can fix it, and become a world leader in cheap power or we can sit back and hope all our scientists are lying to us. I, personally, am going with the former. And no, I'm not a democrat or a leftist.
" for instance, by making clear that you can believe in human-induced climate change and still be a conservative Republican."
But you can't. The Republicans won't have you.
Ignorance is a choice, just like belief. The real problem is to get people to reject ignorance. The difficulty in that is that ignorance, like belief, is easy. Rejecting ignorance requires effort. That is why there are so many people who choose ignorance and belief over reason and fact.
For many, being identified as a member of a specific group, even if that group wants you to believe stupid things, is more important than objective reality. They must get something from that group membership that outweighs what they would get from reality. Reality CAN be a bitch.
That puts you on NSA watchlist.
You must be an American if you equate liberal with socialist. In Europe, they tend to be the very opposite of each other.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Increased scientific literacy increases sceptism toward those who claim to be the standard bearers of truth. "The more I learn the more I learn how little I know." Some old smart dude said something like this once.
"Yet, less than 10 (that's ten out of hundreds of thousands, disagree with the simple finding that humans are altering the average global temperature of the planet"
I'm sorry, until reading this point, I thought you were being serious.
Really?
The big mistake the AGW people made was letting politicians control the discussion.
They allowed some politicians to use it as a weapon against other politicians which turned the issue into a partisan weapon.
Around the time you saw Al Gore pushing an inconvient truth, that was when the AGW movement shifted from being about science to being a weapon.
Seriously... Al Gore has personally done more damage to the AGW cause then anyone else in the world.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
From your point of view, that's quite possible. After all, for the Commies, everyone in the West was a fascist imperialist.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
True enough, pace Levitt & Dubner.
It would be a brave anthropologist who tried to figure out what traits were more likely to survive the 'threat' of abortion.
Our entire economic and political systems the world over are faith based. It is imperative that things remain as they are, or there will be chaos :-/
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
What...like they would supposedly go and tell them to vote for someone else?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
In Europe the socialists can identify and admit their intentions with substantially less backlash Anna ostracization than in America. Here, they mostly must hide their intentions within liberalism.
Mostly.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I've noticed that every time somewhere in the US or Europe experiences a bit of cold weather for the season, comments sections all around the internet are filled with people proclaiming this proves climate change is a fraud.
Yes, it cant be that the science disagrees with your philosophy.
You can't have the debate on honest grounds where we debate if a human fetus has rights -- instead you just want to define, completely unscientifically, that a human fetus isnt human.
Is it that you are afraid that you don't have much of an argument if we just talk about if a particular set of humans should have rights?
"His name was James Damore."
Interesting belief you have there.
I believe that belief is inherent to the human mind, necessary for operation in the world. I see belief in two general categories: rigid and fluid. When rigid, a belief is maintained even in the face of evidence to its contrary. When fluid, a belief can change in nuance and substance based on life experience and information.
We all have beliefs and operate from biases that do not agree with others. I see this as natural and as it should be. Each person is their own subjective lens on reality, and no one person nor committee can determine what objective reality ultimately is. Once we think we have it, something comes along and blows away our vaunted conceptions. Life will never fully give away its secrets, we will always be left guessing. To me that's the beauty of the mystery. What we each make of it is our own journey, and we should not try too hard to fit our personal beliefs to any consensus.
"Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff."
- Deep Thought
Being religious and "accepting science" is just drawing the boundaries in a different place. There is still a science no-go zone so they really do not accept science they just define the boundaries differently.
How about on all beliefs should be rejected and replaced with reality. A belief system that contradicts with the world we live in should be diagnosed as a phsycological disorder.
Psychosis is a loss of contact with reality that usually includes: False beliefs about what is taking place or who one is (delusions) ; Seeing or hearing things that aren't there (hallucinations).
Why does society accept the mass relgious psychosis yet reject other forms?
Science is about changing our "belief" system to match what we know about the world we live in. Religion is about denying the world we live in for a belief system that is a mental fugue.
"Liberals" in Europe are classical liberals who would be labeled libertarians in the US. This is classical definition of liberalism. These people are social liberals and econonomic liberals (free market). "Liberals" in the US are social liberals in the classical sense who generally have a lot of economic positions close to democratic socialists, such that the right wing conflates "liberalism" with socialism.
God made humans rational beings.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Doomsought wrote: "Are you Atheist? If so, you still have a religious belief."
This a a tired and specious argument. Not believing in something for which there is no evidence is not a religion.
But, let's put your hypothesis to a test. Do you believe in Santa Claus? No? Ok, you are an asanta-clausist and practice the religion of asanta-clausism. Do you believe in leprechauns? No? OK, you are an aleprechaunsist practicing the religion of aleprechaunsism. Do you believe the souls of the dead hang around and haunt houses? No? You're nothing but a aghostist worshiping at the alter of aghostism. Get it? Atheists simply don't believe in god the same way you don't believe in Santa Claus. That doesn't make it a religion.
Oh and you obviously don't understand science either. The scientific method does not rely on on the "assumption of fallibility". Where the hell did you get that from? Maybe you mean falsifiability? Falsifiability is a very different concept and is key to the scientific method. Humans are fallible. Scientists know this which why experiments must be repeatable and statistical analysis of data is required. But the scientific method doesn't "rely" on the "assumption of fallibility" in any way.
Curious about this:
...companies that make profits off of fossil fuels have armies of people scouring their data
I hear all sorts of stories but never see these sorts of accusations verified. Do you have evidence of armies?
It reminds me of the study that showed the Koches et cetera were spending billions on blogs and propaganda. Sounds reasonable. Until I realized there would have to be some newly rich people on the receiving end of all this dough. I haven't seen them. Got data?
I18N == Intergalacticization
Whoever it was who said it was an idiot who does/did not understand the difference between science and religion.
And science HAS fulfilled many of its promises of health and life (vaccines, for example) and continues to do so every day with new research.
"... we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations"
because those are the only explanations of real-world phenomena that don't require the act of a supernatural force for which there is ZERO material evidence.
Theists do not base their beliefs on facts. They base their beliefs on "unsubstantiated just-so stories".
Non theists believe in a system of reason (based on material fact) that has produced EVERY advancement in the human race's standard of living. Science works and nothing else comes close.
You exaggerate here: "readily observable and incontrovertible". The study of abstracts of assorted scientific papers was done very subjectively. Some authors said they were counted as on one side when they were aren't on any side. And so on.
That said, it's clearly a majority of climate science.
Climate science finds itself in the unusual position of making quantitative predictions of chaotic systems based on numerical digital simulations, which in turn are based on limited data. Compare that to, oh say, evolutionary biologists, who spent a 100 years proving their theories about the past were correct, but don't dare try to predict the future course of evolution.
I18N == Intergalacticization
They aren't "fudging" numbers. This is climate data, it's HARD to deal with. You're talking about millions, even billions of measurements over periods of centuries. There are more moving parts to this data than you can possible conceive of.
Indeed, and this is a problem when science tangles up with politics. Here we ware saying it's hard to deal with and requires quite a lot of corrections and processing, while the left of politics runs a coercive campaign that you should be called a pariah if you are not convinced by our data and therefore their policies. In science, our credibility is dragged under far more by agreeing politicians trying to co-opt us than by political opponents disagreeing with us. (Disagreement is part of the process; but being dragged into a sharp tongued campaign about why you must vote for higher taxes on big business or otherwise you're a horrible person is not a part of science, and makes us look like a bunch of corrupt fudgers trying to raise our grant funding by cosying up to the left). To a great deal of the public, environmental movement is not the rebel alliance, but Moff Tarkin trying to tighten his grip.
And companies that make profits off of fossil fuels have armies of people scouring their data for the tiniest errors. Surprise surprise they find some on occasion.
This is essentially irrelevant. I work in a less controversial discipline, but if someone finds a flaw in one of my papers, "but you were paid by someone to look for it" would not remove the flaw or change how I should address it. Fossil fuel companies are paying people to scour science for errors -- excellent, good on them, it will help us improve the quality of our publications. So far as the public discussion is concerned, however, it is not the fossil fuel companies whose reputations are in questioned (everyone already thinks Big Oil is a bunch of rotters) so pointing accusing fingers at them does us much more harm than good.
when they can explain historical data that contradicts the theory...
It doesn't. It's dead on.
That's a rhetorical dodge. The models are based on historical data, and are a moving target, so just stating that the historical data concurs with our latest models is hardly surprising. The question, which is not answered so simplistically, is whether our computer models are overfitted or properly predictive. (Hopefully the latter, but we seem never to make that clear in these sorts of discussions.)
As it is, he fudging is so blatant that "climate science" is nothing of the sort...it's a Trojan horse for the same lod tired leftist government takeoff of economies. That trick never works.
Plenty of scientists are republicans or even further right. Yet, less than 10 (that's ten0 out of hundreds of thousands, disagree with the simple finding that humans are altering the average global temperature of the planet.
You're misreporting that rather badly. A small proportion of climate scientists disagree, but plenty of other scientists do. Vastly more than 10 (no I'm not going to "out" my colleagues, but yes I do personally know plenty). It's very important not to misrepresent the views of the field as being the views of everyone in every other field too. Otherwise it seems like we're dishonestly trying to gloss over the selection factor (if you've taken up a career in that part of science over any other, you probably think it's important).
Either all the wind turbine makers and solar panel manufacturers have a hell of a lot more money than we thought and are using it to bribe the scientific community on a scale unprecedented in human history, or we really do have a problem.
The problem we have, particularly as scientists, is that the political left has tried to co-opt us. Academics are naturally a little left-leaning (more of the free marketeers among
for instance, by making clear that you can believe in human-induced climate change and still be a conservative Republican."
When it comes to politicians, the question is not what they believe, but what they say they believe. Politicians are not as dumb as they pretend to be, and would stop pretending the day we start treating continuous incompetence the same as malice.
For example, there already are lots of Republican politicians who believe in global warming -- they just know better than to admit it. It would weaken their position, both during elections and during negotiations (since they intend to vote against any spending on curbing CO2). For what benefit? Honesty? They gave that up when they decided to win elections.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Yep. The European Liberals actually stand for liberty. The American users of the name are the opposite — their first solution to any problem is to create a government agency responsible for solving it, as well as simply banning the use of anything potentially dangerous — and thus the proper name for them is Illiberal.
You're right: Liberalism in Europe
"In general, liberalism in Europe is a political movement that supports a broad tradition of individual liberties and constitutionally-limited and democratically accountable government. This usually encompasses the belief that government should act to alleviate poverty and other social problems, but not through radical changes to the structure of society."
A "liberal" in Europe wants smaller govt like conservatives do in America, while liberals in America want a bigger govt that has more control and attempts to eliminate poverty by equalizing income like a socialist would, like doubling minimum wage to the same wage most college graduates receive.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
The study makes a fallacious conclusion. It ignores the fact that people with scientific training are trained to be skeptics. Once you can find the holes in "proven research" and realize that expressions like "97% of all climate scientists" are bullshit because they do not define who climate scientists actually are- it is easy to dismiss many scientific conclusions and continue to hold beliefs that one knows are simply beliefs and not facts. As an example, a large number of scientists until very recently believed that oil and gas production in the United States had passed its peak production and the science supported that conclusion. At the same time a smaller number of skeptical scientists who were willing to accept a new geologic paradigm regarding oil and gas expulsion were working hard to find the oil that has now put the US in the top ranking spot for world oil production. Science is often wrong and those who change scientific belief are generally in the minority at the beginning of the change. Good scientists know that. Politicians, and those who are more inclined to spread their own agenda, either don't understand that, or ignore it. Science thrives on falsification of the proven. If there is a generally accepted norm that I do not agree with....it does not mean my political or religious bias is the reason.....it simply means that I do not consider the evidence conclusive based on my scientific knowledge and experience. If that happens to mean I agree with Republicans or Democrats, that is only a coincidence. Correlation is not causation.
Then maybe it isn't unreasonable to assert that all the "PSI" misinformation from Lord Monckton, Dr. Salby, Prof. Humlum, and John O'Sullivan is... misinformation. If you notice someone repeating those claims, please consider pointing out that they're ignoring simple accounting, decreasing oxygen, calculus, the seasons, increasing CO2 in the oceans, isotope ratios, etc.