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."

Comments

Not surprising.

[Anonymous Coward]

Humans aren't motivated by logic. Instead, they use logic as a tool to satisfy their emotional needs. No tool suits every problem.

Re:Not surprising.

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing that we all need to realize is that ALL of us have this same issue, not just the people who disagree with you.

Re:Not surprising.

[ShanghaiBill]

But I know it's been pushed on the public about as unscientifically as Eugenics and Phrenology.

Whoa! Phrenology has no scientific basis, but Eugenics certainly does. If you take all the people with traits you don't like, and murder them, you will have fewer of those traits in the next generation. That is a scientific fact. Just because you don't like the political act of mass murder, doesn't make it scientifically invalid.

Re:Not surprising.

[TubeSteak]

Do you have a case study that you can reference which substantiates this claim?

I'm not sure why you need a case study to support research that was originally done almost 150 years ago,
but If you'll accept "not allowing the undesirables to breed" as a proxy for "murder them,"
here's a more recent long term study: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox

Or you could just read about Mendel's original research with pea plants and honey bees.

Re:Not surprising.

[Jawnn]

"97 percent of climate scientists believe human activities are causing global warming."

That's not a scientific statement, it's a political one.

Actually, it is neither. It just is. As in "just is" a fact, readily observable and incontrovertible. Now, the suggestion that it is something else is, itself, a highly "political" statement clearly aimed at diminishing the weight of the fact that an overwhelming majority of those best equipped to assess the data have arrived at the same conclusion. No, the matter is not "settled". No scientist worthy of the title would even suggest as much, but the constantly repeated meme that we should thus do nothing until it is "settled" is simply insane.

Re:Not surprising.

[MightyMartian]

True, but some of us are willing to accept that the universe doesn't give a fuck about ideology.

When AGW first became a big issue in the 1990s I was talking against it as a big scam on Usenet; particularity my old haunt talk.origins. it was when one of the regulars, a biologist (why any scientist would waste his time debating Creationists I'll never understand), pointed out to me that the theory was reasonably well supported, there were a boatload of papers and that science isn't the product of emotional need, and I finally accepted that AGW, even if it suggested things that I didn't like, was legitimate science.

Re:Not surprising.

[ultranova]

One thing that we all need to realize is that ALL of us have this same issue, not just the people who disagree with you.

The problem is that admitting it puts you at a significant disadvantage at debates. If you can no longer summon the (self-)righteous fury your opponent can, not only are you more likely to give in from sheer exhaustion, but people viewing the debate are likely to consider your opponent as dominant and confuse that as being right. This, in turn, can have unfortunate consequences if the topic is something actually important, rather than just a means to establishing pack hierarchy.

I don't know if it's possible to tame your inner alpha male to the point where you can let it handle poo-flinging contests with other monkeys while still keeping your human intelligence in control of what you believe in or do, but if it is we'd better learn how fast, because we're running out of time. Or perhaps the problem is precisely the idea that it needs to be "tamed", rather than recruited as a member of the internal team. Perhaps we should simply accept that humans tend to establish pecking order, and practice how to do so without slipping into abuse or idiocy.

Then again, that would require admitting that people who think mainly in terms of pack hierarchy and territory aren't necessarily any less intelligent than people who think mainly in terms of logic and science, they just interpret the same message through a different lens. And that might be an unbearable blow to quite a few egos.

Re:Not surprising.

[ColdWetDog]

Humans aren't a rational animal. They are a rationalizing animal.
-- Heinlein.

Re:Not surprising.

[AthanasiusKircher]

Whoa! Phrenology has no scientific basis, but Eugenics certainly does. If you take all the people with traits you don't like, and murder them, you will have fewer of those traits in the next generation.

While it is certainly true that selective breeding is a scientific fact, almost all historical eugenicist movements have NOT been based on scientifically verified traits. Take some time and read about the nonsense criteria that eugenics people would use -- measuring ear size or facial characteristics to determine "degenerate" people more likely to be stupid or commit crimes.

You seem to think that "eugenics" is just a synonym for "selective breeding" or something. While the proponents of eugenics often claim that, in fact their criteria for selection were generally based on bogus "science" (even phrenology) and generally tend to be motivated more by politics or class distinctions than science.

So, no, actual eugenics as practiced does NOT have a scientific basis, even if the general principle might theoretically work.

quelle surprise

[fche]

"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.

Re:CAGW is a trojan horse

[Charliemopps]

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.

There's belief, there's facts and there's politics

[mark_reh]

" 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.
 

Re:It's Okay

[Opportunist]

You must be an American if you equate liberal with socialist. In Europe, they tend to be the very opposite of each other.

Re:What if?

[calstraycat]

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.