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Pew Survey Documents Gaps Between Public and Scientists
PvtVoid writes: A new Pew Research Study documents an alarming gap between public perception of scientific issues and the opinions of the scientists themselves, as measured by a poll of AAAS scientists. Even worse, the gap is partisan, with clear differences between Republicans and Democrats, and between conservatives and liberals. For example, while 98% of AAAS members agree with the statement that "Human beings and other living things have evolved over time", only 21% of conservatives agree, compared with 54% of liberals. Global warming, similarly, shows an ideological gap: 98% of AAAS scientists agreed with the statement that "the Earth is getting warmer mostly due to human activity", compared with 21% of conservatives and 54% of liberals. Encouragingly, almost everybody thinks childhood vaccines should be required (86% of AAAS members, 65% of conservatives, and 74% of liberals.) Go here for an interactive view of the data.
In order to succeed as a scientist, one must be of above-average intelligence.
The opinions of above-average people, on issues that require above-average intelligence to really understand, will naturally be at variance with the opinions of merely average and below-average people.
I am sure there are plenty of average people who would disagree with me on this, however.
The correct figures for the Global Warming question are: AAAS members 87%, conservatives 29%, liberals 76%.
A segment of the population has views that are different from the average of the entire population.
Do the same thing with investment bankers and you'll see lots of gaps as well.
Do it with politicians versus everyone else... gaps.
Do it with police officers versus everyone... gaps.
Look at our little community here on slashdot. Are our views analogous to the general population? Nope. Lots of gaps.
So... I don't quite get the point of the survey. There have always been gaps between scientists and the general public and always will be just as there are gaps between any sub group and the whole and ALWAYS will be.
Meaningless.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
The question of anthropomorphic global warming and evolution can be studied and understood on a factual basis as can whether vaccines help. Whether vaccines should be required is not a question for science to answer. The summary conflates matters of fact and matters of judgement.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Isn't that kind of the point of living in a free country? We're all entitled to our own beliefs. Why is it "alarming" or "even worse" that one group doesn't agree with another on a particular topic?
Aside from pointing out the glaringly obvious (people who identify themselves as Conservative gave responses consistent with what you would expect from people who identify themselves as conservative, same for LIberals), /. the summary ignores far more interesting points.
1) There is a much smaller difference between Republicans and Democrats than there is between Conservatives and Liberals, e.g. the Evolution question goes from 21% versus 54% (Ideology) to 57% versus 72% (Party Id).
2) Several of the questions show a fairly small difference between Republicans and Democrats (pesticides, animal research, world population, vaccines, manned space programs, bioengineered fuel, and space station).
Assholes as a Service
Take, for example, Global Cooling back in the 1970's. That was refuted with Global Warming in the 2000's
It was refuted in the 1970s, not the 200's. It was never a popular theory. No one should doubt Global Warming on the basis that the scientific community switched its stance. It never did: the majority of scientists were saying it was warming all along.
now it's simply Global Climate Change
It has been called "climate change" since before 1988, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed. Today, people act like the name is some kind of knee-jerk defense against the switch between "global cooling" and "global warming" when in fact, there was no name change at all, nor was there ever a switch.
What I see is people turning more and more away from learning, actual knowledge, and truth, and turning back towards religion
Where do you see that? Church membership per capita is way down in the US.
Also keep in mind the the Pew Trust is notoriously liberal, especially related to environmental issues. It isn't a surprise that their survey pushes their agenda. They're also known for sending their own employees (and having them claim to be from the general public) to attend congressional hearings so it appears there's more grass root support for their causes than there actually is.
Strange, but I'm finding I agree with this.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Take another look at the numbers for Republican vs. Democrat. They are much closer than the summary (mis)led you to believe by quoting the Conservative vs. Liberal numbers.
Also notice the subtle wording of the AGW question: "The earth is getting warmer mostly because of human activity". The word "mostly" is clearly there to bias the answers. They didn't ask "Is the earth getting warmer?", or "Is human activity contributing to the earth getting warmer?"
It's hard to trust anyone who's work is disseminated by the government or media today.
That's an assertion that's hard to challenge in the libertarian atmosphere of slashdot.
Research and reports are spun mercilessly for the gain of whoever needs it.
Indeed, it's always wise to track down the actual original data, and actually look at the data and see what we know, and how well we know it, rather than to trust the media interpretations.
It may not be scientist's fault but when you hear something like "the sky is falling" and then hear it refuted over and over, one starts to take things with a grain of salt.
The media does like to run doom and destruction stories-- they are more of a story than talking about things like "slow increase in temperature over a time scale of decades."
Take, for example, Global Cooling back in the 1970's.
OK, let's take it for an example. There was never a scientific consensus about global cooling in the 1970s. The American Meteorological Society did a review, trying to look for the origin of that. http://journals.ametsoc.org/do... They summarize: "There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age. Indeed, the possibility of anthropogenic warming dominated the peer-reviewed literature even then.
That was refuted with Global Warming in the 2000's
It was not really "refuted" per se, since it was never a scientific consensus in the first place.
and now it's simply Global Climate Change which seems to be a catch-all.
"Global Climate Change" was the term coined by the (first) Bush administration.
I don't deny GCC but I certainly want to see the data.
Excellent! That's the difference between deniers and skeptics: deniers will make any possible excuse to avoid looking at data. As it turns out, there are literally terabytes of data.
I will suggest starting with the Working Group 1 report, The Physical Science Basis of Climate Change, which summarizes what is known and how we know it. I'm most familiar with the 4th report (www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/contents.html), from 2007, but you might want to go directly to the more recent update, the 5th: http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/...
From there, dive into the data from whichever source you prefer-- I'd suggest possibly the Berkeley Earth data, which does an interesting job of comparing alternative hypotheses against the temperature data: http://berkeleyearth.org/summa...
What's the old adage that Regan grabbed from the Russian's; "Trust but Verify" I think was it.
Excellent. Much better than the denier's motto: "Never trust, never verify, never look at the facts."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Assholes as a Service
Man, they're putting everything in the cloud these days!
not you, random internet guy.
Look at the nuke issue. Scientists want to continue building new nuke plants. Why? Because we KNOW that global warming is a REAL ISSUE that needs REAL SOLUTIONS.
However, Liberals, like conservatives, put their head in the ground and ignore the fact that new gen IV reactors can NOT have the issues that we seen in these gen II and gen III reactors.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Actually, science came about after the world was determined to be round, and science has always been against witchcraft.
It was conservative religious nut jobs that push concepts of flat earth and witchcraft.
Scientific method came about in 17th century.
But hey, do not let facts get in your conservative religious nut job approach.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I'm sure there was a time when 9 out of 10 scientists would have said the world is flat
The earth as a sphere has been known for something between 2400 years and 2600 years. Its size was calculated about 2250 years ago, with amazing accuracy for the time. The only major publication whose words could be twisted to reference a flat earth would be the New Testament in Revelations 7:1 (four corners of the earth).
The numbers above are from the IPCC (albeit from memory, correct some of they are wrong).
Correct in the last part: some of them are wrong.
The actual IPCC documents are here: http://www.ipcc.ch/publication...
An interesting graphic comparing various sources of climate change is here: http://www.bloomberg.com/graph...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
In other words, you don't know what you are talking about, but you heard this really neat meme, that, if it were true, would be a slam dunk for the opinion you hold. The problem of course is that the "98% of the scientific community" claim is not supported by any actual studies. The actual study said that 97% of papers on climatology published in peer reviewed journals supported anthropogenic global warming. The thing is that the study counted any paper on climatology which did not explicitly express the the position that anthropogenic global warming was NOT true as supporting the theory, even when the subject of the paper was not connected to that theory in any way.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The named people are repeating the consensus of the scientific community. You are repeating half-remembered nonsense. If your readings have not convinced you that AGW is a serious threat to humanity, then either you haven't read enough, you haven't understood what you've read, or both. You also haven't seen most of the world's glaciers evaporating, or the shrinking polar ice caps. Do you have any comprehension of what a cubic kilometer of ice is like? Even small glaciers are of a scale that dwarfs all human structure. You can go to places in Alaska where glacier overlooks were constructed, twenty or thirty years ago, and since then the glacier has retreated so far it is no longer visible.
We are observing global warming. It is very, very real. The theory behind it is somewhat complicated, but unshakable. If a higher partial pressure of CO2 does not cause warming, then everything we know about radiative heat transfer is wrong. And there's no need to take anyone's word on it: you can test the effect in your basement, with a modest amount of equipment.
But you don't test it. You don't read the theory, and you look past the observations. You speak of intellectual dishonesty and laziness from deep personal experience, no doubt.
The only significant group that doesn't approve of it are evangelical creationists and they're not numerous enough make that claim.
What is more the survey is conflating POLITICAL positions with scientific positions. What someone will "say" on a survey to show political affliation is not the same thing as "what I ACTUALLY believe".
The accuracy of these surveys is undermined by a long list of issues.
Sample selection. Sample size. Question phrasing. Whether people LIE to pollers... look election polls prior to the election. They very rarely match up with the actual election. Why is that?
Its very hard to get accurate polling on politically charged issues.
This is why amongst other things we have secret ballots. Why is that? Think about it. People would feel pressured to vote otherwise if they were being personally identified by anyone when they voted. And the pollster is doing that... even if only the person collecting the data sees it.
This is why people at the DMV ask people in person if they want to sign up for organ donations. The government has figured out that if you ask people at that moment they're more inclined to say yes. Where as if people just fill out a form and hand it in... they don't check that box as often.
Think about that.
This all biases the results.
On issues of climate change... there are so many different positions on that... whether you're generally pro or anti... there is a lot of nuance... in science and outside of it. To abstract it all to one question with a yes or no answer is an over simplification of what are complicated questions.
The questions being asked are also cherry picked to put progressives in the best possible light. There are quite a few issues progressives believe in that are not backed by science. We could shift the questions to those issues and they'd likely do poorly by the same standard.
The obvious intention of what is effectively an editorial poll is to put progressives in a good light.
I'd like to know who paid for this poll... it wouldn't surprise me if the poll were designed and paid for by a lobbying group. Pew conducted the poll... sure... but you can control the outcome if you control the methodology.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.