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.

Comments

Makes sense.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Makes sense.

[jellomizer]

You are implying that ones political stance is an indicator of their intelligence?

There is a huge group of people who's opinion is based on what the party says, I am a loyal Democrat/Republican so my stance will match what they say. There is no attention of the detail of the message nor any attempt to challenge the notion brought up. So the Democrats say Global Warming is a problem, people will blindly follow. If the Democrats say GMO foods are bad, they will blindly follow. Intelligence isn't the issue, it is just the current polarized nature of the two party system which will normally make one side right and the other wrong (assuming one side is right)

Now the Democrats vs Government view on funding. Democrats prefer more of a blanket funding in scientists, So Scientists who are funded via the Democrats policies have invested interests in that party, so they are making a living off of researching climate science due to Democrats funding, so they will be friendly to that party, and in turn that party will listen to their studies. The Republicans will more likely fund Military or Energy science. Where there is less science and more engineering. Thus you will find a lot more Right winged engineers. As their main means of living is due to Republican policy. So the Republicans will more likely push ideas of a new Military Technology or Energy Extraction technology.

It is interesting on how your political views change depending on where you are living and who is controlling your purse strings.
Now they are crazies on both sides. You got the Leftist hippie type who wants to change everything to match their utopian vision where everyone is all happy because they follow one idea of a perfect life. Then you got the Far Right densest who thinks we should go back to the "Leave it to Beaver" life style, that he fondly remembers as a child (too young to realize the pressures of the world). These guys can often get into the House or Representatives thus get enough media attention to direct "The I have to do what the party says" people.

   

Re:Makes sense.

[jonnyj]

You are implying that ones political stance is an indicator of their intelligence?

That is the clear intention of the article summary, because it highlights only those issues where Democrats are more likely to agree with scientists than Republicans. A more honest summary would have also brought attention to the subjects where Democrats differ from scientists: nuclear power, pesticide use in foods and animal research, for example.

Re:Makes sense.

[Sique]

Even with a lot of questions surrounding the IQ, the generally understanding of intelligence and the importance of it, one fact is quite undisputed:

If controlled for social factors, IQ is by far the best prediction of your future educational performance. So the chance of becoming a scientist is directly correlated to your IQ.

The original IQ test, as invented by Alfred Binet, was created to determine in what class to put children who started school. In 1882, France introduced compulsory education, but many children in France had no or questionable birth certificates, and when they were about to start school, it was not clear what their real age was and which class would be suitable for them. And then there were the children who required special care, and until the beginning of the 20th century, it was up to the subjective judgement of the respective teachers to determine which children should get it. Thus Alfred Binet and Théodore Simon developed a test to more objectively assess the educational potential of a child, the Binet-Simon-Test, which was to calculate something called the "intelligence age" of a child, and which was used as a criterion in what class to put a child.

It should thus be expected that the IQ as measured by the Binet-Simon-test (and the later development Stanford-Binet-test and all subsequent IQ tests) is quite predictive for your educational career, because that's what they were invented for.

Correction

[PvtVoid]

The correct figures for the Global Warming question are: AAAS members 87%, conservatives 29%, liberals 76%.

One of these is not like the others.

[Iamthecheese]

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.

Re:One of these is not like the others.

[Translation Error]

Please don't call it anthropomorphic global warming. It doesn't like it when you do that. I believe the term you were looking for is anthropogenic.

Alarming Freedom

[OhPlz]

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?

Re:Alarming Freedom

[Ionized]

because the topics mentioned aren't opinions, they are facts - there is no room for someone to have an opinion on whether "the Earth is getting warmer mostly due to human activity" for instance. Either it is, or it isn't, and facts overwhelmingly point to yes. By denying those facts we are totally fucking ourselves in the ass, pardon my french.

Re:Alarming Freedom

[praxis]

They are free to believe what they want, but they are not free to consider their beliefs as factual as actual facts.

Biased summary

[tomhath]

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).

Re:Acronym AAAS means what?

[sexconker]

Assholes as a Service

Re:Chicken Little

[MobyDisk]

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.

Re:Research studies are for cows.

[sycodon]

Strange, but I'm finding I agree with this.

Re:Chicken Little

[Geoffrey.landis]

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."