This study explodes a lefty talking point. What are your thoughts?
That the researcher doesn’t think this means anything and that you should try posting less misleading thread titles.
[QUOTE=Dan Kahan]
Next time I collect data, too, I won’t be surprised at all if the correlations between science comprehension and political ideology or identification with the Tea Party movement disappear or flip their signs. These effects are trivially small, & if I sample 2000+ people it’s pretty likely any discrepancy I see will be “statistically significant”–which has precious little to do with “practically significant.”
[/QUOTE]
If I’m reading it correctly, left leaning people were more science literate. But among conservatives the Tea Party people did better. Which means, among the least scientifically literate people, Tea Partiers are a bit ahead.
Um, way to go?
No, the data showed that people who identified with the Tea Party were more scientifically literate than the rest of the study’s population. I’m not sure what to make of the fact that nearly a quarter of the dataset were “Tea Party identifiers”; seems a bit high.
Ironically, no…you didn’t read it correctly. Here:
So, self described liberals were more ‘science literate’ than self described conservatives, but the subset of self described tea party members (a subset of ‘conservatives’) were better (according to this study, which I’d need to see replicated to believe) than liberals AND non-tea party conservatives, overall.
I think it’s something that would need to be replicated several times before conclusions could be formed (personally, I’m on the verge of saying ‘horseshit’, but will take a wait and see approach), but it’s clear that’s what they are saying.
My thoughts are the OP is attempting to say that Tea Party ideology is correct because science. I admit I may be missing a more subtle point.
“people who leaned liberal were more science literate than those who leaned conservative”
“However, those who identified as part of the tea party movement were actually better versed in science than those who didn’t, Kahan found.”
Aren’t Tea Party people part of the sub set that leans conservative? I haven’t read the blog post, just the article.
No, I think the OP is trying to ‘prove’ that liberal expectations about how stupid folks in the Tea Party are may be in error, and s/he is trying to rub their noses in it. Personally, I think there is a bit of jumping the gun here, and I wouldn’t hang much on this study until I saw the results replicated. That said, I think that liberals have an over inflated view of their own intelligence and ‘science literate’ abilities, as a group. SOME liberals are quite scientifically savvy, but a lot of folks who self describe themselves as liberals are as butt ignorant of science (or key aspects of science) as anyone.
Yeah, but that just means that those conservatives who do NOT ID with the Tea Party test lower than liberals.
Were there any specifics on what kind of science knowledge we’re talking about here? Tea Partiers reject the science that shows global warming is happening. (PDF warning)
He makes a good point about the sample size influencing the likelihood of finding statistical significance. Often people analyzing large data sets will adopt a more.stringent alpha level, like p < .01, in order to focus more on the differences that are meaningful.
On that note, there is a more fundamental problem. The result he is talking about is not, strictly speaking, statistically significant! He reports that p = .05! The criterion is p < .05. Now, there are good arguments that mindless adherence to a relatively arbitrary convention like p < .05 isn’t the most sound approach, but here is a situation where we have some sense that we ought to be adjusting alpha downwards anyway, so he should take more care to note that this does not exceed the standard criterion level for significance.
Also, this seems to be an unadjusted association, unless I missed something.
I think that is because, for the most part, and contrary to popular assumptions, Tea Partiers are not ignorant yokels, but Southern and Western “local notables” with some education. This is not a point in their favor; it shows that the TP movement is not a populist one, but exists only to preserve local notables’ local power and privileges from federal interference, and to allow them to continue to exploit their local workers however they like.
Yes, Tea Party folks are a subset of conservatives. Leaving aside whether this survey is accurate, think of it like this. You have a group of folks who self describe as, say, Whigs, right? Say a subset of this group were ‘Whig scientists’. Overall, self described Whigs might do kind of shitty on the poll test, bringing down the averages of the subset ‘Whig scientists’, making their overall score less than, say, to overall Tories group. However, ‘Whig scientists’ might have higher scores than all the rest of the Whigs AND the Tories. These guys are saying the same thing about the Tea Party subset of conservatives. They did better, according to this poll, than the liberal group and the rest of the conservative group.
See?
The test may be flawed in how it recruited respondents: by asking people about their perceptions on vaccine efficacy. It does not seem to me that you would obtain a no biased working set by starting with that premise. That and it seems like it was an online survey type of thing. So the environment in which a respondent takes the test is not controlled.
It was done by a Yale professor; I’d probably believe him a bit more than say someone from that intellectual wasteland that call Liberty University.
The mathematical analysis was done by a Yale professor, but he was using somebody else’s data.
As others and you point at, it is likely that the study is flawed, but there is also another even more **sinister **implication, lets use a non American example, Christopher Monckton who is a darling of the Tea Partiers, he even goes so far as being a birther.
But here is the thing, Monckton is clearly not a slouch in the subject of science, there are many examples of scientists being baffled by him and made to sound wrong on live TV or interviews; of course, only later when checking the sources Monckton used is that one can see that he spewed bullshit, but that IMO is the key of how the study from the OP may be accurate.
If accurate the conclusion for me is that** the TPs are aware of the science, know the science, but use it then to cherry pick, mislead and plant FUD** on others that would vote for people that would enforce or apply regulations or taxes on industries that cause harm in the long run, the Tea Party is smart enough and more aware on how to manipulate public opinion with misleading information.
“A truth that’s told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.”
-William Blake
If I read the original blog post correctly, it’s saying that those who identify as Tea Party test higher than the rest of the sample, including liberals. Look at the legend in the 4th plot, it says “teaparty member (n=430)” and “non-teaparty member (n=1886)”. Those numbers add up to the entire data set used in this analysis, not the number of conservatives.
Anyway - a good understanding of basic science & math doesn’t mean they have an unbiased view of economics, or even about science. I used to know an engineer who had a Ph.D in astrophysics and still vehemently denied global warming. We debated a few times and it was clear that he had a good understanding of science, he was just biased in which studies he took seriously. (He also talked about Ayn Rand a lot and had a FairTax sticker, so I think it’s safe to classify him as a Tea Party person.)