Doctors, in my experience scoff at climate change. So there you go.
:smack: How did I miss that? He’s probably not even using the right measure of association.
Something that took me years to figure out as an engineer: One day you realize that given any technical challenge, you’re smart enough to solve it giving enough time, money, whatever. And whether by deception, ego, laziness…this certainty in your own field convinces you now have the same expertise in all other fields. Took me a while to figure this out…:o
Engineering school teaches you critical reasoning skills for dealing with technical world. It does not, from my experience, teach much about critical thinking.
That’s a fair point. Using correlation as a measure stuck out like a sore thumb to me. Then I promptly forgot it :smack: The only way it might work for some of these graphs is if he did “science comprehension” vs. “years of school” and not vs. binary “didja finish college or not?”
And of course it becomes some sort of Gaudere’s law thing going on where people who can understand science don’t quite get how statistics work.
And vaccine-related nuttery seems to take equal samples from the far right and far left.
I was trying to carefully phase my concerns with the conclusions drawn from this data in ways that were accurate and meaningful, and then I saw this and gave up. Because this pretty much says everything that needs to be said.
Yes. I’ll quote it: "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.”
For those without a statistics background, the author is reporting something called a correlation coefficient. It varies between -1 (negatively correlated) and +1 (positively correlated). He gets a value of .05 which is close to zero (uncorrelated - no relationship). Personally, I tend to consider values between -.25 and .25 as uncorrelated, assuming both variables are continuous. Which may not be the case in this context. http://mathbits.com/MathBits/TISection/Statistics2/correlation.htm
I guess it is only surprising if one thought that TPers were all uneducated hicks. They’ve been to school and memorized some facts. They just choose not to believe them when they conflict with religious truths and their extant belief systems.
What is surprising to me is the slight (albeit very slight) lower science fact knowledge for conservatives. The Democratic side is a mixed bag which relative to the GOP is over-represented both with the highly educated and those without college degrees. The GOP side has a greater number with college degrees but fewer with advanced degrees. One would expect that to be a wash or if anything give an advantage to the GOP on a test of simple scientific fact knowledge
He’s also a Professor of Psychology, as per your link.
I thought this was the most important part of the article:
Now, here’s a guy who started out with an assumption and bias and allowed the science to correct his ignorance. Many on these boards share(d) those very same biases, but will they allow data erase their ignorance? We’ll see…
I was also surprised by the results, but thinking about it further, I have a hypothesis that might explain it: Tea Party people are generally engaged and interested in politics, and they’re generally older (as compared to non-Tea Party folks). Being engaged and interested in politics, and being an older person, may correlate positively with education. In addition, older people are just more knowledgeable in general. This could explain why Tea Party folks may score better on science knowledge (or any sort of knowledge) than non-Tea Party folks.
A similar effect might also occur for self-identified “Feminists”, “Environmentalists”, or those who identify as “Very Liberal/Very Progressive” (although perhaps not with age). It may be that people with strong political self-identification are, in general, more educated and more knowledgeable, regardless of what the self-ID is.
This is just a hypothesis, of course- hopefully there could be further research.
Abraham Lincoln is thee nationalist in American history. He has believers in both the Fox News Right and ThinkProgress Left.
Or someone who started out with a biased outlook and remains biased that his analytical technique is so outstanding that the conclusions of his survey are irrefutable.
He might turn out to be wrong about having been wrong in the first place. 
One has to remember that people who have a background in science like **Smeghead **already noticed that the correlation is virtually meaningless. So even the bone I threw at the Tea Partiers had no meat to speak about.
Thanks guys. I’d gotten into this thread pretty early and read the post politico linked to as well and this is the bit that stopped me in my tracks.
If you go to the first link and look at the examples you see:
So it looked as if half the questions he added to the survey were nothing more than confounders, but since I don’t have the sophistication with statistical analysis to say jack about this, I figured I should just STFU.
As a guy with historical training, I can tell you that today’s party of “states rights” maybe would invite Lincoln, but he would be voted off the island even before the primaries. Just by having the wisdom of starting the National Academy of Sciences would be enough for FOX to call him a RINO.
The problem we have in analyzing this data (and with assigning scores of scientific knowledge to any political group) is that often political beliefs trump science. For example, a lot of people on the right deny global warming, and a lot of people on the left deny the safety of GMO foods or believe that ‘organic’ food is somehow better than food produced with ‘chemicals’.
Does this mean that the right is dumber about climate, and the left is dumber about chemistry? Not at all. What it means is that many on the left start from a presumption that GMO foods and factory farming are examples of big corporations exploiting the little people, and therefore they are already predisposed against any believing that their products are safee and efficacious. That makes them open to disinformation spread by people with an agenda. And on the right, they are already predisposed towards being skeptical of the UN, big government, wealth transfers and all the rest, so they start out heavily biased against Global Warming. Because like it or not, political activists have managed to intertwine the scientific argument with a whole host of liberal policy ‘solutions’ for it.
These are proxy wars - science is used as a weapon by both sides, and rejected by both sides, depending on whose ox is more likely to be gored if the science is true.
I wish we would spend more time on the distortions and abuse of science that both sides engage in. No, creationism should not be taught in science class. Of course. But anti-GMO propaganda from Greenpeace should not be taught in science class either, but in my kid’s school it sure is.
In my experience as someone who spends a lot of time with people on both the right and the left, the right is more likely to deny global warming, evolution, and a few other hot-button subjects, but the left is more likely to be into astrology, new age healing, homeopathic medicine, and have unscientific attitudes towards fracking, nuclear power, genetically modified foods and other science that serves the interest of big corporations.
Likewise, the right is more likely to believe in big-government conspiracy theories (The UN is taking over!), while the left is more likely to believe that there are evil cabals of big multinational businesses controlling the world. My kid just had to sit through a movie on Naomi Klein’s idiotic 'No Labels" book, taught as fact in his school social studies class. It’s bollocks from front to back, but his teachers apparently are so uneducated on the topic they can’t tell. In fact, they aren’t even aware that it’s pushing a specific ideological agenda, because they’re so isolated from other points of view they assume Naomi Klein’s tendentious work is the universal consensus.
There’s plenty of ignorance to go around, but when you look at the specific ignorance on both sides you’ll find it’s almost always tied in with some political ideology. I’ll bet if these studies isolated out the contentious big issues and focused on purely non-ideological science facts, the differences between right and left would be much smaller.
Nice post Sam. I’ll note though that the US is positioned to the right of Europe and Canada and that skepticism about GMO receives a lot less traction here. US environmental groups have gone back and forth on fracking, as has the scientific community. So far it remains unregulated, which is a problem in my view. (I think it should be encouraged, but leakage should be tracked and charged.) And nukes are an odd case, given that the industry couldn’t exist without implicit or explicit governmental subsidies.
Again though, I understand that your post matches the situation in Canada and Europe fairly well.
Not quite Measure for Measure, there is always some items sneaked in that do not belong in those posts.
Well, if ignorance has to the fought I have to say here that opposition to GMO is not the exclusive territory of the left, the reality is that NIMBY is the biggest factor.
That may change, but so far when I see polls going to the 90’s about limiting GMOs, I have to say that unless all people turned liberal, it is not really accurate to put that in the mostly liberal column, same goes for Nuclear, homeopathic medicine, astrology (Remember Reagan) and many others.
There have been a bunch of subsequent posts along these lines, all of which miss the point IMO.
The point here is not that TP people are better versed in science than other groups, and the difference - as you and others point out - is marginal or possibly non-existant.
The point is that they’re not more ignorant either, which flies in the face of a popular stereotype. The fact that r is low does not change that.
I am a registered Democrat. I am an engineer. I voted for Tea Party candidates because I didn’t leave the Democratic party, it left me. I believe in fiscal responsibility. I had no problem with the Half Trillion dollar tax increase, the country clearly needed it. I do not believe in Human Caused Global warming. The ‘science’ of global warming is about as rigid as wet cardboard. Huge sums of money fund ‘research’ that concludes all kinds of terrible things. I am a scientist and an engineer. I’ve been listening to the clap trap coming from the extreme left for 20 years. The east coast should have been under water by now using the ‘science’ put forth by Al Gore and his pet scientists. I quote. “There’s an Ozone hole over Kennebunkport”. Same guy was predicting huge increases in sea level by now.
There are facts. Facts ignored or glossed over. The Polar Ice caps melted on Mars. There is strong science that has suggested that the solar output hitting Earth is at an all time high for our measurement. This is science that is REPRESSED. It is called names it is called the lying tools of the Oil Company conspiracy. That’s crap. One ‘environmentalist’ said the Martian polar ice caps melting was clearly the sun, but the Earth melting was caused by man. Clearly ignoring the law of inverse squares when it comes to radiation and how that the Earth, being closer to the radiation (the sun) would be more profoundly effected by this. How much? Mars gets 1/2 of the radiation that Earth does using the law of inverse squares. Also scientists measured something else. Cosmic radiation. Thats radiation that comes from other stars. That level goes up and down over time and the controlling mechanism is what is called “The solar wind”, essentially the particles ejected by the sun, hydrogen and helium nuclei for the most part. That ‘wind’ intercepts cosmic radiation, so when the Solar output is up, less cosmic radiation hits the earth. Guess what was at an all time measured low. Yep. Basically the conclusion to draw is. “Its the sun, you dummies.” Also Al Gore, showing what a true genius he is, in his ‘lecture’ where he shows the correlation of Earth Temperature to Carbon Dioxide, he tells us the relationship is complicated. Apparently too complicated for him. Because First the temperature goes up. then the Carbon Dioxide goes up. And the science explanation is an easy one. Hot Seawater does not absorb as much CO2. Ok, what is the #1 ‘greenhouse gas’? Answer, its Water Vapor. How much water vapor is in the air. Answer, a lot more then CO2. I’d be more worried about Methane if I was you. OK, so lets back up a notch and talk about cosmic radiation again. There’s a point. Cosmic radiation is detected by something called a ‘cloud chamber’ basically a volume of water saturated gas, ie air. When a cosmic ray passes through the chamber it forms a small ‘cloud’. This is one way our clouds form. On a cloudy day is it cooler then on a bright sunny day? The answer is obvious. We have fewer clouds forming, we have more solar radiation, why is anyone surprised it got a little warmer. So people are clamoring, again on the left that this is unprecedented and etc. I is not. It has warmed up to the point that it was in the 1800’s. Hardly disastrous. You know like it was the last time the Northern Polar Ice cap melted almost completely between 800 and 1200 AD. When it was significantly warmer, when the Glaciers on Greenland had melted so far back that the Norsemen (Vikings) had settled both Greenland and Iceland, and had established farms and were shipping FOOD from the ‘colonies’ back to Europe. And the ‘tree line’ the semi-official designation for what the arctic and antarctic circles were, WAY north. They have the date tree fossils to prove it. The 1000 year old Glacier in Glacier National Park? Not there. I mean really, people say those who oppose this ‘version of the truth’ that says I am a tool of the Oil companies and do not use science. What the heck was that? Oh yes, and ‘all scientists agree’. Really? How about the large number of scientists whos names are on the Global Climate Change study who sued, unsuccessfully I might add, to get their names removed after the science part got changed and it turned into a Political Science game instead. Those people too are tarred with the ‘tools of the Oil company’ brush. I’m a scientist, I’m offended that you even presume I don’t look at things with an open mind. I’m also offended by the notion that people who disagree with your politics are somehow dumber. Some of the smartest people I’ve ever met have been the full spectrum from Marxist and Anarchist to John Birch Society right wingers. They might be smarter then me but that doesn’t mean that they are more correct on all things.
So yes, I tell people I am a tea partier. And I hear all the BS. “they don’t believe in taxes”. Yes they do, they don’t believe in wasteful government. A large distinction. “they are a bunch of racists.” Really, you want to call me a racist? Racists will stand with whoever gets them attention. I think the Southern Poverty Law Center is run by a bunch of racists. They’ve pretty much declared anyone who disagrees with them a hate group. And its done very well in removing poverty from the people who run it. I wonder what Dr. King would say about these ‘jerks’. I also think the Nazi’s, the KKK, and a few other groups might qualify for the racism tag. Here’s what a Tea party person really is. They are, in fact Centrists. They don’t believe in the excesses of the left or the right. Yes there are people who are conservatives, who do not agree with you on things like marriage or taxes or insurance in this group. Not me. I believe in MYOB, the first slogan on American Money. Its nobody’s business who you consort with, go into business with, hang with, live with. Government has grown fat and crazy. We have more then we can afford and just to be clear. I think everyone needs health insurance. WE just didn’t need the crazy law they passed. Really ? How big was the problem, it could have been solved with a 10 page long bill. I will stand with those who promised to put NORMAL back into the laws of this country. Because Normal is the center position. The people currently pissed at all of these selfish jerks. I’m a scientist, I’m a fiscal conservative and social libertarian. As an engineer i think high gas mileage cars are a great idea and electric cars even better. I believe that people will solve these problems, not governments. Find fault with that. As such I must stand with those I do not agree with because in essence that’s all any government is. People banding together for the common good despite their differences on other things. Good day.