Legal eagles and political sciences lead the way!
Posted on 07/16/2011 12:47:20 AM PDT by neverdem
A new study suggests that your values, not science, determine your views about climate change.
The more scientifically literate you are, the more certain you are that climate change is either a catastrophe or a hoax, according to a new study [PDF] from the Yale Cultural Cognition Project.
Many science writers and policy wonks nurse the fond hope that fierce disagreement about issues like climate change is simply the result of a scientifically illiterate American public. If this “public irrationality thesis” were correct, the authors of the Yale study write, “then skepticism about climate change could be traced to poor public comprehension about science” and the solution would be more science education. In fact, their findings suggest more education is unlikely to help build consensus; it may even intensify the debate.
Led by Yale University law professor Dan Kahan, the Cultural Cognition Project has been researching how cultural and ideological commitments shape science policy discourse in the United States. To probe the public’s views on climate change, the Yale researchers conducted a survey of 1,500 Americans in which they asked questions designed to uncover their cultural values, their level of scientific literacy, and what they thought about the risks of climate change.
The group uses a theory of cultural commitments devised by University of California, Berkeley, political scientist Aaron Wildavsky that “holds that individuals can be expected to form perceptions of risk that reflect and reinforce values that they share with others.” The Wildavskyan schema situates Americans’ cultural values on two scales, one that ranges from Individualist to Communitarian and another that goes from Hierarchy to Egalitarian. In general, Hierarchical folks prefer a social order where people have clearly defined roles and lines of authority...
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
That’s exactly what you would expect when you get SMART PEOPLE looking at this GLOBULL WARMING HOAX! There’s no way within current capabilities to get the pulse of a climatic system as chaotic, massive, and complex as we’ve got on this planet. Attempting to predict it is like attempting to predict the weather on your birthday next year.
I'm going with hoax.
Only because I'm merely literate.
they leave out one part of the equation, they don’t count those that have lived through it before
YEs, and NOAA converting sun-specks to sunspots in order to increase the “count” of sunspots is the latest data manipulation:
http://www.iceagenow.com/NOAA_inflating_sunspot_counts.htm
[excerpt from deep inside it]
The Yale study implicitly accepts the “consensus” that climate change poses substantial dangers to humanity. But what about the cultural values held by climate scientists themselves? Could they be subject to confirmation bias too? A study [PDF] published in 2009 in the journal Climatic Change sheds some light on the policy views of climate scientists. Although the cultural cognition typology is more subtle, the Climatic Change study survey of over 400 climate scientists found that 67 percent identified as liberal, 20 percent moderate, and 13 percent conservative. Around 90 percent agreed that man-made global warming is now happening and that immediate policy decisions need to be made to address it.
According to the survey 96 percent support market incentives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; 85 percent favor a tax on industry to discourage practices that contribute to global warming; 89 percent favor higher prices for energy supplies and consumer goods that are not environmentally friendly; 99 percent favor developing no-carbon renewable energy supplies like hydro and solar; and 81 percent want to increase the price of fossil fuels. The few conservative climate scientists surveyed were somewhat less eager to adopt these policies except for the ambiguous “use market incentives” policy, which 96 percent favored. However, only 61 percent of politically conservative climate scientists favor a tax on industry; 65 percent support higher energy and consumer products prices; 92 percent back developing renewable fuels; and only 41 percent want to increase the price of fossil fuels. Could it be that Egalitarian/Communitarian biases against industry and commerce are informing the policy prescriptions of climate scientists? (No Shi'te, Little Beaver!)
The Pew Research Center conducted a 2009 survey comparing the political ideologies of scientists and the general public. Only 9 percent of scientists identified as conservative, 35 percent as moderate, and 52 percent as liberal, with 14 percent claiming to be very liberal. In contrast, the general public identifies as 37 percent conservative, 38 percent moderate, and 20 percent liberal, and 5 percent very liberal. Slicing the data another way, the survey finds that 81 percent of scientists lean Democrat whereas 52 percent of the general public does. Another telling division between the beliefs of the general public versus scientists is their responses to this statement: "When something is run by the government, it is usually inefficient and wasteful." Fifty-eight percent of scientists disagreed, whereas 57 percent of the public agreed with it.
Excellent article.
Confirmation bias is absolutely universal. Freepers are just as prone to it as anybody else.
The whole point of the scientific method is to provide a method whereby confirmation bias can be bypassed and the truth be constantly approximated more closely.
I agree. More science education isn’t likely to help.
There’s always disagreement in science when new ideas come along. It’s not surprising there is genuine scientific disagreement here.
The difference, vis-a-vis climate change, is that libs, if they even bother to try to eschew a life of burger flipping in the first place, tend to avoid the hard sciences in college and end up in psychology, journalism, poly sci, etc., where rarely an equation strains their limited brain power, while conservatives flock to the math-centric courses, if for no other reason than to get away from all the jokers (professors and students alike) in less rigorous courses.
Whether they admit it or not, Communitarians are most definitely communistic Hierarchists of the worst type.
Man’s capacity of doing tests on putative climate change causes is laughably inadequate.
Bump!
I would challenge the premise that the more scientifically literate you are, the more certain you are that climate change is either a catastrophe or a hoax. It is more likely that the more scientifically literate you are, the more certain you are that human caused climate change is a hoax.
The writers probably did not account for bias among the scientifically literate, especially those being paid to support human caused climate change, a multi-billion dollar industry.
The Yale Cultural Cognition Project needs to go back to the "drawing board" and redo their study, IMO. It also may be worthwhile to check into the source of funding for the study.
Unless, of course, the "scientific method" has been buggered by bastardizing the peer review process, which is the case with "anthropogenic climate change".
I believe that the big yellow hot ball of gases that rises in the east and sets in the west everyday has everything to do with our climate and whether it gets hotter or colder. Saying that humans are affecting climate changes, to me, is a hoax perpetrated on humanity by men who think they can scare the masses for profit and political power.
Sounds about right - normal folks with a rational thought process understand the flawed "science".
However, the "scientists" that espouse this crap are more emotionally oriented and less silence-literate than the average 9th grader...
I’ve been calling Communitarians “Totalitarians with a human mask” for years. They don’t like it when you call ‘em that.
I was involved with analyising the Yucca Mountain risk assessment people, Wildavsky being one of them.
As a whole, they are lying skunks.
They've mis-stated this. It should read "The more scientifically literate you are, the more certain you are to either know that climate change is a hoax, or TO PERPETUATE THAT HOAX.
That is, IF you are both scientifically literate and continue to state that AGW is real, THEN you know that you are part of the conspiracy and are endorsing false "science" to advance your political ends.
You can be "scientifically literate" without being scientific -- i.e., being honest.
The scientific method is a tool, like mathematics.
You can misuse the SM, just like you can misuse mathematics, but bastardizing the peer review process doesn't affect the value of the process.
You didn't invalidate the process, you just ignored it. Part of the SM process is to point out publicly when this happpens, as has been done in this case.
THANK YOU for linking to the PRINTABLE version!
52% of the general public lean democrat? I saw quoted 37% conservative, 38% moderates and 20% leftist, with 5% far left in this essay. Using their own numbers and splitting the moderates down the middle, *I* get 56% “right” and 44% “left”, but that’s old style arithmetic...
I also found the political leanings percentages of the scientists surveyed telling as well. I still can’t see even an ivory tower intellectual thinking the gov’t runs things well, let alone 57% of them...
The implicit null hypothesis of AGW, or "climate change", is that the NORMAL state of "global climate" is invariant, and that the observed variances are therefore ABNORMAL (and thus require explanation).
Of course, the true state (historical, geological, oceanographic, archaeological evidence all agree) of "global climate" is chaotic, in fact strikingly so, and any observed variances in the historic period are in fact quite minor compared to the generally accepted variances of pre-history.
The whole of AGW "science" is so unscientific, it makes me wanna holler.
Must read, IMHO.
I can't agree with the above. The journal editors and peer reviewers who are supposed to be guardians of the process have NOT done so. They have participated in pushing only one side of the story.
The ONLY reason that the "anti-GW" side of the equation has gotten any exposure at all has been due to the availability of the internet and the ability to bypass the people who have foresaken their guardianship, and become "gatekeepers" instead. Or perhaps the informational equivalent of "Maxwell's demon".
So, no.....I do NOT see that the "scientific method" has succeeded in this case. Quite the contrary. OTOH, the true "freedom of the press" HAS succeeded.
I'm not sure what the answer is to fixing the SM. Perhaps, since most journals are now moving to electronic distribution, each submitted article might have an "open comments forum" associated specifically to that article to allow much more extended "peer review". Include the comments from the "official" peer reviewers as the first "posts" in the forum, and go from there. Leave comments open, for, say, a calendar year.
Quite correct. But "the scientific method" does not fail because the guardians misbehave. You think this has never happened before?
Exposing the misbehavior of the guardians is itself part of the process of the scientific method.
It appears that authors of Yale studies aren't immune to it either:
If this “public irrationality thesis” were correct, the authors of the Yale study write, “then skepticism about climate change could be traced to poor public comprehension about science” and the solution would be more science education.If only those stupid skeptics would become better educated, they'd become believers.
You’ve misread the sentence and misunderstood the study.
The authors’ conclusion is that more scientific knowledge only makes people more convinced of their own position, it does not lead them to change sides.
This is probably because the root of this issue is social and political, not scientific. Science is being used as a rationale for political change, rather than as a tool for disinterested inquiry.
Wrong.
Of course it has, but in past incidents, the exposure was done by other scientists within the scientific community, and not via "trial by newspaper/website/blog".
"Exposing the misbehavior of the guardians is itself part of the process of the scientific method."
Indeed, but the process has been so corrupted these days that going outside the normal channels of scientific discourse has been necessary. I don't recall any case where that course has ever been necessary before.
Of course, I'm glad that the "backup channel" was/is available, otherwise they might well have "gotten away with it".
A US Oil Boom--Unless Greens Abort It. USA is on the Verge of a Golden Era in Oil Production.
TARP’s Shadow: Why Tea Partiers won’t listen to the establishment, even as a debt crisis looms
War in Libya: Dumb and Dumber (Victor Davis Hanson)
Some noteworthy articles about politics, foreign or military affairs, IMHO, FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.
Clearly, the study itself is not "scientific." Science does not accept ambiguities that allow valid results in polar opposite conclusions.
As to the scientific level of competence of the opposing camps, I supect the hoaxsters are sadly deficient, demonstrably evidenced by reliance on "consensus," data manipulation and personal attacks.
I remain proudly in the denier camp, and would challenge any "the world is going to die" nutcase to a science test devoid of social and political BS.
Wish they had included a link to the method of testing the scientific competence of the "1500 adults" tested.
The more scientifically literate you are, the more certain you are that climate change is either a catastrophe or a hoax...In fact, their findings suggest more education is unlikely to help build consensus; it may even intensify the debate. Led by Yale University law professor Dan Kahan, the Cultural Cognition Project has been researching how cultural and ideological commitments shape science policy discourse in the United States... conducted a survey of 1,500 Americans in which they asked questions designed to uncover their cultural values, their level of scientific literacy, and what they thought about the risks of climate change... The Wildavskyan schema situates Americans’ cultural values on two scales, one that ranges from Individualist to Communitarian and another that goes from Hierarchy to Egalitarian. In general, Hierarchical folks prefer a social order where people have clearly defined roles and lines of authority...I think the hierarchical folks in the climate debate should each be given a line of authority -- one with a noose on one end. Then an egalitarian volunteer will slap the horse on the rump.
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That isn’t what that sentence actually says.
I'm curious - do you believe we need to take serious measures to stop man-caused global climate change?
Have just started this video . . . I think you’d find it interesting . . .
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2129165010048711403#
Hmmmmmmmmm
He’s linking a lot of things together . . . plausibly.
Some new puzzle pieces, . . .
Some interesting contentions re Scripture, science, Egyption and other cultures’ records about
Ark of the Covenant
‘monoatomic gold’ etc.
resonating frequencies with DNA . . .
Controlled study . . . fed such monoatomic substances . . . effects immediate and cumulative . . . left and right brains functioned more equally and more in synchrony.
Interesting contentions.
For those with a particular interest in such—it could be a fascinating video.
Actually, the one thing, so far, that I’m certain he’s wrong about—is the bit about us purportedly using a fraction of our brain power. fMRI etc. imaging has shown that’s basically false.
Hmmmmmmmmm
He’s linking a lot of things together . . . plausibly.
Some new puzzle pieces, . . .
Some interesting contentions re Scripture, science, Egyption and other cultures’ records about
Ark of the Covenant
‘monoatomic gold’ etc.
resonating frequencies with DNA . . .
Controlled study . . . fed such monoatomic substances . . . effects immediate and cumulative . . . left and right brains functioned more equally and more in synchrony.
Interesting contentions.
At about the mid-point . . . gets into a cotton farmer’s discovery . . . from their poor soils . . . and resulting experimental measures get really interesting with a variety of scientific labs . . .
Some interesting stuff when they came to applying for a patent . . .
For those with a particular interest in such—it could be a fascinating video.
Actually, the one thing, so far, that I’m certain he’s wrong about—is the bit about us purportedly using a fraction of our brain power. fMRI etc. imaging has shown that’s basically false.
Somehow, posting efforts are not behaving as predicted . . .
The video gets really interesting and very scientific at about the mid-point.
Very very fascinating.
One of the more interesting videos I’ve seen in the last 10-20 years.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2129165010048711403#
Resonances become a very fascinating issue.
Implications for a long list of things including causing the DNA to cure cancer cells.
Laurence Gardner
Lost Secrets of the Sacred Ark
I teach physics at a prep school and tell my kids...
“your local weatherperson can’t predit what’s going to happen 10 miles from here, 10 minutes from now...
and yet using exactly the same instruments and programs, GW “experts” are making predictions for the entire planet decades from now?!?”
They get it.
Ping.
Given most of the contributors to DU, that has some *really* frightening implications.
Cheers!
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