Press release from the National Science Foundation:
Why “Scientific Consensus” Fails to Persuade 
Individuals with competing cultural values disagree about what most scientists believe
Whether a scientist is seen as knowledgeable and trustworthy depends on a person’s cultural values. |
Suppose a close friend who is trying to figure out the facts about climate change asks whether you think a scientist who has written a book on the topic is a knowledgeable and trustworthy expert. You see from the dust jacket that the author received a Ph.D. in a pertinent field from a major university, is on the faculty at another one, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Would you advise your friend that the scientist seems like an “expert”?
If you are like most people, the answer is likely to be, “it depends.” What it depends on, a recent study found, is not whether the position that scientist takes is consistent with the one endorsed by a National Academy. Instead, it is likely to depend on whether the position the scientist takes is consistent with the one believed by most people who share your cultural values.
This was the finding of a recent study conducted by Yale University law professor Dan Kahan, University of Oklahoma political science professor Hank Jenkins-Smith and George Washington University law professor Donald Braman that sought to understand why members of the public are sharply and persistently divided on matters on which expert scientists largely agree.
“We know from previous research,” said Dan Kahan, “that people with individualistic values, who have a strong attachment to commerce and industry, tend to be skeptical of claimed environmental risks, while people with egalitarian values, who resent economic inequality, tend to believe that commerce and industry harms the environment.”
In the study, subjects with individualistic values were over 70 percentage points less likely than ones with egalitarian values to identify the scientist as an expert if he was depicted as describing climate change as an established risk. Likewise, egalitarian subjects were over 50 percentage points less likely than individualistic ones to see the scientist as an expert if he was described as believing evidence on climate change is unsettled.
Study results were similar when subjects were shown information and queried about other matters that acknowledge “scientific consensus.” Subjects were much more likely to see a scientist with elite credentials as an “expert” when he or she took a position that matched the subjects’ own cultural values on risks of nuclear waste disposal and laws permitting citizens to carry concealed guns in public.
“These are all matters,” Kahan said, “on which the National Academy of Sciences has issued ‘expert consensus’ reports.” Using the reports as a benchmark,” Kahan explained that “no cultural group in our study was more likely than any other to be ‘getting it right’,” i.e. correctly identifying scientific consensus on these issues. They were all just as likely to report that ‘most’ scientists favor the position rejected by the National Academy of Sciences expert consensus report if the report reached a conclusion contrary to their own cultural predispositions.”
In a separate survey component, the study also found that the American public in general is culturally divided on what “scientific consensus” is on climate change, nuclear waste disposal, and concealed-handgun laws.
“The problem isn’t that one side ‘believes’ science and another side ‘distrusts’ it,” said Kahan referring to an alternate theory of why there is political conflict on matters that have been extensively researched by scientists.
He said the more likely reason for the disparity, as supported by the research results, “is that people tend to keep a biased score of what experts believe, counting a scientist as an ‘expert’ only when that scientist agrees with the position they find culturally congenial.”
Understanding this, the researchers then could draw some conclusions about why scientific consensus seems to fail to settle public policy debates when the subject is relevant to cultural positions.
“It is a mistake to think ‘scientific consensus,’ of its own force, will dispel cultural polarization on issues that admit scientific investigation,” said Kahan. “The same psychological dynamics that incline people to form a particular position on climate change, nuclear power and gun control also shape their perceptions of what ‘scientific consensus’ is.”
“The problem won’t be fixed by simply trying to increase trust in scientists or awareness of what scientists believe,” added Braman. “To make sure people form unbiased perceptions of what scientists are discovering, it is necessary to use communication strategies that reduce the likelihood that citizens of diverse values will find scientific findings threatening to their cultural commitments.”
The Journal of Risk Research published the study online today. It was funded by the National Science Foundation’s division of Social and Economic Sciences.
-NSF-
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Media Contacts
Bobbie Mixon, NSF (703) 292-8070 bmixon@nsf.gov
Principal Investigators
Dan M. Kahan, Yale University Law School (203) 432-8832 dan.kahan@yale.edu
“We know from previous research,” said Dan Kahan, “that people with individualistic values, who have a strong attachment to commerce and industry, tend to be skeptical of claimed environmental risks, while people with egalitarian values, who resent economic inequality, tend to believe that commerce and industry harms the environment.”
Oh, Sheesh!
New study finds Scientists that hype false consensus, most likely to sell Grandmother.
Unfortunately it’s someone else’s grandmother they have on the auction block, not their own.
If you think for yourself, you are more likely to be a skeptic regarding AGW. If you are a skeptic, you suffer from mental illness, therefore . . .
This is what tax payer funding of science has wrought.
As Firesign Theater once said – Welcome to the Future!
For some reason the language used reminds me of the mindless dreck served up in the Sociology class I had the misfortune to take (and the stupidity to not drop in time). The whole goal was to use the largest words possible that contained the smallest information load possible and mix them together for maximum confusion with the hope that someone would mistake it for insight…. while supporting a political agenda.
Hated the class. My tendency to distill to basic truths and speak simply was, er, unappreciated…
OK, first off, since when are “egalitarian” and “individualistic” orthogonal? I am a firm believer in “we are all equal” and a firm believer in “we can all live our own lives as we see fit” and “variety is the spice of life”. So right off the bat my BS-O-Meter is shouting big time at false dichotomies and choice of loaded words for emotional and political weight not for denotative meaning. “Speaking in codes” comes to mind, too…
Carl Chapman says:“people with egalitarian values, who resent economic inequality” is a nice way to say “socialists”. They’re the same people who believed in “scientific Marxism”
Methinks thou hast cracked said code…
If I might “distill” the article:
People who think for themselves and have to make a living by being right smell a rat in the AGW thesis as it’s a pretty poorly assembled “put up job” while gullible folks who follow slick leaders believe in it as they think they might get some second hand fame, fortune, or self worth out of it and get the benefit of not having to do that hard thinking stuff.
Is this another “scientific finding” by three scientists?
I don’t believe them nor do I trust them, not anymore, not since the AGW lies.
If there is money involved in the science, I won’t take their word for it, EVVA.
If politics/politicians are involved in the science, I won’t believe it, EVVA.
If it’s anything to do with the environment, I’LL KNOW IT’S A LIE, period.
[EVVA = ?] Robert
Any time someone wants to use the word “consensus” one has to wonder why. Consensus is a majority agreement or opinion of a particular topic. Just because there is a majority in agreement it does not necessarily mean that the topic is a true fact. Science is supposed to be about facts, not opionion or belief. Show me the facts and let me draw my own conclusion. And your facts had better be reproducible, otherwise you have no facts, just a collection of data that you have fit to your conclusion.
And just because someone uses the word consensus does not even necessarily mean that a consensus of ALL parties involved is in agreement but only those with whom the one is speak happens to agree. Thus while a majority of scientists investigating AGW at CRU may be in consensus, the majority of ALL scientists investigating AGW may not. Again, let’s see the facts.
At one time it was the consensus of “scientists” that the Earth was the center of the universe. And when the facts proved otherwise, there was “hell to pay” until the facts proved conclusively that the Earth was not the center.
There is a definite ring of truth here. Western civilisation has evolved to allow opinion to be heard, whether it be informed or not. It matters not to many people that they are ignorant of scientific knowledge; they have a point of view, quite often based on emotion, that is deemed relevant because they have the support of other like-minded individuals. The more emotive the subject, then the more people become involved and the less objective they become – almost to the point of irrationality.
False premise! The spin here is that experts on climate all agree on something. Those who make their living studying the potential of AGW all agree that they should be given more money to study the situation, but even they do not agree on any thing specific. Outside of this bunch, there is a great deal of diversity of thought about how climate changes and the significance of a human impact. Almost nothing is known with any certainty.
Cultural views have no impact on other scientific explanations of the world around us when those explanations are largely proven. For example, gravity, electro-magnetism, chemistry and the structure of the solar system are hardly controversial because the evidence supporting the explanations is overwhelming! Cultural views do not trump strong evidence!
The reason why so many people don’t agree with the AGW crisis theory is that the evidence supporting the theory is remarkably lame! Even non-scientists can easily recognize that the doom and gloom stories they have heard for the last 20 years are not coming to pass.
Whenever cultural differences play a major role in a scientific debate, you can be sure that the evidence for the given science is pretty weak.
“We know from previous research,” said Dan Kahan, “that people with individualistic values, who have a strong attachment to commerce and industry, tend to be skeptical of claimed environmental risks, while people with egalitarian values, who resent economic inequality, tend to believe that commerce and industry harms the environment.”
So greedy bad people don’t believe in AGW and descent good people do.
Yeah, right.
How anyone could write this crap and claim it as “science” is very frightening and depressing.
“people with egalitarian values, who resent economic inequality”
Roughly translated, people who cant be bothered to get off their butt in the morning who sponge of those who do.
There’s an egalitarian born every minute.
The way I interpret this article is this: the drones believe in ‘settled’ science such as the exaggerated perils of AGW, but the thinkers and doers are sceptical.
I would have thought this was self-evident.
William, I really enjoyed your comments about the take up of CO2 by plants.
Boogieman Science, Strawman Science, and just plain BS.
If someone asks you what’s your opinion on Climate Change/Climate Disruption, you show ’em the hard data and tell them to figure it out for themselves, because nobody is going to do it for you.
Meteorologists are way ahead of Climatologists in this regard.
Ok, this study has already been discussed once before here at WUWT but I’m having difficulty finding the exact link. The paper in question, I believe, can be found here
http://www.culturalcognition.net/browse-papers/
It’s the one at the top of the page, unless Professor Kahan has managed to get two articles published in the Journal of Risk Research. I’ve been intending to write a critique of this unreflective and flawed paper but haven’t gotten around to it. It’s ironic that Professor Kahan and his colleagues are perfectly correct in their estimation of the importance of cultural cognitive systems in determining views on a variety of issues with scientific inputs, but then fail to turn that mirror on themselves. They start from the position that the consensus must be correct, without examing the cultural presuppositions and intellectual history behind that consensus.
Please believe me that not all social science is as shoddy as this.
R.E. Phelan
Why do I not believe in the ‘experts’? Here’s why.
I listened yesterday to a great radio documentary about the late Richard Feynman, one of the great scientists of the 20th Century (link here for anyone interested)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00ts5mm/The_Archive_Hour_The_Feynman_Variations/
Among his many achievements, Feynman was honest to a fault. When he didn’t know something he said so. When he couldn’t answer a question he explained why. One of his many wise sayings was
‘Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool’.
Compare and contrast with ‘Climatologists’.
Mann hides his data and methods and bolsters his position by bluster and bullying. Even his own institution uses his fund-raising abilities as a reason to believe in his scientific talent (go figure that one??).
Jones doesn’t answer any difficult questions about his data and disappears when the going gets hot.
The twin [snip] of UEA – Acton and Davies hide behind ‘duty of care’ and set up transparently inadequate and predetermined ‘inquiries’ led by useful idiots.
Pachauri can’t even apply a modest amount of brain power to be even a little suspicious that the entire Himalayan ice sheet will melt in less than 30 years..and dismisses those who question it as ‘voodoo scientists’.
Gore produces a ludicrously OTT movie, littered with errors (leaving aside the propaganda), and then retreats from public view……..
If they walk like shysters, talk like shysters and act like shysters, then they very probably are shysters.
Feynman also said
‘Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts’.
My case rests.
Baa Humbug asks: September 18, 2010 at 10:57 pm
No, is from two law professors (lawyers?) and one political science (but not real scientist) professor.
“To make sure people form unbiased perceptions of what scientists are discovering, it is necessary to use communication strategies that reduce the likelihood that citizens of diverse values will find scientific findings threatening to their cultural commitments.”
Yeah, the best way to do that is to get government out of science. Abolish the NAS with its wasteful and corrupt porn-surfing bureaucrats and stop presenting every scientific argument as an untouchable consensus statement (which is purely political, not scientific). Unbiased perceptions and non-value-laden judgments are not possible within the realm of politics. This fact has nothing to do with any particular scientist’s background or credentials.
These people are slow learners, aren’t they?
Here it happened the other way round. I and my wife were both academic left-leaning politically disinterested statists. About five years ago a family member – who happened to have a Ph.D in geology pushed me to the right direction regarding this climate change cult. He sent me a dozen scientific articles that were completely against what we were been told about the environment. Antarctica wasn’t melting. Greenland wasn’t melting. Why were we then told they were?
I started to study this matter. I found this site and lots of others and came to the same conclusions most of you have. But this didn’t affect my political views yet – it was but a single case were the authorities were wrong. A single incident does not political view change.
Three years ago my wife’s stomach problems got so bad that she started to look for help. Her stomach would swell like a balloon in the evenings so that she couldn’t sleep on her stomach. The swelling would always disapper during the night. Doctors didn’t know what was wrong. She wasn’t lactose intolerant nor was she celiactic. Then she found the low-carb -diet. There were lots of people that had fixed various stomach problems by leaving out sugar, potatoes and wheats and replacing their energy with animal fats. It worked almost immediately and she has been perfectly fine since.
But this made her interested about the science behind the official nutritional recommendations. She had learned to be sceptical about any scientific concensus after hearing me rant about climate change. There was a concensus that animal fats were horrible to your health. She started to dig in to this “concensus”. There were some eerie similarities to the AGW-cult:
– Consensus. Anyone who’s anything in the field on nutrirional science knows that animal fats are bad for you. If you disagree, you are either ignorant, crazy or corrupted by the dairy industry (I kid you not!).
– Concensus is decided in an international meeting, where “the best and the brightest” scientists are invited. If you are a loonie that disagrees, you don’t get an invite. (Sound familiar?)
– There is a strong ideological base for those driving the science. There are lots of scientist in the field that are vegetarians and think that animals shouldn’t be oppressed. They have ideological interest in proving the link between staturated animal fats and cardiovascular diseases.
– Thousands of studies prove that animal fats are bad. These thousands of studies are referred always when a new peer-reviewed study disagrees with the link between animal fats and cardiovascular diseases. “There are thousands of studies that say otherwise, a single study proves nothing!” (Sound familiar?)
– Yet with all these thousands of studies being practically everywhere, nobody can show a single study. A doctor in Sweden was recommending her diabetic patients to stop eating most carbohydrates and start eating animal fats and most importantly butter. The local Diabetic Association sued her, claiming she was endangering her patients.
In the court the plaintiff sited all these “thousands of studies” proving that defendant was causing grievous harm to her patients. The defence wanted to actually see these studies. In the end they managed to find three(!), of which none(!) proved any link between animal fats and cardiovascular diseases. She was found not guilty.
That made us both libertarians. This was not just a single case. The fact is that scientific concensus can be manufactured if there is sufficient ideological interest combined with economical interest. There is really no reason for anyone to have blind trust to what the officials say, no matter how much “consensus” there is. Most experts are experts only in a very narrow subject. Most of the knowledge they have about their field is just mindless carbon-copies of someone who they believe to know what they are talking about. After all – everyone knows about these “thousands of studies”, so surely they must exist!
There is a good change your authorities are ideologues, corrupted, lazy or just plain stupid.
Shona @ur momisugly 11:52 seems to have it about right. The “researchers ” I would confidently put in the egalitarian camp and as Shona says are sponging off the commerse and industry types who, by the very nature of their enterprise have to be individualistic. What’s more it is these very individualistic types who generate the wealth that the egalitarians like to spend.
The researchers also ignored the fact that not all the facts in the AGW consensus were published nor were all the facts considered in order to reach the consensus. Commerse and industry types need all the information in order to formulate those plans which will have the best chance of success. Egalitarians seldom need any data to arrive at some feel good decision especially when another group will have to supply the resources. E.g. Artistic types are usually egalitarian but rely on successful commerse types to buy their art or demand government grants to supplement an income which in many cases their ability does not warrant. Academics are artists with tenure.
What a big and new discovery that environmentalism is about a transformation of the society, not about the natural science. Many of us have been explaining that for several decades.
“Professional” = educated/trained person who earns a living doing something and sometimes makes a mistake.
“Expert” = person from two cities away with a suit and a laptop.
Alternatively, “Expert” = a drip under pressure.
This study would appear to have ignored those people who have done their own research. I did in fact understand AGW to be a fact until I came across a claim of a consequence that I knew to be untrue. It was at that time that I started to question ‘the science’ and found it seriously wanting. In fact, ‘the science’ is again found wanting in this study by it not considering those people that have come to their own conclusions by their own research. By issuing this flawed study (and thankyou WUWT), the author has added more evidence to my understanding that many published scientific conclusions are no such thing: they are often opinion and should be treated as such.
A man from Europe:
Good post! Greatly enjoyed and much appreciated.
Robert E. Phelan says:
September 19, 2010 at 12:07 am
“It’s ironic that Professor Kahan and his colleagues are perfectly correct in their estimation of the importance of cultural cognitive systems in determining views on a variety of issues with scientific inputs, but then fail to turn that mirror on themselves.”
You put beautifully something I was struggling to articulate for myself. Thanks.
For anyone who doesn’t already know, Feynman (see my post above) won a Nobel Prize for Physics.
Quiz question…name the Odd One Out:
Feynman
IPCC/Gore
Obama