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-
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
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So they’ve discovered that humans are rationalizing rather than rational, wow.
re: “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.”
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How about changing “Science Culture” back to an honest culture where Scientific Method is paramount (like open and re-producible) not “Post-Modern Consensus Science” embodied in CAGW and the Social Science Politics of the IPCC.
two law professors and a political science professors hardly have the training to use the *scientific* method in their study – which is full of holes other’s have pointed out.
I have strong left-ish political and social views.
I doubt man made AGW.
Obviously I don’t exist.
“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…”
“To make sure people form unbiased perceptions of what scientists are discovering, it is necessary to…”
This guy seems to think that it’s just people’s business to tot up the numbers of scientists who think something, and the number who don’t, and pick the winner. I know this is how the warmists operate, but does everybody have to do the same? Oh, I see, that way we’ll have to agree with the warmists.
And do scientists still “discover” things? I thought they formed hypotheses, which were of a tentative character, and which would only be retained if they hadn’t been falsified.
Did somebody pay this guy to write this drivel?
idlex says:
September 19, 2010 at 2:17 pm
“This guy seems to think that it’s just people’s business to total up the numbers of scientists who think something, and the number who don’t, and pick the winner. I know this is how the warmists operate, but does everybody have to do the same? Oh, I see, that way we’ll have to agree with the warmists.”
___________________________________________________
Keep in mind that two of the authors are lawyers. Lawyers don’t have to prove anything scientifically…they only have to convince a jury. This alone tends to skew their world view.
Theo Goodwin says:
September 19, 2010 at 11:22 am
Tim Williams writes:
“Please provide some evidence for your assertion that the scientific concensus ‘on AGW’ is now dead. Thanks.”
There is an abundance of evidence. There is this website. There is Climateaudit.org. I especially recommend Roy Spencer’s website and his book, “The Great Global Warming Blunder.” There is the fact that the US Senate cannot find enough AGW supporters to attempt a vote on “Cap and Trade” or some similar bill. There is the fact that no UN body expects any substantive agreement on AGW in the forseeable future. Of course, we must not forget that AGW has just been renamed GCD, global climate disruption. Once again, the renamers left off the word ‘anthropogenic’, a weasal tactic if ever there was one. When you give up the name “AGW,” you have pretty much acknowledged that AGW is dead. As for myself, I would also cite the fact that seventy percent of the American people believe that AGW is dead. Well, there is a beginning for you.
What has any of that got to do with the scientific consensus? All you have there are a bunch of citizen scientists, one maverick climatologist, a collective inability to curb CO2 emissions and an unsupported and irrelevant assertion that ‘75% of American people believe that AGW is dead.’
You’ll have to do a bit better than that, to convince me that every major national science academy, the IPCC and just about every science body you can think of have abandoned the notion of anthropogenic global warming…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change#cite_note-92
I guess if you don’t have much in the way of a rationally functioning brain, you must substitute “culture” for it, assimilate to whatever that is, and hope you just get lucky? Or else maybe even force yourself into a position where you can create your very own “culture” by “writing” whatever you want on everyone else’s Blank Slate. Bingo!
Chris says:
September 19, 2010 at 2:09 pm
“I have strong left-ish political and social views.
I doubt man made AGW.
Obviously I don’t exist.”
Well, I for one am not happy that some good folks are getting painted with the “broad brush”, but as a recovering lefty myself (about two years free now) I know that there are even some conservatives that have imbibed the Klimate Koolaid. Don’t take it personally. In fact, I have tremendous respect for my former comrades that are honourably holding to their politics, rather than lashing themselves to the “ship of doom” that left has become now it is a tool of big environment.
The behavior of some influential party members was a real eye opener for me. These were the same people I had worked with for 25 years! I even helped some get elected to three levels of government. Folks that had seemed truly caring have become drunk by the promise of power that they see coming from the green movement. It was a quick change for me; like throwing a switch. One day I was the latest of 4 generations of staunch Liberal/NDP supporters, the next I was reading Ezra Levant and Conrad Black! Once the eco-deists took over the party, I could no longer be a part of such a corrupt group of zealots. They have thrown away all integrity and are the real threat to this planet now.
Copernicus
Gallileo
Kepler
Wegener
Turing
Marshall
Each pilloried by the consensus, each was right. Truth is in the data not in the consensus.
Chris says:
September 19, 2010 at 2:09 pm
“I have strong left-ish political and social views.
I doubt man made AGW.
Obviously I don’t exist.”
Posted by a ghostwriter? ;o)
@John F. Hultquist
I am familiar with the site.
In prose;
I) Greenhouses maximize plants sensitivity to CO2 by controlling such things as temperature, humidity, insolation, soil structure and providing both macro and micro nutrients in excess. Under these conditions increases in CO2 cause large increases in plant biomass. This means little for cultivated monoculture and even less for uncultivated wild lands. The net effect of increasing CO2 levels in the atmo, even ignoring AGW effects like decreased soil moisture, is undecided. Like I said earlier; There is no consensus among the experts at this time.
To give one example of where this “Plant life is proportional to [CO2]” is expected to fail; Plants becoming more water efficient (Smaller stomata) is going to disrupt the transevaporation process that supplies the west amazon basin with much of it’s water.
It’s been some time since I have perused that site, and memory fails. Were all of the linked studies free air [CO2] experiments? This is crucial.
As the saying goes ‘A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest’. This finding is not at all surprising. Those that are believers of the cause obviously accept any drum beating climate scientist as experts. Those that are sceptical know that there are large question marks over the science of AGW and the so called supporting data. Hence, those people obviouslly question the real expertise of so called climate scientists. The studt was a waste of money since the result was entirely predictable.
The paper seems pretty sensible. It doesn’t make conclusions only about the people who have “individualistic values, and are strongly associated with commerce and industry”, but also about people more like me (commo, greenie fools). It says that there is a tendency to distrust scientists who reach conclusions they don’t like.
As soon as I read this conclusion, I agreed with it. As soon as someone states it, it is obvious. But it is none-the-less worth stating. We all need to be occasionally reminded that our world is coloured by our biases.
Don’t all these very recent effort match up with Man-Bear-Pig trying to restart the AGW propaganda effort? I hate conspiracy theories, but maybe…
I find it incredible that there is not simply a “Are the facts valid? Is the science valid? What are the results?” and then be a big person and live with the logical conclusion of these insightful questions? It is immature to deny reality.
Take ocean acidification by CO2. At first cogitation, this claim makes no sense as CO2 is part of an extended equilibrium from CO2 to calcium carbonate and carbonic acid is a weak acid. So, this starting point already indicates that more CO2 will have to enhance calcium carbonate precipitation as it will push the equilibrium towards calcium carbonate, meaning along the way that protons (acidity) released by this cannot affect this equilibrium – only an outside proton source can do this.
Next, I have to recognize that CO2 might acidify distilled water, but seawater is a much more complex solution comprising several buffer systems which serve to resist changes in pH (the acid-base scale) and geologic processes are constantly adding more to this buffer system. I then go back and remember that carbonic acid is a weak acid and it’s very likely to have little effect.
Then, I go to the literature and look up the records of ocean pH over time and find that there is a recognized range over which pH varies and modern pH values are within this range and not doing anything unusual. So, I have to conclude that ocean acidification by CO2 is a non-issue.
Along the way, I found multiple reports of coral reefs thriving with higher CO2 (any acidification being ignored it appears), photosynthesis is a very basic process (significantly raising the pH), and that coral bleaching is a normal process in which corals expel their photosynthetic symbionts and switch to another symbiont in response to changes in temperature, both up and down (oceans are currently cooling)—come back in 6 months or so and the corals have regained color.
Now, all of this fits logical science, using my background as a chemist and a marine biologist – I have a good knowledge suitable for this kind of evaluation. It is important that anybody wanting to understand “climate science” claims should find someone who knows basic science and not just give an opinion, but explain them, being very careful to avoid opinions, which have no place in science. That is why “consensus” science is wrong. The science is either good or bad, logical or illogical. It has nothing to do with feelings or opinions.
I spent years examining the warmist claims one by one and always (reluctantly, but fairly) thought that the next one would be the one that confirmed warming. It always was not. I kept an open mind and was willing to live with the results, regardless of whether it was what I wanted it to be or not. Adults are willing to live and deal with reality. It is self-destructive to deny reality as decisions made on wishes and opinions will eventually fail and can cause enormous damage.
I eventually had the epiphany, after realizing that the planet was not warming, that the claims had ALL to be false as they could not be, we are cooling. Simply cannot. I also stumbled over the history of the manmade global warming movement and found that it is a political agenda and a longterm plan originated by Maurice Strong, who set up the IPCC (a political body with scientific trappings) to create a case for worldwide emissions control (to save the planet). Al Gore, recruited along the way, became the spokeManBearPig, spreading the junk science being assembled to sell the agenda.
First, what opinions or beliefs individualists or group-think folks have about scientists’ beliefs, opinions or theories is totally irrelevant. The scientific proof, whether satisfactory to either or neither political persuasion is all that matters. Here we have the new paradigm wrt scientific thought. Essentially might is right like it was in Galileo’s time. This why there is no need for a debate or to present proof. Even the ‘study’ didn’t have to bother having a control group, like for example asking both sides where they stood on Einstein’s theories. Good Lord it’s worse than we thought. When have physical and natural sciences been analyzed by sociologists and lawyers and reported in a scientific publication before?
The problem is one of culture, but not exactly as these “experts” say. The research as described is so full of “cultural” assumptions that their work sees through a highly biased template. Consider their repeatedly equating “scientific consensus” with position statements made by the National Academy of Sciences (and/or other bodies of the same ilk).
As a scientist at a major university I have to say that, first, in the physical sciences anything that has to make claims to being a “consensus” position through news releases and “expert reports” is immediately suspicious. This is not how scientific consensus is achieved, and when a consensus is achieved it is never necessary to promote it by political posturing. It is achieved through comparing the results of actual SCIENTIFIC WORK until the answer is clear, not by voting in a highly politicized congress complete with pressure groups and lobbying. It would be one thing if “National Academy” positions were arrived at by such a dubious vote — but most of these positions in my experience are generated by a small group of people at the top of the political pyramid, whose motivations are almost entirely political, and whose actual scientific work is generally a bygone thing. They rise to the top in these organizations because they love schmoozing with politicians and fighting over grant budgets more than analyzing data and doing lab work.
Now I am a mathematician, and we arrive at consensus a bit differently because results are established by deduction rather than by experimental testing of hypothesis, but even in our field, it is true that those who rise to the top of the various “spokesman bodies” are basically political animals who may or may not have any particularly impressive mathematical talent or authority. And they tend to operate more-or-less independently from the membership, trusting their own political instincts over the voice of the mathematician in the trenches.
So these statements of position are certainly not, in any trustworthy sense, “scientific consensus”, particularly when they pertain to issues that are widely debated. They are attempts to quell dissent. Any “study” that takes society “positions” as the definition of scientific consensus is nonsense.
AusieDan : “Look – this study seems to me to be very narrowly based on values pertinent to the USA community.”
Well, the Aussie version is out now.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/psychology-provides-insight-into-why-people-doubt-climate-change-20100919-15hy4.html
“Psychology provides insight into why people doubt climate change” – a new University of NSW study that brings together climate science and cognitive psychology.
The study is by psychology lecturer Ben Newell and climate scientist Professor Andy Pitman. Ben Newell I know nothing about, but Andy Pitman is a very prominent Australian climate scientist who has appeared on a number of television progams on climate.
I think it would be a very good idea if everyone here had a look at their paper, and then contacted Ben Newell and Andy Pitman to give them constructive feedback.
The paper is at http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2010BAMS2957.1
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR: Ben R. Newell, School of Psychology,
University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2052 NSW, Australia
E-mail: ben.newell@unsw.edu.au
Professor Andy Pitman is a UNSW Climate Change Research Centre (CCRC) co-director and and leader of the new ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.
email: a.pitman@unsw.edu.au
The fact that this paper is written by law lecturers reminds me of the (in my opinion) best-ever joke in a movie, Robin Williams’ ‘Peter Pan’.
Joke told by Williams,
“What do you call one hundred lawyers at the bottom of the sea?”
“A good start!”
I have nothing personal against lawyers and some of my very nice cousins follow the lawyering trade, but to suggest that a law lecturer is a scientist seems to be stretching definitions beyond their normal elasticity.
The paper seems more like three blokes making up something to get them tickets on the gravy train.
That’s going to be a real treat. When can we get started with this new 5 PRONGED APPROACH to my perceptions? Oh boy. Fun.
Frank Lee MeiDere writes:
“Here’s the difference between evolutionists’ and AGWs’ defences against disagreements. Evolutionists are often haughty and condescending in addressing disagreements, but by-and-large, they address the disagreements. The AGW crowd addresses the mental deficiency leading to the disagreement.
Frankly don’t care for that second approach.”
I’m not sure I agree with your assessment of Evolutionists….they are in the same camp as Warmers, IMHO. They have nothing conclusive on the Origin of Life, yet they want to shut you down if you attempt to teach contrary “evidence” w/o any involvement of religion…..
;o)
I wonder if it has occurred to Kahan and friends that Galileo invented a new culture, the culture of scientific method. It has been the most productive and creative culture that has existed. However, it is now under threat from politicians and totalitarians who believe that there is something called “scientific consensus” that is separate from and independent of the culture of scientific method. Needless to say, this so-called “scientific consensus” becomes important only when governments attempt to take ownership of the culture of scientific method. In addition, the scientists who trumpet “scientific consensus” are, in their positions, goals, and ambitions, inextricably bound up with politicians, while scientists go about their daily business of science.
Lets see if I can simplify the outcome of this paper:
People with differing points of view require different amounts of evidence before believing a particular finding is true/accurate.
SHOCKING!
It is unfortunate that “egalitarian” and “individualistic” have been used as opposing cultures here. This is surely not what the authors mean, what they mean is socialist versus conservative. The reasons that socialist views (dare I say Marxist) have aligned with the pro AGW view is that this perspective “claims” that some people in society will be disadvantaged by the impacts of AGW and that therefore society has to be managed in order to resolve the problem. In other words let’s centralise all the decision making and remove individual freedoms all in the name of a better society. History, of course, indicates that centralising power has not improved the lot of the disadvantaged in the past and therefore is unlikely to work in the future. The reason for this is, of course axiomatic, centralised power does not respect the individual and is prepared to sacrifice the individual in the name of a greater cause. So the very people for whom the whole charade was established are the very people who get sacrificed first. Instead it is more likely that deprived individuals will get more respect from those who are “individualistic” providing, of course, that we remember our common humanity.