Hexen
10th September 2012, 01:25
New research (http://websites.psychology.uwa.edu.au/labs/cogscience/documents/LskyetalPsychScienceinPressClimateConspiracy.pdf) (PDF) to be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science has found that those who subscribed to one or more conspiracy theories or who strongly supported a free market economy were more likely to reject the findings from climate science as well as other sciences. The researchers, led by UWA School of Psychology Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, found that free-market ideology was an overwhelmingly strong determinant of the rejection of climate science. It also predicted the rejection of the link between tobacco and lung cancer and between HIV and AIDS. Conspiratorial thinking was a lesser but still significant determinant of the rejection of all scientific propositions examined, from climate to lung cancer. Curiously, public response to the paper has provided a perfect real-life illustration of the very cognitive processes at the center of the research. (http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskyCCCresponse1.html)
Abstract:
Although nearly all domain experts agree that human CO2 emissions are altering the world's climate, segments of the public remain unconvinced by the scientific evidence. Internet blogs have become a vocal platform for climate denial, and bloggers have taken a prominent and influential role in questioning climate science. We report a survey (N> 1100) of climate blog users to identify the variables underlying acceptance and rejection of climate science. Paralleling previous work, we find that endorsement of a laissez-faire conception of free-market economics predicts rejection of climate science (r ' : .80 between latent constructs). Endorsement of the free market also predicted the rejection of other established scientific findings, such as the facts that HIV causes AIDS and that smoking causes lung cancer. We additionally show that endorsement of a cluster of conspiracy theories (e.g., that the CIA killed Martin-Luther King or that NASA faked the moon landing) predicts rejection of climate science as well as the rejection of other scientific findings, above and beyond endorsement of laissez-faire free markets. This provides empirical confirmation of previous suggestions that conspiracist ideation contributes to the rejection of science. Acceptance of science, by contrast, was strongly associated with the perception of a consensus among scientists.
Theoretical implications:
The pivotal role of personal ideology in the rejection of climate science has been repeatedly demonstrated. We highlighted the magnitude of this effect among blog denizens, people with a strong interest in the issue, and we additionally showed that endorsement of the free market also predicted the rejection of two other well-established scientific facts. This novel result is particularly intriguing because only one of those facts, the link between tobacco smoke and lung cancer, has regulatory implications and has a history of organized ideologically-motivated denial. The fact that HIV causes AIDS, by contrast, seems of little relevance to one's views on the free market at first glance. However, the association between ideology and rejection of the HIV/AIDS link meshes well with our finding that perceived consensus and acceptance of science were associated via general factors that transcended pairwise correlations. If acceptance of science is a coherent construct, then it is not altogether surprising that rejection of established facts is also consistently associated with free-market ideology and conspiracist ideation.
I knew that there's something about conspiracy theories...
Source: Well I grabbed it from this Facepunch forum:
http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1210664
Abstract:
Although nearly all domain experts agree that human CO2 emissions are altering the world's climate, segments of the public remain unconvinced by the scientific evidence. Internet blogs have become a vocal platform for climate denial, and bloggers have taken a prominent and influential role in questioning climate science. We report a survey (N> 1100) of climate blog users to identify the variables underlying acceptance and rejection of climate science. Paralleling previous work, we find that endorsement of a laissez-faire conception of free-market economics predicts rejection of climate science (r ' : .80 between latent constructs). Endorsement of the free market also predicted the rejection of other established scientific findings, such as the facts that HIV causes AIDS and that smoking causes lung cancer. We additionally show that endorsement of a cluster of conspiracy theories (e.g., that the CIA killed Martin-Luther King or that NASA faked the moon landing) predicts rejection of climate science as well as the rejection of other scientific findings, above and beyond endorsement of laissez-faire free markets. This provides empirical confirmation of previous suggestions that conspiracist ideation contributes to the rejection of science. Acceptance of science, by contrast, was strongly associated with the perception of a consensus among scientists.
Theoretical implications:
The pivotal role of personal ideology in the rejection of climate science has been repeatedly demonstrated. We highlighted the magnitude of this effect among blog denizens, people with a strong interest in the issue, and we additionally showed that endorsement of the free market also predicted the rejection of two other well-established scientific facts. This novel result is particularly intriguing because only one of those facts, the link between tobacco smoke and lung cancer, has regulatory implications and has a history of organized ideologically-motivated denial. The fact that HIV causes AIDS, by contrast, seems of little relevance to one's views on the free market at first glance. However, the association between ideology and rejection of the HIV/AIDS link meshes well with our finding that perceived consensus and acceptance of science were associated via general factors that transcended pairwise correlations. If acceptance of science is a coherent construct, then it is not altogether surprising that rejection of established facts is also consistently associated with free-market ideology and conspiracist ideation.
I knew that there's something about conspiracy theories...
Source: Well I grabbed it from this Facepunch forum:
http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1210664