Map of life expectancy at birth from Global Education Project.

Thursday, April 28, 2016

No, both sides don't do it


While surfing around and commenting on various blogs I have encountered an ineluctable phenomenon. Whenever the discussion is Republican/Conservative denial of the science of global climate change, evolution, and cosmology, people chime in with "Well, liberals are anti-vaccines and GMOs."

Not The Truth. Republicans are far more likely to think vaccines are unsafe than are Democrats, while doubting the safety of genetically modified organisms is completely unrelated to political party or ideology. And, in general, liberals are far more likely to say they trust scientists than are conservatives.

As Dana Nucitelli says at the link:

This rising distrust of science is particularly high among higher-educated conservatives, in what’s been coined the “smart idiot” effect. Essentially, on complicated scientific subjects like climate change, more highly-educated ideologically-biased individuals possess more tools to fool themselves into denying the science and rejecting the conclusions of experts.

1 comment:

Cervantes said...

Well, okay, just this once. But anybody who goes there it's at your own risk, I hav no way of checking this out.