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The University of Colorado Boulder has an article up about a paper [open, DOI: 10.1038/s41562-018-0520-3] [DX] published Monday in Nature Human Behavior which finds that U.S. adults:
who hold the most extreme views opposing genetically modified (GM) foods think they know most about GM food science, but actually know the least
The paper's key finding is that:
the more strongly people report being opposed to GM foods, the more knowledgeable they think they are on the topic, but the lower they score on an actual knowledge test.
Interestingly the authors found similar results applied to gene therapy, but were unable prove a similar conclusion when they tested against climate change denialism. This leads them to hypothesize that:
the climate change debate has become so politically polarized that people's attitudes depend more on which group they affiliate with than how much they know about the issue.
It might be instructive to run similar studies in a number of areas such as
Vaccinations
Nuclear Power
Homeopathy
...
Where would you like to see this study done next?
(Score: 2) by danmars on Tuesday January 15 2019, @10:56PM (2 children)
The most interesting part of this is that it's apparently way beyond Dunning-Kruger. Normally if a person knows less they realize that they know less. But in this case people who know the least actually rank themselves as experts, even though a person with average knowledge wouldn't rank him/herself as an expert.
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/dunning-kruger-and-gmo-opposition/ [theness.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @02:33AM
I had to check the survey they use, so I followed the links to the study published in Nature [nature.com] and from there to the link in the "Data availability" section (isn't a permalink).
The questions are easily high school level, which is grades 9-12 in the US. We are witnessing the first signs of our capitalist-controlled educational system's mass failure. We must dramatically increase funding to schools while placing education back into local control by the teachers themselves.
The fact that teachers have been among the first in a recent wave of strikes is significant. We have every reason to believe that they understand the societal consequences of austerity on education, which are presently manifesting in a qualitative manner (as opposed to quantitative).
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Wednesday January 16 2019, @10:10PM
Actually, that's exactly how Dunning-Kruger works. People who have insufficient expertise in a subject by definition do not have the skills required to objectively understand how little they understand. So people can learn a little bit and think that they are experts when they arn't. Hence the phrase "Know just enough to be dangerous".