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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 Thexalon on Tuesday January 15 2019, @11:04PM
The screw-up that has nothing to do with that was the actions, or more precisely inactions, of the Californian: They were stopped close enough to the sinking to see the ship's rockets being launched as a last ditch effort to try to get help, and did absolutely nothing about it for hours.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.