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posted by takyon on Tuesday January 15 2019, @06:29PM   Printer-friendly
from the Eat-the-fish,-Mr.-Burns dept.

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?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @01:22AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @01:22AM (#787158)

    Stick hand out. Put on keyboard. Push down. You just found it. Your are welcome.

  • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday January 18 2019, @12:49AM

    by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 18 2019, @12:49AM (#788090) Homepage Journal

    Yes, that's what they can't do.