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Journal by khallow
I ran across a recent study ("Knowledge overconfidence is associated with anti-consensus views on controversial scientific issues", published July 2022) that had some interesting results. The study asked subjects to rate their opposition to some scientific claim that is generally held to be true (a "consensus"). They then asked the subjects to evaluate their own knowledge in the area and finally tested the subjects on their actual knowledge of the subject. This resulted in a three value data set of "opposition", "subjective knowledge", and "objective knowledge". The opposition questions are listed in the above study.

For example, one on GM foods:

"Consuming foods with ingredients derived from GM crops is no riskier than consuming foods modified by conventional plant improvement techniques."

The primary conclusion is that for a number of claims that are generally held to be true by consensus, opposition to those results show interesting correlations: opposition correlates negatively with objective knowledge (what the final test indicated that the subject knew about the field), and positively with subjective knowledge (what the subject thought they knew about the field). Those who were most opposed tended to exhibit a large gap between what they knew and what they thought they knew.

Here's the list of subjects and then I'll get to the punch line:

  • GM foods
  • Vaccination
  • Homeopathic medicine
  • Nuclear power
  • Climate change
  • Big bang
  • Evolution

Which one wasn't like the others?

Climate change!

The question was in the same vein as the rest:

Most of the warming of Earth’s average global temperature over the second half of the 20th century has been caused by human activities.

Unlike every other field listed in this research, there was a slight positive correlation between opposition to the claim and objective knowledge of the subject (see figure 2).

What other consensus viewpoints are out there where agreement with the consensus correlations with greater ignorance of the subject? Economics maybe?

 

Reply to: Re:Trees vs khallow

    (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 24 2022, @07:02AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 24 2022, @07:02AM (#1268201)

    I see you present no evidence. If it's easy for me to do, then it probably is easy for you to do as well. As a result, I think there's a slight error in your claim as to who is being dishonest here.

    I literally told you how to see the evidence for yourself, two clicks away from this page. The evidence is in the journal papers. You refuse to click the links and look at the papers, then claim I've presented no evidence, which is basically Pacled-level laziness and stupidity. Your denials might be even stupider than aristarchus claiming that he doesn't have sock puppets, which is truly remarkable. In contrast, when you finally got around to mentioning specific droughts that you stated were on par with the current drought in the UK, I accepted your statement in good faith. You are intentionally being obstinate, just like Pacleds and aristarchus. Holy fuck, your school teachers must have hated dealing with a student who apparently was that lazy.

    No, it's quite scientific. The huge problem being missed here is that it's quite easy to build models that fit against existing data, but extrapolate to anything you want. And this practice of claiming that something is too extreme for non-climate change scenario is worse than the scenario of simulating future climates because there is no way to check the claim.

    No, they haven't been so verified. You merely claim they have. There's only one genuine test here - testing against unknown, future data rather than fitting to existing data. And as I noted above, they're failing that test collectively.

    BS. Models have already been verified against future data: https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2943/study-confirms-climate-models-are-getting-future-warming-projections-right/ [nasa.gov].

    Now, we're making a silly argument that because there's a lot of models, then the models must be right. The obvious rebuttal here is confirmation bias. For example, we have a several decade history [soylentnews.org] of that mass of models understating carbon sinks - models running hot and making predictions that overshoot actual warming but interpreted otherwise once one adjusts the model for actual greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

    FatPhil's reply to your comment noted that your source is unreliable. You made no attempt to defend the accuracy of your source. That tells me that your comment should be ignored as it is highly likely to be BS. Even if your source wasn't BS, you admit that given the correct CO2 concentrations in the models, they do a really good job of predicting temperatures.

    It's not worth my time to discuss this topic with someone who can't be bothered to click a link, then uses his own laziness as an excuse to say that no evidence has been presented. Until you improve the quality of your posting, I'll just stick to pondering whether you're a Pacled because of the extreme laziness, or if you're a Ferengi because of your worship of capitalism. If you want good discussion, post better comments.

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