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One is not like the others

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?

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 20 2022, @03:13PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 20 2022, @03:13PM (#1267662)

    You wrote that the study shows that agreement with the scientific consensus is linked with greater ignorance of the subject. In fact, the null hypothesis (r = 0) wasn't rejected at any of the three statistical significance levels used in the study. The authors do not claim that there is a positive relationship. You omitted that important information.

    Also, let's quote the authors about why climate change is different:

    In discussing why GM foods showed the pattern but climate change did not, Fernbach et al. (25) suggested that a potentially important difference between the issues is degree of political polarization, with climate change attitudes much more polarized by political affiliation than attitudes on GM foods. Political polarization refers to the degree to which people from different ideological groups (e.g., conservatives versus liberals) differ in their positions on an issue. When an issue is highly polarized, there may be less room for individual knowledge to influence attitudes because they are instead driven more by community influence.

    You're an anecdotal example of exactly this. You do have a competent understanding of the climate system. However, it appears that your position on the issue is influenced heavily by your political views about the matter.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 22 2022, @12:18PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 22 2022, @12:18PM (#1267928) Journal

    You wrote that the study shows that agreement with the scientific consensus is linked with greater ignorance of the subject. In fact, the null hypothesis (r = 0) wasn't rejected at any of the three statistical significance levels used in the study. The authors do not claim that there is a positive relationship. You omitted that important information.

    Given that there was such a link - a correlation - I was indeed correct to write that.

    What's important about that information? I doubt they significance tested that climate change would be the only one of the seven questions they asked that wouldn't show the peculiar correlation noted above. Significance testing is dubious [xkcd.com] in the first place, but I have a reasonable hypothesis for why the correlation could be a real thing.

    Also, let's quote the authors about why climate change is different:

    In discussing why GM foods showed the pattern but climate change did not, Fernbach et al. (25) suggested that a potentially important difference between the issues is degree of political polarization, with climate change attitudes much more polarized by political affiliation than attitudes on GM foods. Political polarization refers to the degree to which people from different ideological groups (e.g., conservatives versus liberals) differ in their positions on an issue. When an issue is highly polarized, there may be less room for individual knowledge to influence attitudes because they are instead driven more by community influence.

    You're an anecdotal example of exactly this. You do have a competent understanding of the climate system. However, it appears that your position on the issue is influenced heavily by your political views about the matter.

    First, you exhibit genuine anti-scientific reasoning here - merely asserting stuff. I'll just note that if you had chosen not to perceive my position as "influenced heavily" by political views you have little knowledge or understanding of, then your argument would fall apart. An argument of this sort should be objective, independent of the opinion of the person making the argument.

    Second, it's a silly argument because both climate change and GM food are heavily politicized. I think what's important here is who is doing the politicizing. With climate change, advocacy for a particular climate change interpretation and mitigation fix is heavily politicized. How else do you get the official cognitive dissonance of asserting that 1.5 C is the maximum global warming allowed and that it can be achieved by a near future ending of almost all greenhouse gases emissions, while ignoring both the serious economic consequences of that ending (such as increased poverty and human population growth) and that their models already have more than 1.5 C of warming baked in (more like 2 C of warming if we accept the assumption of 3 C of warming per doubling of CO2 equivalent)?

    My hypothesis is that if we had instead gone with the consensus question of "Does global warming require an urgent, radical reduction in human greenhouse gases emissions?" we would find a strong reversed correlation with people with greater knowledge of the subject opposing the question.