The Burrill Report


I do my best to avoid engaging in serious debates on Facebook. Every so often a friend will post an article about things such as the hoax of climate change, how vaccines cause autism, or the dangers of genetically modified foods. I read the exchanges with others. They are never productive and they never change minds.

Granted I may have a few friends more likely to use aluminum foil on their heads than in their kitchen, but I’ve noticed the folks who post these things are generally educated, intelligent, and scientifically literate. I’ve tended to view it through a political lens. One libertarian friend is constantly posting articles that deny the existence of climate change. From the left, another regularly posts articles about the evils of Monsanto. A new study in PLOS One sheds some light on a growing distrust of science.

Stephan Lewandowsky of the School of Psychology at the University of Western Australia, along with colleagues, conducted a survey of 1,001 Americans through the Internet on a variety of questions relating to their political views, their beliefs in a number of conspiracy theories, and on vaccines, climate change, and genetically modified foods.

What Lewandowsky and the other researchers found was that while there was a correlation between people with a belief in free markets and their rejection of climate change (an issue with potential regulatory implications), political worldviews did not correlate across the board with scientific issues. Instead, they found a correlation between people who believe in conspiracy theories and the rejection of scientific propositions.

In fact, folks who believe in such things as a secretive group known as the New World Order planning to rule the world, that the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. was a government conspiracy, that the moon landings were faked, that 9-11 hijackings were part of a government plan to rescind civil liberties and launch foreign wars, and that Princess Diana’s death was no accident, are three times more likely to reject vaccines. They are also more likely to deny climate change or oppose GM foods, although not as strongly.

It’s worth noting that there’s a difference between skepticism and denial. As the authors note in an accompanying Q&A on the PLOS One site, “scientists are skeptics.” “Climate scientists no longer debate the fundamental fact that the globe is warming from greenhouse gas emissions, and in the medical community, doubts about the efficacy of vaccinations no longer have much intellectual respectability,” they write. “Beyond such fundamentals, the submission portals of journals remain wide open for skeptical debate. Denial differs from skepticism because it usually side-steps the peer-reviewed literature and replaces skeptical analysis with the noise of talkfests or blogs.”

Scientific denialism is an issue of public policy concern and the authors say their study shows the importance of scientific communication to counter misinformation. Denialism can skew public debates by spreading misinformation, and they say people can’t readily dismiss misinformation unless they are provided with reasons for why false information was propagated in the first place.

Lewandowsky told Mother Jones he discourages debating with conspiracy theorists (something any Facebook user should know). Instead, he told the publication its best to “communicate with the persuadable.”

Lewandosky’s work is not without controversy. Deniers of climate change in the blogosphere have taken note and accused him in past works of distortions and fabrications to suggest people who characterize themselves as climate change skeptics are conspiracy nuts. Not a surprise, though, that they should look at his work and see a conspiracy.


October 04, 2013
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-princess_di_faked_moon_landings_and_the_denial_of_science.html