A glimmer

I give this Dutch writer a bit of credit for acknowledging that not all skepticism of popular scientific orthodoxy is an artifact of conservative troglodytism. He forces himself to admit that skepticism of GM foods and vaccines can come from all ranges of the political spectrum--implicitly even the left, though he never comes right out and says so.  Instead, he notes that suspicion about vaccines correlates with concerns about the morality of naturalness, while suspicion about GM foods is associated with ignorance.  He throws "religiousness" in there, but appears to means something like concerns about morality in general, and notes that whatever it is he's measuring probably is confounded with general ignorance.

Climate change skepticism, however, clearly has no explanation other than political conservatism. I doubt the writer even entertains the private suspicion that anyone with his eyes open would be a bit skeptical of many aspects of climate alarmism, and that the common thread there is the political bias (hint: not conservative) that prevents nearly everyone he associates with from closely examining the subject.

The writer finds it natural to gauge trust in science in large part on the basis of how enthusiastically someone supports federal financing of scientists.  How else would you know, right?

9 comments:

J Melcher said...

A plausible co-factor in the analysis is simply age.

Age accumulates experience. Experiences include memories of errors: one's own and those of the consensus.

Age accumulates property. Even renters pack their apartments until all nooks and crannies are full of memorabilia (reminding the aged of their accumulated experiences.)

Political conservatives tend to be protective of property and desire to apply their own experiences of other solved problems, or failed proposed solutions) to new problems. Political progressives and liberals have less to lose, and less experience of either success or failure -- and so tend to base their decisions on what sounds plausible.

The aged regard science with skepticism due to experience with changed scientific consensus. Those of us of "Boomer" age recall when the Earth was "only" 3 billion years old, Pluto was a planet, dinosaurs had had scales not feathers, the population bomb would ruin civilization with war and famine by the year 2000, oil and gas would reach Hubbard's peak and dry up by 1990, the climate was overdue for a new ice age, AIDS would cause an epidemic within the married heterosexual community of Americans, shortage of copper would prevent phone service from deployment in much of the world, nuclear electricity would be too cheap to meter but nuclear waste would cause thousands of cancers per year, and nuclear war would hasten -- via nuclear winter -- the inescapable ice age. Oh, and science recommended the US should unilaterally (meaning, only the US) surrender nuclear weapons.

So, hearing the latest, we tend to react with a "wait and see" attitude now labeled "skepticism".

Texan99 said...

Man, I must be old. :-)

Assistant Village Idiot said...

@ J Melcher - great list.

The irony is rich that this comes from a professor of psychology, a field that is having its foundations ripped out by famous, psych-tesxtbook experiments that have failed to replicate.

Reality continues to be puzzling to them.

Grim said...

I second AVI's comment -- great list.

For me, the skeptic-producing thing is most often the dietary recommendations. I think every single one I grew up with has been reversed, from the dire warnings on salt and fats to the hearty endorsement of carbohydrate-heavy meals as the way to slenderness. But you're right about all the rest of it, too.

And it's also telling when the science has changed, but the proposed solutions have not at all: the solution to "global warming" is the same as the solution to "climate change," and is the same solution the Soviets used to propose to "overpopulation" and whatever else they could come up with. America should in all cases cut back on its energy production and consumption, its population and its wealth production. That's the answer to everything, but really, it's what makes us weak and them relatively stronger than they were.

ymarsakar said...

People still think Einstein's Relativity patching up newton's theory of gravity, was correct. That is quite laughable.

Almost every single time a human has tried to pull along the species by breaking through the limits, society and the status quo consensus has condemned them as cooks, insane people, crazy abnormals, and various other labels designed to shut down the minority of dissidents. It is usually not until the advance starts making money that people reverse and say that they have always valued the work of Ohm and others that were labeled as crazy pots by their peers.

STEM education does indeed teach Ohm's Law and what not. It never, EVER, mentions that scientists considered Ohm a crackpot however for his law. That's not something humans like to do, talking about their hidden dirty closet of secrets any more than the South wants to talk about why Bleeding Kansas happened before Lincoln Tyrant boy ever got on the throne.

ymarsakar said...

Scientists need funding because they are no longer independent. A mad scientist has independent sources of income or at least unusual sources, that allows him to create personal projects. Similar to Nikola Tesla, often called a Wizard for his prowess at electricity, the INvisible Power.

Since modern scientists use grant money from governments and corporations, they often function the same way mercenaries do in Shadowrun. They run the experiments to get the conclusions that their grant money is paying for. If they misinterpret the conclusions to be something unpopular, against the consensus, then they can kiss their future grant money bye bye. Peak Oil was very useful in order to thrive up the artificial scarcity of a semi monopolized fuel substance. This was useful for many people.

J Melcher said...

Back at ya, Grim:
"it's also telling when the science has changed, but the proposed solutions have not at all"

Well, have any of the proposed solutions on large scale environmental issues ever actually worked?

Setting aside any skepticism on "Global Warming", we've had floods since Noah. We've had the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers out there attempting to nail down the path of the Mississippi and hold it inside its own banks since Mark Twain was a puppy. I don't want to think about how much money has been spent. The failure in New Orleans after Katrina is only one of many such instances indicating the solution to "flooding" is no solution at all. Ditto whatever we did to protect US Citizens in Puerto Rico and Houston from hurricanes. Ditto whatever we do in FEMA designated flood prone area, as afflicted by Superstorm Sandy. The government can't cope with current, ordinary, floods. How will giving them MORE money and authority to designate "zones" and construct things and regulate behaviors actually, after more than a century otherwise, suddenly start to work?

The International Socialists of the late 19th century promised that if only four major reforms were accomplished, all would ever after be well. We needed to limit the work week to eight hour days and a forty hour work week. We needed an end to military conscription. We needed "universal manhood" sufferage -- everybody gets to vote. And we needed to commemorate the 1st of May. At the time, when these four proposals were proclaimed, the US was pretty much already there -- except we held our own "Labor Day" in September rather than May, but still. Much of the rest of world is still attempting to get to the place where the U.S. was in 1899. To the extent that, in the U.S. particular items, like the draft and voting rights, were less than proposed in 1899, we have Democrats like Woodrow Wilson to thank. (Thanks Woody!) To the extent that new items were very shortly added (Votes for Women!) we also have the U.S. leading the charge. (When did Switzerland give women voting rights? 1978? Somewhen about then...) How's long's the list now, you Socialists? $198 A pan-national "climate control board" modeled on the federal reserve / central banking system empowered to regulate carbon emissions and so the "thermostat" on global weather. # 199 Free college for all #200 Universal Basic Income #201 Abortion on Demand #202 Multiple and Non-Gender-Specific Public Toilets in every food-serving establishment for use by customers and non-customers alike #203 A Fact-Checking "Board of Official Truth" to cleanse social media ? How much perfection does the society you believe possible actually still require? And if I am skeptical of your vision, what do you have on the list for dealing with me?

Texan99 said...

We made progress on clean air and clean water, I think. It's not entirely hopeless when we keep our eye on the actual ball.

Tom Grey said...

Science is based on hypotheses which are used in experiments to predict some specific future result. The power of Science is based on successful prediction.

Around 2000, the UN Climate Change scientists published at least 6 models of Climate Change, all with ranges of temperature increases, which included high & low ranges for those models.

Since then, the actual temperatures recorded have been below the low range predicted by the models. Each of the not-fully-consistent models was wrong, each FAILED to predict the temperatures.

Climate scientists do NOT know what caused the Ice Ages -- tho they all do agree the Earth has had Ice Ages. They do NOT know what caused the subsequent heating of the earth after the Ice Age.

No climate model I know of explains the Ice Age cooling and heating.


We know that CO2 has been increasing. We don't know how this really affects earth temperatures over the short, medium, or long terms.

Ask a CC believer -- what percentage of the atmosphere is CO2 now? What was it 50 or 100 years ago?
(Answers: less than 1%; less than 1%)


A huge number of "scientists" also believe in and/or support socialism. Socialist experiments have often been tried, they have always failed. Egotistic elites often say BS like "real Socialism" has never been tried, tho that really means THEY have never been the dictator with power in a "dictatorship of the proletariat".

Scientists who believe in socialism might be valuable in the area they know, or are doing research in, but they remain useful idiots.