Getting Dumber with Education: only Republicans or all of us? Probably the latter…

This article by Chris Mooney in Salon caught my eye:

I can still remember when I first realized how naïve I was in thinking—hoping—that laying out the “facts” would suffice to change politicized minds, and especially Republican ones. It was a typically wonkish, liberal revelation: One based on statistics and data. Only this time, the data were showing, rather awkwardly, that people ignore data and evidence—and often, knowledge and education only make the problem worse. [...]

Buried in the Pew report was a little chart showing the relationship between one’s political party affiliation, one’s acceptance that humans are causing global warming, and one’s level of education. And here’s the mind-blowing surprise: For Republicans, having a college degree didn’t appear to make one any more open to what scientists have to say. On the contrary, better-educated Republicans were more skeptical of modern climate science than their less educated brethren. Only 19 percent of college-educated Republicans agreed that the planet is warming due to human actions, versus 31 percent of non-college-educated Republicans.

For Democrats and Independents, the opposite was the case. More education correlated with being more accepting of climate science—among Democrats, dramatically so. The difference in acceptance between more and less educated Democrats was 23 percentage points.

This was my first encounter with what I now like to call the “smart idiots” effect: The fact that politically sophisticated or knowledgeable people are often more biased, and less persuadable, than the ignorant.

The idea is that educated Republicans don’t become more knowledgeable but rather they become better debaters. Now some might claim: “wait, educated Democrats have strongly held delusions too.” But here is the difference:

Are liberals also “smart idiots”?

There’s no doubt that more knowledge—or more political engagement—can produce more bias on either side of the aisle. That’s because it forges a stronger bond between our emotions and identities on the one hand, and a particular body of facts on the other.

But there are also reason to think that, with liberals, there is something else going on. Liberals, to quote George Lakoff, subscribe to a view that might be dubbed “Old Enlightenment reason.” They really do seem to like facts; it seems to be part of who they are. And fascinatingly, in Kahan’s study liberals did not act like smart idiots when the question posed was about the safety of nuclear power.

Nuclear power is a classic test case for liberal biases—kind of the flip side of the global warming issue–for the following reason. It’s well known that liberals tend to start out distrustful of nuclear energy: There’s a long history of this on the left. But this impulse puts them at odds with the views of the scientific community on the matter (scientists tend to think nuclear power risks are overblown, especially in light of the dangers of other energy sources, like coal).

So are liberals “smart idiots” on nukes? Not in Kahan’s study. As members of the “egalitarian communitarian” group in the study—people with more liberal values–knew more science and math, they did not become more worried, overall, about the risks of nuclear power. Rather, they moved in the opposite direction from where these initial impulses would have taken them. They become less worried—and, I might add, closer to the opinion of the scientific community on the matter.

So, this is it? Well, in my opinion, at least on the data I have seen (and not seen), not quite. One thing I’d like to see: how much do liberals value science and mathematics to begin with? Yes, I know that research scientists tend liberal, but that really isn’t the issue here. The issue is “do liberals, on the whole, value science more than conservatives?” I haven’t seen data on this but what I’ve witnessed on several occasions is disturbing.

One such case is the uproar over the recommendation that asymptomatic women under a certain age NOT be given mammograms. The reason behind this? Given the huge number of false positives and the rarity of that disease at that age, the screening had a very low predictive value (e. g., a positive test conveyed almost zero information as it was highly likely to be a false positive) and the health problems caused by needless anxiety took a health toll. But understanding this requires understanding at least a little bit of conditional probability….

You saw something similar when the recommendations for PSA tests came out too (albeit there was something different at work here; there weren’t as many false positives, but the actual positives were often for “cancers” that, well, the best treatment was to “keep an eye on it” via regular exams…in short DO NOTHING DIFFERENT than one would have done had there been no test at all!

You also see a large acceptance of woo such as alternative medicine (homeopathy, etc.) among educated liberals.

But..yes, many of these don’t have mathematics/science educations. But many of these types don’t even see the need to understand mathematics and science; they think that they understand the world without it! (yes, they have told me exactly that). Some think that research is, well, designed to produce conformation for whatever bias the person has to begin with (yes, I’ve been told this too).

Another thing that sends liberals in a froth: “Genetically engineered food” or “genetically modified food” (pssst: natural selection is genetic modification…and is a type of genetic engineering).

And no, you can’t explain anything to some of these people. If you point out that homeopathy is nonsense, you’ll be called “close minded” and a stooge for big pharmaceutical companies. If you try to explain why testing needs to be able to produce a meaningful prediction AND provide an opportunity for a meaningful action on the data to be useful, you’ll be accused of wanting to cut costs at the expense of others.

You have a discussion along the these lines here here and here; I highly recommend reading at least the first of these articles.

Upshot: if you see this:

OR this:

On their blog or wall, it is probably a waste of time to talk to them. They aren’t going to accept facts that contradict what they already believe. (yes, Tea Party types ARE more educated than the rest of the population)

My Education
I wonder about what exactly was meant by “educated” in the Slate article. It was true that I felt more confident about what I knew when I finished my undergraduate education. But at the start of graduate school, I was blown away very quickly. By the end of graduate school, I was appalled at my staggering ignorance. It got worse as I became a professor.

Hence, at THIS stage in my life, I am open to new facts and theories. Others who know me (or at least know me from facebook or on line communications) might not agree with this….because I am NOT open to woo and religious claims or other claims made sans evidence. But I am open to evidence based claims coming from accomplished experts with established research credentials (and that is NOT most pundits not-named Paul Krugman!) provided these claims from their own fields.