By Mike Gray

A new study suggests that your values, not science, determine your views about climate change.

— Ronald Bailey

The study produced by a major university suggests:

The more scientifically literate you are, the more certain you are that climate change is either a catastrophe or a hoax, according to a new study from the Yale Cultural Cognition Project.

Many science writers and policy wonks nurse the fond hope that fierce disagreement about issues like climate change is simply the result of a scientifically illiterate American public. If this “public irrationality thesis” were correct, the authors of the Yale study write, “then skepticism about climate change could be traced to poor public comprehension about science” and the solution would be more science education. In fact, their findings suggest more education is unlikely to help build consensus; it may even intensify the debate.

Led by Yale University law professor Dan Kahan, the Cultural Cognition Project has been researching how cultural and ideological commitments shape science policy discourse in the United States. To probe the public’s views on climate change, the Yale researchers conducted a survey of 1,500 Americans in which they asked questions designed to uncover their cultural values, their level of scientific literacy, and what they thought about the risks of climate change.

But does this mean that “climate change” (nee “global warming”) is true? Hardly. It’s really an example of “confirmation bias,” which is “the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions”; it’s not surprising that confirmation bias is “ubiquitous.”

Moreover, “scientific literacy” goes undefined in the study: Could someone who believes “the science is settled” about the “reality” of “global warming” be “scientifically literate” — whatever that might mean — or simply the unfortunate victim of propaganda? Read Ronald Bailey’s article — “Climate Change and Confirmation Bias” — here.