notes from the reality-based universe

james_davis_nicoll linked to this abstract and I find it absolutely fascinating, so I'm reprinting it here.

An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science

Abstract

Although nearly all domain experts agree that carbon dioxide emissions are altering the world’s climate, segments of the public remain unconvinced by the scientific evidence. Internet blogs have become a platform for denial of climate change, and bloggers have taken a prominent role in questioning climate science. We report a survey of climate-blog visitors to identify the variables underlying acceptance and rejection of climate science. Our findings parallel those of previous work and show that endorsement of free-market economics predicted rejection of climate science. Endorsement of free markets also predicted the rejection of other established scientific findings, such as the facts that HIV causes AIDS and that smoking causes lung cancer. We additionally show that, above and beyond endorsement of free markets, endorsement of a cluster of conspiracy theories (e.g., that the Federal Bureau of Investigation killed Martin Luther King, Jr.) predicted rejection of climate science as well as other scientific findings. Our results provide empirical support for previous suggestions that conspiratorial thinking contributes to the rejection of science. Acceptance of science, by contrast, was strongly associated with the perception of a consensus among scientists.

I am not surprised that conspiracy-theorists can accept the idea that an entire field of scientific inquiry can simultaneously decide to delude the public. But their findings that belief in free-market economics also leads one to reject scientific consensus is one that I really interesting. (And I will freely admit to my own bias here, I've always suspected that anybody who believes in free-market economics isn't super competent at evaluating real-world evidence.)

[ETA] Just for shits & giggles, I'm going to add a link to this - One in four Americans think Obama may be the antichrist, survey says. Fortunately only one in 25 think that "shape-shifting alien reptilian people control our world by taking on human form".