Those who are open to evidence about the Tea Party might be interested in the following article
Tea Partiers Score High on Science Literacy
in the Cultural Cognition Project from Yale Law School.
The Cultural Cognition Project is a group of scholars interested in studying how cultural values shape public risk perceptions and related policy beliefs. Cultural cognition refers to the tendency of individuals to conform their beliefs about disputed matters of fact (e.g., whether global warming is a serious threat; whether the death penalty deters murder; whether gun control makes society more safe or less) to values that define their cultural identities. Project members are using the methods of various disciplines -- including social psychology, anthropology, communications, and political science -- to chart the impact of this phenomenon and to identify the mechanisms through which it operates. The Project also has an explicit normative objective: to identify processes of democratic decision making by which society can resolve culturally grounded differences in belief in a manner that is both congenial to persons of diverse cultural outlooks and consistent with sound public policy making.
Excellent article. I do not know the author or have any basis for the validity of the numbers presented but the article is well written and the author is candid enough to admit that he had an expectation (prior results) of how the “Tea Party” understands science.
ReplyDeleteIn 9th grade general science a bonus question on the final exam was “How would you cook beans on Pike’s peak”. 21 years later the same teacher told my son that the question has been on every final exam for 25 years and I am the only student to have answered correctly. It would be interesting to know if the numbers presented in the graphs represent an understanding of how scientific principles apply in the real word or if the numbers simply reflect a comprehension of the science.