14 DAY TRIAL // The way people report themselves to scientists and experts in various fields is largely dependent on the values the individuals themselves have, a new study shows, and has little to do with the actual qualifications the researchers have.
Establishing who is an expert in a field and who is not is apparently a very thorny issue, in the sense that while some may accept a person's qualifications, others cannot and will not do the same.
Surprisingly, the new research determined that the actual achievements a scientist had had very little to do with how he or she was perceived by the public.
This may go a long way towards explaining why the public is largely divided on issues such as climate change, on which the scientific community agrees.
Both those who agree and those who disagree that the phenomenon takes place are strengthened in their beliefs by studies and experts whom they themselves invest with authority in their respective fields.
Objective factors that should hint at an expert's qualifications include obtaining a PhD in an important field of research from a major university, holding an appointment at another large university, and being a member of the National Academy of Science, for US scientists.
But these qualifications mean little for people who do not agree with what the expert has to say. The new conclusion belongs to a study led by Yale University law professor Dan Kahan.
Coauthors include University of Oklahoma political science professor Hank Jenkins-Smith, as well as law professor Donald Braman, who is based at the George Washington University (GWU).
“We know from previous research, that people with individualistic values, who have a strong attachment to commerce and industry, tend to be skeptical of claimed environmental risks, while people with egalitarian values, who resent economic inequality, tend to believe that commerce and industry harms the environment,” explains Dan Kahan.
Following the study. “no cultural group in our study was more likely than any other to be 'getting it right', i.e. correctly identifying scientific consensus on these issues,” the expert says.
“They were all just as likely to report that 'most' scientists favor the position rejected by the National Academy of Sciences expert consensus report if the report reached a conclusion contrary to their own cultural predispositions,” he goes on to say.
The main issue with the general public “is that people tend to keep a biased score of what experts believe, counting a scientist as an 'expert' only when that scientist agrees with the position they find culturally congenial,” the scientist explains.
This goes a long way towards explaining a lot of things, and again highlights the influence that culture and predispositions have in perpetuating potentially disastrous opinions.
In the case of global warming studies, where overwhelming studies show that the phenomenon takes place, and where the international scientific community agrees, a few people still argue differently.
Their arguments are based on the opinion of experts, whom they consider to be more qualified than the rest of the scientific community.
This cannot be true, given the extensive peer review processes at work before a team can publish a study. And there are literally hundreds of studies about global warming and climate change.
The new investigation was sponsored by the US National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Social and Economic Sciences, and it is detailed in the latest online issue of the respected Journal of Risk Research.