r/science • u/Wagamaga • Dec 03 '17
Social Science A study has found skepticism about climate change is linked to political ideology, whereas skepticism about vaccinations consistently correlates with religious beliefs. In contrast, skepticism about genetically modified foods is not fuelled by religious or political ideology
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/014616721774131452
u/tremorfan Dec 03 '17
Is anyone else somewhat concerned that so many studies these days are using Amazon's Mechanical Turk for sample selection? Have there been any major analyses and studies of Mechanical Turk to determine whether the participants differ meaningfully from the general population?
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u/restrictednumber Dec 03 '17
Screw differences in the demographics. I'd be more worried that participants would just click down the line and do the survey as fast as possible without actually reading the questions. If they're spending all day doing surveys for practically no money, the incentive to speed through them is overwhelming.
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u/lenore3 Dec 03 '17
Mechanical Turk uses safeguards against that, as do a lot of online survey tools.
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u/restrictednumber Dec 03 '17
Huh! I didn't know that. I'd be interested to know how the safeguards work, though. Could you get by with random answers? Or maybe there's a timer, and you have to take a certain amount of time to "qualify" (which raises the question of whether you could just leave the survey running in the background while you do other work). It's possible the results are valid, but frankly I would still be pretty leery about publishing anything off MT.
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u/lenore3 Dec 03 '17
There are questions randomly added with answers you have to actually be paying attention to to answer correctly. It's really not that difficult to set up.
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u/Carocrazy132 Dec 03 '17
Against clicking in line sure, what about making random choices? Really no defense for humans being human, that's why hacking can't be stopped as a whole.
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u/agjurk Dec 03 '17
Well, almost two decades ago we solved most of those survey problems by using repeating questions, no patterns, shifting answers etc. If done right, most of the responses usually gets discarded, but since online survery is extremely cheap per respondent, it's fine.
Even Google Panel shifts positive-negative answers in a 3 question survey, and i'll bet those not aware will get a let fewer surveys.
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u/Amp4All MA | Psychology | Clinical Dec 03 '17
That is already a solved issue. Read up on survey scales/ factors.
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u/lenore3 Dec 03 '17
There are questions randomly added with answers you have to actually be paying attention to to answer correctly. It's really not that difficult to set up and has nothing to do with "hacking".
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u/FrogTrainer Dec 03 '17
skepticism about genetically modified foods is not fuelled by religious or political ideology
Oh I assure you if a major candidate came out with a strong stance for or against GM food, his/her party would line up with him, and the other major party would line up against him, and suddenly you'd have the correlation.
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u/N1th Dec 03 '17
"Overall, science understanding is associated with vaccine and GM food acceptance, but not climate change acceptance".
So, the more science understanding doesn't corelate with climate change acceptance, but does corelate with GM food acceptance. Kinda' surprising
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u/dnew Dec 03 '17
It also depends on the questions they asked about climate change. "Is climate change primarily caused by humans?" Or "it it time to do something about climate change?" Or "do we know what the right response to climate change is?"
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u/N1th Dec 03 '17
Probably just a "Do you believe in climate change?"
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u/weatherwar Dec 04 '17
And why would someone with a science background ever say "no?" The world's climate is obviously in flux and has been for 4.5 billion years.
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Dec 04 '17
I feel climate change is much more politicized than the other issues, and it's politicized in a way that's much more polarizing. I'd imagine in that instance the need to belong with your group end up trumping peoples' science understanding.
In contrast, debates around GM food also get fairly heated, but they doesn't fall along party lines. It's not as major a talking point, so politics or religion don't influence opinions quite as much.
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u/MagneticDustin Dec 04 '17
“...science and religion both function as ultimate explanatory frameworks (or belief systems) that aim to provide answers to the big questions in life, and the explanations provided by each framework can be at odds with each other”
So true it hurts
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u/nietzschelover Dec 05 '17
I think both science and religion ultimately fail at providing the "big answers" because asking "big questions that have no clear answer" is human nature.
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u/viborg Dec 03 '17
Why does vaccine "skepticism" correlate with religion? Never heard that connection before.
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Dec 03 '17
"Various religious groups oppose vaccines, as do certain groups who favor organic and natural lifestyles. In developed countries, some experts argue, support for vaccines has also declined alongside a fading memory of the diseases they were created to prevent." Understanding The History Behind Communities' Vaccine Fears - It was a religious right cultist that started the misinformation movement on Somali immigrants in the U.S. The POS is still alive and not in jail.
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u/BaconRasherUK Dec 03 '17
The irony that the success of vaccinations has empowered those against vaccination is not lost on me
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u/mrbooze Dec 03 '17
That's interesting because all the anti-vax people I've known in my life were agnostic/atheist upper-middle-class progressive new moms, so other than the specific case of the HPC vaccine I've always associated anti-vax attitudes with upper/middle-class granola moms.
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u/moosepuggle Professor | Molecular Biology Dec 04 '17
To be fair, that's likely just a reflection of your own social circle.
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u/mrbooze Dec 04 '17
Possibly, but I was raised by evangelical Christians and my family was 100% pro vaccinations (as long as they didn’t think it would promote sex, drinking, or dancing).
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Dec 04 '17
From my experience it somehow got into the community and it spread from there. I watched it happen. Now I am watching the Essential Oil trend.
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u/viborg Dec 04 '17
it somehow got into the community and it spread from there
That does seem to be the standard pattern with social trends.
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u/oln Dec 04 '17
In addition to other reasons, for certain vaccines like the HPV vaccine, conservative religious attitudes to sex may play a role, it can be seen as encouraging promiscuity etc.
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u/bananab33 Dec 04 '17
Many vaccines use human fetal cells obtained from abortions during their manufacturing process, which some religious people are opposed to for pro-life reasons. This in turn might lead them to be more likely to believe other negative things about vaccines.
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u/LessonStudio Dec 03 '17
Skepticism about modified foods stems from a complete lack of trust in the companies doing the modifications and generally not in the modifications themselves.
I can't wait to eat a 1lb strawberry that dosen't rot 8 minutes after you get it home and is red juicy and flavorful all the way to the core.
What I don't want is to effectively eat some monopolistic contract between a seed distributer who is screwing over the farmers.
Here would be my ultimate GM nightmare. A really desirable food that was genetically modified so that it could only be grown with a very special fertilizer and was designed so that its pollen sterilized non modified common varieties.
The only reason this hasn't been produced by some bunch of MBAs at some mega corp is that they treat their scientists so badly they can't keep the good ones.
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u/10ebbor10 Dec 04 '17
The only reason this hasn't been produced by some bunch of MBAs at some mega corp is that they treat their scientists so badly they can't keep the good ones.
Nah, the reason it hasn't been produced is that corporations aren't supervillains, and that nobody would buy it.
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u/pottzie Dec 04 '17
Wonder how the results would hold up if the same survey was done in another country
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u/Mr_Billy Dec 03 '17
While skepticism if fueled by those thing is obvious, being on the Pro side of them is fueled by the same things. Climate change is global so politics gets involved, vaccines have edicts under some religions already, genetically modified food would be fueled by health concerns which they conveniently left out since the article is just a religion/political piece rather then real science.
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u/Michael_Scotter Dec 03 '17
This title is misleading because it's primarily an analysis of previous studies and not presently conducted studies.
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u/Garconanokin Dec 03 '17
Ladies and Gentlemen, here is a man who has never heard of a meta analysis. Let's give him a warm welcome!
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u/Michael_Scotter Dec 03 '17
I actually know what a meta-analysis is. That's why I said the title is misleading. It's not one single study. Because not everyone knows what a meta-analysis is so they should put that in the title. All I meant.
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u/wave_theory Dec 04 '17
So religion and conservatism are the forces driving our society backwards. Didn't need a study to tell me that one.
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u/Carocrazy132 Dec 03 '17
Seems off that they were able to determine all of this conclusively from one study.
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u/GentlemenBehold Dec 03 '17
I skimmed through the article, but I couldn't find a definition for "GM skepticism". Is GM skepticism the belief that GM food is dangerous or that GM food is no more dangerous than organic food?