Merged "Climate change deniers more likely to believe in other CTs"

It is often stated on this forum that CTers come in all sorts of political orientations and backgrounds. This is not true when you sit down, and count them and the impressions that give way to this conclusion are often based in the very same kinds of thinking that give rise to conspiracy theory.

I am not defending the methodology of this study. I think it is almost certainly problematic and represents typical methodology for studying conspiracy theory that distances itself from the CTers. Nick Terry points to a very interesting way to reinterpret the results. There are statistical ways of determining if Nick's description is a closer fit to the data than the conclusions published by the authors themselves. I have not read the paper myself, so it's a little early for me to be deciding if the study was constructed in a way that would warrant their conclusion and not others. However, as I have said, I have been continually disappointed with mainstream academic research on conspiracy theory.
 
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Scott Sommers said:
It is often stated on this forum that CTers come in all sorts of political orientations and backgrounds. This is not true when you sit down, and count them and the impressions that give way to this conclusion are often based in the very same kinds of thinking that give rise to conspiracy theory.

I am not defending the methodology of this study. I think it is almost certainly problematic and represents typical methodology for studying conspiracy theory that distances itself from the CTers. Nick Terry points to a very interesting way to reinterpret the results. There are statistical ways of determining if Nick's description is a closer fit to the data than the conclusions published by the authors themselves. I have not read the paper myself, so it's a little early for me to be deciding if the study was constructed in a way that would warrant their conclusion and not others. However, as I have said, I have been continually disappointed with mainstream academic research on conspiracy theory.
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I was actually quoting from the paper when I noted that they found a higher correlation between espousing free market views and espousing CTs. The question they pose is not strictly 'why do people deny climate change?', but rather 'what else do people who deny climate change think?' The CT aspect has perhaps been overplayed by both the Guardian as well as the authors, but I think they got enough hits to indicate that a faction of more active climate change skeptics are also CTists.
 
The title of the paper places the cart rather ahead of the horse, from my perspective:

"NASA faked the moon landing|Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax:
An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science."

Hey, I remember taking a few journalism classes in the hopes of knocking the more obvious rough and stoic edges off my professional writings, and I've nothing against behavioral observation and study researchs, but this seems like rather blatant mockery more fit for pop-psy than the write up of a serious psychological study.
 
Nick Terry said:
I was actually quoting from the paper when I noted that they found a higher correlation between espousing free market views and espousing CTs. The question they pose is not strictly 'why do people deny climate change?', but rather 'what else do people who deny climate change think?' The CT aspect has perhaps been overplayed by both the Guardian as well as the authors, but I think they got enough hits to indicate that a faction of more active climate change skeptics are also CTists.
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It makes a lot of sense for those to espouse "free market views" to want climate change to be a hoax.

If climate change is real, the free market has created a massive problem that the free market will never solve before it is too late, thus disqualifying the free market as a source of solutions for important problems.

The mechanism causing free marketeers to believe climate change is a hoax is probably the same as the one that causes anti-semites to believe the Holocaust is a hoax - it gets rid of a massive problem for their world-view.
 
Chaos said:
It makes a lot of sense for those to espouse "free market views" to want climate change to be a hoax.

If climate change is real, the free market has created a massive problem that the free market will never solve before it is too late, thus disqualifying the free market as a source of solutions for important problems.

The mechanism causing free marketeers to believe climate change is a hoax is probably the same as the one that causes anti-semites to believe the Holocaust is a hoax - it gets rid of a massive problem for their world-view.
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Indeed; the bigger mystery is why any of the surveyed climate change skeptics endorsed bat guano crazy theories like the moon hoax.
 
Nick Terry said:
Indeed; the bigger mystery is why any of the surveyed climate change skeptics endorsed bat guano crazy theories like the moon hoax.
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I suspect it has something to do with a sort of general anti-government slant that creeps into their "reasoning".

See, if you think government cannot do anything better than the free market, then it cannot determine facts better than the free market, either. This means that "facts" available on the free market, such as CTer sites, are by definition superior to facts provided by the government.

Also, the government consistently claims that it is better at a lot of things than the free market. If you believe that the free market is better and that this is obvious to anyone, as free marketeers generally do, then you have pretty much no choice to conclude than the government is lying about this. And once you conclude that the government is lying about one important thing, it is not a great leap to conclude that it is lying about a lot of other important things as well, especially if (as in the Moon "Hoax") the "lie" makes the government look better than the "truth" (by default the opposite of whatever the government claims) would.

Which, in my opinion, makes free marketeer CTers the most internally consistent CTer crowd.
 
Nick Terry said:
I was actually quoting from the paper when I noted that they found a higher correlation between espousing free market views and espousing CTs. The question they pose is not strictly 'why do people deny climate change?', but rather 'what else do people who deny climate change think?' The CT aspect has perhaps been overplayed by both the Guardian as well as the authors, but I think they got enough hits to indicate that a faction of more active climate change skeptics are also CTists.
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The paper uses a correlational modeling technique called Structural Equation Modeling. It is complex and takes into account that effects are moderated and mediated through other variables and not always direct. The procedure was developed specifically to be able to examine these kinds of problems. I have to finish reading through the paper to see if this is the case here.
 
Nick Terry said:
Actually the study suggests that free-market ideology was more important than conspiratorial thinking for the rejection of climate science. Which confirms what previous studies have shown
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The authors of this paper would agree with you. They mention this point several times in the paper. The aim of the paper is to address the "Motivated Rejection of Science" rather than just climate science. What they mean by this is that, "conspiracist ideation as a personality factor or cognitive style, with numerous theories [can be] captured by a single latent construct" (p. 14). This is quite different from the way that you posit the research question.

I had several other problems with the methodology.

I do not believe the Internet methodology is valid.

The original sample size was 1377 (p. 7). Large numbers of respondents were removed because they voted more than once, "duplicate responses from any IP number were eliminated (N = 71)" (p. 8). So at a minimum, 5% of respondents voted twice. This does not appear to be encouraging to me.
An additional 161 responses were eliminated because the respondent's age was implausible (< 10 or > 95) or values for the consensus items were outside the 0-100 range, or because responses were incomplete.
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This is a very large portion of the sample and points to a great deal of carelessness in answering the questions.

Scaling of answers on a Likert-type scale is problematic
Respondents do not necessarily make the same distinctions in belief as the scale and different scales provide. For example, many respondents probably do not make distinctions between the 8 and 9 on the 9-point Likert scale used by Swami et al that the authors also used in their study. As a result, someone indicating 8 and someone indicating 9 would be indicating. In one of the scales (p. 9), they found 2 factors and solved this by summing the scores on the items that loading on each. This would also be a common practice, but is problematic.

Another solution to the problem, which has never been tried, is Rasch Partial Credit Molding. The PCM calculates the log-likelihood of respondents selecting each of the response categories. Thus, we are able to see if two or more response categories have the same chance of being selected and are not be discriminated against by the respondents.

I would like to examine problems like this using more sophisticated techniques, like Rasch partial credit molding I wrote about above. I'm looking for co-authors who have access to students in English-speaking countries. Anyone interested in helping with this, send me a pm.
 
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Probably people who believed that Iraq had no WMDs were more likely to believe in CTs.
That didn't alter the fact that there were no WMDs in Iraq.

If you believe in CTs you are more likely to suspect AGW. But there are plenty of environmentalists who will have conspiracy-type views of Big Pharma, the nuclear industry, military industries etc. An anti-vac person might be a rightie, but might equally be an alternative lifestyle hippie and hence tend towards AGW views.

I know the author, not personally but interacted with him online. He is an idiot with a rather embittered personality.
 
uke2se said:
I only have anecdotal evidence and personal experience to draw from, but both tell me that people on the internet who call themselves libertarians are most prone to CTs.

I'm sure there's a few who'll call out "no true libertarian", but as far as I've been able to gleam, few libertarians have any idea how the world and human beings actually operate, and basically worship a strong form of capitalism. As Travis says, this disconnect from reality might explain why they are drawn to CTs.

Again, personal experience.
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I too only have personal and anecdotal evidence to draw from, but many CTers I have been encountering are now calling themselves some form of anarchist. Anarcho-capitalism seems to be the dominate view of most of them, especially ones I've encountered on a different forum. As someone else pointed out, they do have a very strong belief in free market principles almost to the point of seeing the free market as something mystical. And they tend to use various CTs as proof that the government is evil; global warming being one to gain more control over people's lives. Of course I guess that's what they believe about all CTs anyway.
 
NASA faked the moon landing|Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax

A thought provoking article from Stephen Lewandowsky from UWA highlighting the parallels between science denial and other conspiracy theories, in particular the political mindset of people who share such CT views. Enjoy:

http://websites.psychology.uwa.edu....yetalPsychScienceinPressClimateConspiracy.pdf

(Note: this is NOT a thread to discuss the scientific basis for climate change, it's about the psychology of denial)

Abstract
Although nearly all domain experts agree that human CO2 emissions are altering the world's climate, segments of the public remain unconvinced by the scientific evidence. Internet blogs have become a vocal platform for climate denial, and bloggers have taken a prominent and influential role in questioning climate science. We report a survey (N > 1100) of climate blog users to identify the variables underlying acceptance and rejection of climate science. Paralleling previous work, we found that endorsement of a laissez-faire conception of free-market economics predicts rejection of climate science (r:80 between latent constructs). Endorsement of the free market also predicted the rejection of other established scientic ndings, such as the facts that HIV causes AIDS and that smoking causes lung cancer. We additionally show that endorsement of a cluster of conspiracy theories (e.g., that the CIA killed Martin-Luther King or that NASA faked the moon landing) predicts rejection of climate science as well as the rejection of other scientific findings, above and beyond endorsement of laissez-faire free markets. This provides empirical conrmation of previous suggestions that conspiracist ideation contributes to the rejection of science. Acceptance of science, by contrast, was strongly associated with the perception of a consensus among scientists.
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I've seen creationists attempt to disprove gravity because if you prove one theory wrong ALL theories are wrong. Or something. The stupid makes my brain hurt.
 
Alareth said:
I've seen creationists attempt to disprove gravity because if you prove one theory wrong ALL theories are wrong. Or something. The stupid makes my brain hurt.
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Many conspiracy theories and fringe theories seem to have a deeper underlying core belief or mindset. Moon-hoax theorists, JFK conspiracy theorists, and similar theorists rail against the Powers That Be, typically some soft of overt or shadow government agency. Free-energy advocates rail against big energy companies and mainstream science.

Creationists are similar in that they have a deep, abiding distrust or dislike of science. It seems to extend beyond the scientific disputation of their cosmology and biology beliefs derived from Fundamentalist Christianity. That is, the Creationism advocate seems likely to go after science on topics that have nothing to do with the Creationism debate; they simply believe all science is or must be wrong on nearly every point.
 
Damn. Should have mentioned, this isn't a thread to discuss the validity of the moon landing either.

An amusing addendum to this article

Not content to wait, Australian skeptic blogger Simon Turnill has sent a Freedom of Information request to UWA asking for Lewandowsky's emails. Lewandowsky told DeSmogBlog:

So now there's a conspiracy theory going around that I didn't contact them. It's a perfect, perfect illustration of conspiratorial thinking. It's illustrative of exactly the process I was analysing. People jump to conclusions on the basis of no evidence. I would love to be able to release those emails if given permission, because it means four more people will have egg on their faces. I'm anxiously waiting the permission to release this crucial information because it helps to identify people who engage in conspiratorial thinking rather than just searching their inboxes.
​

Lewandowsky revealed that two of the five skeptic blogs approached even replied to the email they were sent.

Desmogblog (http://s.tt/1mwBG)
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In a similar vein:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Vivid-demonstration-knee-jerk-science-rejection.html

So I wrote an article for The Conversation listing the various methods employed to reject climate science where I discussed the psychological phenomenon of confirmation bias and how it leads to these specific methods. In the conclusion, I predicted that the tell-tale signs of confirmation bias would appear in the comment threads:

Look for cherry picking, conspiracy theories, comments magnifying the significance of dissenters (or non-experts) and logical fallacies such as non sequiturs.​

Now you might think, with prior warning, that those who reject the scientific consensus on climate change would seek to make a liar out of me and thwart my predictions. However, my expectation was they wouldn't be able to help themselves. Ideologically driven science rejection is a knee-jerk, instinctive reaction. How did my prediction pan out? Let's go through the lis
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t:
 
Of course crank magnetism is nothing new and I have no problem believing her research. Can't wait for the release of emails. The title of the paper is a bit sensationalist though.
 
Well now the off topic chaff from the resident spammer has been moved to Abandon all Hope, it may be possible to get a post in edgeways:)


There is definitely a correlation between conspiracies. It seems that all someone has to do is embrace one woo theory, and it enables them to be swamped by them all. In a vast blinkered brush of madness, all the science can be dismissed, all participants numbering thousands can be dumbed down to 'just-a-few-who-needed-to-know-at-the-top-of-the-pyramid-cos-it's-all-compartmentalised-didn't-ya-know'.

Easy.:jaw-dropp
 
I think it may be simpler than the paper suggests. Many people distrust 'Authority' and, by extension, 'Government'. A degree of mistrust is probably a healthy thing for society, but CTers have taken that lack of trust to an extreme, and distrust everything (more or less) that the government/media says. If NASA had released the Apollo 11 footage and called it a science fiction film, the CTers would be telling anyone that would listen that "Seriously dude! They landed on the moon for real!".
 
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