Posted on 10/17/2013 12:41:22 PM PDT by Red Steel
You know that line liberals love to lob at the Tea Party: you're stupid. Well, obviously that's not the case, nor has it ever been true. Now, a Yale professor has released some new research showing that the so-called "Tea Party radicals" are actually scientifically literate.
Professor Dan M. Kahan of the psychology department at Yale says he was surprised to discover a positive correlation between science comprehension and members of the Tea Party:
"Identifying with the Tea Party correlates positively (r = 0.05, p = 0.05) with scores on the science comprehension measure."
"I've got to confess, though, I found this result surprising. As I pushed the button to run the analysis on my computer, I fully expected I'd be shown a modest negative correlation between identifying with the Tea Party and science comprehension."
"But then again, I don't know a single person who identifies with the Tea Party. All my impressions come from watching cable tv -- & I don't watch Fox News very often -- and reading the "paper" (New York Times daily, plus a variety of politics-focused internet sites like Huffington Post & Politico)."
"I'm a little embarrassed, but mainly I'm just glad that I no longer hold this particular mistaken view."
"Of course, I still subscribe to my various political and moral assessments--all very negative-- of what I understand the "Tea Party movement" to stand for. I just no longer assume that the people who happen to hold those values are less likely than people who share my political outlooks to have acquired the sorts of knowledge and dispositions that a decent science comprehension scale measures."
Well, perhaps some of those previous opinions could've been dispelled earlier when the New York Times wrote in 2010 that Tea Partiers are more educated - and financially better off - than the rest of the public.
I’ve found the most devastating thing you can do to a lib is to show them that their standards and opinions are essentially baseless.
Any thinking/”SMRT” lib will be flummoxed by the inability to show that his opinion is “right” based on nothing.
That’ll happen.
A large part of the problem is the avalanche of people trying to co-opt the impetus of the 2010 tea party wave.
That wave can from a SINGLE ISSUE. Cut Government Spending.
The GOP then sprinted to the microphones to define the Tea Party as anti abortion, anti tax, anti gun control. The left wing largely did the same, defining the Tea Party to be extremists for guns and pro life and anti gay.
But the truth was (and likely still is) that it’s ONE ISSUE ONLY. Cut Government Spending. All other redefinitions have agendas, and it’s usually fundraising.
As individuals, their "comprehension" of the history of civilization and the ideas of liberty embodied in their Declaration of Independence and incorporated into their Constitution for a "People's" limited government makes them "constitutionally literate" as well.
It has to be hard to see that data from where his head is.
Just anothet low information voter.
Cut government spending and all those other issues kinda fall in line as well.
Well if he’d had just visited this forum more often he wouldn’t have been surprised. :-) Science doesn’t matter to the left. They use the word like a substitute for God. The technical details aren’t very important to them. I don’t know how many times I’ve entered an argument only to find that the person I’m talking with not only doesn’t know ‘science’ beyond what is fed them via the pop culture but they don’t really care. They don’t even realize when their idols like Darwin are totally incompatible with their ideas of homosexuality and abortion but again its not about reality its about perception which they desire to control at all cost.
Most leftists are the product of weakness and excess. Most born in the country know how to survive without government. We know how to raise our own food, we know how to hunt, we know how to fix our stuff and build houses. The lack of practical knowledge combined with coddled backgrounds mentally neuter many leftists. They live in the domain of fantasy where someone not approving of gay sex or killing unborn babies is a horror but having the federal government choosing to terminate granny or letting people starve to protect a insignificant minnow is no big deal.
Most of his misconception is that he is a psychologist; not a real scientist. Most of the science and technology/IT faculty here are conservatives while the liberals are almost entirely english, business, and social studies twits.
Won’t he be surprised when he finds out that the global warming that he has been teaching is nonsense and that Creation Science makes more sense than evolution.
Yes, we TEA Party people do know about Science. More than the Left, because their Science is about feelings and Socialism and trying to make the government the highest authority.
Literacy in general is correlated in some degree with the intensity of devotion to the principles held by the T.E.A. party people. Most people are simply not that well read, and many who have attained high-level university degrees have little knowledge or empathy outside their own narrow specialty. The Ivory Tower is not just some mythical construct.
Literacy requires a certain discipline of mind and some kind of developed critical thinking. Otherwise, it is just rote learning.
Being able to quote whole passages does not assure the sense of the words thus recalled has ever been examined.
*Does this still mean the Earth’s core is millions of degrees ?*
Al gore is the ONLY person that knows this fact. His follows believe him, but he is the only one who KNOWS. All other scientists disagree with him, they are deniers that say that it is not hotter than the surface of the Sun. But he has a consensus.
What an educated fool.
*Those who can’t, teach.*
those who really can’t, teach Socialism and Communism in college.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this professor would also be embarrassed to discover that the Founding States made the federal Constitution to deliberately limit (cripple) the federal government’s powers.
millions? Whew! For a moment I thought you wrote billions! *
Gore all most slipped up and said it was brazilians.
That would've been embarrassing for him...
I think it would be far more illuminating for him to research his fellow academics for their ignorance, bias and outright prejudice. I would suspect he might discover several interesting things.
First and foremost there is a good possibility that he would discover widespread feelings of inferiority and inadequacy, that feeling that academically their real accomplishment is the Peter Principle, that they have been promoted to their level of incompetence. (Former studies have indicated this.)
Then, if asked to rate their peers, they would rate some as better, but they would rate many they considered their inferiors as strongly inferior. This is common among those with inferiority complexes, that they grovel before those they consider better, but abuse those they consider inferior.
In effect, academics are to a great extent attuned to elitism, or what 200 years ago was royalism. They imagine academia as the intellectual class of the nobility and the bureaucracy, and despise the peasantry, which today is everyone else.
But fortunately, these fantasies are not universal. There are still some academics concerned far more to intellectual pursuits than fretting about it. But learning in one field does not make a person an expert in all fields.
In fact, expertise in one field likely conceals ignorance in other areas, even below the level of the typical person and common sense. Though they pride themselves with their ability to learn, it does not mean they have learned, nor have any experience in practice.
As “scientist” that formed his opinion of us based on what other people told him . . . some scientist he is. . . .
Libtards have a bad habit spewing absolute lies about what conservatives and Christians believe. I have NEVER heard one get it right. These people are not educated, they are simply brainwashed.
Most of the ones I've talked to don't care that they are against the facts. They will argue that the facts don't matter because their favorite socialist said...
Where do you find thinking libs?
Imagine how much better the world would be if there was no Yale or Harvard...
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