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.
>> Professor Dan M. Kahan of the psychology department at Yale says he was surprised to discover
The folly of arrogance.
It's easy if you try.
An educated idiot finds out the truth. People who are educated and who know what’s going on are by and large outraged at the direction of this Country. Now the uneducated, buy all you can when the ebt cards screw up crowd on the other hand are ignorant to pretty much everything except the dates on a calendar.
He has a compartmentalized mentality. He might be smart in his profession, but he is dumb as rocks when it comes to rational economics, philosophy, and human nature and the requirements for survival.
Still I give him props both for letting the data take him where it goes, and NOT simply burying it by not publishing it.
He also gets extra points in my book for honestly admitting in public that he was wrong.
correlation coefficient (r) not impressive.
The view from the liberal bubble.
The thing about bubbles: Being blind and unable to adapt to reality, they come to abrupt ends.
Kahan lives in a liberal bubble... I knew people like that in the Jim Crow south years ago... lots of prejudice - not a lot of reality. Professor Dan M. Kahan is cut from that same cloth - he's just chosen a different victim group ( and thinks that makes him 'moral') ...
Does this still mean the Earths core is millions of degrees ?
Democrats still think that if you put too many people on an island it will tip over...
"Freud defined a neurosis as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result." Then again it's hard to operationally define any of Freud's theories ...
Most of us here on FreeRepublic may argue about the origin of the earth.
However most of us agree on the Physical Laws of the Universe that must be followed. Laws like the laws of thermodynamics and the Laws of Economics as well as the Laws that govern Human behavior such as how dependency is a form of addiction.
Just because someone (in my opinion) incorrectly believes the Earth if 6000 years young doesn’t mean they disagree with the speed of sound or light.
From the article:
I’ll now be much less surprised, too, if it turns out that someone I meet at, say, the Museum of Science in Boston, or the Chabot Space and Science Museum in Oakland, or the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago is part of the 20% (geez— I must know some of them) who would answer “yes” when asked if he or she identifies with the Tea Party. If the person is there, then it will almost certainly be the case that that he or she & I will agree on how cool the stuff is at the museum, even if we don’t agree about many other matters of consequence.
Gee, he is forgetting that if someone in the above mentioned job was actually a Tea party member and confessed it there is a “chilling effect” going on which might cause these people to “stay in the tea party closet” as it is a documented fact that Government has been using it’s vast and unchecked power to harass Tea Party Groups and by extension it’s members using the IRS as a thug....
He subscribes to those beliefs in conflict with real data. That would make him willfully ignorant and a bigot; hence, his negative moral/political assessment of Tea Party types is based on his bigotry. Q.E.D.
I heard someone discussing a poll on the radio that showed about 40% of people who identify themselves as “Tea Party” have a college degree and higher, as opposed to about 25% of the general population. About 50% identify themselves as middle class as opposed to 40% in the general population. There was discussion about their surprise that “Tea Party” people are generally better educated than the general population. I guess it doesn’t fit the media template.
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