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We think we trust experts. But a new study finds that what really influences our opinions, more than listening to any expert, is our own beliefs.
Researchers told study subjects about a scientific expert who accepted climate change as real. Subjects who thought that commerce can be environmentally damaging were ready to accept the scientist as an expert. But those who came into the study believing that economic activity could not hurt the environment were 70 percent less likely to accept that the scientist really was an expert.
Then the researchers flipped the situation. They told different subjects that the same hypothetical scientist, with the same accreditation, was skeptical of climate change. Now those who thought that economic activity cannot harm the environment accepted the expert, and the other group was 50 percent less likely to believe in his expertise. The study was published in the Journal of Risk Research.
The investigators found similar results for various other issues, from nuclear waste disposal to gun control. Said one of the authors, “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."
—Christie Nicholson
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39 Comments
Add CommentThese so-called "experts" for this article don't knoww hat they're talking about!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow many experts will write in the comments section?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease give us the link to the research! This is asking too much?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs an expert myself, I disagree with this research
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConfirmation bias is not only nothing new, in a properly trained logician, it can be avoided.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't trust the researchers who conducted this study. http://jlvernonphd.tumblr.com/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReferences and links"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.greencarcongress.com/2010/09/kahan-20100914.html
Though it was NSF funded, it is the kind of thing that makes suggestions. We will probably be looking at this for quite a few years. SA was remiss in not posting proper links. Bad.
Dan M. Kahan; Hank Jenkins-Smith; Donald Braman (2010) Cultural cognition of scientific consensus. Journal of Risk Research doi: 10.1080/13669877.2010.511246
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSuggests more research is needed on the subject from what I can tell. Nothing new except that it is much stronger an effect than I thought. But I'm obviously influenced by what I thought yesterday.
The really interesting question is whether the opposite is better: a person who believe any expert. Where is the middle ground?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs an unbiased judge who simply discriminates between best arguments without any personal bias truly desirable? That would not be very fuzzy, and innate fuzziness is absolutely necessary for cognition. Otherwise, computers could think.
And you would be... an expert at grammar?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOur own opinions influence our beliefs?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisStunning. Groundbreaking.
Thisisentirelybogus, thanks for the cue.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe link for the abstract is:
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a926783777~frm=titlelink
Of course people's opinions and/or prior knowledge are used to judge new information they're given. With the number of so called "experts" on both sides of this issue I disbelieve most people who claim to be an experts on climate change. There are plenty of people on the left who think high school science and internet research makes them and expert, and that doesn't even scratch the surface of the people who claim to be experts but don't seem to understand high school science, and deny climate change.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTesting this hypothesis on an issue that's the subject of enough misinformation that most people are wary of what they hear about it (especially when it comes from the other side) isn't good science. Now if you'd tested this by asking people if they prefer roundabouts or normal intersections (an issue that isn't conventional or the subject of a lot of misinformation), then introducing them to city planning experts who had an opinion on the topic, you might be better able to answer the question of how people's opinions affect how they judge whether or not someone is an expert.
Of course people's opinions and/or prior knowledge are used to judge new information they're given. With the number of so called "experts" on both sides of this issue I disbelieve most people who claim to be an experts on climate change. There are plenty of people on the left who think high school science and internet research makes them and expert, and that doesn't even scratch the surface of the people who claim to be experts but don't seem to understand high school science, and deny climate change.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTesting this hypothesis on an issue that's the subject of enough misinformation that most people are wary of what they hear about it (especially when it comes from the other side) isn't good science. Now if you'd tested this by asking people if they prefer roundabouts or normal intersections (an issue that isn't conventional or the subject of a lot of misinformation), then introducing them to city planning experts who had an opinion on the topic, you might be better able to answer the question of how people's opinions affect how they judge whether or not someone is an expert.
Typical left-wing liberal reporting. I'm going back to Fox.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI love the first couple of comments to this article. They almost redeem the lame results of the study itself.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe problem with using a well-known political issue for establishing confirmation bias is that that one expert is now competing with all of the hundreds of other authoritative (if not necessarily scientific) voices on the issue. As soon as they say "Dr. Soandso finds no evidence to corroborate global warming" you say yes, but Dr. A-Z did, and so Dr. Soandso didn't do his homework. I'm actually surprised that the opinions of one expert had any impact at all on a well known issue like this. The ability to weight the view of an expert is actually very important. If all of us were immediately swayed the instant someone sporting a lab coat shows up and says something, we would not be able to function as human beings because we would be too busy reacting like lemmings to every offhanded remark from a supposed expert. We fall into party divides more because of how many hours we spend listening to our respective media (Networks for liberals, FOX for conservatives) and therefore the ratio of "experts" that get air time in each case.
The only trouble is that it is extremely difficult for the scientists that are trying to set themselves up as objective observers to truly design an experiment that isn't biased. When studying prayer, acupuncture, bigfoot or aliens, everyone knows your swimming in confirmation bias. But even hard science that no one else cares about exhibits a lot of assumptions that the experimenter doesn't even realize are there. This article is thinking mostly in terms of a boolean question. Either humans impact global warming or they don't. But most boolean experiments in science only work if you accurately account for and control all the other variables, and if we just so happen to miss some, but the experiment gives us what we expected, it is a rare scientist that goes back and reconstructs that experiment from the ground up looking for what went wrong. But when you get what you did not expect, that's when some of the best science gets done. If you can figure out why something didn't go as planned, then you're really onto something big!
As a scientist I would never trust a single "expert". But if a large National or International Organization like the National Academy of Sciences or the American Chemical Society were to make a pronouncement based on the preponderance of Scientific Research I would be more likely to accept that position.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd off-topic, aggressive, verbal hostility/attacks are the online response of most to ideas and science that disagrees with their beliefs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm not the only one who thinks there is nothing new about this study. Am I missing something? Or did someone just blow a lot of funding?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis begs the question: then where do we get our beliefs from? I didn't have the beliefs I do now when I was born, and surely not everything I believe is based on my parents.... I think the only sensible thing to think is that it works both ways. I believe experts' reports based on previous experts' reports. But maybe I just think that because this article isn't inline with my beliefs, who knows....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat a silly stub. One of many criticisms: Climate change is more of a political question rather than a science question for most of the public. A real test of trusting expertise would use a less politically charged topic. Engineering and bridges, for example.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi like the this very sort of news very much. it provides me not only with just news but also an access to your culture and society. though i am a chinese, i will still attach great importance to english while more and more people are learning chinese throughout the world. i like english and i want to communicate with you and people from various backgrounds of culture. here is jeffery.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi like the this very sort of news very much. it provides me not only with just news but also an access to your culture and society. though i am a chinese, i will still attach great importance to english while more and more people are learning chinese throughout the world. i like english and i want to communicate with you and people from various backgrounds of culture. here is jeffery.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI remember having heard about the so called Manslow paradigm that says something like that when you learn something, you always store the information in line with your pre-existing knowledge or pre-judices about the subject
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"We see the world not as it is but as we are." ... or as they say in El Salvador, "Every head is it's own world."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"We see the world not as it is but as we are." ... or as they say in El Salvador, "Every head is it's own world."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe don't trust anything, alleged to be expertise or not, that goes against the consumes that we already have come to trust. We will be open to trusting specifics that are persuasive, but just claiming expertise is not going to be counter persuasive.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd there certainly seems to be a consensus, expert or otherwise, that this podcast series deserves less trust each time it appears.
Part of that comment should be corrected to read "goes against the consensus" that we have come to trust - the spell checker here came up with "consumes" instead. Go figure. Typical.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe too many get paid too much to lie too often & spoil it for others. And lets not forget we the public dont learn from a set of of books & we are more able to step aside from the garbage.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe study of misconceptions of physics among secondary and tertiary students leads me to believe that students often hold dearly to their preconceived notions (preconceptions and alternative framework). The preconceptions are tenacious , perhaps lasting a lifetime.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisResearchers often look for things they are expecting, thus inadvertently falling into the traps of misconceived preconception.
Inevitably, we only trust findings that fit into our conceptual framework.
(btt1943)
Please read ETHER=GRAVITY=DARK ENERGY THEORY OF GRAVITOETHERTONS.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisexperts are experts only when they know the correct answer we ordinary people agree.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe charge contained in the subtitle certainly applies to me as an unlettered Traditional Roman Catholic, militant young-Earth Biblical creationist and geocentrist.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSomewhere in my past reading was the term expert allegedly broken down into its component parts: ex is a has-been, spurt is a drip under pressure. It might be fruitful to reflect on the "experts" confronted each by Francesco Redi and Louis Pasteur. The "experts" today do not seem to have learned much from those experiences. This entry will be briefly limited to two topics.
Regarding evolutionism, one of the few experts accepted by me wrote the following: "Darwin himself considered that the idea of evolution is unsatisfactory unless its mechanism can be explained. I agree, but since no one has explained to my satisfaction how evolution could happen I do not feel impelled to say that it has happened. I prefer to say that on this matter our information is inadequate."
One might ask, What creationist wrote that statement? The answer is, no creationist wrote it. The statement was written by Prof. W. R. Thompson as part of the "Introduction" to one of the 1956 editions of Darwin's "...Origin of Species..." An internet search for a copy of that edition proved fruitless. Fortunately, the members of a British group, the Evolution Protest Movement, received permission from the publisher to reproduce that "INTRODUCTION" in booklet form. The quote is on page 12.
As for global warming, the late Prof. Stephen Jay Gould used the criterion established by science philosopher Karl R. Popper against creationists because the concept of Special Creation is allegedly not falsifiable. Is the concept of anthropogenic global warming (a term that seems to have been replaced by climate change) falsifiable? If it is, what is/are the detail(s)?
An economic adage might very well apply in the current argumentation surrounding global warming/climate change: "Follow the money." If the information available to me is correct, Ted Turner has publicly stated his wish to have human population reduced by 90%. He also donated one billion dollars to the U.N. The grant funding for global warming/climate change research is provided by the U.N. Is there a connection? Is there a funding source available for someone who is doing research to disprove anthropogenic global warming?
Just a few reflections...
I have to think about it, but i'll agree with an expert who's right.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPretty flimsy article. Did the "expert" actually articulate an argument? If I have already learned the facts about something, I am unlikely to spend time listening to a counter argument. In the case of climate change the evidence is overwhelming, convincing and braodly supported. So one person, no matter his credentials, is not oging to be able to refute the many arguments that have already been made.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHi, I'm an expert and I agree with you and everyone else.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPersonally, I take exception to the opening statement:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe think we trust experts.
When those presented as experts disagree, how can experts be trusted? When all experts are, in time, proven wrong, how much trust should be placed in them? I don't know about everyone else, but I don't place my blind faith in anyone simply because they are currently recognized by someone as an expert.
I also take exception to a statement by one of the unidentified authors of the unidentified study:
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.
Are people really foolish enough to keep a count of how many experts 'believe' what? I'm particularly uninterested in what any expert believes and don't evaluate the veracity of information based on who's winning. It's my expert opinion that these expert 'investigators' must have advanced degrees in sociology.
In many cases it may seem that we only trust experts if they agree with us. This is due to confirmation bias being a major component of our subconscious life. But numerous individuals who haven’t quite been exposed to new knowledge can agree with an expert as long as he or she backs up an argument with a sufficient justification. Therefore, I agree that we trust experts even if they don’t agree with us, meaning we listen to them even if we lack the knowledge. This is solely dependent upon the way they justify themselves and present it to us. As a child, I didn’t know there was calculus nor did baby Einstein know there were such things as Newton’s Laws. Going back to the early teachings of psychology, the concept of “tabula rasa” or “blank slate” could explain these situations. As children when we didn’t know that one plus one is two, we didn’t necessarily say that our teachers/experts were wrong. But instead we were reinforced through justification and teachings of concepts that said one plus one IS actually two.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am not expert in science but I took risk to publish papers from Australian engineer who believes he is going against scientific law and theoretically his calculations and design are correct. He is really looking for answers and nothing else. If he is right-we will have better source of very cheap energy. Please help to find out is he right or wrong.His papers are published on Real People Real Answers(com.au) under Experts page. You can communicate directly with him if you are interested.
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