What sorts of inferences can/can't be drawn from the "Republican shift" (now that we have enough information to answer the question)? - Cultural Cognition of Health

Okay, so Pew, not surprisingly, happily released the partisan breakdown for all parts of its evolution question.

Pew also offered a useful explanation of what it admitted was a “puzzle” in its report–viz., how the proportion of Republicans “disbelieving” evolution could go up while the proportions of Democrats and Independents as well as the proportion of the general population “believing” in it all stayed “about the same”? Should be obvious, of course, that this was something only Pew , & not others without access to the necessary information, could do.

So now I’ll offer up some reflections on the significance of the “Republican shift”—the 9 percentage-point increase in the proportion of Republicans who indicated that they believe in the “creationist” response and the 11 percentage-point decrease in the proportion who endorsed either the “Naturalistic” or “Theistic” evolution responses to Pew’s “beliefs on evolution” item.

I’ll start with two background points on public opinion, including partisan divisions, on evolution. They are pretty critical to putting the “shift” in context.  Then I’ll offer some points that counsel against treating the “shift” as a particularly important new datum.

But to give you a sense of the theme that motivates the presentation of this information, I think the modal response to the Pew survey in the media & blogosphere was absurd.  Paul Krugman’s reaction is typical & typically devoid of reflection: “Republicans are being driven to identify in all ways with their tribe — and the tribal belief system is dominated by anti-science fundamentalists.”

He and many others leapt to a conclusion without the evidence that logic would have told them was not supplied in the original Pew summary. That’s pretty embarrassing.

And not surprisingly, the theme of their interpretation – “more evidence of Republicans being driven to anti-science extremism!” – is a testament to confirmation bias: the use of one’s existing beliefs to construe ambiguous data, which is then treated as corroborating one’s existing beliefs.

Background point 1: “Beliefs” on evolution lack a meaningful relationship to understanding evolution, to science literacy generally, or to being “pro/anti-” science.

Only aggressive disregard of empirical data—lots and lots and lots of them!—can explain why popular commentators start screaming about science illiteracy and creeping “anti-science” sensibilities in the U.S, every time a major polling outfit releases an “evolution belief” survey (about once a year).

As I’ve mentioned before , there is zero correlation between saying one “believes” in evolution and being able to give a passable (as in pass a highschool biology test) account of the modern synthesis (natural selection, random mutation, genetic variance) account of it.  Those who say they “believe” are no more likely to have even a rudimentary understanding of how Darwinian evolution works than those who say they “don’t believe” it.

In fact, neither is very likely to understand it at all.  The vast majority of those who say they “believe in evolution” believe something they don’t understand .

But that’s okay. They’d not only be stupid—they’d be dead —if people insisted on accepting as known by science only those insights that they actually can intelligiently comprehend!  There’s way too much scientific knowledge out there, and it matters too much!

What’s not okay is to march around smugly proclaiming “my side is science literate; your’s isn’t!” because of poll results like this one.  That’s illiberal and ignorant.

It is also well established that “belief” in evolution is not a valid indicator of science literacy in general !

Answering “yes” to the simplistic “do you believe in evolution” item in the NSF’s “science indicators” battery doesn’t cohere with how one does on the rest of this science literacy test—in part because plenty of science know-nothings answer “yes” and in part because plenty of “science know a lots” answer “no.”

The item isn’t measuring the same thing as the other questions in the battery, something NSF itself has recognized.  What it is measuring is a matter I’ll address in a second.

Finally, as Pew, in one of the greatest surveys on U.S. public attitudes toward science ever has shown, “disbelieving” in evolution is not meaningfully associated with being “anti-science.”

The vast majority of people who say “I believe!” and those who say “I don’t”—“tastes great!” vs. “less filling!”— all have a super positive attitude toward science.

The U.S. is an astonishingly pro-science society. If you think otherwise, you just don’t know very much about this area.

Background point 2: “Belief”/“disblief” in evolution is a measure of identity , not a measure of science knowledge or attitudes.