Supporters of the free market more likely to reject science

People who subscribe to conspiracy theories or who strongly support a free market economy are more likely to reject scientific findings, according to research into people who visit climate blogs.

The research aimed to discover why people who are heavily involved in the debate about climate change might reject scientific evidence.

Researchers from UWA found that the strongest determinate of the rejection of climate science was subscribtion to a free market ideology. The correlation extended to other scientific facts, such as the link between HIV and AIDS.

Read more at University of Western Australia

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2 Comments sorted by

  1. David Nutzuki

    logged in via Twitter

    President Romney says thanks for fear mongering your own voting base over to the neocon’s side with your CO2 death threats to the voter’s children. Nice job girls. Climate change was your Iraq War and welcome to the club. Bush admires your fear mongering by the way.
    -Occupywallstreet does not even mention CO2 in its list of demands because of the bank-funded carbon trading stock markets run by corporations.
    -Socialist Canada killed Kyoto with a newly elected climate change denying prime minister…

    Read more

  2. David Arthur

    n/a

    So, adherence to one of the following is a predictor of adherence to the others:
    - "Free-market" economic views,
    - Rejection of science in the fields of climate, medicine (tobacco, asbestos &/or HIV), ecology (synthetic pesticides),
    - Conspiracy theories.

    Could these correlations be classed as a syndrome?

    If so, to what extent would these indications also be correlated with tendency to self-loathing?

    report