Education plus ideology exaggerates rejection of reality

[jtuck004]

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The higher your education, the better equipped you are to question accurate info.

We like to think that education changes people for the better, helping them critically analyze information and providing a certain immunity from disinformation. But if that were really true, then you wouldn't have low vaccination rates clustering in areas where parents are, on average, highly educated.

Vaccination isn't generally a political issue. (Or, it is, but it's rejected both by people who don't trust pharmaceutical companies and by those who don't trust government mandates; these tend to cluster on opposite ends of the political spectrum.) But some researchers decided to look at a number of issues that have become politicized, such as the Iraq War, evolution, and climate change. They find that, for these issues, education actually makes it harder for people to accept reality, an effect they ascribe to the fact that "highly educated partisans would be better equipped to challenge information inconsistent with predispositions."
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Unfortunately, that issue was climate change, which may be one of the most critical global issues facing voters. It's not clear why this issue is so exceptional in terms of how strongly education enhances the rejection of the scientific community's conclusions. While it has become highly politicized, it's unlikely to have reached the divisiveness of the Iraq war.
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Here.
Ironic. An opponent may be as well educated, or even more so, than you, as the world burns.

[Trillo]

1. Interesting article.

Have to chew on it for awhile.