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Well, to create this type of test at all, one probably has to use a heuristic, otherwise everyone would get it right all the time and you couldn't see the "more skill fails to help". So I suppose I could live with that.

My qualm is the false symmetry. Conservatives fail to detect the message from genuine figures, Liberals from false ones (I could maybe even suggest they filtered them).
It does not get better with the rest of the article: Liberals were more likely to say that a scientist was an expert in his subject if his research underscored the dangers of climate change, conservatives if he cast doubt on them. Well, most people cannot judge the resume of a top scientist, but many do know that pretty much no climate scientist reject global warming.
So a Bayesian view, at least, would lead to consider it unlikely that the person was a subject expert. Contrast that with the Conservatives who require one to trumpet lies in order to be given credibility. That is a very different dynamic.

I know that facts have a liberal bias, which might explain why researchers find it hard to come up with a simple case of a liberal belief that clashes with data. But could the causation not run the other way? Maybe facts have a liberal bias because Liberals tend to form their beliefs with consideration for facts. That would be the opposite of what Klein was talking about of course, and the artificial balance reflex is still strong...

As for doubting mainstream media, yes, I admit to that. Although not from a tribal reaction -I caught them red-handed twice in a single week back when I was 16. But my reaction is to seek peer-reviewed articles, independent and cross-examined websites, and check that publications that I read are particularly careful to conclude when they "like" the conclusion. Surely that is not the same as only watching Fox News and believing everything it says.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Gandhi

by Cyrille (cyrillev domain yahoo.fr) on Fri Apr 11th, 2014 at 02:28:42 AM EST
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My point is that we've all learned to be suspicious of information - and the test simply presents information. It's a test, so I'm not (I presume) allowed to go Google for peer-reviewed articles on the topic. So my "Bayesian priors" are automatically to give priority to info I already know. Which I think pretty much gives you the results of this study...
by Metatone (metatone [a|t] gmail (dot) com) on Sun Apr 13th, 2014 at 04:50:36 AM EST
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