Polarization Over Controversial Scientific Issues Increases With Education

Carnegie Mellon University researchers have found that people's beliefs about scientific topics that are associated with their political or religious identities become increasingly polarized with education as measured by years in school, science classes and science literacy. "A lot of science is generally accepted and trusted, but certain topics have become deeply polarizing. We wanted to find out what factors are related to this polarization, and it turns out the 'deficit model' - which says the divisions are due to a lack of education or understanding - does not tell the whole story," said lead author Caitlin Drummond, who recently received her Ph.D. in behavioral decision research from CMU's Department of Social and Decision Sciences. Drummond will be a postdoctoral research fellow at the Erb Institute at the University of Michigan this fall. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences (PNAS), Drummond and CMU's Baruch Fischhoff used data from the nationally representative General Social Survey. They examined predictors of Americans' beliefs about six potentially controversial issues - stem cell research, the big bang, human evolution, genetically modified foods, nanotechnology and climate change.