It’s all a giant conspiracy! (To some readers of climate blogs)

The resistance to the findings of climate scientists can be a bit difficult to understand. Most evidence points to a human role in driving climate change, and a large majority of scientists are convinced by that evidence. Do people think that the scientific community is making things up?

According to a study that has been accepted (but not yet published) by Psychological Science, the answer is yes, at least for some of those who frequent climate blogs. The study finds, as other studies have, that a strong free-market ideology correlates with a lower acceptance of climate change. But it also finds that, among readers of popular climate blogs, a tendency toward conspiracy theories plays a role in fostering doubt of the scientific community.

Because blogs have become a focal point for the discussion of climate change, the authors decided to recruit their study population through them. The authors succeeded in having links to their survey posted by eight blogs that take a generally pro-science slant. Attempts to get it posted at climate skeptics blogs failed (although that’s a topic that has since sparked its own controversy, as we’ll get to later). Over 1,300 people completed the survey.

A series of questions in it assayed a tendency toward favoring a laissez-faire, free-market economy. Another set handled basic climate literacy, while a third set asked about a variety of conspiracy theories. These ranged from checking for fears of global government to the Moon landings being faked, with questions about Area 51 and 9/11 being an inside job interspersed. The authors figured out which of these questions showed the greatest variation among those filling out the surveys, and used them to create aggregate scores for further analysis.

As expected from other studies, “endorsement of free markets was highly predictive of rejection of climate science.” But, more weakly, it also predicted a rejection of other scientific propositions.

But completely independently, so did a tendency toward believing conspiracy theories. Why would this be? “If an overwhelming scientific consensus cannot be accepted as the result of researchers independently converging on the same evidence-based view, then its very existence calls for an alternative explanation,” the authors argue, “a function readily fulfilled by the ideation of a complex and secretive conspiracy among researchers.” And, since conspiracy theories tend to be equally appealing to those who subscribe to them, that means rejection of climate change groups with all sorts of oddities—faked Moon landings, the belief that the FBI killed Martin Luther King, Jr., and so forth.

Both a laissez-faire attitude and conspiracy tendencies separately predicted the rejection of a variety of other scientific findings, like the fact that HIV causes AIDS, or smoking causes cancer.

It’s important to note (as the authors themselves do) that this is not a general cross-section of society. These people read climate blogs and, based on their participation in this study, are willing to share their thoughts on this and other matters.

We also talked to Yale’s Dan Kahan, who studies how culture influences our willingness to accept scientific information. He emphasized that the study looked at the impact of two different things: tendencies toward thinking in conspiratorial terms, and a cultural identity that included favoring free markets. As far as the latter group, the results were consistent with previous research, which showed the importance of their cultural leanings. “Members of the public who are culturally predisposed to be doubtful about climate change are just as science literate as ones who are culturally predisposed to accept evidence of climate change,” Kahan said.