Researchers hoist with own petard?

In a recent post I took note of the publication of new research purported to support the notion that partisans reject information that contradicts strongly held beliefs more readily than do non-partisans.  I've identified and read the study by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler.

The verdict?  Read on.

One of the instantly striking aspects of the study, titled "When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions," was the redefinition of "misperception" employed by the authors:

(W)e define misperceptions as cases in which people’s beliefs about factual matters are not supported by clear evidence and expert opinion—a definition that includes both false and unsubstantiated beliefs about the world.

That definition occurs in a section devoted to the case for redefining the term for purposes of the study (pp. 304,305).  I suggest to the researchers that a term redefined to reflect that "factual matters that are the subject of contemporary political debate are rarely as black and white as standard political knowledge questions" will result in an increased ambiguity in the finished results where the redefined term occurs.  In particular, if news reports seize on the term "misperception" without mentioning the spin placed on the term by Nyhan et al., the news report will end up producing or reinforcing an unsubstantiated belief in the reader.  Which we might call a "misperception" regardless of whether it contradicts the expert opinions of Nyhan and Reifler.  Clear evidence, after all, constitutes a requirement according to their definition.

The study provides fairly clear evidence that Nyhan and Reifler were "hoist by their own petard."

Of Richard Dawkins and metaphysics

I had a chance to hear a portion a conversation between Richard Dawkins and Michael Medved on the latter's radio program the other day.

As usual, something in the conversation fairly leaped out at me.

Dawkins, after classifying Charles Darwin as a racist (along with the rest of Darwin's generation), went on to say that the proper understanding of science provides no basis for racism.

And why not? Because, Dawkins explained, racism requires that one race be considered somehow better than another. Evolution fails to deliver on that criterion. It is value-neutral. In fact, Dawkins said, all humans are equal.

And that is where he stepped in it.

In scientific and naturalistic terms--or even logical terms, for that matter--no two humans are equal unless they are identical. That's identical in every respect.

Dawkins cannot reasonably be thought to be saying that humans are physically equal in every respect. He was, it seems obvious, talking about some other type of equality. But that type of equality carries with it exactly the type of value judgment that Dawkins denied we could have based on evolutionary science.

So where could human equality have possibly come from?

I don't know that Dawkins ever addressed the issue. I suspect he never got around to it.

Science, it would seem, must undercut the notion that humans are not different from one another to the extent that they vary from one another physically/genetically. Dawkins implicitly denied that greater success in leaving viable offspring is better than lesser success in leaving viable offspring. But if science would bar us from judging that reproductive success is a good thing, then what kind of value judgments are we allowed?

That is the sort of question I would like to see Dawkins try to address. His answer, I think, would betray the glibness of his claim that modern evolution provides no fuel for racist notions.

Neo-atheists such as Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens often provide the thinnest sort of answers in support of their own metaphysical positions.