Sister blog of Physicists of the Caribbean in which I babble about non-astronomy stuff, because everyone needs a hobby

Friday 18 April 2014

Backfiring : the problems of countering misinformation with facts

One of the most depressing paradoxes of science communication is that not only can misinformation often spread faster and wider than the truth; but even worse, combating misinformation with evidence can often have the complete and utter opposite of the desired effect.
http://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/when-evidence-backfires

Wednesday 9 April 2014

Where Americans think Ukraine is


Where Americans think Ukraine is

These are the guesses of 2066 Americans as to where Ukraine is. Only 1 in 6 were correct. Presumably the people who think it's actually on American soil weren't being serious...

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-26943479

Extracts from the article :

...we found that the less accurate our participants were, the more they wanted the US to use force, the greater the threat they saw Russia as posing to US interests, and the more they thought that using force would advance US national security interests; all of these effects are statistically significant at a 95% confidence level.

So the stupider you are, the more likely to want military intervention ?
(Or, more optimistically, the further you think the Ukraine is from Russia, the more you think intervention won't mean all-out war ?)

It's worth noting, however, that no matter how woefully misinformed Americans are about Ukraine's actual location, only 13% of the total survey wanted to intervene militarily.

DISCLAIMER : I probably couldn't find half of US states on a map, let alone most of its major cities.

EDIT : Indeed, I couldn't. After 10 minutes on sporcle (http://www.sporcle.com/games/g/states) I was only able to even name, let alone find, 33/50 states.

Dune part two : first impressions

I covered Dune : Part One when it came out, so it seems only fair I should cover the "concluding" part as well. I'm gonna do ...