science blogging new atheism extreme fundamentalism
nisbetmc | May 12, 2009
Several colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have a new study out that shows not surprisingly that like-minded conversations drive attitude extremity relative to science policy.
Analyzing data from a national panel survey conducted between 2002 and 2005, graduate student Andrew Binder and his collaborators find that after controlling for demographics and news use, like-minded discussion pushed respondents' position on stem cell research to the extreme ends of the distribution, either towards strong support or strong opposition.
The study comes out of the research group at…