Social Origins of Scientific Deviance: Examining Creationism and Global Warming Skepticism

Abstract

Scientific communities maintain respected authority on matters related to the natural world; however, there are instances where significant portions of the population hold beliefs contrary to the scientific consensus. These beliefs have generally been studied as the product of scientific illiteracy. This project reframes the issue as one of social deviance from the consensus of scientific communities. Using young-earth creationism and global warming skepticism as case studies, I suggest that consensus perception in light of public scientific deviance is a valuable dialectical framework, and demonstrate its utility using logistic regression analyses of the 2006 Pew Religion and Public Life Survey. Believing there is no scientific consensus is one of the most important factors in predicting scientifically deviant beliefs, along with political and religious effects, eclipsing education. The inability of consensus perception to explain all variation in scientific deviance lends further credence to the framework, suggesting future directions in the study of this phenomenon.