Month: August 2022

The North Carolina state supreme court likes to play with fire.

Just a few months ago some Republicans were talking about the possibility of impeaching members of that court as it deliberated on whether to strike down legislative maps drawn after the 2020 census as unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders. The court eventually split along partisan lines to strike down the Republican drawn maps, and the case is now before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Today the state court again split along partisan lines in another extraordinary case. The electoral map that the state legislature had drawn after the 2010 census had previously been declared unconstitutional due to racial gerrymanders, but legislators were allowed to be elected and serve out their terms until a new map could be approved. The court today declared that those legislators had only limited authority given the flawed maps and some legislative tasks they were not allowed to perform. Specifically, the majority determined that the legislature was barred from proposing some constitutional amendments. Although the case was remanded back to the trial court for further proceedings, the clear implication is that the state constitutional amendment that had been proposed by that legislature and ratified by the voters that had empowered the legislature to adopt a voter ID law is invalid.

The principles of popular sovereignty and democratic self-rule as embodied in article I, sections 2 and 3 mean that individuals can only exercise the sovereign power that the people have transmitted to the legislature if they validly hold legislative office. The constitution defines and structures the processes by which individuals assume offices that permit them to exercise sovereign power, and sovereign power can only be lawfully exercised by individuals who have come into office through the processes established by the constitution for that very purpose. Burke v. Elliott (NC 1844). The legitimacy of any individual officer’s claim to exercise sovereign power depends upon the legitimacy of the process by which that individual came to assume the office to which sovereign power has been delegated.

Consistent with the principles of popular sovereignty and democratic self-rule, only the people can change the way sovereign power is allocated and exercised within North Carolina’s system of government. And, through their constitution, the people assigned the General Assembly a vital role in the amendment process. Specifically, the constitution authorizes the General Assembly to initiate the process of enacting constitutional amendments by “adopt[ing] an act submitting the propos[ed] [constitutional amendments] to the qualified voters of the State for their ratification or rejection,” provided that “three-fifths of all the members of each house shall adopt [the] act.” is undisputed that three-fifths of the members of each house adopted acts submitting the proposals to add the Voter ID and Tax Cap Amendments to the North Carolina Constitution, and that a majority of voters ratified both amendments in 2018. The sole question before us is whether the legislators who passed the bills submitting these two amendments to the voters could validly exercise the authority conferred upon the legislature by the people in article XIII, section 4.

The court lays out a new test for determining whether a constitutional amendment proposed by a legislature and ratified by the voters should nonetheless be struck down as constitutionally invalid.

Thus, when the votes of legislators elected due to an unconstitutional gerrymander could have been decisive in enacting a bill proposing a constitutional amendment, courts must assess whether there is a substantial risk that the challenged amendment will (1) immunize legislators from democratic accountability; (2) perpetuate the ongoing exclusion of a category of voters from the political process; or (3) intentionally discriminate against a particular category of citizens who were also discriminated against in the political process leading to the legislators’ election. If any of these factors are present, then the balance of equities requires the court to invalidate the challenged amendment. If these factors are not present—or if the legislators elected due to an unconstitutional gerrymander were not so numerous as to be potentially decisive in the vote to put a proposed amendment to the people—the challenged amendment must be left in place.

The majority concludes,

“We should ever be mindful that the Constitution to a great extent is the rudder to keep the ship of state from off the rocks and reefs.“ Hinton v. Lacy (NC 1927). Although the questions raised in this appeal are novel, the answers can be found in the principles that are the foundation of North Carolina’s system of government as expressed in multiple provisions of the North Carolina Constitution, the people’s fundamental law. The people have reserved to themselves the power to amend or replace these principles and provisions. While they have assigned the legislature a role in the amendment process, the potentially transformative consequences of amendments that could change basic tenets of our constitutional system of government warrant heightened scrutiny of amendments enacted through a process that required the participation of legislators whose claim to represent the people’s will has been disputed. Consistent with these constitutional principles and provisions, we conclude that acts proposing constitutional amendments passed by a legislature composed of a substantial number of legislators elected from unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered legislative districts, after the unlawfulness of those districts has been conclusively established, are not automatically shielded by application of the de facto officer doctrine.

The three justices in dissent practically begged the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn this case as a potential violation of the republican guarantee clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Breathtaking. Will be interesting to see what comes next.

The opinion can be found here. I have already edited the case for the companion site to the Howard Gillman, Mark Graber, and Keith Whittington American Constitutionalism casebook. Happy to share it for anyone interested.

The post North Carolina State Supreme Court Makes a Bold Move appeared first on Reason.com.

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Today, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin took a surprising YIMBY-inflected (“yes in my backyard”) swipe at restrictive development regulations that he says are making the state increasingly unwelcoming for renters and homebuyers.

“The cost to rent or buy a home is too expensive,” said the governor in a wide-ranging speech before the Virginia Senate’s Joint Money Committee today. “We must tackle root causes behind this supply and demand mismatch; unnecessary regulations, overburdensome and inefficient local governments, restrictive zoning policies, and an ideology of fighting tooth and nail against any new development.”

The state of Virginia is short roughly 105,000 homes, according to a recent study from the housing advocacy group Up For Growth. Another report commissioned by the state government found that while the state’s population had expanded by over 10 percent since 2008, housing supply had only expanded by 8.7 percent.

For fast-expanding regions like the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., that’s meant skyrocketing rents and home prices. The median home price in Arlington County, Virginia, is $836,806 according to the Zillow Home Value Index. That’s up from $667,000 in 2017.

“The really big danger in northern Virginia is … this unwritten rule or expectation that if you don’t have a college degree or you don’t make $100,000 per earner in your household, you should just live somewhere else,” says Luca Gattoni-Celli, founder of YIMBYs of Northern Virginia, a chapter of national housing advocacy group YIMBY Action. “And that would be a real shame.”

Gattoni-Celli blames the northern Virginia region’s pressing housing affordability problems on low-density zoning rules that often allow just one house per property.

Reform is in the air,  however. Arlington County is currently in the process of developing a “Missing Middle” zoning reform that would allow as many as eight units of housing on formerly single-family zoned lots.

Nationwide, three states and even more municipalities have legalized “missing middle” two-, three-, and four-unit homes on all residential land in an effort to bring housing prices and rents down. These zoning fights have typically occurred in deep-blue areas between pro-growth liberals and progressive NIMBYs.

Youngkin’s comments today are evidence that both the problem of housing affordability and the solution of deregulating housing construction are bipartisan issues.

“The last election reminded everyone outside of the places that voted for Gov. Youngkin that Virginia is still a very purple state,” says Gattoni-Celli. “Having leaders of both political parties identifying the same solution to such a serious problem is really great.”

But, he adds, “if [Youngkin] is serious about this, it will have to translate into legislative action.”

A state bill that would have legalized duplexes on residential land statewide was proposed in 2019 but went nowhere in the Legislature.

The Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development has also been weighing a change to state building codes that would allow apartment buildings to be constructed with just one staircase. That seemingly small technical change could potentially goose apartment construction by enabling them to fit on smaller lots.

Time will tell if the governor’s promising comments translate into more than just talk.

The post Glenn Youngkin Says NIMBY Regulations Are Making Virginia an Impossibly Expensive Place To Live appeared first on Reason.com.

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The en banc panel majority (seven judges) ordered today, in Young v. Hawaii:

The Supreme Court vacated the judgment of this Court, 992 F.3d 765, and has remanded this case to us “for further consideration in light of New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. ___ (2022),” Young v. Hawaii, 2022 WL 2347578, at *1 (U.S. 2022). We vacate the judgment of the district court and remand this case to the district court for further proceedings pursuant to the Supreme Court order.

Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain, joined by Judges Consuelo Callahan, Sandra Ikuta, and Ryan Nelson, dissented, arguing that the Ninth Circuit should have resolved the question itself:

I respectfully dissent from our failure to resolve the straightforward legal issues presented by this case. The Supreme Court has vacated the judgment of this Court and remanded this case to us “for further consideration in light of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 597 U.S. __ (2022).” But today, we decline to give further consideration to the question presented to us and we decline even to deal with it.

This case presents the following question: in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Bruen, does Hawaii’s “may-issue” permitting scheme violate the Second Amendment right of a responsible law-abiding citizen to carry a firearm for self-defense outside of the home? Bruen held unconstitutional a “may-issue” permitting scheme for public carry of handguns, much like the law challenged in this case. So, after Bruen, the question before us is simple. Nevertheless, our Court today declines to answer it. In refusing to do so, our Court delays the resolution of this case, wastes judicial resources, and fails to provide guidance to the lower courts of our Circuit. As a judge of this Court, I feel obliged to offer such guidance, even if a majority of my colleagues does not….

George Young wishes to carry a firearm for personal self-defense in the State of Hawaii. He twice in 2011 applied for a license to carry a handgun, either concealed or openly. His application was denied each time by the County of Hawaii’s Chief of Police, Harry Kubojiri, because Young failed to satisfy the requirements set forth in section 134-9 of the Hawaii Revised Statutes (“H.R.S.”).

Section 134-9 acts as a limited exception to the State of Hawaii’s “Place[s] to Keep” statutes, which generally require that gun owners keep their firearms at their “place of business, residence, or sojourn.” The exception allows citizens to obtain a license to carry a loaded handgun in public, either concealed or openly, under certain circumstances. Respecting concealed carry, section 134-9 provides that “[i]n an exceptional case, when an applicant shows reason to fear injury to the applicant’s person or property, the chief of police … may grant a license to an applicant … to carry a pistol or revolver and ammunition therefor concealed on the person.” The chief of police may, under section 134-9, grant a license for the open carry of a loaded handgun only “[w]here the urgency or the need has been sufficiently indicated” and the applicant “is engaged in the protection of life and property.” The County of Hawaii has promulgated regulations to clarify that open carry is proper only when the license-holder is “in the actual performance of his duties or within the area of his assignment.”

Absent a license under section 134-9, a person may only transport an unloaded firearm, in an enclosed container, to and from a place of repair, a target range, a licensed dealer, a firearms exhibit, a hunting ground, or a police station, H.R.S. §§ 134-23, 134-24, 134-25, 134-26, 134-27, and may use those firearms only while “actually engaged” in hunting or target shooting….

Ten years ago, on June 12, 2012, Young filed this suit …. In 2018, a three-judge panel of our Court reversed the district court’s dismissal of Young’s Second Amendment claim against the County, holding that he “has indeed stated a claim that section 134-9’s limitations on the issuance of open carry licenses violate the Second Amendment.” … In 2021, sitting en banc, we reached a conclusion different from that of the three-judge panel…. Following its decision in Bruen, the Supreme Court granted Young’s petition, vacated our en banc decision, and remanded the case to us for further consideration in light of its opinion….

The Supreme Court in Bruen explicitly overruled the lower courts’ two-step test which would apply means-end scrutiny to the Second Amendment. Because “the reasoning or theory of our prior circuit authority is clearly irreconcilable with the reasoning or theory of intervening higher authority,” we are “bound by the later and controlling authority” of the Supreme Court, and therefore we must “reject the prior circuit opinion[s] as having been effectively overruled.” As the Supreme Court just instructed us, “the standard for applying the Second Amendment is as follows: When the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. The government must then justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only then may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s ‘unqualified command.'” …

In a Second Amendment case, we must “assess whether modern firearms regulations are consistent with the Second Amendment’s text and historical understanding.” However, although “[h]istorical analysis can be difficult” and, at times, it requires “nuanced judgments about which evidence to consult and how to interpret it,” the analysis in this case is simple under the binding precedent set forth in Bruen…. In Bruen, the Court considered the constitutionality of “proper-cause” statutes such as that enacted by Hawaii. Accordingly, the Supreme Court parsed the text of the Second Amendment and evaluated at great length “whether ‘historical precedent’ from before, during, and after the founding evinces a comparable tradition of regulation” to “proper-cause” laws. After thorough review, the Court concluded that neither text nor historical precedent support “proper-cause” language restrictions….

As with the petitioners in Bruen, Young is an “ordinary, law-abiding, adult citizen[ ],” and is therefore unequivocally “part of ‘the people’ whom the Second Amendment protects.” As the Court observed in Bruen, “handguns are weapons ‘in common use’ today for self-defense.” And the plain text of the Second Amendment contemplates not just the “keeping” of arms in the home, but also the “bear[ing] of arms” beyond it. Therefore, as with the petitioners in Bruen, “[t]he Second Amendment’s plain text thus presumptively guarantees” to Young “a right to ‘bear’ arms in public for self-defense.” …

Because “the Constitution presumptively protects” Young’s right to carry arms in public for self-defense, Hawaii “must … justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” Put differently: since the Second Amendment guarantees to the people “a general right to public carry,” the constitutionality of section 134-9 hinges on whether there was at the time of the ratification of the Second Amendment or the Fourteenth Amendment “a tradition of broadly prohibiting the public carry of commonly used firearms for self-defense.” The government has the burden to show such a tradition.

But Hawaii cannot meet its burden, because, as the Supreme Court held in Bruen, there was no such tradition. Nor was there a “historical tradition limiting public carry only to those law-abiding citizens who demonstrate a special need for self-defense.” Historical restrictions on public carry may have “limited the intent for which one could carry arms, the manner by which one carried arms, or the exceptional circumstances under which one could not carry arms.” But such valid historical exceptions are quite the opposite of section 134-9, which flips the presumption by limiting public carry licenses to “an exceptional case.”

A law-abiding citizen need not demonstrate a special need to exercise his or her right to carry arms in public for self-defense. But like the New York law at issue in Bruen, section 134-9 requires ordinary citizens like Young to demonstrate an exceptional reason to obtain a public carry permit. Thus, section 134-9 violates the Fourteenth Amendment by “prevent[ing] law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms.” Bruen admits of no other conclusion….

The Second Amendment “‘elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms’ for self-defense.” The Supreme Court has thus admonished the lower courts that this right “demands our unqualified deference.” But “may-issue” permitting schemes violate this Second Amendment right. Like all such schemes, Hawaii’s “may-issue” permitting law, section 134-9, infringes the right of Young, a law-abiding responsible citizen, to carry a handgun in public for the purpose of self-defense. Young has indeed stated a claim that section 134-9 violates the Fourteenth Amendment by depriving him of the right protected by the Second Amendment.

Our Court should say so. We are bound, now, by Bruen, so there is no good reason why we could not issue a narrow, unanimous opinion in this case. The traditional justifications for remand are absent here. The issue before us is purely legal, and not one that requires further factual development. The majority does not explain, nor can it justify, its decision to remand this case to the district court without any guidance. Yet in its terse order and unwritten opinion, the majority seems to reveal a hidden rule in our Circuit: Second Amendment claims are not to be taken seriously. I would prefer to apply the binding decisions of the Supreme Court to the case at hand.

Instead of remanding without explanation or justification, we should reverse the district court in an opinion holding that Young has stated a claim upon which relief may be granted, that section 134-9 is unconstitutional, and that the case must proceed accordingly in district court. If we issued such an opinion, we would ensure that Bruen is applied uniformly in our Circuit in future cases. And in this case, we would save the parties and the district court the time and expense of continuing to litigate issues that we could resolve easily.

Today we shy away from our obligations to answer the straightforward legal questions presented on appeal and to provide guidance to the lower courts in our Circuit. And in doing so, we waste judicial resources by sending the parties back to square one at the district court. The parties have waited a decade to resolve this litigation, and Young has waited over ten years to exercise his constitutional right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense. Because we opt not to decide this simple case, we force Young to wait even longer.

Someday, Young will finally be vindicated. Someday, our Court must issue an opinion that respects the rights enshrined in the Second Amendment….

The post Ninth Circuit Sends the Hawaii Concealed Carry Challenge Back Down to District Court appeared first on Reason.com.

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On Tuesday, President Joe Biden signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which among its Democratic-favored grab-bag of provisions included $80 billion in additional funding over the next 10 years for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), a 53 percent increase over the agency’s projected budgetary baseline.

Because everyone pays taxes, and because the bill’s passage depended heavily on projections that a beefed-up IRS would locate and extract an additional $204 billion in currently unpaid revenue, many citizens became nervous about what the law would mean for them. To dampen the disquiet, the White House and Treasury Department in the run-up to the bill’s final passage made escalatory claims—untethered to any statutory language and in contradiction to projections by both the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT)—that the historic enforcement increase would not increase the audit rates on American households earning less than $400,000 per year. Opposing Republicans, meanwhile, have been making frequently hyperbolic critiques about the IRA funding “87,000 new IRS agents” and so forth.

Faced with the choice of those two broad categories to scrutinize—the claims of the executive branch in justifying a major enforcement change with the potential to affect all adult residents of the United States, and the criticism thereof by losing Republican legislators—the fact-checking industry continues, even after the signing of the bill, to nitpick the ankle-biters instead of challenging Goliath.

“IRS Will Target ‘High-Income’ Tax Evaders with New Funding, Contrary to Social Media Posts,” went the headline Thursday at The Annenberg Public Policy Center’s FactCheck.org. The Poynter Institute’s PolitiFact on Wednesday contributed “Rick Scott overstates potential hiring surge at the IRS,” then followed up Thursday with “Video misleads about size of IRS, audits and armed agents.” Agence France-Presse’s Fact Check department Tuesday concluded that “Claims of ‘IRS army’ targeting US taxpayers are misleading,” then came back Thursday with “US congressman misrepresents photos purported to show armed IRS recruits.” Reuters on Wednesday offered up a twofer—”Fact Check-The IRS is not hiring thousands of armed agents, job ads show opening for specialized unit,” and “Fact Check-Social media posts miss key context on Inflation Reduction Act’s provision for thousands of new IRS agents“—then on Friday posted: “Republicans call it an ‘army’ but IRS hires will replace retirees, do IT, says Treasury.”

All of these (and the many other similar) mainstream media fact-checking exercises have as their starting point not the contested promises made by the victorious White House and other key promoters of the IRA but soundbites from the types of conservatives that mainstream journalists find annoying. Consumers seeking to double-check the president were mostly stuck with such explicitly conservative outlets as Breitbart News.

This divide, and journalistic interest skewed more toward the excesses of rhetoric than the exercise of power, is reminiscent of the way professional fact-checking comported itself before, during, and immediately after Barack Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act. Back then, even though the then-president was routinely lying in easily discoverable ways about his health insurance overhaul, fact-checkers were obsessed with backbencher opposition to the point where PolitiFact awarded its “Lie of the Year” to Sarah Palin, who at the time held no elected office.

PolitiFact did belatedly catch up with the president’s fibs in 2013, at which point there was a moment of mild journalism-industry self-reflection. Though, as I warned at the time, the mea culpas did not contain nearly enough self-awareness about how Democratic politicians and operatives, coming as they do from largely the same class of people as national journalists, have been consciously and successfully working the refs.

So it has been this week. It’s not just that the fact-checkers have been trawling for conservative B.S.—which, when identified accurately, is always legitimate to call out. It’s that they’re holding up as debunkatory evidence assertions by the White House that either have no statutory force or are themselves misleading, even false.

For instance, FactCheck.org‘s piece claims right at the outset that “most new hires” by the IRS “will provide customer services,” then expands on the point further down:

“The majority of hires made with these resources fill positions of the 50,000 IRS employees who are on the verge of retirement. Of the net new hires, the majority are hired to improve customer services – from upgrading IT to answering phone calls,” the Treasury Department spokesperson said.

This is not checking a fact, this is reproducing speculative spin that makes no sense when you look at where the additional IRS spending has been statutorily allocated.

According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the Inflation Reduction Act directs the $80 billion in additional IRS funding to the following four enumerated divisions: “enforcement” ($45.7 billion), “operations support” ($25.3 billion), “business systems modernization” ($4.7 billion), and “taxpayer services” ($3.2 billion):

The Treasury Department spokesperson would have us believe that 50.01 percent of newly created positions funded by this $80 billion injection will work in the divisions receiving just 10 percent of the money. That is just not credible, let alone a credible basis for debunking someone else’s fact.

Other administration assertions taken as baseline fact by many fact-checkers include that 52,000 IRS employees—nearly two-thirds of the agency’s total work force—will retire in just the next five years; and that the “tax gap,” or amount of annual unpaid taxes owed, is “at least $381 billion” (Snopes), or $585 billion (PolitiFact), or $600 billion (Reuters).

Not only have several of the fact-checking outlets taken questionable executive-branch claims at face value, but they’ve also let Democratic appointees heap adjectival derision at the dishonorable opposition. Treasury Department tax policy specialist Natasha Sarin, who’s been busy making the rounds, called the 87,000-new-agents claim “deeply dangerous nonsense—and false,” in a Reuters fact-check.

“The speed and voracity with which [Republicans] are coming at this is really a testament to how important these resources are going to be,” Sarin added, “because there are many wealthy tax evaders that stand to lose a lot.” As a furtherance in the checking of a fact, this quote provides zero—perhaps even negative—value. It does, however, provide useful color commentary in the service of clowning conservatives.

Many Americans do not enjoy being reminded of the fact that a country that began as a tax revolt against England now has a federal agency with some 81,600 employees dedicated to confiscating the maximum amount of income from its citizens allowable by (very confusing) law, under threat of potential imprisonment. The Inflation Reduction Act, in greatly expanding that power—a full 69 percent of the funding increase is dedicated unambiguously to “enforcement”—has surfaced that unpleasant reality in a way that could be politically potent.

It is understandable, if unseemly, that an executive branch funded by those very same tax dollars would be busy minimizing every hard-to-swallow detail of its historic IRS expansion. The Democrats who lead the government have to run for reelection, after all. Journalists have no such excuse, though they may soon learn that fact-checks showing there are “only” 2,100 IRS agents who carry firearms are not as reassuring to readers as they are to reporters.

The post Fact-Checking Industry Continues Providing Cover for White House's Unbelievable IRS Claims appeared first on Reason.com.

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“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge,” wrote Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man (1871). Experimental findings reported in 1999 by social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger bolstered Darwin’s insight. They tested people on their knowledge of grammar and logic and found that many of the people who did badly on the tests rated their performance as being well above average. On the other hand, those who did well tended to underestimate how well they had done.

The now eponymous Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people “wrongly overestimate their knowledge or ability in a specific area. This tends to occur because a lack of self-awareness prevents them from accurately assessing their own skills.” In other words, incompetent people are often too incompetent to realize just how incompetent they are. (It should be noted, however, that some now suggest that the Dunning-Kruger effect is not a real phenomenon but arises from how the researchers parsed their data.)

In any case, most of us do suffer from various forms of cognitive overconfidence such as the “illusion of explanatory depth.” We actually think we know how many of the mechanisms and processes we interact with every day actually operate. But when we are asked to draw or write down how a zipper, a bicycle, or a flush toilet works, we find that we don’t know as much as we initially thought we did. And let’s not get started on the massive problem of confirmation bias when it comes to politically salient issues.

Now, a new study in Science Advances adds to these findings and reports that “knowledge overconfidence is associated with anti-consensus views on controversial scientific issues.” In the study, the researchers first asked 3,200 participants through online surveys how much they think they know (subjective knowledge) using a 7-point scale about each of seven scientific topics ranging from “vague understanding” to “thorough understanding.” To prime participants, the researchers provide a complex explanation of how a crossbow is constructed and works (level 7 knowledge) compared to the case where a person can identify a crossbow and know that it shoots arrows (level 1 knowledge). Then each participant was randomly assigned to answer a question about their degree of acceptance of one of the seven different issues that enjoy substantial scientific consensus.

The issues probed by the researchers were “the safety of GM foods, the validity of anthropogenic climate change, the benefits of vaccination outweighing its risks, the validity of evolution as an explanation of human origins, the validity of the Big Bang theory as an explanation for the origin of the universe, the lack of efficacy of homeopathic medicine, and the importance of nuclear power as an energy source.” For each issue, participants were asked to indicate their level of opposition ranging from not at all (level 1) to extreme (level 7).

To figure out how much participants might know about scientific findings in general, researchers also tested them on a 7-point objective-knowledge scale ranging from definitely false, not sure, to definitely true for 34 different purportedly factual claims about the world. The researchers divvied up the 34 statements into clusters relevant to the topics of evolution, the Big Bang, nuclear power, genetically modified foods, vaccination and homeopathy, and climate change. Among the statements participants were asked to answer true or false were assertions like the center of the earth is very hot; all radioactivity is man-made; ordinary tomatoes do not have genes, whereas genetically modified tomatoes do; the earliest humans lived at the same time as the dinosaurs; and nitrogen makes up most of the earth’s atmosphere.

The researchers also asked participants about their political and religious views.

The researchers then compared the strength of the participants’ claims to subjective knowledge, that is, how sure they were that the scientific consensus of the seven topics was right or wrong, with the depth of their objective knowledge as revealed by their answers to the 34 purportedly factual claims.

In general, the researchers found “that the people who disagree most with the scientific consensus know less about the relevant issues, but they think they know more.” Interestingly, as the above chart shows, study participants tended to have a bit less confidence in their views with respect to the highly polarized issue of climate change and the origins of the universe and species.

The researchers do acknowledge that “conforming to the consensus is not always recommended.” They cite the opposition of Plato and Galileo Galilei to philosophical and scientific consensuses of their eras as examples. They might well have noted the pernicious consensus in favor of eugenics that prevailed in the early 20th century.

Nevertheless, the researchers conclude that “if opposition to the consensus is driven by an illusion of understanding and if that opposition leads to actions that are dangerous to those who do not share in the illusion, then it is incumbent on society to try to change minds in favor of the scientific consensus.” Dangerous actions like trying to ban more productive and environmentally friendly crop varieties, refusing vaccination against dangerous infectious diseases, or rejecting a safe technology for generating electric power.

The post Incompetent People Are Often Too Incompetent To Realize Just How Incompetent They Are, Says New Study appeared first on Reason.com.

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