Links this week:
- We see skill where none exists and are happy to pay for transparently useless advice.
- No evidence of the effect of parenting on criminal behaviour.
- Doug Kenrick on testosterone and the rationality of taking risks.
- Pulling apart the recent paper on perceptions of ability and the gender gap.
- The human guinea pig.
- Distrust of vaccines not a left wing issue.
#6 is a bit of hair-splitting. Yes, liberalism need not mean anti-vaccine – and I know that silly conservative Victoria Jackson is one of these people too – but the fact that such sentiment leans toward occurring in the very blue counties of California almost certainly stems from a kind of Rousseauian view coupled with distrust of “Big Pharma.”
Having said that, the anti-vaccine thing is still far more mixed politically than anti-GMO, from what I gather.
Razib Khan looked at the vaccination issue too, and found a top-bottom coalition against being immunized. I suspect of course at the bottom end this comes more from inertia and lack of education than anything ideological.
http://www.unz.com/gnxp/where-californians-are-not-immunized/