Now this is interesting, if unsurprising.

The other day I wrote about the correlation between political ideology and assumptions about how many unarmed Blacks are killed by police. In it I discussed a study done by the Skeptic Research Center that showed that people who identify as liberal are least likely to guess how many unarmed Black men are killed by police.

Not by a little, but by a lot. Almost none of the liberals guessed in the right range–the number is about 10 a year–and over half guessed that the number was between 1000 to 10,000.

2020 Survey: "How many unarmed black men were killed by police in 2019?"

The Washington Post's police shooting database says 12.

54% of "Very Liberals" (least accurate) estimated 1,000+.

13% of "Conservatives" (most accurate) estimated 1,000+. pic.twitter.com/zOXADsQ4pm

— Skeptic Research Center Team (@SkepResCenter) April 4, 2023

2020 & 2022 Surveys Compared

There was a modest improvement in accuracy.

The greatest improvement occurred among “Very Conservatives.”

While liberals increased how often they gave the false answer of “About 100,” they gave even more extreme answers less often. pic.twitter.com/9gWy05YxMc

— Skeptic Research Center Team (@SkepResCenter) April 4, 2023

The most accurate group was conservatives, with very conservative being the best, and very liberal being the worst. It’s not even close. Liberals have no idea what the truth is, and they believe the very worst to be the case.

Yesterday the organization released more data from their study, in order to explain why that is the case. Their findings were equally interesting because they give a very strong clue regarding what is driving that disparity.

And it’s exactly what you think: the greater the education you have and the higher the trust in the news media the less likely you are to have a grasp of reality.

Education + Trust in MSM=ignorance.

Again, it’s not even close. Education and trust in the MSM are directly correlated with not having a damn clue about the real world. You are better off living in a shack with no internet or TV than having a graduate degree and being a cable news junkie.

Trust & Police Victims

“If you had to guess, in 2019 what percentage (%) of people killed by police were black?”

Trust in news media *inversely* corellated with accuracy.

On avg, those with high trust in news media said 56.6%.

The actual answer is around 25%. pic.twitter.com/GmFt1r9ZM2

— Skeptic Research Center Team (@SkepResCenter) April 6, 2023

You can see the trend right away. The higher the education level the higher the trust in the MSM, which is probably similar to having a lot of trust in “experts” of all kinds. I suspect you could build a graph like this regarding trust in wearing masks as well.

How about the belief that boys can be girls and vice-versa? Same graph, in all likelihood. Groundedness in reality is inversely correlated with education and MSM trust.

How do you interpret these results? We welcome your thoughts and feedback!

We are an #antipartisan research team. If you like our work, please support us by sharing our findings.

You can freely access the full PDF research report here: https://t.co/AoxLLVzUso pic.twitter.com/J54Zvf9kt7

— Skeptic Research Center Team (@SkepResCenter) April 6, 2023

None of this should be surprising, of course, although it is exactly counter to what we have been led to believe. We are bombarded by messages that claim that the MSM dispels misinformation, while it is the #1 means by which it is transmitted.

Higher education and trust in the media/expert complex lead you far from reality and into Narrativeland, where up is down and down is up. The more you watch the news and read the paper the more distorted your view of reality. The more professors you have spoken to the less likely you are to have a grasp on basic facts.

Fox Mulder was right. Trust no one.