Graphic from the article discussed showing support for nuclear power by gender as described in the article.

This is one of the most excellent must read articles ever sent to me (by a girlfriend who does this sort of thing for a living. You know who you are, Girl. Thank you!) I’m talking about David Roberts, “There’s a Gender Divide on Nuclear Power, but It Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means,” at Vox.

First I’ll tell you why I think it’s awesome. Then I’ll quote some of the best bits for you, if you just want to skip to that…

The Awesomeness

The reason I find it awesome is multifold.

  1. It’s a good example of going beyond correlation data to test causal hypotheses. You know, that thing EvoPsych almost never does and yet still claims to be science.
  2. It’s a really good example of dispelling myths of innate gender differences the Sam Harris crowd is fond of, and proving instead that it’s all about culture and social systems, and thus the structure of society, that then needs to be structured differently (the system needs to be changed in some way), and the programming of brains, that then need to be reprogrammed (and we have no automated virus to do that; we each individually have to admit our operating system is jacked and fix it.)
  3. It closes with an excellent survey of standard scientific caveats that apply to how all statistical studies should be read, covering some of the common mistakes people make (usually various generalization and causal fallacies) after hearing a study that they need to stop making, which is alone worth reading the whole thing for.
  4. And on top of all that, it’s also a good example of demonstrating the pervasive effect on cognition and belief that white male privilege causes.

Whereas it becomes obvious that a white man can break into his car he left his keys in and expect a cop to help him, while a black man would get rousted, probably arrested, and possibly shot (the white man thus has a privilege the black man does not). Or that a white man’s resume is more likely to result in a hire than the identical resume from a black woman (ditto). Those manifestations of privilege are clear when pointed out, but seemingly scattered among countless disparate scenarios. But this article shows that white male privilege even affects beliefs and perceptions on a fundamental level that explains a lot of what’s fucked up about our country’s politics. It also explains a big chunk of science denialism and why white men, even atheists and so called skeptics, succumb to such nonsense weirdly often, too.

The funny thing is that the question began as “Why are women so disproportionately against nuclear power than men?” Because that’s how the question was framed. Until someone framed it differently, and noticed it was actually “Why are white men so disproportionately in favor of nuclear power?” Because guess what. Women and minority men? Opinion levels measure about the same. Instead of white guys being the standard (an assumption white male privilege often makes, even unconsciously), they are actually the weirdo outliers. Their deviance is what needs to be explained. Not everyone else’s.

And this connects with a point often overlooked: many people believe the right things for the wrong reasons. And that can disguise the fact that this is happening. White men may be right about nuclear power. So the natural assumption is that they disproportionately support it because they believe correctly by a correct methodology. I mean, how else could they have come to a correct belief? Right?

Except, no. Too many people come to correct beliefs for bad reasons. And it is commitment (or blind surrender) to those bad reasons that causes other false beliefs. The being right about the one thing can trick a mind into thinking it has a good method, therefore every other belief that method generates must be just as reliable. Nope.

Another point to take away is that it’s not always about factual differences. People can assess the facts identically and still differ in how much risk they are comfortable accepting. That’s a personal choice, not a wholly objective one.

One can make objectively legitimate appeals for consistency in one’s anxieties, and one can fairly argue that it is counter-productive to be so averse to risk you are paralyzed, or so inured to risk you wreck the world like a bull in a china shop (but recognize that the lines demarking these excesses must necessarily still vary from individual to individual for valid personal reasons), or that some risks and risk aversions can’t be imposed on the community just because you personally are okay with them, at least when instead there are ways you can choose your own exposure to the risk without meddling with other people’s liberty or safety (like, choosing not to live near a nuclear power plant…notice how a big part of the problem is that most people don’t have that privilege. These things often get dumped in neighborhoods whose population is too poor or disempowered to move out of them.)

Which brings us to the last interesting thing this study should remind us of: that the risk being the assessed is not always simply, for example, “Is nuclear power safe?” Often the risk being assessed on top of that and thus adding to it is, “Is it safe to trust the people who insist it’s safe?” When those are people, as a class, who often have been very untrustworthy, the powers that be often being caught in lies, and very dismissive of the concerns of minorities and the disadvantaged, running roughshod right over them and not even caring, even wasting human lives and resources on disastrously mistaken ventures or from outright negligence.

No one will ever trust politicians. So it’s up to scientists to restore credibility in good science-based decisions. Restoring trust in the scientific community is thus even more important than educating the public about the actual risk factors and risk levels involved in various kinds of nuclear power sources. And there are historical reasons women and minorities don’t trust the science community.

The Best Bits

The overall conclusion (quoting from one of the studies surveyed) is dead interesting:

Perhaps white males see less risk in the world because they create, manage, control, and benefit from so much of it. Perhaps women and nonwhite men see the world as more dangerous because in many ways they are more vulnerable, because they benefit less from many of its technologies and institutions, and because they have less power and control.

Yep. That. And do you know how to fix that? Yeah. A lot of white guys need to stop hogging all the privileges, power, and wealth. Or trying to. Or not letting women and minorities a fair shot at it. Because it’s fucking with your mind. It’s making you so inured to risk you support useless wars and dangerously unregulated oil drilling, and don’t give a shit about fixing the storm walls that would prevent one of the greatest disasters in U.S. history, and think guns are totes safe, and…basically, every distinctively conservative belief or boondoggle there is. And then you wonder why so many women and minorities don’t trust you when you talk up nuclear power.

And true, it is mostly (mostly) conservative white men (depending on how you define conservatism: many liberal atheists and skeptics count as conservative by the definition these studies use). As Roberts puts it:

What looked like a gender divide on nuclear power is in fact mostly a function of the “extreme risk skepticism” of “white hierarchical and individualistic” males. (In the US, “white hierarchical and individualistic” males generally go by the more economical “conservatives.”)

So. Yeah.

And then. Last but not least. The coda Roberts attaches at the end that applies to everything involving comparative statistical studies of any kind:

  1. “…the data tell us only about statistical patterns. They do not tell us anything about ‘men’ and ‘women’ as such,” and thus we cannot casually make inferences to biology as cause, and “they certainly don’t tell us anything about particular individuals.” Because, for example, “Plenty of non-males and non-whites support nuclear power; plenty of white males oppose it,” etc. So you can’t say things like “women are against nuclear power” or “white men support nuclear power.” All we are seeing is statistical disproportions in these categories, not universal essential traits of men and women or white people and nonwhite people.
  2. But this also means social and economic forces, not essentially gender or race, are causing these measured disparities, and “Social and economic forces can be interrogated and changed.” Which is what many white men fear the most. That they will have to change themselves and their world (look how much they whine with absurd hyperbole about witch hunts over organizations firing spokespeople who don’t express the values they were hired to support, e.g., that sadder puppy Tim Hunt, who actually did nothing less than suck at one of his jobs, so his getting fired from that one job was entirely appropriate). Or even have to admit it’s fucked and needs changing in the first place (thanks to their love affair with just world and system justification fallacies).
  3. Put more broadly, that things often correlate does not mean they always do, e.g. though climate denialists disproportionately support nuclear power (showing that they can trust science…when accepting it doesn’t threaten their way of life), “this does not mean that all climate change deniers support nuclear power or that supporting nuclear power makes you any kind of denier.” Like the two lessons above, and the one below, you should adapt this sentence to every statistical study you have ever or will ever rely on.
  4. The author remarks on how often it seems to him “that supporters of nuclear power” and any other science they have a hard time selling to the public “have trouble letting go of the knowledge-deficit model.” By which he means, “They react to gaps like these by wondering how the unduly frightened masses can be made more rational” and thus “can be made to see things how they see things.” But, um, maybe “white males ought to contemplate why almost all other groups are more sensitive to local risks than they are. Perhaps it’s not as simple as everyone else being wrong.” Privilege often comes with privilege blindness.

If you want more people to support nuclear power, you need to address their actual fears regarding it, which are more political than scientific. It’s not that nuclear power is inherently dangerous (any more than fossil power, which actually kills more people). It’s that our society is unreliable. So you have to address that. Rather than assume those fears are irrational, they have to be met.

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