It is not a smear piece. It is saying "Population A has a higher likelihood of believing logically questionable assertions than Population B, let's figure out why." It's not a new exploration. The research dates back to the Vietnam War, at least as reported by Dan Pink in Drive (2009). The causes may be semantic, in that liberals have looser alliances and allegiances and therefore are more investigative of their beliefs. Fundamentally? Liberal beliefs are aligned with objective truths while conservative beliefs are aligned with ideology. Ideology is not beholden to fact. Therefore, conservatives are less concerned with facts.Conservatives will probably be elated by these findings. But for others, Kahan’s conclusions are likely to be quite controversial, especially since he packages them alongside a critique of a leading strategy to communicate the reality of climate change, namely, by emphasizing that 97 percent of scientists agree that humans are causing global warming. Kahan thinks that’s a way of pushing conservatives’ political identity buttons, rather than tapping into their knowledge.