Comments on: Who objects to painful tests on animals?

By: Andrew Selvarasa

Andrew Selvarasa — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 05:46:00 +0000

We’re lazy.

By: Razib Khan

Razib Khan — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 21:41:10 +0000

often baby-duty for a bit. i see no one has done any of their own GSS analysis???

By: Razib Khan

Razib Khan — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 02:01:11 +0000

just to be clear, i described other people as saying this was hypocritical. didn’t publish a few comments ragging on my opinion as to how this was a hypocritical position. read closer to have your comments published

busy on daddy-duty. if you guys are curious why don’t you look in the GSS???

By: Lab Lemming

Lab Lemming — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 22:51:33 +0000

Can you break down by diet?

By: Isabel

Isabel — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 19:46:50 +0000

“Looking at all ‘agree’ the only strong differences seem to be male/female and Black/White”

But smart folks and Jews seem to ‘strongly agree’ far more often than other groups.

By: Andrew Selvarasa

Andrew Selvarasa — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 19:37:22 +0000

#9 – Yes, you’re right, we’re a self-selected group.

By: Divalent

Divalent — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 17:46:10 +0000

It seems to me you addressed the wrong question with the data you presented. The data you show explores attitudes towards animal experimentation as a function of support for or against abortion on demand. But the question you said you were going to address was additude towards abortion as a function of support for animal experimentation. (Specifically, the question of whether people opposed to animal experimentation are less likely to oppose abortion.)

Or maybe I’m just missing it. (been a long day)

By: Shashi

Shashi — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 17:41:52 +0000

#8 Yes, that’s usually the case with most people. We only tend to know and associate with people who think/act like us and then we continue to think that our bubble is representative of some wider community.

By: Andrew Selvarasa

Andrew Selvarasa — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 17:16:55 +0000

Wow, I’m surprised. I’m a vegan animal rights activist, and I’m also pro-life. Most of the vegans I know are like myself. Interesting.

By: Shashi

Shashi — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 16:38:29 +0000

Very interesting. Not any significant differences between any group except male & female. Any guesses or attempts to explain this? Differences in level of empathy? Testosterone?

By: Mercy Vetsel

Mercy Vetsel — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 16:08:13 +0000

This is very interesting and it’s good to see people doing their own analyses of GSS data. With such a great dataset freely available to everyone on the web it’s funny how often people accept easily disproved statements about the population.

Still, this doesn’t quite dispute the claims regarding “animal rights activists”. It’s possible that there is a substantial difference between actual activists and those who merely disagree with animal research.

-Mercy

By: Hedonic Treader

Hedonic Treader — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 14:41:55 +0000

I find the question utterly underdefined. How much pain, to how many animals, for what kind of information, on which health issues, affecting how many people?

By: Tom Bri

Tom Bri — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 14:38:25 +0000

Looking at all ‘agree’ the only strong differences seem to be male/female and Black/White. Interesting that political beliefs don’t predict much of anything here. Even religious beliefs don’t predict much, with only a small uptick for non-believers. Shows how little intuition can be trusted. Thanks Razib.

By: AG

AG — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 13:32:07 +0000

So when come to interest of non-human species, political or religious difference does not matter much.

By: DK

DK — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 07:21:18 +0000

how animal rights activist don’t oppose abortion, and how hypocritical that is

I see nothing hypocritical about it. Abortion activists (that’s the proper term actually – even if they hate it) don’t consider human embryos sentient and they usually insist that early embryos don’t feel pain any more than ants or something like that. At the same time, animal rights activists consider some animals nearly as sentient as humans.

The veracity of their beliefs can very well be questioned but that does not make them hypocrites.

By: Matunos

Matunos — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 04:34:40 +0000

Even if unborn human fetuses and fully formed non-human animals were morally equivalent, it wouldn’t be a case of hypocrisy.

By: ohwilleke

ohwilleke — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 03:00:47 +0000

In other words, animal rights and abortion rights are orthogonal components of the social issue ideology map. I wonder how accurately you could predict outcomes on other issues as a linear combination of these two components.