A little knowledge is a dangerous thing: excess confidence explains negative attitudes towards science

Scientific knowledge has been accepted as the main driver of development, allowing for longer, healthier, and more comfortable lives. Still, public support to scientific research is wavering, with large numbers of people being uninterested or even hostile towards science. This is having serious social consequences, from the anti-vaccination community to the recent "post-truth" movement. Such lack of trust and appreciation for science was first justified as lack of knowledge, leading to the "Deficit Model" \cite{Durant:1989, Bauer:2007}. As an increase in scientific information did not necessarily lead to a greater appreciation, this model was largely rejected, giving rise to "Public Engagement Models" \cite{Miller:2001}. These try to offer more nuanced, two-way, communication pipelines between experts and the general public, strongly respecting non-expert knowledge, possibly even leading to an undervaluing of science. Therefore, we still lack an encompassing theory that can explain public understanding of science, allowing for more targeted and informed approaches. Here, we use a large dataset from the Science and Technology Eurobarometer surveys, over 25 years in 34 countries \cite{Bauer:2012}, and find evidence that a combination of confidence and knowledge is a good predictor of attitudes towards science. This is contrary to current views, that place knowledge as secondary, and in line with findings in behavioral psychology, particularly the Dunning-Kruger effect, as negative attitudes peak at intermediate levels of knowledge, where confidence is largest. We propose a new model, based on the superposition of the Deficit and Dunning-Kruger models and discuss how this can inform science communication.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, 1 table; Appendix with 12 pages, 9 figures, 8 table

Popularity functions, partisan effects and support in Parliament

This paper analyzes the popularity of the main political entities in Portugal. After describing the recent evolution and structure of the Portuguese political system, we present estimations of popularity functions for the Assembly, Government, Prime Minister, and President using several estimation techniques to incorporate the timeseries and cross-equation aspects of the models. The results strongly favor the responsibility hypothesis, with unemployment, and to a lesser extent inflation, affecting popularity levels. There is also evidence that voters’ evaluations of incumbents’ economic performance depends on the ideology and support in Parliament of the latter. Finally, there is evidence of popularity erosion over consecutive terms and of honeymoon effects.

Political Business Cycles at the Municipal Level

This article tests for the existence of rational political business cycles models using a large and unexplored data set of Portuguese municipalities. The data set is well-suited for this purpose because it provides a high level of detail on expenditure items, because Portuguese municipalities are homogeneous with respect to policy instruments and institutions and follow an exogenously determined election schedule. Estimation results clearly reveal the existence of opportunistic behaviour by local governments. Expenditures increase in pre-election periods, especially on items that are highly visible to the electorate (e.g., highways and streets). This suggests an effort to signal competence and improve chances of re-election.Political business cycles, public finance, local governments.

Does Opportunism Pay Off?

This article tests the hypothesis that the opportunistic manipulation of financial accounts by mayors increases their chances of re-election. Working with a large and detailed dataset comprising all Portuguese mainland municipalities, which covers the municipal elections that took place from 1979 to 2001, we clearly show that increases in investment expenditures and changes in the composition of spending favouring highly visible items are associated with higher vote percentages for incumbent mayors seeking re-election. Our results also indicate that the political payoff to opportunistic spending increased after democracy became well-established in the country.Voting functions, opportunism, local governments, elections, Portugal.

The determinants of vote intentions in Portugal

This paper offers additional insights on the interactions between economics and politics in Portugal. We use an unexplored data set consisting of monthly polls on vote intentions for the main political parties in Portugal, since 1986. Results indicate that: (1) socialist governments had less electoral support than social democratic governments; (2) social democratic governments enjoyed a honeymoon period with the electorate while socialist governments did not; (3) vote intentions for incumbent parties tend to decrease with time in office; (4) voters hold incumbents responsible for the evolution of the economy; (5) the socialists are more penalized for rises in unemployment than are the social democrats.voting functions, responsibility hypothesis, Portugal, vote intentions.

Inequality, a scourge of the XXI century

Social and economic inequality is a plague of the XXI Century. It is continuously widening, as the wealth of a relatively small group increases and, therefore, the rest of the world shares a shrinking fraction of resources. This situation has been predicted and denounced by economists and econophysicists. The latter ones have widely used models of market dynamics which consider that wealth distribution is the result of wealth exchanges among economic agents. A simple analogy relates the wealth in a society with the kinetic energy of the molecules in a gas, and the trade between agents to the energy exchange between the molecules during collisions. However, while in physical systems, thanks to the equipartition of energy, the gas eventually arrives at an equilibrium state, in many exchange models the economic system never equilibrates. Instead, it moves toward a "condensed" state, where one or a few agents concentrate all the wealth of the society and the rest of agents shares zero or a very small fraction of the total wealth. Here we discuss two ways of avoiding the "condensed" state. On one hand, we consider a regulatory policy that favors the poorest agent in the exchanges, thus increasing the probability that the wealth goes from the richest to the poorest agent. On the other hand, we study a tax system and its effects on wealth distribution. We compare the redistribution processes and conclude that complete control of the inequalities can be attained with simple regulations or interventions

O combate à radicalização no extremismo islâmico : a contrarradicalização e a des-radicalização

Em termos académicos tem sido despendido bastante esforço para compreender o processo de radicalização islâmica, embora escasseiem os estudos sobre o processo de desradicalização, no qual um extremista renuncia à violência, deixa um grupo ou um movimento - ou rejeita uma visão radical do mundo. Importa assim perceber o combate à radicalização islâmica, comparando os programas implementados em países do Médio Oriente e Ásia com os da Europa, analisando as diferentes estratégias e alguns desafios para no final se extraírem algumas conclusões

A internet como meio de difusão do radicalismo islâmico

O presente trabalho investiga o papel desempe‑ nhado pela Internet como meio de difusão do ra‑ dicalismo islâmico, destacando o aparecimento de utilizadores (v.g. Younis Tsouli, Aabid Khan), que não se limitam a participar em fora radicais, mas que disseminam informação radical e incentivam a prática de actos terroristas jihadistas. Para além disso, analisa as vantagens que a Internet oferece ao radicalismo islâmico, quer em termos de segurança dos utilizadores (aprovei‑ tando o anonimato), quer como meio de trans‑ missão de informação e a sua relevância no processo de radicalização, com o objectivo de apontar algumas soluções para o combate deste fenómeno