Instruct: Identify the main and secondary category of Arxiv papers based on the titles and abstracts
Query: Are Opinions Based on Science: Modelling Social Response to Scientific
  Facts   As scientists we like to think that modern societies and their members base
their views, opinions and behaviour on scientific facts. This is not
necessarily the case, even though we are all (over-) exposed to information
flow through various channels of media, i.e. newspapers, television, radio,
internet, and web. It is thought that this is mainly due to the conflicting
information on the mass media and to the individual attitude (formed by
cultural, educational and environmental factors), that is, one external factor
and another personal factor. In this paper we will investigate the dynamical
development of opinion in a small population of agents by means of a
computational model of opinion formation in a co-evolving network of socially
linked agents. The personal and external factors are taken into account by
assigning an individual attitude parameter to each agent, and by subjecting all
to an external but homogeneous field to simulate the effect of the media. We
then adjust the field strength in the model by using actual data on scientific
perception surveys carried out in two different populations, which allow us to
compare two different societies. We interpret the model findings with the aid
of simple mean field calculations. Our results suggest that scientifically
sound concepts are more difficult to acquire than concepts not validated by
science, since opposing individuals organize themselves in close communities
that prevent opinion consensus.

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The categories of this paper are: nucl-ex
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The categories of this paper are: cmp-lg
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The categories of this paper are: cond-mat
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The categories of this paper are: hep-ph
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The categories of this paper are: math-ph
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The categories of this paper are: acc-phys
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The categories of this paper are: funct-an
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The categories of this paper are: solv-int
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The categories of this paper are: bayes-an
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The categories of this paper are: ao-sci
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The categories of this paper are: patt-sol
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The categories of this paper are: q-alg
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The categories of this paper are: comp-gas
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The categories of this paper are: nucl-th
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The categories of this paper are: dg-ga
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The categories of this paper are: eess