Dunning–Kruger Effect

Refers to a 1999 study entitled “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.” The study seemed to prove that people with very little skill or knowledge in a particular field consistently over-estimated their skill or knowledge. Colloquially, this this the idea of bring “too dumb to know that you’re dumb,” or “I don’t even know enough to know what I don’t know.”

Links

• People with extreme anti-science views know the least, but think they know the most: study

  “Across four studies conducted in three countries — the U.S., France and Germany — the researchers found that extreme opponents of genetically modified foods ‘display a lack of insight into how much they know.' They know the least, but think they know the most.”