I think this is largely because of the overwhelming number of fundamentalists in the Republican party. When there are polling figures like 46% of Republicans believe Obama is a Muslim and 67% believe he's a socialist, this picture starts to become clear. If you believe something so strongly that your opinion cannot be changed despite astronomical amounts of evidence to the contrary, then you will not many friends in science.
Most Scientists in the U.S. Are Democrats. That's a Problem
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Re: Most Scientists in the U.S. Are Democrats. That's a Problem
#32That is a problem. But it is not a problem for science, it is a problem for the republican party. For the last ten years they have been so aggressively pro stupidity that intelligent people are embarrassed to be affiliated with them, even if their general political beliefs are closer to the republican than to the democrat side.
Re: Most Scientists in the U.S. Are Democrats. That's a Problem
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
balony. Most scientists do work that's not at all related to what the public knows about and talk about their work in ways that no one else can understand. Your claim that scientists are being "chased" from the Republican party is ridiculous. Unless, of course, you have data that shows they are?
Here's a small sample size: http://www.conservapedia.com/Theory_of_relativity This guy free-associated the theory of relativity with "moral relativism" (ideological bingo word!) and apparently concluded that that means relativity is wrong. Article full of cites follows. If it's cited, must be true, right? He also liberally (heh!) re-uses the bogus arguments from below about how relativity research is funded by the go…
I'm a liberal, but even I can see that conservapedia represents the overall conservative/Republican base about as well as Mao represents all Chinese.
Re: Most Scientists in the U.S. Are Democrats. That's a Problem
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mostly true, but conservatives hardly have a monopoly on willful ignorance. Ask the stereotypical liberal what he thinks of nuclear power or GMO crops, and you're not likely to get a response based on sound science.
Not to mention anything related to economics, as I mentioned above. All that nonsense about "fair trade", the complaints about Chinese currency (see Chuck Schumer), and on and on, has absolutely no basis in the real science.
Isn't chinese currency idiocy bipartisan? I mean http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/07/republicans-... certainly suggests that powerful Republican leaders believe it wholeheartedly.
Re: Most Scientists in the U.S. Are Democrats. That's a Problem
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would claim that there are two factors that lead to the fact that most scientists are Democrats: the overall lean of universities, and the source of funding. And the overwhelming anti-science bias within large segments of the Republican base has nothing to do with it? Yeah, it has just got to be all of those liberal universities and scientists living off the government teat... You can delude yourself all you want,…
And the overwhelming anti-science bias within large segments of the Republican base has nothing to do with it? So how come people who oppose evolutionary/genetic theories on slightly different religious grounds haven't chased scientists away from the Dems? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers#Differences_be... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_D._Watson#Comments Both parties are quite strongly anti-science…
You have good points. On the other hand, there's a big gap between the folks who shout down Lawrence Summers (who, incidentally, remains a favoured Democratic insider) and the folks who actually deny evolution.
As one of these supposedly-mythical Republican scientists, I do find that the Bobby Jindals and Mike Huckabees of the party are a constant source of embarrassment.
Re: Most Scientists in the U.S. Are Democrats. That's a Problem
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
where science aligns with political belief What if it's more an issue of political belief aligning itself against science? We've all seen the numbers on which Americans believe the earth is 5,000 years old, right?
Well clearly that's problematic too.
I agree, and furthermore I'd say that if the one preceded the other (i.e. the Republican Party became anti-science first), it's sort of blaming the victim to say scientists should be more balanced. More balanced with what? We'll average 5k and 12 billion and posit that the universe is 6 billion + 2500 years old?
Re: Most Scientists in the U.S. Are Democrats. That's a Problem
#37This is a problem, and it really has nothing to do with specific policies or parties.
Any democracy will evolve into a multi-party system. In the U.S. we've basically went with two parties, and it looks like we are stuck with it.
So in a two party system, any group that completely affiliates with one party, either by membership or just tradition, both damages that party and the group itself.
What I love about politics is that it shows humans at their most irrational: from the Nobel Laureate to the rocket scientist, when you get them talking about politics it's the emotional brain first, the logical brain second. People are like this in all areas of reasoning, it's just politics is the easiest to observe. So, for instance, watching somebody bullshit themselves about politics is a pretty good quick and dirty indicator of how they're going to bullshit themselves about whether or not you need a new server rack.
I don't think every issue naturally has two sides to it, but because politics is emotion-based and not reason-based, I don't think it matters. There should be as many scientists roughly in each party. It's a very interesting observation that there are not. I believe journalism is similarly skewed. So when story X comes in over the transom from NGO group advocating some cause, the reporter picks up the phone and consults with several experts. If the odds hold, everybody in that little scenario is a member of the same party, with the same prejudices towards how the story should be told.
Not a good thing.
I imagine -- without looking at any other comments on this thread -- that there will be a lot of "but the scientists are actually scientifically choosing to be Dems, because it's not logical to do otherwise" or perhaps blaming the Rs for being so bad that no decent scientist would support them. This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about (and probably a good reason for the post to be considered of dubious merit for HN) It's a shame, because the larger issue causes all sorts of other problems.
Re: Most Scientists in the U.S. Are Democrats. That's a Problem
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's a small sample size: http://www.conservapedia.com/Theory_of_relativity This guy free-associated the theory of relativity with "moral relativism" (ideological bingo word!) and apparently concluded that that means relativity is wrong. Article full of cites follows. If it's cited, must be true, right? He also liberally (heh!) re-uses the bogus arguments from below about how relativity research is funded by the go…
I'm a liberal, but even I can see that conservapedia represents the overall conservative/Republican base about as well as Mao represents all Chinese.
Well, fine, that one was mostly for yucks.
But the pattern holds - check out the AEI on climate change, or the Texas Board of Education on evolution. These aren't fringe institutions.
Re: Most Scientists in the U.S. Are Democrats. That's a Problem
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think he was trying to point out that it's a credibility problem. For instance, where science aligns with political belief, it makes it harder for scientists to argue that they're impartial when they generally share the same political beliefs with eachother.
Science is based on facts, not in belief. Proving a scientific theory using a flawed logic to support a political belief would be fatal to the reputation of a scientific. Therefore, scientific credibility has nothing to do with political affiliation, religion beliefs (or lack thereof), colour of skin or any other personal treat. There were brilliant scientists amongst the nazis and amongst the soviet communists, so i…
"Science is based on facts" is a nonsensical statement. Science is a method by which one tries to establish facts. The problem is that it is a process run by humans which have biases.
Bias can influence many things in science, not least of which is hypothesis selection. Through no fault of their own, scientists who have beliefs may not come up with hypotheses that contradict them, and therefore fail to test them. They will select the better of the two hypotheses they have, but they may miss something. This is a flaw in the scientific process that goes way beyond bias, by the way. It's the part that not anyone can do: that requires creative thinking, and is limited by it.
To emulate Churchill, science is the worst way to discover truth, except for all those other ways that have been tried from time to time.
Re: Most Scientists in the U.S. Are Democrats. That's a Problem
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would claim that there are two factors that lead to the fact that most scientists are Democrats: the overall lean of universities, and the source of funding. And the overwhelming anti-science bias within large segments of the Republican base has nothing to do with it? Yeah, it has just got to be all of those liberal universities and scientists living off the government teat... You can delude yourself all you want,…
And the overwhelming anti-science bias within large segments of the Republican base has nothing to do with it? So how come people who oppose evolutionary/genetic theories on slightly different religious grounds haven't chased scientists away from the Dems? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers#Differences_be... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_D._Watson#Comments Both parties are quite strongly anti-science…
Angry anti-science leftists are indeed a problem, but you don't really see them outside the academic left. The academic left is to the far left of the far left; to put it bluntly, these are the people Noam Chomsky criticizes for being too leftist. Once you get out of academia and don't have to deal with these people anymore, they're a non-issue. Unfortunately, that's not the case for, e.g. creationists.