Thanks to the President’s appearance on Mythbuster’s, Slate’s Daniel Sarewitz looked into a year and a half old survey from the Pew Research Center on the public’s perceptions of science and scientists and social perceptions of the science community. The survey spends a few pages dissecting the general politics of scientists and finds (SHOCKING… wait for it) that a meager 6% of those surveyed identify as republicans. The majority identify as democrats (55%) and the rest independents (32%). For Sarewitz, this is a problem. I would also postulate that if this story gains more traction, some conservative commentators will have more fuel for conspiracy theories that science is biased against “main street America.”
Plenty of commenters and others have pointed out the obvious – it’s pretty difficult to reconcile conservative ideologies, which have been openly hostile to science for more than a decade – with science. For example:
- The right wing’s penchant for picking fights over whether or not evolution exists. According to the Pew survey, 97% of scientists believe humans evolved over time, whereas 39% of the public surveyed who identified as republicans believe life always existed in its present form.
- Republicans have spent years attempting to discredit global warming. 94% of scientists believe the Earth is warming and 70% believe that’s a serious problem.
- While some notable republicans have been in favor of stem cell research, 93% of scientists are in favor of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.
- Finally, as Kevin Drum from Mother Jones points out – republicans generally gravitate towards the business world. It’s not often we see a room of scientists sucking down cocktails at an expensive lunch or regularly crashing in 5 star hotels to sleep off a hectic business dinner. In fact, just 4% of scientists in the survey said that a “financially rewarding career” was very important in their choice to pursue a scientific field.
Sarewitz calls on leaders of the scientific community to look into the overall red/blue disparity because it’s just not fair to have a field filled with people who don’t give enough weight to ideologies that disagree with scientific fact. He cites the climate change debate as one example and believes that finding more republican scientists would foster “more informed, creative, and challenging debates about the policy implications of scientific knowledge.”
Sarewitz misses a few variables in his argument and though I’m no scientist, I suspect they may be important. He barely notes the 32% surveyed who identify as independent. Such a high number of independents in both categories (34% of the public surveyed identified as independent) suggests that highly partisan politics, which often become very emotional and hyperbolic, might not be welcomed with open arms in the realm of science. While informed and challenging debates should certainly have components that contain emotion and consider morality and ethics, should rigid dogmatism have a place? It’s no secret that politians, especially those with close ties to industry and business, have often attempted to use, influence or skew scientific results and studies for financial and political profit. Somehow finding a way to entice scientists to stress a party affiliation would invite more of that behavior. Finally, how many of those surveyed prescribed one ideology but later switched affiliations later in their careers?
Adhering to a rigid partisan political ideology when actively researching, experimenting or otherwise conducing the business of science should be viewed with skepticism. Card checking party affiliation could damage a field that should be, at its core, an objective measure of facts.
TIP:
Enter the amount, and click "Tip" to submit!
Karen Looney
Natalie W
cartouche
Rebecca Sarwate
Ann24
Kevin Gosztola
Salon.com
Comments
Seems a snarky thing to say but what I mean by that is we teach HS kids the Myths of America and not the truths. We teach Manifest Destiny and ignore the Sandcreek Massacre. We do not trust our kids with truth.
Conservatives have been able to devalue education and extol busness acumen without ethics.
I was told once in a seminar by a very well-regarded sociologist that "All good social scientists are moderate Democrats."
That doesn't help people who don't swallow that, and who think good social scientists are moderate Republicans, because of the nature of economic reality, and especially because of the always potentially violent character of international relations.
When I read about the Republican led fight against global warming and Sarewitz calling for better debate then I know he is not serious.
Why should political inclination be a litmus test?
Political parties are happy with science when the results match their agenda.
A secondary issue is that scientists are trained to look for rational causes that can be tied to observed effects. Believers develop philosophies irrespective of the cause and effects and real observations.
This problem is not confined to conservatives, although religious belief is more associated with conservatives.
For example: Republicans can't/won't belief in Global Climate Change or Evolution.
Liberals can't/won't believe that ethnic groups vary in their physical abilities. although this has been demonstrated and analyzed time and time again, it is virtually anathema to speak or say this shibboleth.
Science comes up with results, groups can accept or reject those results for their own reasons. Science goes on.
The Left after all invented communism, which was supposedly "scientific socialism" and spent a lot of time and effort murdering and indoctrinating people, in the millions, in the name of Marxist beliefs that amounted to a religion, with Stalin and Mao as the high priests.
Furthermore, if you had conservative beliefs, and saw them attacked systematically in college, you wouldn't see being an academic social scientist as a good career move, and for good reason, namely that you wouldn't get a hearing saying things like,"It seems like communists historically have killed their opponents, and when you read Marx, it isn't a surprise, because if you think 'class interest' explains everything, including opinion, and although there are ambiguities, that is the drift of Marxism, then you would see any disagreement as not sincere but as part of the class war, and in war, you kill you enemies."
As far as conservative beliefs being "systematically attacked" throughout college, where do you draw the line between "facts" and "attacks?" Would we call disproving that the Earth is only 6000 years old an "attack?" Are the studies that show that unemployment benefits actually spur economic growth mere "attacks" and part of some sort of liberal conspiracy? Are the vast inequalities in regards to income and wealth that exist in America merely imaginary?
As far as my own personal beliefs are concerned, I see some of them attacked systematically every day by a right wing corporate controlled media, a government that concerns itself more with the interests of business and wall street than its citizens, by neo conservatives who state they want to end "big government" but don't mind a surveillance state, by people who want to rewrite history books to make sure they have a conservative spin...the list goes on.
As for "political correctness," most of the time someone cries those words it's usually a guise to be given license to say or do things that society has recently come to realize are unacceptable.
could it be that disagreements over climate change are essentially political—and that science is just carried along for the ride? For 20 years, evidence about global warming has been directly and explicitly linked to a set of policy responses demanding international governance regimes, large-scale social engineering, and the redistribution of wealth. These are the sort of things that most Democrats welcome, and most Republicans hate. No wonder the Republicans are suspicious of the science.
Think about it: The results of climate science, delivered by scientists who are overwhelmingly Democratic, are used over a period of decades to advance a political agenda that happens to align precisely with the ideological preferences of Democrats. Coincidence—or causation? Now this would be a good case for Mythbusters.
Mr. Sarewitz obviously views climate change, and to some extent science itself, through an ideological lens, and as many people do, he ascribes his own motives to others, so it's no surprise he'd see a lack of Republican scientists as a problem. If things were somehow arranged so that conservatives were actively discouraged from pursuing careers as scientists, it would be a problem. That isn't the case, so what I see is yet another ideologue who's incapable of realizing that science, when functioning properly, is self-policing as regards personal views on politics, religion, etc. That isn't to say that bias doesn't sometimes enter into the process, just that when it does it is fairly easy to detect it.
As for "political correctness," most of the time someone cries those words it's usually a guise to be given license to say or do things that society has recently come to realize are unacceptable.
That is only partially true. Political correctness has its uses, but it can be and often is used as a means of quashing debate and of painting those one disagrees with as beyond the pale. Like many ideas which originated as a response to genuine problems and then became enshrined as inviolable orthodoxy, political correctness is sometimes carried to ridiculous extremes.
As to "political correctness" there is lots of that in academia; see Kuhn's Structure of Scientic Revolutions for the point that only certain modes of inquiry are dominant at particular points in time.
For example, in the social sciences, rational choice theories and an attempt to replicate methods used in physics as to statistical testing have been increasingly dominant in the social sciences, and yet the real estate bubble, and lots of other things for that matter, suggest that these modes of inquiry may not be sufficiently applicable to the study of human beings to crush out more qualitative approaches.
You are correct that the right has to answer for fascism, which is why a pure Realist-Realpolitik approach is ethically problematic, because that is exactly where it goes, to fascism.
All that shows however is that human action is not the same as physical action, which undermines all materialist approaches, because human beings are ethical creatures, with ethical-moral duties.
My only point is that if there is an Orthodoxy of the Right, so to is their an Orthodoxy of the Left, and that Orthodoxy of the Left does not get challenged very much lately, except in economics departments, whose materialist approaches fail to capture all human motivation too, because in the end, neoclassical economics at a very deep level is not so different from Marxism, just with different utility and production functions that generate different results and predictions, both of which are looking increasingly at variance with reality.
Instead of latching onto unprovable religious dogma.
rated.
Results for the scientist survey are based on 2,533 online interviews conducted from May 1 to June 14, 2009 with members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates International. A sample of 9,998 members was drawn from the AAAS membership list excluding those who were not based in the United States or whose membership type identified them as primary or secondary-level educators.
Who joins the AAAS? A little research shows this:
This is important, because the AAAS is (as its name suggests) a political advocacy group. And, according to its website, the top issues it advocates for are climate change legislation, increased funding for the National Science Foundation, stem cell research, and green energy initiatives. Obviously, these aren’t the types of efforts that Republicans tend to support. It’s not hard to see why GOPers wouldn’t want to shell out the $146 membership fee to join an organization whose main mission is to advocate for issues they personally oppose.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/alana-goodman/38391
Scientists operate by questioning theories and received knowledge. They search for new theories, new particles, new knowledge.
That makes them more aligned with progressives than conservatives.
Good, thoughtful post.
wgergrg
Science and religion are complimentary attributes of the search for truth. Science is the search for truth about natural reality. Religion is the search for truth about spiritual reality, which by definition is not measurable.
Science without religion is materialism. Religion without science is superstition. Either one without the other is a half truth. Secular humanism is the "wolf in sheep's clothing" that Jesus spoke of.
Everything is sacred. God does not need religion, people do. The only thing that is not sacred is this man made secularism, which is "other than religious."
Religion is an inherent attribute of human nature. Always has been, always will be. Our educational establishment trying to suppress this unquenchable human instinct, is causing a tremendous amount of trouble in our society.
It's this suppression of our inherent spirituality that is offensive to many people and is causing this tension between "left and right.' Religion is the source of science. Jesus Himself says, "Seek the truth and the truth will set you free."
Freedom is lawful, wild is lawless (Hegel). The rule of law, revealed by the Manifestation of God (Prophets), is the difference between wild animals and civilized human beings. Nations are a secondary manifestation of the rule of law. The 10 commandments and other spiritual principles are the primary rule of law. The foundation upon which human nature and civilization are based.
"He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'' "
So the Republican philosophy would appear to be anti-science?