IN SCIENCE WE DISTRUST: Since the 1970s those who consider themselves conservative in outlook have less and less trust in science and scientists.
Image: Flickr/Gage Skidmore
Conservatives' trust of science has gradually decreased over the past 40 years, beginning perhaps when empirical research was increasingly used to justify government regulations, according to a new academic analysis.
The study, appearing this week in the April edition of the journal American Sociological Review, identifies a 25 percent drop among conservatives who express trust in the scientific community since 1974. That decline is striking to researchers because conservatives were more trusting of science than other political groups when data were first collected nearly four decades ago.
Today, they are the most distrustful, while the attitudes of liberals and moderates have held steady. The conservatives' migration into negativity makes liberals the most trusting group now, by default.
"[T]his study shows that public trust in science has not declined since the 1970s except among conservatives and those who frequently attend church," the study concludes.
The research also challenges popular beliefs that increased academic achievement and educational outreach will persuade people to believe in the scientific underpinnings of issues like climate change and evolution. It doesn't work that way, says Gordon Gauchat, the author and a postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Conservatives tend to be about even with liberals in terms of attaining high school and undergraduate degrees, he said. But the research suggests that well-educated conservatives are more skeptical of science than their less-educated counterparts.
"That was the biggest surprise finding," Gauchat said in an interview. "Highly educated conservatives are more fluent in what the [conservative] ideology means and its relationships with institutions. So they understand where the conflicts lie, what the value system is. In other words, they're more ideological."
'Regulatory science' cools support
The research also casts doubt on a social science hypothesis that predicts a wide-ranging decline in public trust in science across all social groups. The idea that there would be a backlash against a rising "technocratic authority" that uses science is challenged by the exclusive scope of conservative distrust, the paper says.
Instead, Gauchat settles on a third concept proposed among social scientists -- the "politicization thesis," which predicts that conservatives alone will feel alienated from science as it is increasingly used to justify regulatory regimes.
"Regulatory science directly connects to policy management and, therefore, has become entangled in policy debates that are unavoidably ideological," the paper says. "The shift toward regulatory science that began in the 1970s could account for conservatives' growing distrust in science, given this group's general opposition to government regulation."
In recent years, that disdain for regulations is perhaps illustrated nowhere as sharply as in the debate around climate change, Gauchat said. By coincidence, the paper is being published the same week that the Obama administration released its landmark rules regulating greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants.
The study also provides a warning about the potential impacts of losing conservative support for science.
"Transformations in the organization of science could change how the scientific community relates to large transnational corporations and private venture capital," the paper says. "These concerns are particularly relevant when we consider global climate change -- and growing public skepticism toward the problem."
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
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61 Comments
Add CommentWhen conservatives started eventually see a political bias in the messengers they lost trust in the message.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour headline is entirely misleading and disingenous.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe study was about trusting the "scientific community", yet your headline said "science". The two are not one in the same and you know it.
Many conservatives see the scientific community as corrupted by ideology and politics. They don't trust the *people* in the scientific community to deliver the facts unbiased anymore.
That implies their is some other source of scientific evidence, which is what exactly?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConservatives are happy to cherry pick scientific facts to support their principles, e.g. "creation science." They also assume that "everybody does it," either out of ignorance of the scientific method, or just to ease their conscience.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn reality, good researchers follow the facts where they lead, regardless of personal opinions. Conservatives seem to hate that.
I wonder if we would see the opposite if science tended to support deregulation or some other conservative principle. Would liberals be less trusting of science?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's obvious that many liberals disregard science just as much as conservatives--especially in regard to drug use, alternative medicines, etc. But liberals don't tend to distrust science the way conservatives do. They might just ignore it.
The contrast is interesting. Conservatives tend to be extremely skeptical of any new idea--especially when those ideas conflict with their already-established ones. Liberals, on the other hand, tend to react to new ideas with far too little skepticism with the result being that many liberals believe a lot of garbage.
I'm assuming the study was only done with regards to people in the United States. (I'm sure it would be far too complicated to involve multiple nations in a single study.) Still, I would be interested in seeing how people in other countries view science. Do the same results hold up? (By testing in countries with totally different politics--maybe a socialist state like Cuba, where conservatives tend to hold left-wing positions and progressives tend to hold right-wing ones (comparatively)--we could see if it's due to specific political ideologies or if it's due to something else, like the nature of conservatism in general.)
It's no surprise the unintelligent, uneducated, anti-science educated, superstitious portion of republican base is anti-science since science has disproved all actual evidence of religious beliefs. But it's also no surprise that the intelligent, well educated portion of republican base PRETENDS to be religious (for base votes), & PRETENDS to distrust science, since science exposes truths, falsehoods, lies that hurt their agenda. That's why it's so easy to to predict in advance which science they'll condemn or support & how they'll vote.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe will all fall as are the gorilla- "Hey- my family needs to eat and bush meat is good."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTry to get a conservative to agree with a liberal that a rose is a rose. Conservatives think that liberals are stupid and liberals think conservatives are stupid. I think conservatives are stupid when it comes to anything scientific or the environment or humanity. I am a liberal, so I am not going to tell you what I think is stupid about the liberals.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm a liberal-leaning atheist who has worked in science for almost 35 years and even I have lost faith in some of the scientific community (as opposed to 'science').
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScientific American itself is often 'uncientific'... agenda driven and not questioning some of the hyperbolae it laps up and prints.
There are whacos on both side of the ideological lines. Bible thumping zealots on the right denying evolution... to politically correct zombies on the left adopting the latest questionable scientific data 'to prove' some evil or another.
I count myself as a Conservative and I earned a PhD in Finance.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI question the validity of "global warming" because the "evidence" is provided by so many "experts" whose education lies outside pertinent fields.
For example, there was an article that related that something over 1,600 scientists in England believe that global warming is caused by man. I seriously doubt that there are 1,600 scientists in England who are qualified to judge the issue.
My PhD is in Finance, but I would never claim any expertise outside a limited subset of Finance, much less [say] marketing or management.
How many people are truly qualified to address the issue? Probably, a few hundred, at most.
I can sympathize with those feeling "...alienated from science as it is increasingly used to justify regulatory regimes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScientific conclusions in the hands of politicians & law-makers can be dangerous and expensive.
My sympathy runs dry however, when it comes to born-again fundies losing "faith" (I assume the pun was intended)in science when it clashes with their 6,000 year old Earth & creationist ideas.
As to the study being US-based; of all the western countries only the US has this dichotomy, seeing science vs religion as implacable enemies.
The rest of us were not colonized by puritans.
Actually about 98% of climatologists accept the data on human caused climate change.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat would be the scientific group most qualified to render an opinion.
I used to really enjoy Scientific American. I remember reading it in the school library as a kid, really being fascinated.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut between Global Warming Religon cheerleading and now, a dopey article like this...
Whats next? A study on phrenology proving conservatives brains are smaller?
If I want to read Media Matters I'll go to the Media Matters website.
Can we just have Science, please?
98%?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo what?
A number skewed by the fact that any scientist who disagrees with the dogma is not funded, not published or has his career demolished by public castigation.
Is this true of every other generally accepted scientific fact as well? Is the earth round, for example?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI could accept evidence from climatologists.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen, I want to know whether humans are responsible for 1% or 99% of the change.
Let's be very clear. Today's "conservatives" oppose almost any health, safety, pollution or other regulation for the common good. Therefor any sound scientific evidence which determines the damage being remedied or prevented by such regulation must also be opposed. End of story & there's no "they all do it" way to provide some mythical balance
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEarly in my career I worked on health & safety issues under research grants from a U.S. gov't agency. THe grantees were very clear that any regulatory action through congress would require sound scientific support to be successful. That was 35 years ago.
OF course that work ended with the advent of the Reagan administration, which closed entire projects to end such support for rational government decision making.
Today, the opposition to any regulation is so intense that we have the deepening of this - regulation must be prevented by de-funding and making impossible the scientific research which would supply an objective measure of potential risks.
It is not a measure of trust or distrust - but who has the power to gather or suppress the evidence, who maintains the benefits vs. who sustains the risks.
Outsidethebox: You crystallized my thoughts exactly. Even liberals must see that science has been wielded as a political weapon by the left over the last 30-40 years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm as strong a supporter of science as they get, but the statement, "disproved all actual evidence of religious beliefs" is just the kind of nonsense that causes the problems. Religious beliefs are just that: beliefs. You cannot 'disprove' them. They are _personal_ spiritual beliefs. They cannot be right or wrong, or true of false for anyone but oneself. No one's personal spiritual beliefs can be made any more true or false for the next person by one's strength or weakness of those beliefs. How is this not perfectly obvious?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat's a more difficult question. One that I would say is not possible to quantify to an exact percentage.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrom what I have read, I would say that the consensus is, human behavior has contributed to climate change more than any other single factor.
"Today's "conservatives" oppose almost any health, safety, pollution or other regulation for the common good."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat's crap [not scientific jargon, but....].
I am not my brother's keeper.
And, I suspect that most of those who claim to support the "common good" are among the 50% who pay no income tax!
Most conservatives are conservatives for one (or all) of three reasons: they are fanatically religious; they are fanatically greedy; they are stupid.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen you combine folks with those attributes with the emergence of 24/7 right-wing propaganda media, you end up with "intelligent" or "college educated" conservatives who believe what Beck, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, or Hannity say, yet distrust scientists because of their "political bias."
Articles like this one don't help, since the writer, or shall we say, the person who wrote it, comes up with phrases like "regulatory science." There is no such thing. There is such a thing as scientific evidence which is then acted upon by government regulators, for example, lead in paint will harm/kill people, therefore, says the government, we will ban lead in paint, gasoline and coffee cups.
Religious fanatics, who believe that god would not have created lead if it would destroy the human nervous system, the stupid, who think the government is steal their thoughts and their children, and the fanatically greedy, who realize their stocks will decline and their bonuses shrink if the government forces changes in the industry that pays them (i shouldn't forget local pols, who don't want the fed interfering with their ability to get bribes from industry)have come to "distrust" science because they know in their heart of hearts that the conclusions are for the most part pretty accurate. But that is nowhere near as important as their their superstitions, their prejudices or their bank accounts.
And there you have it.
shorewood,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou have supported and reinforced the argument that you are trying to argue against.
"Conservatives Lose Faith in Science over Last 40 Years"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBecause facts did not align with their belief sets.
I'm not conservative and not religious, but I don't think conservatives have lost "faith" in science per se. I think they've become skeptical that science is often misused to promote political agendas ( have many liberals).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAfter all conservatives will often cite "scientific studies" to bolster their own agendas. I think that conservatives feel that the academic and scientific communities and their funding organizations lean more toward "liberalism" so that when science gets agendized it is often in ways that hurt their causes.
Of course they also tend to see any science that doesn't give an answer they like as being agendized, even when the studies are obviously accurate.
Science and "the scientific community" are not the same thing. Similarly, Faith and the religious community are not the same thing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou can lose faith in the people who pretend to uphold some values, without you losing faith in the underlying values.
I lost faith in the scientific establishment, and I also lost faith in the Catholic Church.
I never lost faith Science, and I never lost faith in God. The two are connected. When you practice Science, you are reading the mind of God.
lampora,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm just guessing, but I think with "religious beliefs" he intended the common meaning: a set of principles and rules organized into dogma and promulgated by some organization or other --- which then asks for money.
It didn't seem like he meant "personal spiritual beliefs."
I think the Pope might disagree with you on that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisShoreewood: "For example, there was an article that related that something over 1,600 scientists in England believe that global warming is caused by man. I seriously doubt that there are 1,600 scientists in England who are qualified to judge the issue."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBingo!
I'm a geologist and have had these surveys come around. My answer is how F... do I know? A colleague was joking that his knowledge of climatology is sticking head out the window to see if it is raining.
I can draw a carbon molecule and that's it. I have no idea of the thousand variables at play interacting on that molecule to raise global temperatures 'x' amount or not. My name on any consensus or not means 'zip'....as does 'the consensus' of 99% of any of these 'scientists'.
And yes-----these conservatives---many of them---have been educated at Christian colleges and these colleges have, as their fundamental underpinnings, a repudiation of anything that contradicts the antiquated Christian explanation of the Universe.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScience is the advanced and up to date explanation of the universe and it just so happens that it blows away the Christian explanation and leaves it in the dust of antiquity.
So of course they are opposed to Science, but this does not change the fact that Science is the new reality and a much more advanced human understanding of everything that is---was---or will be.
Antiquated belief systems need to step aside and go occupy their rightful place---the dustbin of tired and no longer useful human perspectives.
Really, frankblank, you have stated the exact problems very clearly so that everyone SHOULD be able to understand. I am curious as to whether anyone will bother refuting the points you made since they accurately define the categories virtually every conservative falls into.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's just sad that some of them are willing to lie to the public or "play stupid" in order to fulfill their own agenda. It's absolutely shameful.
An aside to BUDDY199, who wrote "...any scientist who disagrees with the dogma is not funded, not published or has his career demolished by public castigation." A very large part of my very successful career in science has been based on disagreeing with "the dogma" by furnishing evidence that it needed to be changed, or at least modified. I have been well funded, my work has been published in prominent journals (and even occasionally in the news), and there has been no evidence of public castigation. And my own experience is unexceptional among scientists. Your statement is quite simply wrong!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAn aside to MARCHER, who wrote "I think the Pope might disagree with you on that" to GG. So what? The Pope has his own beliefs and GG has his own, so which one is "right"? The Pope's beliefs are based on the Pope's experience (i.e., lifelong immersion in Catholic affairs, Catholic doctrine & Catholic tradition) and on his personal interpretation of what is written in the bible. GG's are based on GG's own life experience and - presumably - on his personal interpretation of what is written in the bible. So why is the Pope's agreement necessary, or even relevant? It's not.
I was being sarcastic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry if it was taken seriously, that was not my intention.
Dancer tiffy: "And yes-----these conservatives---many of them---have been educated at Christian colleges and these colleges have, as their fundamental underpinnings, a repudiation of anything that contradicts the antiquated Christian explanation of the Universe."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot really. Let me preface by stating I'm an atheist and have never worshipped a dead-guy-on-a-stick. A fraction of a fraction of most science has anything to do with religious beliefs. Physics and chemistry are the same in any college. Doctors do heart surgery the same. Engineers build bridges the same. We geologists evaluate ore deposits the same. etc.
Special relativity applies whether you are studying physics at Oxford, in Saudi Arabia or at BYU. One can be a Hindu and believe in reincarnation,a Fundy and believe Adam and Eve, etc. and it has almost zero impact on science.
And that exactly is what makes you a conservative, you are unable to do anything apart from one tiny task.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe in the teachings of Richard Feynman, when he taught physics you also got a dose of chemistry, zoology and botany not to mention maths which is ubiquitous to everything. Science is science, you need to read about the greatest scientists and you will find they had multiple skills. In fact science induces skills across the scientific spectrum since everything is inter related. Said Carnot was an engineer, James Joule a brewer, Helmholtz a doctor.
Of course when I think finance I only see a skill-set related to fraud. My poor retirement savings!
Try looking up Christian universities in the US. I don't know about Canada, but here we have Universities that literally refuse to teach evolution, while offering classes on creationism in the science department.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe you said you were a geologist, how many colleagues have you had that believe the earth was made less than 6,000 years ago?
It would be difficult to find a better example of why college-educated conservatives are "losing faith in science (sic)" than this article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo begin with, the study doesn't measure attitudes toward science, it measures attitudes toward the scientific community. Then, in an act of spontaneous confusion, the study's author assumes the two are thoroughly correlated.
If this is the kind of nonsense the scientific community puts up with -- including publishing it in one of the community's most prestigious forums -- then clearly the scientific community deserves little faith.
This whole piece simply promotes one man's thinly-disguised mindless attack on conservatives and people of faith.
On this one Scientific American, to its great shame, got took like a 14 year old visiting the big city for the very first time.
Shame on you.
Why, science, of course. It can be done by anyone, even those not beholden to grant-givers. All it really takes is integrity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnfortunately, that's exactly what the "scientific community" continues to display less and less of.
The misleading title of this article provides as good an example of that as I've seen in recent months. (As previously noted, the study says NOTHING about conservatives losing faith in science.)
The lock-step, highly constricted intellectual sphere in which the humanities profs work seems to be worming its way into the science building.
Bravo. Until we start calling out our own, instead of just lapping it up, we're not going to get anywhere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think the Pope would agree with everything GG said.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat science specifically?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow exactly would I, an accountant for example, go about determining the validity of string theory, determining the statistical accuracy of the latest papers on the effects of asbestos on humans or determining the safety of Google's self-driving car?
You can have all the integrity in the world, but without the technical knowledge, it doesn't add up to much.
Marcher - "You can have all the integrity in the world, but without the technical knowledge, it doesn't add up to much."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd you are an...accountant? Going on about science and scientists? LOL!
What exactly is your criticism?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat I accept scientific consensus instead of assuming thousands of people are successfully perpetrating some elaborate conspiracy against me?
You are being far too kind. They are just STEWPID. One of them used an etch a sketch as a prop, not even an Ipad. Its just so sad how incredibly dense they are.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are being far too kind. They are just STEWPID. One of them used an etch a sketch as a prop, not even an Ipad. Its just so sad how incredibly dense they are.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMarcher: "Try looking up Christian universities in the US. I don't know about Canada, but here we have Universities that literally refuse to teach evolution, while offering classes on creationism in the science department."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrue and therefore what? There are hundreds of science courses at our local university and I don't know of any specifically on evolution...perhaps a couse in anthropology or whatever. Religious ignorance is a non-issue in 99.95 of science. Whaco fundies participate in most sciences and their ridiculous belief in creationism has zero impact. A Fundie aeronautics engineer doesn't study air flow any different from an atheist engineer.
I assume the conservatives are "self identified". I don't know what "loss of faith" means in the context of science, (they don't believe the "facts" or the data? as would be required to claim a 6000 year old "creation") or is it a loss of "faith" in the "neutrality" of the reporting and interpretation? (i.e. the scientific community, and its "agenda"?). Could it mean that these self identified conservatives can't use scientific facts and data to support their own agendas which was easier for them to do 40 years ago? (I'm thinking health issues such as smoking and alcoholism, "mental health" issues such as being gay, the "science" regarding "race"... the 1/16th negro=negro "race", Nazi Aryan supremacy, women being the weaker gender). The article notes that these conservatives are often also religious fundamentalists. Can I assume that would increase their frustration with science, scientists, and the scientific community in that they are fighting a losing battle when trying to invoke God's plan, Bible scripture, etc. to fight against science. It was easier then to use the Bible to argue against evolution and gender equality, and they continue even today. Global Climate Change must be extremely difficult for conservatives and religious fanatics as they cannot fall back upon the Bible NOR can they use their angry old (western) white men support team as climate change data is forthcoming from all parts of the world. When did the Christian Church(es) lose control and "regulation"? When Galileo was tried by the Roman Inquisition, found guilty of heresy, and put under house arrest for the rest of his life? or when the Church finally "apologized" more than 300 years later? Is this losing of "faith" in science an echo of the Scientific Revolution or a post Enlightenment struggle for that same control and regulation, i.e. power. Interesting that 400 years after the heliocentrism controversy, the trapping of the sun's energy from the increase in CO2 is the new controversy, though not within the scientific community, but from a certain type of political "conservative" and often a "religious fundamentalist". I've used lots of quote marks because I don't trust many conservatives and religious fundamentalists. I think they are hiding behind and using once respected labels for their own political and "religious" agendas.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBTW, if quality of science reporting in USA can be judged by Scientific American website, then not trusting "scientific reports" is good idea. Every lobby seems able to produce one-sided report ignoring he opposite evidence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBYW, science by definition is verifiable, not to be trusted or taken by faith. "Trust in science" is ,strictly speaking, an oxymoron.
People from both sides of the political spectrum distrust science when science tells them something they don't want to hear.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConservatives don't want to hear about global warming and evolution.
Liberals don't want to hear about innate differences in human nature (for example, intelligence or propensity to crime). I'm not saying the latter has been proven, but whenever there's even the slightest hint of evidence towards possible innate differences in human nature, the reaction of many liberals can only be described as a witch hunt, with accusations that the scientists involved are part of a vast right-wing racist conspiracy.
I also suspect that liberals are more likely to disbelieve evidence-based medicine and fall for alternative quackery and paranoid conspiracy theories about the medical-pharmaceutical complex.
njcjuhkuusb....I agree completely.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso re Scientific American...it is not 'science' but science reporting. I agree with those who make the distinction. I have faith in the credibility of fellow geologists when I read a a published work in a journal. In contrast, I have little faith that Scientific American has qualified journalists who actually 'question' the integrity of the material they are fed. What I tend to read is often 'cheerleading' for breathrough number 1000 in battery technology or evidence number 59 showing evidence of flowing water on Mars....otherwise, no hard questions asked.
The world can't march blind into the future as the hyper-capitalists claim. Policy and caution were always needed, but especially now that we have almost used up the world's cheap resources. Caution requires regulation, which came out of conservative as well as Judaeo-Christian concepts of careful stewardship. One of the derivative words of "conservative" is "conservation". The teabaggers are NOT genuine conservatives, but only kick around the word "conservative" and have just about kicked that old once-honorable word into the garbage can. While many traditional conservatives are foolish enough to support the wild men, few go to their meetings. The smart ones stay behind the scenes as funders and puppeteers, watching those in Congress stagger around sky-high on tea, having a drunken orgy wrecking the world with a thousand cuts. The teabaggers in Congress are RADICALS in a sinister tradition: weak, unable to sustain a life style they associate with "winners", always afraid, unable to distinguish allies from enemies and choosing whoever promises them power to take revenge. They are true believers in anythingthat supports rigid top-down control over their enemies, and wrongly think they are exempt from control. Whatever their inborn ability, many are unable to create a rational thought that deviates from their beliefs. They'll sell their souls for a mess of security pottage. To distinguish them from the real conservatives of my younger years, many of whom I could respect, let's call the teabaggers "NeoCons" since the origin of their beliefs is NeoCONfederate. I grew up in the South, observed my own white people caught in a hallucinatory world of apocalyptic, dualistic, Manichaean religion (a heresy of Zoroastrianism) that pretends to be Christian. Have you noted that the people attending tea party events act just as brain-dead drugged out as any crackheads? Would you elect known crackheads to Congress? It's not surprising that the tea partiers make so many idiotic laws, including HYPER-REGULATION. Their regulations demand intrusive control over our private lives but never of the toxics that threaten the survival of their own grandchildren. The long range plan is to bring this whole country, in fact, the entire world (our skin color doesn't matter) down to the level of slaves on a plantation devoid of jobs, food and scenery other than rocks and sand, with the teabaggers wielding overseer whips while massa relaxes and guzzles bourbon & branch water up in his gated mansion shaded by trees.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is in reply to "Shorewood", who thinks that only the specialists in a science should make policy comments on it. But that's backward! Policy should be made by generalists who have the big picture. Specialists too often concentrate on their own (money-making?) tree, unable to see the blight and withering of the forest. Many of them got their PhDs 30 or 40 years ago and have been too busy to see beyond obsolete assumptions of cost and benefit that many non-specialists can quickly spot. I quite agree that generalists who lack basic knowledge of the sciences can run their holistic approach over the cliff and fall into a New Age swamp. They need to go back to school. But so do specialists. If you're properly educated in one science, if you know how to use the scientific method, math, reason and logic, you can study and learn many other sciences, enrich your life and your cocktail party conversation, and--who knows?--you could make policy demands that save the world. If you can't afford the staggering costs of academia and student loans nowadays, I suggest reading SCIENTIC AMERICAN from cover to cover and looking into the additional reading listed at the end of the articles.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow do we have one without the other?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPhD in Finance really doesn't know about science though does admit that. However, the 1600 scientists mentioned is on the small side of those qualified.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll science, technology, engineering and mathematics is interdisciplinary, and must be. No one silo of knowledge and expertise, and certainly no one person is capable personally knowing enough to come to these conclusions. It's a team effort of tens of thousands of scientists across many continents that publish and communicate tens of thousands of studies, cite tens of thousands of past studies published before anti-science politicos decided they didn't like to hear inconvenient truths, using and confirming the discovered laws of nature.
No, the conclusion that global warming is primarily caused by man is not the conclusion of over 1600 scientists in England, but the whole body, as one organism, of tens of thousands of scientists over generations and confirmed by the accuracy in understanding of natural systems, unbiased by current political forces, that have conclusively inferred this result.
These conclusions are far more than the opinions of the individual scientists speaking today. It is the emergent result of the collective laws of nature as discovered and confirmed over hundreds of years.
It was about 40 years ago that the Republican Party began actively courting the evangelicals by demonizing Roe vs Wade and in many cases supporting efforts at the state and local levels to get Creationism aka 'Intelligent Design' taught as part of science classes. By adopting the aims of the evangelicals, the political right has become evermore anti-science. It is but a short hop from denying evolution to denying global warming. It has resulted in denying of government funding to any scientific endeavor that runs counter to religious dogma and threatens a woman's right to choose. The concept of life at conception is a religious one and not supported by science, yet it is used to argue for what would amount to a government mandate that every woman carry a fetus to full term. How consistent is that with conservative ideals?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut often "good researchers" do not ask questions which violate liberal views. Questions like: Are males better at math or chess than females? Are Asians and whites more intelligent than Afro-Americans? Can African-Americans run faster or dance better than whites? Would society be better off if child molestered were executed? Scientists it seems may have a liberal bias.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting, so you don't trust the science of climate change because the evidence doesn't come from experts in the field. I thought climatologist were the experts in the field and they are pretty much the providers of the evidence you distrust. Something's wrong here. The usual argument is that they get funding for their research so to get more, they lie to us.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe disconnect between the headline and the content says it all. We all use the scientific method to live our lives. It is not that I distrust science or the method, but when a researcher, who is a member of the scientific community, uses his research to make a political point, then he is no longer operating as a member of the scientific community and has become a politician.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScientists are not careful enough when making links between 2 apparently disconnected phenomena. Science is also about developing links between theory and data. If there is even one anomaly, then it must either be explained or the theory must be treated with skepticism. The modern scientists is all too often trying to fit data to a theory, rather than letting the data speak for itself.
The article mentions "regulatory science". The concept is ridiculous. There is only science and specialists within the overall field. There is no such thing as "regulatory science" or "climate science". It may be useful to categorize disciplines, so that we can better understand the phenomena, which cannot be described by either discipline, such as physics, chemistry and biology. In each case, there phenomena, which are poorly understood by each discipline, but as our understanding improves, this misunderstanding is being eliminated. What remains is only science.
All too often, scientists discard their field of study when discussing the consequences of their conclusions. Regulatory science is almost by definition biased to determine what regulations should be adopted, but it pre-agrees the effectiveness and validity of regulation without question. Freedom is discarded in favour of totalitarianism.
In relation to Climate Change, Hardin's groundbreaking essay "The Tragedy of the Commons" is entirely disregarded by scientists. They seem to believe that, even though mutually agreed coercion on a global scale is impossible, that we should continue to try to achieve an unattainable goal. They then advocate totalitarian policies to advance their own solution, and there is no research on the validity of this solution.
The modern scientist often ignores critiques of modern analysis, because the questions raised by these critiques is often inconvenient.
Finally I am an atheist and my spiritual beliefs or lack thereof has nothing to do with science or the method.
Shorewood: When did God, or Wotan, or Sir Rupert Murdoch tell you that We AREN'T our brothers' and sisters' "keepers" -- or, in modern English, "concerned helpers"? Competition is one of the less practical aspects of evolution. If competition had outweighed cooperation and compassion, we'd all still be single celled critters and this conversation wouldn't be taking place--not on planet Earth. But cooperation and symbiosis created multicellular life, then atmospheric oxygen, then taxonomic proliferation and highly specialized organs, and here we are.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs for those who support the common good, we don't just
"claim" to. We, the poor and middle class, actually do, and we have paid the lion's share of taxes since Ronald Reagan. The rich, most of whom no longer have the slightest sense of noblesse oblige, keep their loot and lock it up.
Those who support the common good include just about everyone I know, since in my apartment building for elders and Unitarian Universalist church I hang out with poor retired people like myself, of all races and backgrounds, who are grateful to receive the Social Security we paid for during the years we worked, and which is now giving us a whole lot better return than we'd have if our money had "trickled down" through the greedy hands of privateers into periodic crashes and depressions. I'm a military veteran (12 years a Naval officer) and all of my veteran friends are extremely suspicious of people who would actually say or write, "I am not my brother's keeper." Fortunately, a growing majority of young people are equally disgusted with the dysfunction of our social contract -- and they are the future. They'd better win. I'm also a grandma.
They must provide a hopeful future because the cruel "me first" solipsist mentality, plus hysterical and exaggerated fear of anything "other" has shredded and almost destroyed the social contract. I'm a Medievalist by education, and am painfully aware that the social contract, the Western world's greatest invention, was steadily refined from the Ninth Century mini-Renaissance until 2001, although slowly and with setbacks like Torquemada, Hitler and Stalin. Even in the hysterical aftermath of 2001 it was still imperfect, but a far more certain (and conservative) path to the future than the rapaciousness of "me first" and the cult of fear and violence. I really have no desire to go back to the Dark Ages of privatization and privateering robber barons. Most people would rather not. Why do you want to?
"Conservative" is somehow in itself an insulting term, as the image linked to the word is one of rigidity, coldness, and selfishness, and it's true that the persons that are commonly called conservatives tend to be more formal than casual, but as everybody is in favor of progress, the right words for the different attitutes towards politics and other social issues would be "moderate", against "radical", or something like. The use of names that do automatically disqualify those who receive it, is a very bad form of prejudice, and can be a root approach to socializing with those who are dissidents in respect of the other's positionings. Salut +
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd in today's news...
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former researcher at Amgen Inc has found that many basic studies on cancer -- a high proportion of them from university labs -- are unreliable, with grim consequences for producing new medicines in the future.