Most Scientists in the U.S. Are Democrats. That's a Problem

As a scientist, the damning of stem cell research.

But stupid or smart Keynesianism is not certainly "pro-stupidity" economics in the sense that's obvious aiming to be smart. It's endorsed by lots of apparently smart economists, it uses coherent mathematical models etc.

You might argue that the positions of Glen Beck or George Bush would be smarter to adopt than those of Lawrence Summers. Whatever. You could hardly argue that these folks took a "pro-science" approach in defending their positions.

On the other hand, despite having one of the most widely-read blogs in the world you'll almost never see him on TV. Both the right-wing and the left-wing sides of the media don't like to show conservatives unless they're angry and fire-breathing. And even the most intelligent of the fire-breathing conservatives (say, Krauthammer) always come off as non-thoughtful.

Please remove you head from the sand.

I'll put up Thomas Sowell, Charles Krauthammer, Jonah Goldberg, and George Will up against whoever you want from the Left any day.

Furthermore, I submit that I think the Left often makes the error of mistaking the Right's distaste for having the "intellectual elites" run their lives for a distaste in intelligence informing their lives.

Your claim that scientists are being "chased" from the Republican party is ridiculous.

Unless, of course, you have data that shows they are?

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 when it suits their purposes. Consider this program - any guesses as to the party affiliation of people who oppose this experiment? http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/nyregion/09placebo.html?re...

That's a very good question. If you don't mind, I'd like to tweak it a bit first. As a libertarian myself, and from my association with other libertarians, I believe that people of that political bent are also much more likely to pursue a rational truth. So I'd like to re-do the boolean algebra to refer to "non-right-leaning" rather than "left-leaning".

Anyway, the premise is partly flawed. I gave an example of economics, and other examples were cited such as opposition to GM crops, where those on the left are clearly in opposition to the best available scientific understanding.

But by my own observation, it does appear that as a generalization your premise holds strongly for the life sciences, and also holds for hard sciences like physics and chemistry. I think it would be interesting to pursue that.

HOWEVER, I think that while considering it, that we are careful to keep science and policy separated. Even if we are to grant that a certain point of science is correct, it does not necessarily lead to acceptance of a point of policy.

For example, it is well known that at the margin, minimum wage laws increase unemployment amongst the least skilled workers. But it doesn't automatically follow that such a policy should not be followed; perhaps with a proper safety net, those bottom-rung folks can be motivated into improving themselves. Likewise (and even more controversially), even if climate change is as serious as some claim, it does not necessarily follow that all efforts must be pursued: it may be that the cost of fixing it exceeds the cost of the expected damage.

It's just too easy to say "we have this problem, thus we must do something". The values that drive our actions are different from the science that allows us to understand the world.

My father taught free market economics at a small private college. His students would regularly comment to him that they'd never heard that stuff before, that they didn't even know there was a rationale behind free market economics.

If you're smart and left-wing you become a professor. If you're moderately smart and left-wing you become a university librarian. If you're dumb and left-wing you wind up working at the DMV.

Incidentally, while science professors can actually be a reasonably ideologically-diverse bunch, I doubt you'll ever find much diversity among university librarians.

True, but I don't know of any economist that disputes it. Yet when approached from a political angle, minimum wage is sold as an unalloyed good to help the most disadvantaged. The size of the effect might not be the biggest, but the degree to which it is contradicted in political discourse is extreme.

I have seen no evidence in the last decade that Democrats are particularly opposed to free trade deals per se

Well, Clinton was of course no worse than GWB, and possibly much better. But if you step outside the politicians themselves and look at the citizens, well, I hear a lot of chatter about ideas like "fair trade", which is simply stupid.

In the broader field, which classical Keynesianism was thoroughly discredited by the 70s, I have to admit that more recent refinements aren't so easily discarded (although I do disagree with them). Even so, the Democrats have been trying to pretend that these ideas are all there is, spouting multiplier values as if there's any evidence behind them, and not acknowledging any of the market-based arguments (viz Austrians and Chicagoans) that would explain both the crisis itself, as well as the failure of the government policies. Democrats are to the economic crisis as Republicans are to climate change.

It is pretty much accepted that minimum wage increases unemployment, although the effect may be small as pointed out elsewhere.

But you may also believe that we should offer a well-designed safety net to those who lose their jobs as a result, and that these people can thus improve their skills to benefit themselves in the longer term. Thus, it's perfectly possible to believe scientifically that the effect as bad, yet still support it as a political policy. (note that I do not support it, but I can understand how someone might)

It's been said elsewhere in this thread that even if Obamacare would work, the speaker feels that it's morally wrong to force other people to pay. So again, the scientific results don't necessarily determine the policy.

It's neither a mistake nor inaccurate. Once you've observed, measured, calculated and concluded, you can involve all form of non-empirical disciplines you want, after all we are morally and emotionally bound beings. One thing we can't do however is hide from the truth the data has spoken. Those are usually very profound paradigm shifts, a crossroad between being comfortable with what was revealed, or choosing to be more at peace with one's oblivion and folkloric truths.

"Some questions, e.g.: should we perform stem cell research on embryos, should we eradicate mosquitoes, should we try to affect human sexual patterns leading to AIDS, etc. are scientific [...] i.e. they cannot be approached by handling equations alone in an objective matter."

If the approach can't be objective then the question isn't scientific. Granted, those are science related questions and have a dose of moral and ethics involved, but that's not what science is about.

Science isn't there to answer what you should or shouldn't do. It's there to provide you with facts on what would happen if you do it. Change your question should we eradicate mosquitoes into what would happen if we eradicate mosquitoes and we can talk science. Lets take out the tools, dust off old books, go in the nature, observe, measure, extrapolate, calculate and conclude. Then based on those conclusions we'll look at each other and our moral fiber will tell us, nah we should probably let the little scoundrel be.

No, none of those "should we" questions are scientific. Those are policy questions. Policy is informed by science, but passes through a filter of cultural values as well.

I've said it several times here, but I'll do so again. Just because we can establish a theory as true does not necessarily lead to any particular policy.

Suppose that climate change is not happening, at least to the extent of the sky falling. That does not mean that we do not have an obligation to preserve our environment; that is still determined by our values.

Conversely, even if the climate is changing as significantly as some say, it doesn't necessarily mean that we must change our lifestyle to avoid it. Again, it's a question of values.

Science should not be seen to lead directly to policy.

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?

If both of them are fairly secure in their beliefs, within a very short amount of time you'll realize that they are very close on maybe 80-85% of all these issues, although they each adopt talking points from their chosen party to describe their differences!

This is a natural consequence of only having two parties to choose from. Extremely fascinating stuff.

I wonder how the parallels hold out in multi-party systems?

EDIT: Wanted to clarify that I agree with you that folks have a huge variety of opinions on all sorts of issues. I just wanted to point out that even then, they are much less attached to the issues themselves as they are to the talking points their party has around those issues

It's a strange thing.

There is a field called political science. There are lots of researchers in that field publishing in journals, attending conferences, writing books, etc. And they've actually come up with some interesting results. In particular: voters do not make voting decisions based primarily on issues. In fact, there's some evidence that the causation often goes the other way.

Any model that starts with the assumption that voters choose candidates based on issue matching starts with fail.

Why should I be shoehorned? I am a gnostic, against excessive off-shoring, pro-choice, against gun banning and so on. It's a curious mix. Yet, I have to choose between two packages.

Because the nature of political parties that can function in any society is heavily dependent on the institutional structure of the government. Again, this is a question that actual political scientists have researched and answered.

It would be, if I had conflated "philosophy" with "political party"

But I didn't.

Cheers.

Of course, there are many other factors, and we can endlessly speculate as to what they might be. But for purposes of the relationship between one group and one party, whatever the group or party, my example holds.

Of course, a fine counterargument to that is "but there is nothing like what you describe, so your thought experiment is useless" To that the best I can come up with is to take at look at early American politics, when the parties first developed after the founding of the government. At that time it was a pretty even split (as far as I have been told)

There is a lot of correlative science going on in this area, and I would be very careful not to confuse correlation with causation. I would also be careful (and I know you know this if you know anything about politics) about exactly how such studies are conducted: the questions used, the implied bias, etc.

Somebody who was not careful could take reams of this "science" of correlation and string all sorts of theories about people, such as right-wingers are more happy yet stupider and more authoritarian. Or whatever. I'd be very careful walking down this road, and not simply because of the flaky nature of the science. It's beginning to look like scientists are making an effort to explain why people could be so stupid to be conservatives, and that's not a good place to go. Not because you'd piss off folks, but because there is a great danger of political science itself becoming an echo chamber. Once you box-up any opposition, you can lord over the poor unwashed masses, whether you mean to or not. And that is really bad for both the science itself and the way the science is conducted.