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Conservatives' Trust In Science Has Fallen Dramatically Since Mid-1970s
An anonymous reader writes "While trust in science remained stable among people who self-identified as moderates and liberals in the United States between 1974 and 2010, trust in science fell among self-identified conservatives by more than 25 percent during the same period, according to a study by the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. 'Over the last several decades, there's been an effort among those who define themselves as conservatives to clearly identify what it means to be a conservative,' said the study's lead author. 'For whatever reason, this appears to involve opposing science and universities and what is perceived as the "liberal culture." So, self-identified conservatives seem to lump these groups together and rally around the notion that what makes "us" conservatives is that we don't agree with "them."'"
Or in other words, around the time that science started suggesting reasons why economic progress can be bad, instead of just helping it along?
This article is about conservatives trying to brand themselves.
They want to find out what liberals support, and be the opposite. Since liberals seem to like science, and it seems to conflict with religion to some people(*), conservatives are rebelling against that.
What "science" actually is has nothing to do with the conservative view, or the liberal one(+).
The real problem that conservatives face here is that their strategy is silly. Defining yourself by what your enemies do will not work. It leaves you open to manipulation and getting backed into a corner. I think that's what is happening here.
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* - I don't think this is true at all. Religion is metaphysical poetry, science is its physical counterpart.
+ - I don't believe that "reality has a liberal bias." Reality has a reality bias. It's pointlessly combative to claim that all conservatives are detached from reality (or all liberals)
"liberals' use of science as a religion has increased dramatically since mid-1970s".
How in the world do you infer *that* exactly? Seriously, I hear this sort of thing from conservatives and there must be some kind of logic chain that led you to make this conclusion. I'd just like to know what it is, explicitly.
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but the neo-conseravatives. There are many conservatives that do not subscribe to the following of reagan and W. Basically, it is these 2 and their followers that fight against science, logic and facts. You will find that nearly all support the concept of creationism, fight against the idea that Global Climate Change is cause by man.
They will argue that Russia is enemy #1 and claim support for private enterprise, but then push for the Space Launch System (in which CONgress, mostly neo-cons designate WHICH companies will provide WHICH parts for a shuttle derivative and costing us 60 billion), push for us to be reliant on Russia for another decade of rocket launches and works to destroy private space.
Likewise, they will argue that Corporations should be ONLY for making profits and have absolutely no conscience, but then want them to be able to lobby, influence congress, and some have said that they want to give them a vote. Yet, at the same time, they scream that society is broken morally.
This lack of logic continues over and over and over. It has become a broken record with the no-cons.
OTOH, many conservatives and real republicans fully support science, logic, etc. and what can be learned from it. Sadly, they are now a minority of the republican party. Many of them are driven out with the neo-cons screaming that those ppl are RINOs and are actually liberals. Sad that America has sunk this low.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It's not that reality has a liberal bias, it's that conservatives in the US especially have a 'not intended to be a factual statement' bias which they seem to have developed since the 70's. This means that on the rare occasion democrats in the US aren't proverbially shooting themselves in the foot there is a small possibility that they may align with facts, for no other reason than it being bound to happen occasionally. Conservatives have institutionalized support for things that aren't factual, and an overt rejection of anything that is factual.
I'm not really sure how that happened and you'd think it would have cost them more business support, after all, businesses can't function unless things they buy, people they hire etc all deal primarily in facts. You can't 'not believe' in Liquid crystals existence, you can't just 'believe' parts from china aren't counterfit etc. 'trust but verify' (popularized in english by Reagan) requires you to do the verification part honestly.
This has been gradually leading up for a century and more. Conservatives have always been doubtful of science, preferring to believe what they had been told in their youth. For them, it is easier to believe in the mad ramblings of an old book than a system of thought that has borne the fruit of progress for four centuries. There is no fundamental difference between the Catholic Church's assaults on Giordano Bruno and Galileo and the Evangelical assault on Evolution in schools. (For people who condemn Popery so strongly, this is especially amusing.) That there was ever an embrace of science on the conservative side only reflects the reality of the world as was discovered in the Second World War. That is to say, even the most stupid of Evangelicals must acknowledge we are better off with atomic bombs and ICMBs than without. Of course, it might be acknowledged that this is only an extension of the conservative love of spreading doctrine through violence rather than rhetoric and scientific persuasion.
Yes, the ones who call themselves liberals have their own problems with science. The stupid stupid lies of postmodernist thought destroyed a generation and a half of potential scientists, but the important thing is that science is pulling away from that abhorrent clap trap.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
That's false. I am a fiscal conservative. It simply means that we want ppl to handle a checkbook responsibly. Sadly, the neo-cons scream fiscal conservative, but they account for most of the debt. In addition, other than FDR handling GD and WWII and O handling the current mess, dems have shown far more fiscal conservationism than has the republicans ever since the neo-cons took over the republican party.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I'd dispute that. There is trust in science; more accurately, there is trust in scientists. I can go into my garage, and replicate all sorts of experiements. Tyson had a wonderful essay, called something like 'stick in the mud science' about all of the things you can figure out with a stick, a string, and a rock. However, I can't go into my garage and duplicate most particle physics. Genetics. Medicine. All sorts of stuff. That stuff, I have to take on trust. Note, I don't say 'faith.' I prefer to use the term 'confidence.' One has faith in one's god, one has confidence in scientific consensus.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Perfect example of where science becomes something to be feared:
- To those unbelieving of global warming (generally conservatives), the science indicates it may be real
- To those believing in global warming (generally liberals), the science cannot demonstrate it beyond a doubt
Science serves neither, so both sides will try to suppress it.
I'd say it was Regan who invited the social conservative Christians into the Repblican party, creating the rise of the "religious right". This group as a whole seems to demand that they be "right" and everyone else be wrong, so it's natural for them to seek consensus on what a "true conservative" means, and they're quite willing to morph their beliefs to gain consensus. It's not that they trust science less, it's just that these people, who blindly believe in Genesis rather than any science, now identify themselves as "conservative", not that they've warped the meaning to their liking.
The term "conservative" had a very different meaning in the '70s. Those conservatives would have cringed at the phrase "true conservative". Here's a decent definition of the term. They blindly believe not just in the common ground between social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, and military hawks, but they believe in the super-set of all three, creating the strangest set of widely held blind beliefs I've ever heard of.
So, it's now Christian to promote war, fiscal conservatives abandon rational though when it comes to science, and the desperately poor rally to causes to help the rich. It's "I'll believe what you want me to believe if you believe what I want you to believe." Scary. Understanding science is simply one of those things they brokered away. I love how the definition above claims true conservatives don't believe in various science issues like Evolution, because "they do the research themselves."
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
Perhaps you missed certain liberal ideas, like freedom of speech, voting for the common man and not just the wealthy, women's suffrage, women having the right to divorce, abolition of slavery, end of sodomy laws criminalizing homosexuality.
Well, in order:
Free Speech - Classic liberal, not modern liberal. Thank "speech codes on campuses" for the modern liberal counter example.
Voting for the Common man and not just the wealthy - Yes, because if you screw the rich, it never hurts their employees, right?
Women's suffrage - Filibustered by the democrats.
Women having the right to divorce - I don't know my history on this one.
Abolition of slavery - Largely motivated by religious idealists, politically starting with the Conscience Whigs, finally accomplished by the Republicans.
End of sodomy laws - Yeah, you probably have this one.
Yes, good comparison that: those who decline vaccines, a fringe movement, with those who deny the effects of CO2 on global climate or the health effects of cigarette smoking, big think tanks with massive funding. Surely these are equivalent.
As for insisting on organic produce, what's wrong with that? There are perfectly rational reasons for not wanting to pump even more insecticides into the biosphere.
Mart
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
It really is; I for one have already done that. The "social conservatives" are causing the Republican Party to eat itself, exactly as Goldwater predicted.
There is also a third conservative; a practical one.
Take a software development shop doing security sensitive code. One type of conservative would fire the developers and offshore everything, hiring a H-1B for anything that needed done on US soil, only later to find that their business is compromised. Another type would fire the senior developers and hire people at min wage, firing anyone too good so they don't have to give pay raises.
A practical conservative knows that morale is important in the company, and knows that payroll is a relatively small fraction of accounts payable. They give the developers competitive pay, and morale is high. The result is that security policies are strictly followed because people rally behind the company's banner (as opposed to just going there for a paycheck.) Result, no leaks or security intrusions, and employee ideas add further revenue.
Similar with government. A practical conservative considers part of national security the welfare and morale of citizens. Better pay for good schools now than pay for long prison stays later.
Uh no. Not actually. I "trust" in science because science is a way of testing a theory until you know it's really, really reliable at predicting behavior in the physical world. Historically, it's worked out pretty well as evidenced by the fact that the lights come on when I flick the switch and my car actually works.
So what I don't get is the "science as religion" part of your statement. Epistemologically, science is the exact opposite of Abrahamic religions that rely on faith. The process of scientific method is what you do when you have no faith at all. You just empirically see what happens again and again when you apply your theory, to see if the theory holds up.
So, can you explain to me how you equate science and religion?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
A more accurate way to put it that reasonable people started to distrust science when it became the bitch of the control freaks.
My kingdom for mod points. Best political statement on /. evah!
Perfect example of the style of bad arguing used by the deniers, who, sadly, are for the most part also conservatives. You just start ranting away about the consequences of something you think and fear is so obviously true that you don't have to bother stating let alone proving it. Your problem is, the assumption isn't true. So your whole rant is founded on nothing, and is just a bunch of hot air.
In this case, the assumption seems to be that anthropogenic global warming is false. You evidently find it more likely that the entire consensus about global warming is wrong, or is a big lie and plot to get more funding. You think that thousands of independent scientists running thousands of independent tests and checks have all gotten this wrong, and wrong in the same way? You think that every single scientist is too incompetent or biased to collect good, honest data and to come to some honest conclusions based on that data? And that there is no competition between scientists that would very quickly expose problems? That the entire community of very diverse individuals would or even could collude? And that organizations with an interest in the status quo, such as Big Oil, haven't tried to discredit the idea and even science itself for patently obvious reasons? Do you really believe any of that?
Big business tells whoppers like no one else does. Everyone thinks of politicians as the incurable, pathologic liars, but big business makes them look like pikers. Big business is so much more professional about lying, employing entire departments known as "marketing" to handle routine, accepted lying, and funding nominally independent think tanks and setting up fake research groups to engage in less accepted forms of lying. One of Big Tobacco's few honest moments was when they said "doubt is our product", admitting that their object is NOT to do good science, but just the opposite. They purposely hinder discovery and confuse the public. Exxon is notorious for applying the same dishonest techniques to arguments over global warming. The Creationists saw what they thought was a good thing, and adopted similar techniques to argue that evolution is controversial and in doubt when it is not, and to try to present their own wishful thinking as solid science when it too obviously is not. Funny how you give "doubt is our product" a pass when you are so quick to take and interpret every least little thing as more signs that scientists are just a pack of whining, conniving, greedy, politically motivated hacks.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
fiscal conservative social liberals are employing a non-optimal strategy.
I think that's at least in part because your Republican party is winning a propaganda war. They're spending gobs and gobs of cash trying to convince people that they're the fiscally responsible ones, and that the Democrats are the ones pissing away money. (irony, much?). When you look at the numbers, it's actually been the inverse: the deficit has consistently increased year over year under Republican presidents, and decreased under Democrats.
Unfortunately, however, they are spending more money trying to propagate the myth that they're the ones saving money, and people are buying into it. Personally, I don't see how the idea of fiscal responsibility is incompatible with progressive social ideals.
In fact, if I were to tell you where I stood on social matters, most Americans would probably call me a communist.... I believe that the justice system should be focused on mending recidivism rates, and that this means spending money on education and apprenticeship programs for offenders to equip them with the skills they need to find a productive job upon their release. I also think that this means that education on the whole should be a main target for money. I believe in publicly accessible health care, because I know that early detection of health problems means that they're *far* cheaper to treat in the long run. I believe in social welfare programs in general, because while there's some people who abuse them, society as a whole benefits from not letting people fall through the cracks. I believe that we should be taxing bad behaviours (environmental practices), and rewarding good behaviours (subsidizing solar installations, for example). I believe that these sorts of environmental rules should extend in to other areas of industry as well... make it too expensive to run your business badly, and business will stop doing things badly (regulated but mostly free market). And I believe that the tax rates on the wealthy and corporations should be set at a level they can bear... there's no excuse for a corporation to be able to post a $1bn profit for a year when they've used tax loopholes to not pay a dime in corporate income taxes (again, sustainable market growth, but make sure that the corporations contribute their fair share to the economy). All of these ideas are very socialist... enough that McCarthy would have called me a communist sympathizer, but I also believe, quite firmly, that the government should never be allowed to run deficit spending, unless it's extenuating circumstances (such as an economic crash), and that for such circumstances, it should require a 2/3 majority in all levels of government to pass.
If I were in the US, I'd probably be trying to make a difference in the Democrat party.... as it is, I actually belong to the Green party in this country, and have been quite active in trying to get certain policies set.... the Greens are, in most of the world, socially liberal while being fiscally conservative... a very good compromise, IMO. :)
As you claim to speak for all conservatives, would you mind providing a reason for not trusting scientists? Sure I can see why you don't trust scientists working at Philip Morris to tell you about the harms from smoking tobacco products, but "scientists" is a large category to mistrust for any single reason. I am a scientist, do you distrust what I post here because I am a scientist? If so why? What are your reasons.
I totally agree that the politicalization of science has been a detriment to both science and society. That we as a nation should remove politics from science. However you cannot remove science from politics. Our nation should not make policy decisions based on gut feelings when a rational understanding is available.
Simply stating that you don't trust scientists without providing a reason is a great analogy for the current problem as I see it: many people FEEL that they KNOW what the answer is and when evidence contradicts that they ignore it, when evidence validates it they claim victory. In reality very little is ever that cut and dry. Science will (in fact must) be wrong at times. There are many reasons for that but the number of times that it has been due to scientific misconduct are minuscule when compared to the number of times it was just a statistical fluke or experimental error. So what evidence do you have to support your distrust of scientists as a group?
Some did, some didn't. Dixie Democrats were definitely one the driving forces in maintenance of the status quo on slavery, no doubt. It is more than a little disingenuous to think that party politics from the early to late 18th century haven't changed at all. One of the big reasons Southern Democrats didn't want slavery to end was that their constituencies were almost entirely white southern men who felt that keeping blacks down was key to their ongoing power and success.
Remarkably that is the exact same demographic so widely courted by Republicans today. I think you'd be amazed at the parallels between a Dixie Democrat platform of the 1850s and modern Republican platform in any Southern state. Replace "Black Slave" with "Illegal immigrant" as the focus of hatred and ire and they're basically the same.
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of good people in the south. There are plenty of good people who are southern conservatives. I lived in the South most of my life. As a statistical class though Republican voters in the south are poor white men who lack an education and are easily led by fear. To fair, they're easily led by fear because they exist at the edges of society that was designed to keep them there. Those are the exact same people with the exact same statistical properties that elected pro-slavery Dixie Democrats 150 years ago.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Just because someone claims to be a conservative doesn't automatically mean he or she is going out shooting up minorities or raping the landscape.
No, but it means they vote for people who do far, far worse. George Zimmerman has the blood of one young man on his hands. Bush voters have the blood of a hundred thousand Iraqis.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If conservatives are so skeptical of faked data, then please explain the blind adherence to their religious texts.
American conservatives are not that simple. We live in a two-party system and going independent essentially erases your voice, so most people pick a label and form sub-groups. Under "conservative" you have libertarians, (far more than are in the Libertarian Party, mind you) the religious right, the log cabin republicans, most of wall street :p, and a whole slew of other conflicted groups who only really agree on economic policy a little. (one of the drums beat during Tea Party movements was to put social issues on the back burner, though the candidates have been somewhat contrary to this -- especially Santorum) Liberals also have libertarians, socialists (both authoritarian and "legalize everything"), people who want free stuff, etc. People on both sides hold their nose and pretend some of the people on their side don't exist. Third parties can't prosper because then the "other side" will have a supermajority, and "all hell will break loose".
That said, it's a bit of a blanket statement to make that assumption. Cable news is all about getting ratings from people who are generally unemployed and can't find something better to do than sit in front of the TV. I've been going along with the right for the last few years (and believe me, my nose is bleeding from how hard I've held it) but I'm as interested in interacting with the religious right as I am with the free stuff left. My argument isn't about liberals and conservatives, it's about politics and science. Missteps like the claimed exclusion of the medieval warm period from presentations made to the public may have been the biggest political blunder related to climate change.
If you're going to convince the public to do something extremely inconvenient, you have to be honest. It doesn't matter if you're right, it matters that the public believes you are.
If you look at it this way, how would you -personally- go about verifying all the data and conclusions about climate change? That's the heart of the problem.
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
I accept the teachings of the church in the Bible; however, I also accept the theory of evolution based on my studies of bioinformatics related subjects
Uhh.... You know the pope is totally hip with evolution right? There is no "however" statement needed there. There could be an "also" maybe. Or maybe you just need to be a better catholic. (So go feel guilty about your shortcomings off in that corner.)
Consider the claims that man made CO2 emissions are causing the planet to warm. Much of the research upon which scientists have based these claims is not public
Oh. You're one of... "those". Riiiiight. Well. The link between CO2 and average global temperature is pretty damn rock solid. So your shortcomming kind of extend into the science/engineering realm too. (checking your facts is basic engineering.) Double duty in the corner I guess.
If you had claimed that there are liberal forces trying to hype the threat and immediacy of global warming and climate change, then you might have had something. You'd be right. There are people trying to push social changes and a lot of them are believing their own hype. There's a chance it could still be that bad, just less of a chance when you take into account the political bias.
elimination of DDT, etc. span back as early as the 1970s
And look, we're not going to kill off our national bird anymore. YAY success stories!
When science enters the realm of public policy,
That's called sociology. It deals pretty heavily with all those fluffy squishy things that these meatbags drone on about and how to bypass them to achieve better sales metrics.
So... hmmm. Yeah, ok I see your point. As a counterpoint though, think of what it means to be socially conservative, and how they've treated minorities, women, homosexuals, migrants, and the generally downtrodden masses. "Dehumanizing" is a word I would use.
Sociologist certainly have some crazy ideas about how to deal with miscreants and that sort, but the science has proposed that treating them less abusively and more like errant children yields better results. For the miscreants at least. The socially conservative viewpoint, I believe, would claim that it encourages miscreant behavior. Which is understandable, if the threat of being down-and-out permanently isn't there, there's less motivation to avoid it. But it's the sociologists that want to treat criminals like humans, and socially conservatives that want to put them in the chair.