Later On

Republicans will always choose ideology over facts—at least that’s what I’ve observed. Thus Republicans in general avoid (a) taking science classes (too many facts contrary to their ideology), and (b) thus avoid careers in science.

This column, in which I believe the humor is unintentional, is by Daniel Sarewitz, a geologist who seems to have gone into policy activity—he’s currently based in DC, though his appointment is from Arizona State University. Although he was work was in geology (PhD, Cornell, 1986), most of his publications seem to be in sociology and policy. Very strange.

At any rate, the column’s a hoot. It begins:

It is no secret that the ranks of scientists and engineers in the United States include dismal numbers of Hispanics and African-Americans, but few have remarked about another significantly underrepresented group: Republicans.

No, this is not the punch line of a joke. A Pew Research Center Poll from July 2009 showed that only around 6 percent of U.S. scientists are Republicans; 55 percent are Democrats, 32 percent are independent, and the rest “don’t know” their affiliation.

This immense imbalance has political consequences. When President Obama appears Wednesday on Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters (9 p.m. ET), he will be there not just to encourage youngsters to do their science homework but also to reinforce the idea that Democrats are the party of science and rationality. And why not? Most scientists are already on his side. Imagine if George W. Bush had tried such a stunt—every major newspaper in the country would have run an op-ed piece by some Nobel Prize winner asking how the guy who prohibited stem-cell research and denied climate change could have the gall to appear on a program that extols the power of scientific thinking.

Yet, partisan politics aside, why should it matter that there are so few Republican scientists? After all, it’s the scientific facts that matter, and facts aren’t blue or red.

Well, that’s not quite right. Consider the case of climate change, of which beliefs are astonishingly polarized according to party affiliation and ideology. A March 2010 Gallup poll showed that 66 percent of Democrats (and 74 percent of liberals) say the effects of global warming are already occurring, as opposed to 31 percent of Republicans. Does that mean that Democrats are more than twice as likely to accept and understand the scientific truth of the matter? And that Republicans are dominated by scientifically illiterate yahoos and corporate shills willing to sacrifice the planet for short-term economic and political gain?

Or 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.

Continue reading. It goes on like that. He omits the inconvenient fact that climate change (whose effects are quite obvious all around the world) is supported by more than 99% of climatologists—the very people who spend their lives and careers studying the climate. He apparently believes that they base their conclusions on their politics, not their observations.

It’s pretty clear why Dr. Sarewitz abandoned science: he apparently lacks the capacity to understand it. He can’t even follow the scientific arguments if he thinks that the evidence for climate change is simply political. (Geology, it may be of interest to know, is at the very bottom of the scientific totem pole. Geologists get as much respect from their scientific peers as, say, dermatologists get from their medical peers.)

Thanks to Alex Pareene for pointing out the column, and I think you might find his rebuttal worth reading. At the end, Pareene notes:

Oh man, here’s Sarewitz writing more great stuff about science and politics last March: “Contrary to all our modern instincts, then, political progress on climate change requires not more scientific input into politics, but less.” This guy!