The headline is a Left-liberal’s wetdream Study: Trust in science among educated conservatives plunges
Conservatives, particularly those with college educations, have become dramatically more skeptical of science over the past four decades, according to a study published in the April issue of the American Sociological Review. Fewer than 35 percent of conservatives say they have a “great deal” of trust in the scientific community now, compared to nearly half in 1974.
“The scientific community … has been concerned about this growing distrust in the public with science. And what I found in the study is basically that’s really not the problem. The growing distrust of science is entirely focused in two groups—conservatives and people who frequently attend church,” says the study’s author, University of North Carolina postdoctoral fellow Gordon Gauchat. […]
Gauchat attributes the changes to two forces: Both science and conservatives have changed a lot in 40 years. In the post-WWII period, research was largely wedded to the Defense Department and NASA—think the space race and the development of the atomic bomb. Now the scientific institution “has come out from behind those institutions and been its own cultural force.” That has meant it is increasingly viewed as a catalyst of government regulation, as in the failed Democratic proposal to institute cap-and-trade as a way to reduce carbon emissions and stave off climate change.
“People are now viewing science as part of government regulation,” Gauchat says.
Not that Gauchat views that as problematic on its face. The published study is here and is revealing in its language. Look at what Gauchat bases his study on:
Pg 6: Data for this analysis come from the General Social Survey (GSS), 1972 to 2010 (Smith et al. 2011). […]
The GSS asked respondents the following question: “I am going to name some institutions in this country. As far as the people running these institutions are concerned, would you say you have a great deal of confidence, only some confidence, or hardly any confidence at all in them [the Scientific Community]?”
Note the sleight of hand here. The question is specifically about scientists not science. Yet this paper uses the word SCIENCE!!1!
What conservatives reject are leftist scientists politicizing science (scientism), where they say the argument is over — for instance — on anthropogenic global warming. Then using government to run businesses out of business by “carbon credits.” Not science. It is when “scientists” bow down to political pressure that erks conservatives, like this candid admission noted in MailOnline:
The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.
Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.
In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.
Much like liberals see government as a catalyst for changing societal norms, so to, do they see “science” — or a political step-child of it — for societal change. Left Coast Rebel also notes the following political bias embedded in Gauchat’s work:
Gordon Gauchat calls his objectivity into question by agitating for Barack Obama starting with the first sentence of his article:
In the first months of his presidency, Barack Obama addressed the National Academy of Sciences to speak about U.S. science policy and a renewed commitment to fund scientific research. In this speech he charged: “We have watched as scientific integrity has been undermined and scientific research politicized in an effort to advance predetermined ideological agendas” (White House 2010). The previous administration under George W. Bush was widely seen as unfriendly toward the scientific community. As a consequence, many scientific organizations and advocacy groups became concerned that political and ideological interests were threatening the cultural authority of science.
Gauchat then draws sloppy connections between conservative distrust for the scientific community and the policies of recent Republican administrations while labeling skepticism about the integrity of the scientific community and debate about the proper role of government in funding science as “anti-science.” Moreover, as commenters at Hot Air are quick to note, Gauchat conflates distrust for the “scientific community” with distrust for “science.”
Protein Wisdom explains well an example from his above mentioned post why incentives have caused some to over express the importance of their work in order to keep funding/jobs:
Conservatives have absolutely no reason to mistrust publicly-funded scientists, do they?
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.
During a decade as head of global cancer research at Amgen, C. Glenn Begley identified 53 “landmark” publications — papers in top journals, from reputable labs — for his team to reproduce. Begley sought to double-check the findings before trying to build on them for drug development.
Result: 47 of the 53 could not be replicated. He described his findings in a commentary piece published on Wednesday in the journal Nature. […]
Begley’s experience echoes a report from scientists at Bayer AG last year. Neither group of researchers alleges fraud, nor would they identify the research they had tried to replicate.
But they and others fear the phenomenon is the product of a skewed system of incentives that has academics cutting corners to further their careers.
George Robertson of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia previously worked at Merck on neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s. While at Merck, he also found many academic studies that did not hold up. […]
When the Amgen replication team of about 100 scientists could not confirm reported results, they contacted the authors. Those who cooperated discussed what might account for the inability of Amgen to confirm the results. Some let Amgen borrow antibodies and other materials used in the original study or even repeat experiments under the original authors’ direction.
Some authors required the Amgen scientists sign a confidentiality agreement barring them from disclosing data at odds with the original findings. “The world will never know” which 47 studies — many of them highly cited — are apparently wrong, Begley said. […]
For one thing, basic science studies are rarely “blinded” the way clinical trials are. That is, researchers know which cell line or mouse got a treatment or had cancer. That can be a problem when data are subject to interpretation, as a researcher who is intellectually invested in a theory is more likely to interpret ambiguous evidence in its favor.
The problem goes beyond cancer.
On Tuesday, a committee of the National Academy of Sciences heard testimony that the number of scientific papers that had to be retracted increased more than tenfold over the last decade; the number of journal articles published rose only 44 percent.
Yessiree, those Conservatives and their War on Science!
Whats Up With That points out that distinguished astronomer Theodore White agrees with conservatives on their view of politicized science:
…When Al Gore rose to the vice-presidency by 1993 – Wirth and Hansen were already well out in front of the ‘man-made’ global warming pack – extending the ‘man-made’ ideology to other federal agencies and the university-level climate community – with federal dollars.
Follow the money pushing the ideological AGW lie. If one examines climate science funding from 1986 to 1996 and then from 1996 to the present – you may find some amazing numbers.
Incredible amounts – increasing yearly and wasted on every bigger and more expensive computers to run models. Careerists who cannot forecast seasonal weather were making things up (and began to alter weather data on purpose) while spending lavishly on computers pushing the AGW ideology – all at the public’s great expense.
But the media was not on board. Most journalists are ignorant of climate and weather science. I was fortunate in that I was not, so my editors passed on to me the great amount of work – and I was busy enough as it was a police reporter as it was! Since my beat included covering the climate science community in the heart of it in Colorado, I was well-attuned to how events were shaping up by 1989.
Since the mid-1980s, what I saw were articles like the one Anthony posted from 1986 were becoming more common. What I observed as professional reporter was that the ozone-layer press releases from NOAA and NCAR and other climate centers were beginning to use the same talking points in their different releases to news desks. Sometimes, these went out on the wire which were then placed into newspapers across the country without the resources to assign reporters to cover the climate.
I did not have that problem since this was part of my beat. In interviews with the particular scientists (including Hansen) what I observed was that they were heavy on the ideology, yet not sure if it was strong enough because the global weather data in the late 1980s did not strongly support their case that the world was warming because of man.
Still, by 1989, the AGW science did not make sense to me in light that it would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Which I remind everyone – remains in effect to this very day.
Anyhow, it did not seem to matter to Wirth’s office, Hansen, or the growing careerists at NCAR and NOAA; because whomever was pushing ‘man-made global warming’ on the United States, were also doing it at the international level too.
My view was that it was a conspiracy right from the start to bamboozle the world on the lie of anthropogenic global warming sandbagging much of the mainstream media, the markets and the educational system to not believe their own eyes and ears.
Events have since proven that I was right.
All this – while AGW ideologists reaped untold profits convincing populations that carbon (the very stuff we are made of) is bad and so we all have to pay for carbon to a global mafia.
In short, the careerist climate AGW scientists and their political insiders conspired to convince the world that humans had to pay dearly for exhaling the carbon gases that the natural world and our trees inhales to flourish.
American Thinker sums up the issue well:
A new study just released by a sociologist at the University of North Carolina provides two pieces of interesting information. The study finds that conservatives, particularly college-educated conservatives, are losing confidence in the scientific community.
The study also provides an unexpected and surely unplanned bonus: it serves as a perfect example of the intellectual dishonesty that has led educated conservatives to lose their faith in the scientific community.
Just check out the story about the study in the well-respected Scientific American. The headline reads, “Conservatives Lose Faith in Science over Last 40 Years.”
The subtitle adds detail, saying “a new academic analysis finds conservatives expressing more and more distrust in science in recent decades, particularly educated conservatives.”
Unfortunately for the reputation of Scientific American, the study says no such thing. In fact it reports that educated conservatives have lost faith in the “scientific community.” The two — science and the scientific community — are without basis simply assumed to be one and the same.