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I would claim that there are two factors that lead to the fact that most scientists are Democrats: the overall lean of universities, and the source of funding.

I would claim that there are two factors that lead to the fact that most scientists are Democrats: the overall lean of universities, and the source of funding. First, scientists tend to work in academia. It's well documented that universities are strongly slanted to the left. It seems reasonable to expect that when the left-leaning universities are looking to hire, they will tend to (possibly not intentionally) favor others like themselves. Second, the government is the largest funder of scientific research. However, to the extent that the GOP favors a smaller government (and though they say this, they don't actually do so, but that's a different discussion), this would make one expect that those against such governmental funding would be morally bound to find other means of employment. asking how the guy who prohibited stem-cell research This isn't what happened. It's incredibly frustrating to me that people continually read a ban on federal funding to be a ban on research itself. But it does reinforce my point that the governmental force behind science is now perceived as the sole force behind science. reinforce the idea that Democrats are the party of science and rationality In the science of economics the opposite is true. For example, Democratic support of minimum wages and other price controls, and especially their opposition to free trade, fly against the wind of economic science.

araneae 16y ago
to the extent that the GOP favors a smaller government (and though they say this, they don't actually do so, but that's a different discussion), this would make one expect that those against such governmental funding would be morally bound to find other means of employment. I can support this with anecdotal evidence. I have a friend who got his Ph.D. in physics, but decided to work outside of academia. His primary reason for this was that he felt that as a libertarian it would be immoral for him to take government money. He currently works at Intel.
- evgen 16y ago
  Yeah, but it wasn't too immoral for him to take advantage of government funded university research labs in order to get that Ph.D. in the first place, right? Once he no longer needed the government's money he was free to let his strong moral position take over, but up until that point I am sure the cognitive dissonance was keeping him up at night...
  - CWuestefeld 16y ago
    What's with all the vitriol in your two replies? It seems like you're awfully eager to put words into people's mouths, and to stereotype a large portion of the country in a single stroke. There may be parts of your argument that are worth discussing, but you make it difficult to ferret them out from all the anger. You know nothing of the parent post's friend. How can you make such bald assertions?
  - araneae 16y ago
    Your tone is rather aggressive. Why is that? In fact, it did keep him up at night that his lab was receiving grants from the government. That's why he ultimately made the decision he did. It's impossible for someone to be completely moral with their money. All of us on H.N. have paid taxes that at some point went to pay for something that we disagree with morally. All of us have purchased a product from a company that has probably done something we find immoral or given money to someone who has. It's not shameful to pay your taxes because you like not being in prison. Self-preservation is not a bad thing. But nor is trying to put your money where your mouth is, either.
- quanticle 16y ago
  Libertarian doesn't automatically mean Republican, though. Again, speaking anecdotally, I know of a fair number of libertarians who switched party affiliations when the Patriot Act was passed, and the Bush Administration started its warrantless wiretapping program (a program that the Obama administration has sadly continued).
  - hugh3 16y ago
    Anecdotally it seems that most of the Libertarians who switched their party affiliation to Democrat while Bush was in power switched it back to Republican once Obama came into power and managed to keep up all Bush's objectionable policies while adding a whole bunch of his own. I am reminded of the old joke about the man who goes to hell and is given a choice of two rooms in which to spend all eternity. In the first, everybody is forced to stand on their head for all eternity, groaning uncomfortably with the strain. In the second, everybody is standing around knee-deep in poop, but they're also drinking coffee, eating biscuits and chatting. After thinking long and hard, he eventually chooses the second room, but the moment after he walks in a voice comes over the intercom "OK, coffee break's over, everybody back on your heads."
evgen 16y ago
I would claim that there are two factors that lead to the fact that most scientists are Democrats: the overall lean of universities, and the source of funding. And the overwhelming anti-science bias within large segments of the Republican base has nothing to do with it? Yeah, it has just got to be all of those liberal universities and scientists living off the government teat... You can delude yourself all you want, but the fact is that most scientists did not just aimlessly gravitate to the Democratic party; they were chased there by pitchfork-wielding, bible-thumping, Republicans who sought to "refudiate" their work (aided in large parts by conservative think tanks that will tell any lie and spread as much FUD as possible if it helps the short-term objectives of their corporate backers.)
- orangecat 16y ago
  Mostly true, but conservatives hardly have a monopoly on willful ignorance. Ask the stereotypical liberal what he thinks of nuclear power or GMO crops, and you're not likely to get a response based on sound science.
  - CWuestefeld 16y ago
    Not to mention anything related to economics, as I mentioned above. All that nonsense about "fair trade", the complaints about Chinese currency (see Chuck Schumer), and on and on, has absolutely no basis in the real science.
    - MichaelSalib 16y ago
      Isn't chinese currency idiocy bipartisan? I mean http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/07/republicans-rip-treasury-for-weakkneed-report-on-chinese-currency.html http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/07/republicans-... certainly suggests that powerful Republican leaders believe it wholeheartedly.
  - sachinag 16y ago
    Nuclear power and GMO crops have the same issue for liberals like me: when they fail, they fail in catastrophic fashion. We've already had Cherynobol and Monsanto's "Terminator" seeds getting out into the wild. To paraphrase badly, liberals opposed to both are concerned about Black Swan events. Your assessment of the risk and that of those of us who are a bit more "reactionary" are just different, but it doesn't mean that we willfully misrepresent the science.
narkee 16y ago
>It's well documented that universities are strongly slanted to the left I think that this just deflects the question. Why is it that universities are left-leaning? The implication is that knowledge acquisition is co-related with left-leaning politics? I'm not about to go into the implications of such an assertion, lest a political flame-war break out, but I think answering that more general question will explain the more specific case of scientists.
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  The implication is that knowledge acquisition is co-related with left-leaning politics? 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.
- WalterBright 16y ago
  >Why is it that universities are left-leaning? 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.
MichaelSalib 16y ago
In the science of economics the opposite is true. For example, Democratic support of minimum wages and other price controls, and especially their opposition to free trade, fly against the wind of economic science. I don't believe this is true. First, assertions that economics is a science seem...dubious at best. Secondly, actual economic research suggests that negative effects of the minimum wage in practice are quite small. It is true that people who have no more economic knowledge than that imparted by a first semester intro to economics class do not know that, but that merely underscores the danger of a little bit of knowledge. Finally, I have seen no evidence in the last decade that Democrats are particularly opposed to free trade deals per se. Can you cite some? I would point out that a great deal of some "free trade" deals actually has little if anything to do with free trade.
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  negative effects of the minimum wage in practice are quite small 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.
quanticle 16y ago
For example, Democratic support of minimum wages and other price controls, and especially their opposition to free trade, fly against the wind of economic science. The problem is that there are plenty of Republicans willing to oppose free trade as well. Lets also not forget that it was Nixon who imposed price controls in the '70s. You'll be hard pressed to find sound economics in either party.
njs12345 16y ago
Many economists would certainly support the idea of a minimum wage, so I hardly think it's fair to portray it as a settled matter..
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  You're failing to differentiate between supporting a policy versus the truth of a scientific argument. 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.
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    And just to clarify, the effect of minimum wage on employment is small because virtually no one earns less than minimum wage anyway. A law saying "hey everyone, keep doing what you are already doing" won't have much effect, positive or negative.

araneae 16y ago

to the extent that the GOP favors a smaller government (and though they say this, they don't actually do so, but that's a different discussion), this would make one expect that those against such governmental funding would be morally bound to find other means of employment. I can support this with anecdotal evidence. I have a friend who got his Ph.D. in physics, but decided to work outside of academia. His primary reason for this was that he felt that as a libertarian it would be immoral for him to take government money. He currently works at Intel.

evgen 16y ago
Yeah, but it wasn't too immoral for him to take advantage of government funded university research labs in order to get that Ph.D. in the first place, right? Once he no longer needed the government's money he was free to let his strong moral position take over, but up until that point I am sure the cognitive dissonance was keeping him up at night...
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  What's with all the vitriol in your two replies? It seems like you're awfully eager to put words into people's mouths, and to stereotype a large portion of the country in a single stroke. There may be parts of your argument that are worth discussing, but you make it difficult to ferret them out from all the anger. You know nothing of the parent post's friend. How can you make such bald assertions?
- araneae 16y ago
  Your tone is rather aggressive. Why is that? In fact, it did keep him up at night that his lab was receiving grants from the government. That's why he ultimately made the decision he did. It's impossible for someone to be completely moral with their money. All of us on H.N. have paid taxes that at some point went to pay for something that we disagree with morally. All of us have purchased a product from a company that has probably done something we find immoral or given money to someone who has. It's not shameful to pay your taxes because you like not being in prison. Self-preservation is not a bad thing. But nor is trying to put your money where your mouth is, either.
quanticle 16y ago
Libertarian doesn't automatically mean Republican, though. Again, speaking anecdotally, I know of a fair number of libertarians who switched party affiliations when the Patriot Act was passed, and the Bush Administration started its warrantless wiretapping program (a program that the Obama administration has sadly continued).
- hugh3 16y ago
  Anecdotally it seems that most of the Libertarians who switched their party affiliation to Democrat while Bush was in power switched it back to Republican once Obama came into power and managed to keep up all Bush's objectionable policies while adding a whole bunch of his own. I am reminded of the old joke about the man who goes to hell and is given a choice of two rooms in which to spend all eternity. In the first, everybody is forced to stand on their head for all eternity, groaning uncomfortably with the strain. In the second, everybody is standing around knee-deep in poop, but they're also drinking coffee, eating biscuits and chatting. After thinking long and hard, he eventually chooses the second room, but the moment after he walks in a voice comes over the intercom "OK, coffee break's over, everybody back on your heads."

evgen 16y ago

I would claim that there are two factors that lead to the fact that most scientists are Democrats: the overall lean of universities, and the source of funding. And the overwhelming anti-science bias within large segments of the Republican base has nothing to do with it? Yeah, it has just got to be all of those liberal universities and scientists living off the government teat... You can delude yourself all you want, but the fact is that most scientists did not just aimlessly gravitate to the Democratic party; they were chased there by pitchfork-wielding, bible-thumping, Republicans who sought to "refudiate" their work (aided in large parts by conservative think tanks that will tell any lie and spread as much FUD as possible if it helps the short-term objectives of their corporate backers.)

orangecat 16y ago
Mostly true, but conservatives hardly have a monopoly on willful ignorance. Ask the stereotypical liberal what he thinks of nuclear power or GMO crops, and you're not likely to get a response based on sound science.
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  Not to mention anything related to economics, as I mentioned above. All that nonsense about "fair trade", the complaints about Chinese currency (see Chuck Schumer), and on and on, has absolutely no basis in the real science.
  - MichaelSalib 16y ago
    Isn't chinese currency idiocy bipartisan? I mean http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/07/republicans-rip-treasury-for-weakkneed-report-on-chinese-currency.html http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/07/republicans-... certainly suggests that powerful Republican leaders believe it wholeheartedly.
- sachinag 16y ago
  Nuclear power and GMO crops have the same issue for liberals like me: when they fail, they fail in catastrophic fashion. We've already had Cherynobol and Monsanto's "Terminator" seeds getting out into the wild. To paraphrase badly, liberals opposed to both are concerned about Black Swan events. Your assessment of the risk and that of those of us who are a bit more "reactionary" are just different, but it doesn't mean that we willfully misrepresent the science.

narkee 16y ago

>It's well documented that universities are strongly slanted to the left I think that this just deflects the question. Why is it that universities are left-leaning? The implication is that knowledge acquisition is co-related with left-leaning politics? I'm not about to go into the implications of such an assertion, lest a political flame-war break out, but I think answering that more general question will explain the more specific case of scientists.

CWuestefeld 16y ago
The implication is that knowledge acquisition is co-related with left-leaning politics? 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.
WalterBright 16y ago
>Why is it that universities are left-leaning? 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.

MichaelSalib 16y ago

In the science of economics the opposite is true. For example, Democratic support of minimum wages and other price controls, and especially their opposition to free trade, fly against the wind of economic science. I don't believe this is true. First, assertions that economics is a science seem...dubious at best. Secondly, actual economic research suggests that negative effects of the minimum wage in practice are quite small. It is true that people who have no more economic knowledge than that imparted by a first semester intro to economics class do not know that, but that merely underscores the danger of a little bit of knowledge. Finally, I have seen no evidence in the last decade that Democrats are particularly opposed to free trade deals per se. Can you cite some? I would point out that a great deal of some "free trade" deals actually has little if anything to do with free trade.

CWuestefeld 16y ago
negative effects of the minimum wage in practice are quite small 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.

quanticle 16y ago

For example, Democratic support of minimum wages and other price controls, and especially their opposition to free trade, fly against the wind of economic science. The problem is that there are plenty of Republicans willing to oppose free trade as well. Lets also not forget that it was Nixon who imposed price controls in the '70s. You'll be hard pressed to find sound economics in either party.

njs12345 16y ago

Many economists would certainly support the idea of a minimum wage, so I hardly think it's fair to portray it as a settled matter..

CWuestefeld 16y ago
You're failing to differentiate between supporting a policy versus the truth of a scientific argument. 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.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  And just to clarify, the effect of minimum wage on employment is small because virtually no one earns less than minimum wage anyway. A law saying "hey everyone, keep doing what you are already doing" won't have much effect, positive or negative.