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Why Being Anti-Science Is Now Part of Many Rural Americans’ Identity

23 points by areoform 5y ago

jleyank 5y ago
Ignoring nature has its own "reward". Kill off wetlands, and you end up wringing your hands about where the ducks went. Kill off woodlands, and there goes deer hunting. Ignore airborne disease, gee, people die. Ignore climate, your biome changes, ... $GOD's will, eh? "Science" has nothing to do with this. It's merely an attempt to understand, ideally explain what's happening. And no, it's not an opinion, although entertainers and pretty clothes on TV (mis)present it as such. Maybe people never tried to think long-term, but they're certainly not thinking this way now. Better to see what the Kardashians/Trumps/whomever are up to and gee, should actors slap each other, ... The world is just a stage where people spend a few decades before Eternity so what the %@(&#%!. Thinking's hard, better to sit and have a brew and complain.
Bostonian 5y ago
Being anti-science is part of the identity of the left on some issues. If I say that there are more male programmers than females at Big Tech because (1) the average level of interest and aptitude of males and females at programming differs (2) males have a greater variance in aptitudes than females, putting a larger fraction of them in the right tail of aptitude people on the right may engage with the argument, whereas people on the left will try to cancel me. I'm not saying the statements above are necessarily correct but that they are scientific questions, not moral ones. The left is also unwilling to think scientifically about racial differences -- in fact such thinking is called "scientific racism".
- lern_too_spel 5y ago
  They are scientific questions with scientific answers. For the particular issues you mentioned, it would be great if the scientific answer supported that more women could work in big tech or that race does not determine intellectual ability, so we shouldn't discount environmental factors unless we can certainly rule them out. For the latter, we have plenty of evidence that race doesn't determine intellectual ability, yet the right continues to pretend that we don't. For the former, there is no strong evidence either way given what we have seen happen in the medical field over the past few decades, yet the right opposes any policies encouraging women to enter the field.
watersb 5y ago
Science is just another religion for many people. [citation needed] That is to say, all of us have to take large chunks of our built environment as a matter of faith. My old iPad, for instance, is indistinguishable from magic. I can explain technology and engineering as something you might conceivably build. But to explain why we built a data processing pipeline the way we did, and why the resulting image represents the appearance of a massive black hole in a distant galaxy... it's all noise. People can believe that you think we need to change our ways to head off climate change. But you're not going to get them to join your religion of science.
biomcgary 5y ago
538 has a strong background in polling, ostensibly, but they missed the real take away from the poll. The real change that needs to be understood is the reasons for soaring Democratic confidence in the scientific community over the past three years and if is it durable or specific to COVID-19. The post's only graph of poll information shows a dramatic uptick in Democratic confidence in the scientific community starting in 2018 that continued into 2021. Republican confidence ticks upward for 2018 and downward for 2021. The overall drop places Republicans in roughly the same range as Democrats from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s. If Musk continues to (appear to) push technology forward (a big if) and simultaneously is vilified for Twitter's policy changes, we could end up in the peculiar situation where the left favors "science" and the right "technology". What a crazy world that would be!
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > 538 has a strong background in polling, ostensibly, 538 has a strong background in statistical analysis, really, and that particular brand was developed through application of that to polling.
  - biomcgary 5y ago
    You're correct, of course. Unfortunately, the linked article was light on data and statistical analysis, which I think would have highlighted that the Democrat shift is the more statistically improbable one.
- solenoidalslide 5y ago
  Elon Musk isn't really right wing (e.g. show me Tucker Carlson going on a podcast and smoking weed). Also Elon is more or less an outward backer of science.
  - biomcgary 5y ago
    Agreed on both points. However, tribal politics don't really get nuance or follow details closely. Simply by appearing to be attacked by the left, Musk gets interest/support from the right (or, at least, the not-left). The old right is dying, literally, from a demographic perspective. With the gradual removal of the current dead-weight (heh) of conservative boomers, the right is necessarily going to shift from reactionary paleo-conservatism to something else. The right's skepticism of science is substantially (but not entirely) directed towards science institutions not the scientific method per se, i.e., conspiracies are hiding the real science. Although Musk is not to the right, he comes across as turning over entrenched institutions (the good old boy clubs of the space and transportation industries). As long as Musk doesn't overtly attack the right, they may be broadly supportive.
seti0Cha 5y ago
I hate this framing. It's not a matter of people denying that science is real, but a question of not trusting scientists. There are a lot of reasons for that, some of them good (e.g. people cloaking their agendas in pseudo-science or misrepresenting the claims of science) others not so much (anti-intellectualism, motivated reasoning). The article itself acknowledges it's a trust issue, but still calls it anti-science rather than what it is: anti-distant-impersonal-authority-that-claims-to-know-better-but-has-its-own-agenda. That doesn't fit on a yard sign or make people feel as intellectually superior, but does at least suggest possible solutions.
- jfengel 5y ago
  And yet they engage in it by putting faith in their own distant-impersonal-authority-that-claims-to-know-better-but-has-its-own-agenda. It's not as if they've actually done any primary research themselves. "I've done the research" means "I engaged my confirmation bias and cherry-picked authorities who agree ideologically with me". That's why it looks like an anti-science bias, rather than a matter of trusting scientists. The trust is still there. They're just choosing that trust on the most unscientific of bases.
tabtab 5y ago
My impression is that many conservatives simply don't value the basics of critical thinking and cross-checking information. They've learned to trust their "gut" and/or prayer above doing the legwork needed for finding or checking info. They've been convinced they either have special powers or have a direct "network connection" to the Big Guy's Fact Channel In The Sky.
rufus_foreman 5y ago
Looking at the graph from the article, it looks like 20 years ago, 38% of Republicans said they had a great deal of confidence in the scientific community, and 38% of Democrats had a great deal of confidence in the scientific community. And according to the same graph, today 32% of Republicans say they have a great deal of confidence in the scientific community, and 65% of Democrats say they have a great deal of confidence in the scientific community. A 6% decrease for Republicans and a 27% increase for Democrats. And the response by FiveThirtyEight is to ask, "What has changed with the Republicans"? That's not the question I want answered. The question I am curious about is why the massive increase in the percentage of Democrats who trust the scientific community during a period where in my opinion, it has done nothing to gain that trust and much to destroy it.
- native_samples 5y ago
  The same trend can be seen in media trust: https://news.gallup.com/poll/267047/americans-trust-mass-media-edges-down.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/267047/americans-trust-mass-med... Basically, "science" here means the social institutions of science like universities not the abstract notion of it, like how "the media" means the actual concrete media institutions and not the general concept of the press. And US Democrats trust institutions dramatically more when they realize that those institutions have become full-blown ideological allies rather than neutral. Post-2016 US media stopped pretending it was politically neutral and became full time water carriers for the Democrats. Trust on the left surged as a result. COVID made it clear to everyone that the same is true of public health - it's just blatantly ideologically compromised by leftists to an extent that people hadn't realized before, and thus leftists now trust it a whole lot more than they used to. For science it really means academia. The professoriate has become much more partisan over time. If you go back to the 1960s or so, the balance between right and left wing professors was far better. Then the left went on their famous Long March, which is basically code for finding reasons to harass or exclude non-left wing people, and universities became ever more dominated by ideology. Along the way, science became "science". Modern science is totally debased. The sort of people who most loudly beat the drum for Believe The Science™ tend not to have actually read the science they're promoting. Certainly, journalists never do. They just take it as axiomatic that because universities are filled with lefties they're all honest, intelligent and pure. Then they present some papers pushing blatantly ideological propaganda as "science", and when others read it reject it, label them anti-science. A good example of this is the papers pouring out of university social science departments on the theme of: why are conservatives so stupid and misinformed? The entire research theme is itself ideological, but then you discover their experiments are done on random recruits from TaskRabbit type sites (i.e. they have no idea who they are experimenting on).

23 points by areoform 5y ago

Ignoring nature has its own "reward". Kill off wetlands, and you end up wringing your hands about where the ducks went. Kill off woodlands, and there goes deer hunting. Ignore airborne disease, gee, people die. Ignore climate, your biome changes, ... $GOD's will, eh? "Science" has nothing to do with this. It's merely an attempt to understand, ideally explain what's happening. And no, it's not an opinion, although entertainers and pretty clothes on TV (mis)present it as such. Maybe people never tried to think long-term, but they're certainly not thinking this way now. Better to see what the Kardashians/Trumps/whomever are up to and gee, should actors slap each other, ... The world is just a stage where people spend a few decades before Eternity so what the %@(&#%!. Thinking's hard, better to sit and have a brew and complain.

Bostonian 5y ago

Being anti-science is part of the identity of the left on some issues. If I say that there are more male programmers than females at Big Tech because (1) the average level of interest and aptitude of males and females at programming differs (2) males have a greater variance in aptitudes than females, putting a larger fraction of them in the right tail of aptitude people on the right may engage with the argument, whereas people on the left will try to cancel me. I'm not saying the statements above are necessarily correct but that they are scientific questions, not moral ones. The left is also unwilling to think scientifically about racial differences -- in fact such thinking is called "scientific racism".

lern_too_spel 5y ago
They are scientific questions with scientific answers. For the particular issues you mentioned, it would be great if the scientific answer supported that more women could work in big tech or that race does not determine intellectual ability, so we shouldn't discount environmental factors unless we can certainly rule them out. For the latter, we have plenty of evidence that race doesn't determine intellectual ability, yet the right continues to pretend that we don't. For the former, there is no strong evidence either way given what we have seen happen in the medical field over the past few decades, yet the right opposes any policies encouraging women to enter the field.

watersb 5y ago

Science is just another religion for many people. [citation needed] That is to say, all of us have to take large chunks of our built environment as a matter of faith. My old iPad, for instance, is indistinguishable from magic. I can explain technology and engineering as something you might conceivably build. But to explain why we built a data processing pipeline the way we did, and why the resulting image represents the appearance of a massive black hole in a distant galaxy... it's all noise. People can believe that you think we need to change our ways to head off climate change. But you're not going to get them to join your religion of science.

biomcgary 5y ago

538 has a strong background in polling, ostensibly, but they missed the real take away from the poll. The real change that needs to be understood is the reasons for soaring Democratic confidence in the scientific community over the past three years and if is it durable or specific to COVID-19. The post's only graph of poll information shows a dramatic uptick in Democratic confidence in the scientific community starting in 2018 that continued into 2021. Republican confidence ticks upward for 2018 and downward for 2021. The overall drop places Republicans in roughly the same range as Democrats from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s. If Musk continues to (appear to) push technology forward (a big if) and simultaneously is vilified for Twitter's policy changes, we could end up in the peculiar situation where the left favors "science" and the right "technology". What a crazy world that would be!

dragonwriter 5y ago
> 538 has a strong background in polling, ostensibly, 538 has a strong background in statistical analysis, really, and that particular brand was developed through application of that to polling.
- biomcgary 5y ago
  You're correct, of course. Unfortunately, the linked article was light on data and statistical analysis, which I think would have highlighted that the Democrat shift is the more statistically improbable one.
solenoidalslide 5y ago
Elon Musk isn't really right wing (e.g. show me Tucker Carlson going on a podcast and smoking weed). Also Elon is more or less an outward backer of science.
- biomcgary 5y ago
  Agreed on both points. However, tribal politics don't really get nuance or follow details closely. Simply by appearing to be attacked by the left, Musk gets interest/support from the right (or, at least, the not-left). The old right is dying, literally, from a demographic perspective. With the gradual removal of the current dead-weight (heh) of conservative boomers, the right is necessarily going to shift from reactionary paleo-conservatism to something else. The right's skepticism of science is substantially (but not entirely) directed towards science institutions not the scientific method per se, i.e., conspiracies are hiding the real science. Although Musk is not to the right, he comes across as turning over entrenched institutions (the good old boy clubs of the space and transportation industries). As long as Musk doesn't overtly attack the right, they may be broadly supportive.

seti0Cha 5y ago

I hate this framing. It's not a matter of people denying that science is real, but a question of not trusting scientists. There are a lot of reasons for that, some of them good (e.g. people cloaking their agendas in pseudo-science or misrepresenting the claims of science) others not so much (anti-intellectualism, motivated reasoning). The article itself acknowledges it's a trust issue, but still calls it anti-science rather than what it is: anti-distant-impersonal-authority-that-claims-to-know-better-but-has-its-own-agenda. That doesn't fit on a yard sign or make people feel as intellectually superior, but does at least suggest possible solutions.

jfengel 5y ago
And yet they engage in it by putting faith in their own distant-impersonal-authority-that-claims-to-know-better-but-has-its-own-agenda. It's not as if they've actually done any primary research themselves. "I've done the research" means "I engaged my confirmation bias and cherry-picked authorities who agree ideologically with me". That's why it looks like an anti-science bias, rather than a matter of trusting scientists. The trust is still there. They're just choosing that trust on the most unscientific of bases.

tabtab 5y ago

My impression is that many conservatives simply don't value the basics of critical thinking and cross-checking information. They've learned to trust their "gut" and/or prayer above doing the legwork needed for finding or checking info. They've been convinced they either have special powers or have a direct "network connection" to the Big Guy's Fact Channel In The Sky.

rufus_foreman 5y ago

Looking at the graph from the article, it looks like 20 years ago, 38% of Republicans said they had a great deal of confidence in the scientific community, and 38% of Democrats had a great deal of confidence in the scientific community. And according to the same graph, today 32% of Republicans say they have a great deal of confidence in the scientific community, and 65% of Democrats say they have a great deal of confidence in the scientific community. A 6% decrease for Republicans and a 27% increase for Democrats. And the response by FiveThirtyEight is to ask, "What has changed with the Republicans"? That's not the question I want answered. The question I am curious about is why the massive increase in the percentage of Democrats who trust the scientific community during a period where in my opinion, it has done nothing to gain that trust and much to destroy it.

native_samples 5y ago
The same trend can be seen in media trust: https://news.gallup.com/poll/267047/americans-trust-mass-media-edges-down.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/267047/americans-trust-mass-med... Basically, "science" here means the social institutions of science like universities not the abstract notion of it, like how "the media" means the actual concrete media institutions and not the general concept of the press. And US Democrats trust institutions dramatically more when they realize that those institutions have become full-blown ideological allies rather than neutral. Post-2016 US media stopped pretending it was politically neutral and became full time water carriers for the Democrats. Trust on the left surged as a result. COVID made it clear to everyone that the same is true of public health - it's just blatantly ideologically compromised by leftists to an extent that people hadn't realized before, and thus leftists now trust it a whole lot more than they used to. For science it really means academia. The professoriate has become much more partisan over time. If you go back to the 1960s or so, the balance between right and left wing professors was far better. Then the left went on their famous Long March, which is basically code for finding reasons to harass or exclude non-left wing people, and universities became ever more dominated by ideology. Along the way, science became "science". Modern science is totally debased. The sort of people who most loudly beat the drum for Believe The Science™ tend not to have actually read the science they're promoting. Certainly, journalists never do. They just take it as axiomatic that because universities are filled with lefties they're all honest, intelligent and pure. Then they present some papers pushing blatantly ideological propaganda as "science", and when others read it reject it, label them anti-science. A good example of this is the papers pouring out of university social science departments on the theme of: why are conservatives so stupid and misinformed? The entire research theme is itself ideological, but then you discover their experiments are done on random recruits from TaskRabbit type sites (i.e. they have no idea who they are experimenting on).