It’s true in the sense that scientific exploration expands our understanding of the world, which often forces us to re-evaluate our beliefs and adopt new ones,

It’s true in the sense that scientific exploration expands our understanding of the world, which often forces us to re-evaluate our beliefs and adopt new ones, something that is antithetical to small C conservatism, almost by definition. So in that sense, reality does have a “liberal” (perhaps more accurately progressive) bias, the more we learn about it. There is also quite a lot of history through the ages of science being a partisan issue as new discoveries upended the stories told by the established powers. So I stand by my comment and it would apply to any political era. There’s a reason Colbert’s joke works: it’s true.