News Article: Conservatives trust in science has declined sharply

Bamaro

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A study released Thursday in the American Sociological Review concludes that trust in science among conservatives and frequent churchgoers has declined precipitously since 1974, when a national survey first asked people how much confidence they had in the scientific community. At that time, conservatives had the highest level of trust in scientists.
Confidence in scientists has declined the most among the most educated conservatives, the peer-reviewed research paper found, concluding: "These results are quite profound because they imply that conservative discontent with science was not attributable to the uneducated but to rising distrust among educated conservatives."
Gauchat suggested that the most educated conservatives are most acquainted with views that question the credibility of scientists and their conclusions. "I think those people are most fluent with the conservative ideology," he said. "They have stronger ideological dispositions than people who are less educated."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-conservatives-science-20120329,0,2248977.story
Rumor has it that ASR conducted some research on TFNS :wink:(some of you are educated)
 

ValuJet

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Meh. As a conservative (and a churchgoer) I am OK with science.

It's the shameless money-grubbing hucksterism in the name of science that I have an issue with. :)
 

uafan4life

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Your thread title and post content are fairly misleading - your thread title says that conservative people are less trusting of "science" while your post content says that conservative people are less trusting of the "scientific community."

Those are two different things.

I fully trust science - when it is purely science; when it is not politically motivated; when it is thoroughly tested, evaluated, and retested; when its methods and conclusions are consistent and transparent; and when its methods and results are both verifiable and repeatable. Anything that doesn't meet all of those criteria, in my mind, isn't really science.

There's a big difference between a scientific answer and a SWAG. There's also a big difference between reaching a scientific conclusion by thoroughly testing a theory/hypothesis multiple times from every conceivable angle while taking into account all conceivable variables versus merely agreeing with some preconceived "scientific" conclusion by setting out to prove a particular theory/hypothesis correct and then cherry picking only the tests/methods/results that favor that conclusion and then calling it proven.

A perfect example is one that commonly occurs with pharmaceutical companies. All they are really worried about is FDA approval. So, when they have a new drug ready to submit to the FDA they'll often submit it to two or three different FDA approved labs for "internal" testing, often citing the exact same drug as being different "versions" sent to each lab. They'll then pick the lab that gives them the friendliest results and submit the drug and lab test results to the FDA claiming that the "version" they're submitting is the one from that lab test, implying or outright saying that the other tests were different versions. The FDA will then use that cherry-picked lab test as a guideline for testing the drug. If the original lab completely missed something that was wrong with the drug then there's a decent chance the additional FDA testing will miss that problem as well. It doesn't matter if other "internal" testing had previously found that problem. If the final lab test and the additional FDA testing don't find it then the pharmaceutical company isn't necessarily liable, or at least not as liable as they should be, for the consequences of that defect. That's not science. That's gaming the system and taking shortcuts to get approval as quickly as possible.


It's really tantamount to rolling the dice or shaking the "Magic 8-Ball" over and over until it gives you an answer you want.
 
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Bodhisattva

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I fully trust science - when it is purely science; when it is not politically motivated; when it is thoroughly tested, evaluated, and retested; when its methods and conclusions are consistent and transparent; and when its methods and results are both verifiable and repeatable. Anything that doesn't meet all of those criteria, in my mind, isn't really science.

There's a big difference between a scientific answer and a SWAG. There's also a big difference between reaching a scientific conclusion by thoroughly testing a theory/hypothesis multiple times from every conceivable angle while taking into account all conceivable variables versus merely agreeing with some preconceived "scientific" conclusion by setting out to prove a particular theory/hypothesis correct and then cherry picking only the tests/methods/results that favor that conclusion and then calling it proven.
Well said.

It is only smart to be skeptical of things that have a government taint on it. Liberals, on the other hand, can't get enough of that Big Brother taint. :eek: ;)
 

swoop10

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Well said.

It is only smart to be skeptical of things that have a government taint on it. Liberals, on the other hand, can't get enough of that Big Brother taint. :eek: ;)
Taint? On a female body, isn't that the part between the..........oh never mind, I don't want to get in trouble here. ;)
 

SimplyTide

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Hard not to be less trustful of a scientific community that has to play politics with its research for funding.
 

selmaborntidefan

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"Against science" is the rhetoric of the left.

I'm not "against" gravity. It's a reproducible hypothesis now advanced beyond the stage of theory to law.

I'm not "against" the notion that when a sperm cell fertilizes an egg cell it results in life.

I'm not "against" the water cycle, and we can go on and on. For Pete's sake, I work in a clinical laboratory - I work with ACTUAL science every day.

But as I've noted here before:

1) We are gonna be in the next Ice Age by 2000 (I was told this in Illinois in 1979. The proof? We had a VERY bad winter that year).

2) Remember how AIDS was going to wipe out the USA? People who pointed out we did NOT have an epidemic (a 1:1 transfer) and NEVER WOULD were castigated back then as non-scientists for simply using our brains. (Remember how Magic Johnson was going to be dead "real soon?" Over 20 years ago?)

3) Swine flu - such a threat to everyone's health we can close the schools but - God forbid - can't close the border where the thing came from.

4) Dioxin - we close Times Beach, Missouri and then find out we overreacted

5) The Ozone Hole - notice how that one just kind of disappeared?

6) Piltdown Man

7) The Brontosaurus

And now we have "The Artist Formerly Known As Global Warming" (aka Climate Change). Ever try to follow one of those nuts in a conversation? They're equivocators of the highest order, moving the goal posts every single time you shoot down their nonsense. They START with temperature and then when you talk temperature they simply shift gears to climate change (which we've had for eons - they're called winter-spring-summer-fall). All the while they are nesting insults in their rhetoric about "people who know" as if they are some enlightened species from another planet.

You see this is SUPPOSED to be SCIENCE...not RELIGION!!! Yet they want to be publicly funded as science when they advocate religion.

Science: "The planet HAS WARMED a degree Centigrade over the last century.

Religion: "The planet is going to burn up in the next 50 years if (undefined) drastic measures are not taken (by others, of course).

I have nothing against science, but Al Gore has less of a science background than I - and he's the spokesman for the whole thing.

No, I don't trust ideological science. (Btw - left-wingers don't trust "conservative science" that says a child is 'alive' at conception - this is NOT a one-way street).
 

Tider@GW_Law

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Well said.

It is only smart to be skeptical of things that have a government taint on it. Liberals, on the other hand, can't get enough of that Big Brother taint. :eek: ;)
Care to venture a guess as to the percentage of medical breakthroughs directly attributable to NIH-funded foundational studies?

There's a lot of questions out there for which it is in the public's interest to find an answer and no cash-producing patent at the end of the rainbow to motivate private interests - and universities can't carry the torch alone.
 

Bama4Ever831

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Care to venture a guess as to the percentage of medical breakthroughs directly attributable to NIH-funded foundational studies?

There's a lot of questions out there for which it is in the public's interest to find an answer and no cash-producing patent at the end of the rainbow to motivate private interests - and universities can't carry the torch alone.
This. Add DoD, DoE, NSF, etc.
 

Bodhisattva

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Care to venture a guess as to the percentage of medical breakthroughs directly attributable to NIH-funded foundational studies?

There's a lot of questions out there for which it is in the public's interest to find an answer and no cash-producing patent at the end of the rainbow to motivate private interests - and universities can't carry the torch alone.
Heh. The guy who doesn't understand the private sector sees only solutions in government activity. What a surprise. Whatever non sequitur floats your boat, dude. Care to venture a guess at how many people with PhDs I know who work at NIH and tell me it's just like every other government bureaucracy with the way it wastes money?

Curiously, for the lefties, does one potential legitimate government activity trump the thousands of examples of fraud, waste and abuse by Big Brother? Sure seems that way.
 
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Bama_Dawg

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Isn't this about evolution? When dozens of scientific fields (genetics, biology, archaeology, etc.) are producing evidence that the world was not created the way the Bible says it was, the shortcut is to distrust science altogether.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of baby to throw out with that bath water.
 

gmart74

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cause when i think of science, i think of this goofy chick



got the link from drudge. i would link the article but it has comments so im sure their will be cusswords somewhere
 

Bodhisattva

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Isn't this about evolution? When dozens of scientific fields (genetics, biology, archaeology, etc.) are producing evidence that the world was not created the way the Bible says it was, the shortcut is to distrust science altogether.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of baby to throw out with that bath water.
I think it has been well established in this thread and previous ones that it's government-tainted science that is rightly distrusted, not the straw man pushed by the left.
 

Bama_Dawg

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I think it has been well established in this thread and previous ones that it's government-tainted science that is rightly distrusted, not the straw man pushed by the left.
So do you think conservatives are okay with the science behind evolution? Is that the straw man you're talking about? I'm not so sure. I was part of some of those no-holds-barred threads on TF and I can tell you that posts like "carbon dating is a lie!" were not exactly rare.
 

Bodhisattva

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So do you think conservatives are okay with the science behind evolution? Is that the straw man you're talking about? I'm not so sure. I was part of some of those no-holds-barred threads on TF and I can tell you that posts like "carbon dating is a lie!" were not exactly rare.
I'm not a conservative, so I can't speak for them. But, I'm a big believer in science and evolution and all that. I'm not a believer in Al Gore's fraud. That's the straw man I'm talking about.
 

Tidewater

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So do you think conservatives are okay with the science behind evolution? Is that the straw man you're talking about? I'm not so sure. I was part of some of those no-holds-barred threads on TF and I can tell you that posts like "carbon dating is a lie!" were not exactly rare.
I think you might be conflating conservatives with fundamentalist Christians. Two different things, in many cases.
I'm fairly conservative on most issues, but I do not believe that the Earth is 5,300 years old. A Supreme Being who would create a process like radioactive decay, and then change how it works once mankind discovered how to read and understand it would be a fairly malevolent Supreme Being.

On the topic of the opening post, if NOAA gives a research grant to a climate scientist to determine how fast global warming is happening, and tells him that if he comes back with a result that global warming is not happening, he will lose his grant, well, in such a case, I would not be surprised that the scientist brings back the result NOAA told him to bring back.
I am sceptical of scientists whose funding is tied to what results they return, whether the funders are coal companies or global warming scientists. Francis Bacon is probably spinning in his grave over what is going on with scientific research today.
 
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Bama_Dawg

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I'm not a conservative, so I can't speak for them. But, I'm a big believer in science and evolution and all that. I'm not a believer in Al Gore's fraud. That's the straw man I'm talking about.
I'll meet you halfway on Gore: he wants people to believe we're driving off a cliff when in fact we may just be driving into a ditch. Cross our fingers that temperatures start coming down over the next hundred years and do not, as they have in the past, correlate with global CO2 concentrations.

Still, while you may be the exception, I think you're underestimating the influence of Christianists on the anti-climate change crowd. Just to name a couple of high profile examples, you've got John Shimkus, the Republican congressman seeking the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who said that global warming isn't real because "God said the Earth would not be destroyed by a flood.” And then there's James Inhofe in Oklahoma who said the "arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous."

These are guys that a conservative electorate chose to represent them. And they distrust science because it threatens their theology.
 
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Bodhisattva

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I'll meet you halfway on Gore: he wants people to believe we're driving off a cliff when in fact we may just be driving into a ditch. Cross our fingers that temperatures start coming down over the next hundred years and do not, as they have in the past, correlate with global CO2 concentrations.

Still, while you may be the exception, I think you're underestimating the influence of Christianists on the anti-climate change crowd. Just to name a couple of high profile examples, you've got John Shimkus, the Republican congressman seeking the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who said that global warming isn't real because "God said the Earth would not be destroyed by a flood.” And then there's James Inhofe in Oklahoma who said the "arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous."

These are guys that a conservative electorate chose to represent them. And they distrust science because it threatens their theology.
I don't care for the Christian fundamentalist influence in politics at all. But, I consider their influence less offensive than the green activists who want to cripple this country with regulations that serve no purpose. Government cannot solve climate change. In my experience government can't even order copier toner efficiently. (Our solution was to order all new copiers once we ran out of toner. No joke.) This is not the crowd I want "solving" anything.
 

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