When Timmy comes home from school and says “today in biology class we learned (that the father determines the sex of the child/that humans evolved from other animals)”, do his parents:
1) Say “that’s interesting, son, I didn’t know that”? Or,
2) Say “that’s a lie, son” and call the principle to complain?

I suspect that one of the possible hypotheticals leans more towards option 2 than the other.

Now, I suspect that liberals have some of the second kind of ignorance, too, particularly in the issues relating to chemicals and radiation. But it would be dishonest to ignore the difference.

On the other hand, many liberals have denounced scientific findings on such issues as gender differences, the law of supply and demand, and the fact that AIDS was never a threat to spread to the heterosexual population. When science leads to uncomfortable policy implications, it’s natural for people to lash out at the science. It unfortunately happens on both sides.

Apart from those exceptions, it is remarkable how weak the liberal/conservative distinction is on science. Very little of the variance is explained by nature of political ideology as opposed to having a political ideology. It isn’t clear that the differences are statistically significant.

that’s why i try and be transparent so people can double check.

nevertheless, i would rather work with quantitative data than verbal stuff, cuz it is least least more transparent and biases are more quickly smoked out.

also, i think to post on stuff that goes against my normative preferences. e.g., conservatives are stupider than liberals, etc., to consciously compensate for unconscious bias. this of course means that conservatives think i’m a liberal, just as liberals think i’m exhibiting conservative bias when i report something unfavorable to their own self-worth.

1) i assumed you’d misread the title and skimmed too quickly. the title was a ‘cute’ take off on chris mooney’s ‘republican war on science.’

2) no, the post isn’t just about conservatives or liberals. the biggest conclusion is that these sorts of correlations emerge out of *demographic* correlates. though again, i generally like to throw out data without too much interpretation.

3) you should still read a post closely enough not to mistakenly impute something which isn’t there if you are going to comment on the post. at least on my blog.

@Mike #7. Agreed. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t succumb to bias occasionally; we’re all human after all.

@Pablo #9. I was going to ask why you started your comment in reply to mine at #6 by saying, “Republicans are not the same as conservatives.” Rereading my post, I don’t see the word “republican” anywhere – I used conservative throughout. Then I read Razib’s reply at #15, and I carefully re-read his post. I think that if there is confusion, Razib has contributed to it by entitling his post “The Republican Fluency with Science”, then using GSS data about conservatives to illustrate his point. Other than that, I have no issue with anything you’ve said; I tend to be against categorizing all liberals, all moderates or all conservatives as one type of person (e.g., lefty loony new-ager, vs. dumb know-nothing who cares about nothing so they don’t have an opinion about anything, vs. bible-thumping fundamentalist who believes the Flintstones were based on a true story). I don’t like that kind of categorization, and within each group there will be a range of “informedness”, intelligence, etc., etc.

@Chris #10. Yeah, I thought when I wrote that sentence that I was going to get nailed on that. I call Poe on myself. I had hoped that putting quotes around “open minded” would be clear enough to indicate my sarcasm about being “open minded” about astrology. So let me be clear about my attitude. Astrology does not work. Those who believe so are deluding themselves.

@Razib #15. Re-reading your post, I’ll agree that your only conclusion is that moderates as a class score poorer on science questions than either liberals or conservatives. I find your choice of title for this post skewed the perception of the post itself. If your post is about conservatives vs. liberals on the scientific fluency scale, than titling it “The Republican Fluency With Science” is unintentionally confusing or misleading at best.

“Republicans, in the data above, scored lower on the question pertaining to evolution. That suggests, I think, that Republicans either a) are bad at biology, or b) master only the scientific knowledge that pertain to their ideological interests, and can be used to support those interests.”

It is clear that Republicans only give such answers on certain specific topics, while showing a good scientific understanding on many others. It seems likely, therefore, that they probably understand the science of evolution or climate change as well as most laymen understand any scientific subject, but that to take the step from understanding up to belief they are using different criteria. They may simply be setting different – and higher – standards of evidence for issues that conflict with prior beliefs and knowledge. In a Bayesian sense, they evaluate the evidence the same way, but start with different priors.

I have found as many cases of basic misunderstanding of evolution in non-scientist proponents for the theory as in those against. But because the proponents for happen to get the right answer by the wrong method, they count as “more scientific”.

That’s why I consider it essential when testing scientific literacy to not use a simple list of scientific facts which one either knows or believes, but to check whether they understand. Do they understand scientific principles and methods? Scientific ways of thinking? It is a completely different issue.

liberals 6.32-6.14
moderates 5.89-5.76
conservatives 6.25-6.10

10 = perfect. conservatives and libs overlap on 95th percent interval. moderates do not. they be dumb

dumbasses can not read. lol. for the morons who don’t bother to read the post, i did not say anything about conservatives understanding science better than liberals or moderates. i did imply moderates don’t understand as well though.

You seem to have some problems with semantic logic.

fair enough. i was being colloquial.

Similarly, “all man-made chemicals do not cause cancer” is not the same as “not all man-made chemicals cause cancer”.

The survey seems to have gotten it right, but you didn’t.

Republicans, in the data above, scored lower on the question pertaining to evolution. That suggests, I think, that Republicans either a) are bad at biology, or b) master only the scientific knowledge that pertain to their ideological interests, and can be used to support those interests. The proponents of Intelligent Design often express skepticism about ‘the theory of evolution,’ and like to emphasize that it is ‘just a theory.’ I doubt that the Republicans who generally know their science well are ‘dumber’ in this one regard – rather, I’d suggest that they are expressing a skepticism that may be particular to their ideological backgrounds.

I don’t think this suffices as a general explanation of the data, but I do wonder whether there are epistemological factors at play.

Those are good questions.

The most honest answer is that GEOs (genetically engineered organisms) are not guaranteed to be safe, but neither are non-GEOs. There is a potential risk with any food. Wild plants have evolved ways to prevent herbivores eating them – the plants that do this best survive to breed – and poisoning predators is an effective method. 99.9% of all the pesticides you eat are entirely natural, produced by the plant itself, and are continually evolving still. (You know how fast pests evolve pesticide resistance…)

And virtually all the food products you eat today are “genetically modified”, by selective breeding compared to their wild ancestors – which is itself not an absolutely safe process. Selective breeding consists of throwing genes together at random and seeing what happens, picking out those that look better. (Did you know that carrots are not naturally orange? There’s an interesting story behind that…) With genetic engineering, you do at least have some idea of what it does and how it works.

There have been a few cases of plant breeders selecting food crops for disease resistance, without at first realising that the plant achieved this by loading its flesh with toxins. The problem was quickly recognised and the plants withdrawn, but only because it was so extreme. (Celery pickers got chemical burns on their hands from picking them.) If there are long-term, cumulative effects of some of these natural pesticides, nobody would necessarily notice. (Although in a few cases, such effects are known.) This requires testing, and as a rule, genetically engineered plants are the most thoroughly safety-tested foods you can get. They are much safer than selectively bred plants, which in turn are much safer than wild, “natural” species.

If producers of natural vegetables had to list the natural chemical ingredients on the label, like they do for the artificially added ones, people might have a better understanding.