How do you explain the current factual and scientific divide that separates the two U.S. political parties today? In the latest American Prospect, I’ve taken a stab.

The explanation isn’t simple–there are many moving parts–but also some key fundamentals: 1) Democrats have vastly more Ph.D.s and experts, and seem to be more factually correct about contested issues; 2) Republicans nevertheless have enough of their own experts and aren’t giving up; 3) neither Democrats nor Republicans are inherently anti-science or anti-expertise, but they rely on these for very different reasons, and do not both share the “Enlightenment ethic” of using science and reason to forge a better society; 4) all this is set against a rightward shifting political backdrop since about 1970; 5) all of the foregoing, in combination with psychology and media, leave us with a “postmodern” discourse that helps nobody.  Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness,” writ large.

Anyway, that’s the very, very brief rundown. Here’s how the piece opens:

In March, it was Kerry Emanuel’s turn to do what so many of his colleagues have done before: defend their knowledge and expertise against congressional Republicans. (more…)

In the comments here, we’ve been discussing this April “neuropolitics” study in Current Biology, which was supported by the actor Colin Firth and actually lists him as a co-author. Another celeb science fan, one supposes.

Anyway, it finds that in a sample of 90 young British men and women, the liberals and the conservatives tended to have somewhat different brain structures in brain scans. Conservatives had more gray matter in the amygdala, and liberals had more in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). The authors weren’t shy about speculating as to what this means:

We speculate that the association of gray matter volume of the amygdala and anterior cingulate cortex with political attitudes that we observed may reflect emotional and cognitive traits of individuals that influence their inclination to certain political orientations. For example, our findings are consistent with the proposal that political orientation is associated with psychological processes for managing fear and uncertainty. The amygdala has many functions, including fear processing. Individuals with a large amygdala are more sensitive to fear, which, taken together with our findings, might suggest the testable hypothesis that individuals with larger
amygdala are more inclined to integrate conservative views into their belief system…. (more…)

by Jon Winsor

No surprise, but Rick Santorum appeared on Rush Limbaugh today and made an effort to scoop up Mitt’s lost support:

The argument is a familiar kind, which I’ll have more to say about in the coming days:

“To me this is an opportunity for the left to create — it’s really a beautifully concocted scheme because they know that the earth is gonna cool and warm. It’s been on a warming trend so they said, ‘Oh, let’s take advantage of that and say that we need the government to come in and regulate your life some more because it’s getting warmer.’”

“It’s just an excuse for more government control of your life…”

H/T: TPMDC

From globalwarming.org, a climate “skeptic” site, I find this very interesting piece entitled the “Democrat War on Science,” by William Yeatman. It attempts to us some of my own themes from The Republican War on Science and flip them so that they cut against the Obama administration–e.g., it released reports that violated peer review standards, it suppressed agency scientist dissent, it put out bad information. Based on three alleged examples, one from each category, the piece concludes:

If there’s a “Republican war on science,” then there is also a “Democrat war on science.” In fact, science is politicized and manipulated by both political parties. It’s what politicians do in order to achieve political ends. To put it another way, if you think that American elected officials give priority to the purity of science over political ideology, and not vice-versa, then I’d like to introduce you to a wealthy Nigerian friend who needs help moving millions of dollars from his homeland and who promises a hefty percentage of his fortune for assisting him.

Honestly, it’s a noble attempt. However, to really make the argument stick, you would need the following: 1) more fully documented case studies; 2) more clearly valid case studies; 3) crassness–e.g., the administration is doing this stuff blatantly and not apologizing; 4) a strong explanatory framework–e.g., what is the ideology driving this?

I think that with the Obama administration, you will certainly find mistakes and things that probably shouldn’t have happened, but I seriously doubt you will satisfy all of these criteria. (more…)

This is a guest post by Jamie L. Vernon, Ph.D., an HIV research scientist and aspiring policy wonk, who recently moved to D.C. to get a taste of the action

The Pontifical Academy of Science,  the Vatican’s non-denominational science panel, has declared that global action on climate change must be undertaken in order to avoid “serious and potentially irreversible impacts of global warming caused by the anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases…”  These warnings are part of a report entitled “Fate of Mountain Glaciers in the Anthropocene.”  The report was released along with a public address.  The statement urges,

“all nations to develop and implement, without delay, effective and fair policies to reduce the causes and impacts of climate change on communities and ecosystems, including mountain glaciers and their watersheds, aware that we all live in the same home.” [Read the entire statement]

But, will this appeal to the people of the world make a difference? That is a difficult question for which I am not equipped to respond.

Will it have an impact on American policy?  Sadly, I will argue, no, it will not have a major effect on the proceedings within our government on policies related to global warming.

Here’s why. (more…)

This is a guest post by David Ng, a science literacy academic at the Michael Smith Laboratories of the University of British Columbia.

In case you missed it, last night saw the Canada election deliver a Conservative majority. It was an interesting and historic vote for a variety of reasons, but the bottom line is that now the Harper government is in a position to do pretty much as it pleases, given its position of majority power in both the House of Commons and the Canadian Senate.

As is the norm for any democratic action, this is good and bad depending on your perspective and ideals. Those who make their homes in the business or economic front generally see the result as a positive; whereas those who value fairness, ethical government practices, and social issues tend to look upon the election as a daunting and frustrating setback. In this mix, however, is the scientific point of view. And speaking as a Canadian scientist, I want to use this space to make the case that all things being considered, this is a fundamentally bad moment in history for Canadian science.

To do this, let’s access how the Harper government (not the “Government of Canada” as it was once officially called) has performed so far (in the science context anyway). (more…)

It’s quite the irony. In his contrarian report entitled “Climate Shift”–a report Joe Romm and Robert Brulle have seriously challenged–Matthew Nisbet claims that falsely “balanced” coverage of climate change is no longer a problem. Huh. Then in chapter 4 of the report, Nisbet goes on to provide falsely “balanced” coverage of an issue I happen to know a lot about:

During the Bush administration, many scientists mobilized in response to what they perceived as attempts by the administration to control the public statements of government scientists and to interfere with the conclusions of government reports. This debate received heavy attention at science-related blogs, from science journalists and via several top-selling books.

Here Nisbet is referring to me–although not by name. But note the language: “many scientists mobilized in response to what they perceived as attempts by the administration to control the public statements….” Actually, all these things were extensively documented (see below). There is no “perceived”; these are facts. Why is Nisbet applying phony balance to them? (more…)

Over at Mother Jones, I have a major feature story that just went up about the psychology of science denial–and, indeed, denial in general. In it, I unpack a theory called “motivated reasoning,” which political psychologists have used to explain all manner of divides over factual, resolvable issues. Motivated reasoning is, in many ways, the updated, neuroscience infused version of “cognitive dissonance”:

The theory of motivated reasoning builds on a key insight of modern neuroscience (PDF): Reasoning is actually suffused with emotion (or what researchers often call “affect”). Not only are the two inseparable, but our positive or negative feelings about people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts, in a matter of milliseconds—fast enough to detect with an EEG device, but long before we’re aware of it. That shouldn’t be surprising: Evolution required us to react very quickly to stimuli in our environment. It’s a “basic human survival skill,” explains political scientist Arthur Lupia of the University of Michigan. We push threatening information away; we pull friendly information close. We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but to data itself.

We’re not driven only by emotions, of course—we also reason, deliberate. But reasoning comes later, works slower—and even then, it doesn’t take place in an emotional vacuum. Rather, our quick-fire emotions can set us on a course of thinking that’s highly biased, especially on topics we care a great deal about.

Consider a person who has heard about a scientific discovery that deeply challenges her belief in divine creation—a new hominid, say, that confirms our evolutionary origins. What happens next, explains political scientist Charles Taber of Stony Brook University, is a subconscious negative response to the new information—and that response, in turn, guides the type of memories and associations formed in the conscious mind. “They retrieve thoughts that are consistent with their previous beliefs,” says Taber, “and that will lead them to build an argument and challenge what they’re hearing.”

In other words, when we think we’re reasoning, we may instead be rationalizing. Or to use an analogy offered by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt: We may think we’re being scientists, but we’re actually being lawyers (PDF). Our “reasoning” is a means to a predetermined end—winning our “case”—and is shot through with biases. They include “confirmation bias,” in which we give greater heed to evidence and arguments that bolster our beliefs, and “disconfirmation bias,” in which we expend disproportionate energy trying to debunk or refute views and arguments that we find uncongenial.

I then apply the theory to climate denial, vaccine denial, creationism, and much else–including the persistence of political misinformation, such as the belief that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Again, you can read the Mother JOnes piece here. I’ll have much more to say about it soon. I also unpack the implications a bit further over at DeSmogBlog.

I’ve been blogging less, traveling more, and taking on some exciting new responsibilities which I’ll be sharing soon. But in the mean time, I’d like to point readers to the work of my brilliant friend and former colleague Michael Conathan. He’s sharp, articulate, and has tremendous experience working on U.S. oceans policy. In 2006 when I served in Senator Bill Nelson’s office, Mike was the Knauss Sea Grant Fellow on the Senate Commerce Committee. Perhaps our greatest accomplishment that year was contributing to the long-overdue reauthorization of the Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act–the primary law governing marine fisheries management in the U.S.

Michael recently joined the Center for American Progress as the the Director of Ocean Policy and they are very lucky to have him on board. He’s also writing a terrific column called Fish on Fridays which I’ve been following over the past weeks. Here’s a sample from March 11 entitled Waking from the Gluttony:

A strong case can be made that fishing is America’s oldest profession. Europeans were using parts of what is now Atlantic Canada as seasonal fish camps as far back as the early 15th century—even before Columbus confused the Caribbean for the shores of India.

Many fisheries scientists were sure there was no way humans could make a dent in the seemingly endless abundance of fish in the ocean as late as the middle of the 20th century. But our fishing industries were already well on their way to proving them wrong. It now seems that the problems facing our fisheries are as plentiful as cod once were on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland and throughout the Gulf of Maine.

We now live in a world where overfishing is far too prevalent. To stem this tide, regulators impose tighter and tighter restrictions on fishermen,* in the face of fundamental disagreements among harvesters, regulators, and conservationists about how many is too many.

Read on..

Our oceans are in real trouble and we critically need experts like Michael who understand more than the biology and trophic interactions beneath the surface. He notably includes the people and policy, as well as the science and has the experience on and off the Hill to be practical toward progress. In short, I encourage everyone to make Fish on Fridays part of their weekly reading. These columns are also posted at Climate Progress where you can participate in the comment threads.

I was just reading an interesting study on the politics of intellectuals and postgraduates, and one figure leapt out at me:

The number of graduate and professional degree students grew at a rate of about four percent per year over the past decade (Bell 2010), and data from the General Social Survey (GSS) show the percentage of American adults with advanced degrees has more than doubled since the 1970s, reaching just over 9 percent in 2008.

On Point of Inquiry in February, I somewhat jokingly asked Dan Kahan–who has documented how everybody thinks the experts supports their point of view–whether the problem isn’t simply that there are so damn many experts out there now that you can find one willing to say anything. These data would seem to support the contention, at least with regard to the growing number of experts.

Don’t get me wrong–I know it is very good for our society, in a myriad of ways, to have highly trained, smart people running around. However, I wonder whether one by-product is that it is easier to politicize science, because it is easier to find someone very smart who is willing to argue some strange contrarian position in a very convincing way–and indeed, may even pay the bills by doing so.