This is where distrust of science really comes from

[Perspicuo]

The Washington Post: This is where distrust of science really comes from — and it’s not just your politics
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...ly-comes-from-and-its-not-just-your-politics/

Nearly every week, it seems, we get a new survey or study correlating people’s ideological beliefs with their views on science. Thus, we know that conservatives are more likely to doubt climate change and evolution, liberals are more likely to distrust nuclear power, and that both political camps include anti-vaccine minorities. Research also tells us that left-wing sociologists distrust attempts to explain many aspects of human behavior by invoking our evolutionary history.

[...]

A new paper, published in the journal Social Forces by sociologist Gordon Gauchat of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, goes much further in this regard. And what did it find? That to simply claim that conservatives distrust science, or that liberals love it, doesn’t really explain much at all.

So why do people’s responses to these questions vary? That’s where it gets interesting.

On a first look at the data, Gauchat found [...]

“The ‘direct effect’ of liberal-conservative orientation is spurious once the distinct belief systems that underlie those identifications are accounted for,” wrote Gauchat.

What did they find? Follow the link... down the rabbit hole...

 

[ronburgundy]

The Washington Post: This is where distrust of science really comes from — and it’s not just your politics
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...ly-comes-from-and-its-not-just-your-politics/

So why do people’s responses to these questions vary? That’s where it gets interesting.

On a first look at the data, Gauchat found [...]

“The ‘direct effect’ of liberal-conservative orientation is spurious once the distinct belief systems that underlie those identifications are accounted for,” wrote Gauchat.

What did they find? Follow the link... down the rabbit hole...

Oy! This article itself is why people should distrust science reporting, because its sloppy and done by idiots who know nothing about science.

They misuse regression to explain away political orientation effects with other variables like religious fundamentalism and authoritarianism.
Religiosity and authoritarianism are defining aspects of what a "conservative orientation" means in the US. A mountain of other research already shows that.
So, "controlling" for these variables is like explaining away the effect of an cylinder's mass on water displacement by adding variables like height and circumference.

To be fair to the journalist, the researcher himself doesn't seem to grasp this. Hopefully the full research article has more valid analyses to offer.

 

[skepticalbip]

It is difficult to tell from the journalist’s interpretation of the study but it seems that the study accepted some fundamentally erroneous beliefs. One being that conservatives are religious and liberals are not. If we assume that the Republican party represents conservatism and the Democratic party represents liberalism that assumption is flawed. The black population in the US is overwhelmingly religious and overwhelmingly liberal. Also the majority of both US Catholics and US Jews are liberal. The only way that it seems that the assumption is applicable is that if the study is defining religious as evangelical Christian (a quite small percentage of the population) but possibly not even then as there are a lot of black evangelical Christians.

Another fundamental error seems to be in what the study assumes as acceptance of science. Both liberals and conservatives accept what they think is science (a lot of which is pseudoscience) and reject good hard science. They just accept different pseudoscience “studies” and reject different science studies.

ETA:
But to address the basic question of where the distrust of science comes from. It comes from ignorance of science and the scientific method. This crosses all religious, ethnic, or political lines. Any method of dividing the public into groups to determine the question would seem to be flawed with biased results unless the division was made between those who have studied and understand science and the scientific method and those who haven't.

 

[ronburgundy]

It is difficult to tell from the journalist’s interpretation of the study but it seems that the study accepted some fundamentally erroneous beliefs. One being that conservatives are religious and liberals are not.

Social conservatives are much more religious than social liberals.

If we assume that the Republican party represents conservatism and the Democratic party represents liberalism that assumption is flawed.
The black population in the US is overwhelmingly religious and overwhelmingly liberal.

Democratic party affiliation does not represent liberalism in the same way for different racial groups. In particular, blacks are conservative on most social issues, and closer to white tea partiers than to white liberals. They are also more anti-science than whites Democrats, which supports the ideas that religiosity, social conservatism, and anti-science views tend to go together. Blacks vote Dem for economic reasons and criminal justice reasons. They are only about 1/5th of the Dem party and have minimal impact upon science-relevant policy positions of the party.

Also the majority of both US Catholics and US Jews are liberal.

Yes, but most liberal Catholics and Jews in the US are not very religious beyond refusing to give up the superficial label. In terms of actual beliefs and religious observance, they are borderline agnostics.

Another fundamental error seems to be in what the study assumes as acceptance of science. Both liberals and conservatives accept what they think is science (a lot of which is pseudoscience) and reject good hard science.

The study seems to acknowledge that many liberals do reject some science. However, religion serves as a major anti-science force because it makes so many unscientific claims and at an basic epistemology level, faith is the very anti-thesis of the scientific method. Thus, the greater religiosity of social conservatives makes them more at odds with more science and more likely to think that faith is a legit alternative to reason. This is true even on moral issues, such as their desire to paint homosexuality as a moral failing requires that it be a "choice" and not biological.

 

[fromderinside]

Social conservatives are much more religious than social liberals.

If we assume that the Republican party represents conservatism and the Democratic party represents liberalism that assumption is flawed.
The black population in the US is overwhelmingly religious and overwhelmingly liberal.

Democratic party affiliation does not represent liberalism in the same way for different racial groups. In particular, blacks are conservative on most social issues, and closer to white tea partiers than to white liberals. They are also more anti-science than whites Democrats, which supports the ideas that religiosity, social conservatism, and anti-science views tend to go together. Blacks vote Dem for economic reasons and criminal justice reasons. They are only about 1/5th of the Dem party and have minimal impact upon science-relevant policy positions of the party.

Also the majority of both US Catholics and US Jews are liberal.

Yes, but most liberal Catholics and Jews in the US are not very religious beyond refusing to give up the superficial label. In terms of actual beliefs and religious observance, they are borderline agnostics.

Another fundamental error seems to be in what the study assumes as acceptance of science. Both liberals and conservatives accept what they think is science (a lot of which is pseudoscience) and reject good hard science.

The study seems to acknowledge that many liberals do reject some science. However, religion serves as a major anti-science force because it makes so many unscientific claims and at an basic epistemology level, faith is the very anti-thesis of the scientific method. Thus, the greater religiosity of social conservatives makes them more at odds with more science and more likely to think that faith is a legit alternative to reason. This is true even on moral issues, such as their desire to paint homosexuality as a moral failing requires that it be a "choice" and not biological.

Science in the political weal is, by definition, pseudoscience. Once that is settled there is really no discussion about science is there.