Posted on 03/30/2012 8:57:04 AM PDT by Qbert
As the Republican presidential race has shown, the conservatives who dominate the primaries are deeply skeptical of science -- making Newt Gingrich, for one, regret he ever settled onto a couch with Nancy Pelosi to chat about global warming.
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."
"That's a surprising finding," said the report's author, Gordon Gauchat, in an interview. He has a doctorate in sociology and is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
To highlight the impact conservative views of science have had on public opinion, Gauchat pointed to results from Gallup, which found in 2012 that just 30 percent of conservatives believed the Earth was warming as a result of greenhouse gases versus 50 percent two years earlier...
[Snip]
Chris Mooney, who wrote "The Republican War on Science," which Gauchat cites, agreed.
"If you think of the reasons behind this as nature versus nurture, all this would be nurture, that it was the product of the conservative movement," he said. "I think being educated is a proxy for people paying attention to politics, and when they do, they tune in to Fox News and blogs."
(Excerpt) Read more at heraldnet.com ...
"Chris Mooney, who wrote "The Republican War on Science," which Gauchat cites, agreed..."
Helpful hint to the LA Times: If you want to present the appearance of being heroic defenders of the truth against those eeeevil Republicans... you probably shouldn't be interviewing a guy who was busted a month ago for peddling a forged document purporting to show the Koch Brothers donating hundreds of thousands to the Heartland Institute for the express purpose of "dissuading teachers from teaching science"...
There is a HUGE difference between being skeptical of the work of individual scientists and being skeptical of science.
That’s got to be one of the dumbest titles I’ve seen in a while. Science should never be about faith. Science should be about unbiased results and skepticism.
I’ve lost faith in the ability of many scientists to do their jobs without bias.
We have lost faith in “scientists” with a political agenda.
Conservatives have lost faith in science...”
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Conservatives reject outright politicized “science”.
We’ve just lost faith with Big Science.
Crooked Lynx Hair Hoax Biologists BTTT
The “study” was even worse than that- apparently, it was only asking whether people had any confidence in those running various institutions:
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/139873/j
They blamed it on too many researchers chasing after too few dollars. That's nicer than saying present researchers are less capable and honest compared to their predecessors.
Perhaps it is because those “educated conservatives” know how science is supposed to function and what is being peddled for political purposes isn’t it.
Skepticism is a necessary part of science, but the only science that is taking place here is political science with an emphasis on mass psychology via propaganda.
It's over. Conservatives and most everyone else with a brain sees and understands what you're doing.
Quit peeing in our community pool of knowledge!
Get back to scientific integrity and the basics: theory and rigorous testing via the scientific method, published results and vigorous debate, instead of "The science is settled" bullsh1t we have sunk to!
Einstein’s theory that gravity bends light provides a beautiful example of how science should work. He published his paper and waited for others to prove or disprove it.
Today we know its a fact and we even use gravitational lensing in astronomy.
It isn't a republican who is asking us to believe, despite abundant empirical evidence to the contrary, that the earth must be warming due to human activity when there is, in fact, no actual warming going on for at least 15 years.
Who's anti-science?
Wrong again MSM. It’s POLITICAL SCIENCE we have lost faith in. And we have also lost faith in the SOCIALIST DEMOCRAT REAR END LICKERS INFESTED IN THE MSM.
The "scientists" who continue to perpetrate the "global warming" scam approach their science in exactly the opposite manner as the approach described above. They formulated a theory based on political correctness (as well as the path of least resistance to "grant" money) and then did whatever they had to do with their data to "prove" it.
What the world has now seen with the expose of the "global warming" scam puts a new spin on the old saying: "Figures can lie and liars can figure." The discipline of science has taken a massive hit over the past two-plus years (Climategat I, November 2009; Climategate II, Novemeber 2011) and it could take many more years for science - - and scientists - - to begin to regain credibility with the public. A lot of that burden must fall on honest scientists, and the first and most important thing they must do is scream for the heads of Michael Mann, Phil Jones, and the rest of the fraudsters masquerading as "scientists". I guess we'll see if they have the guts, integrity and self-respect to speak up loudly... No, I am not holding my breath.
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Clearly, we need to do something about "climate change", and fast!
"Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve... The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality."
Newsweek: The Cooling World (April 28, 1975)
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From the original "climate change" scam, the one known as "global cooling".
Meet the new corrupt alarmists, same as the old corrupt alarmists.
Some student reviews of Professor Gordon Gauchat (overall grade 2.13/4):
“he is always unprepared, disorganized, and biased in favor of liberals he changes due dates, nervously sweats when he teaches, and does not even seem to know the subject matter...”
“Overall.. He sucks.. Point blank. He’s terribly unorganized. He never knows when he wants assignments to be handed in and changes the due date frequently..”
“Would not recommend this professor”
“Lacks enthusiasm in the classroom
Poor sense of humor”
I’ve lost faith in junk science. Like anthropomorphic global warming, for example.
As a conservative scientist, I myself have lost confidence in science as it is practiced nowadays. Once, Physics was free of the political shenanigans common to the social ‘sciences’, but the global warming shenanigans have stained even physics.
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