Re: [asa] American political conservatism impedes the understanding of science

> Science magazine has just published a graph of data taken from a
> general social survey of Americans that quantifies what most of us
> assume: a well-educated liberal who is not a fundamentalist is much
> more likely to accept evolution than a conservative fundamentalist
> with only a high school education. You can see the trend fairly
> clearly: here we see the percent believing in evolution vs.
> fundamentalism, amount of education, and self-reported political
> views.

This shows correlation, but the cause cannot be identified from the
data. Does the leftist reputation of higher education prevent some
conservatives from pursuing it? How is fundamentalism defined?
Evolution is important, but what about any other areas of science?

> "American political conservatism impedes the understanding of science"

draws unsupported conclusions about the cause. While I do see clear
examples of bad science being promoted by certain political
conservatives, notably in the current administration, this does not
prove that all conservatism is detrimental to science nor that
liberalism is necessarily good for it.

In particular, political and theological liberalism, by tying
scientific issues into their politics/theology (often with some
distortion of the science), are often a major reason for conservative
hostility to the science. E.g., Dawkins is one of the best arguments
against evolution.

-- 
Dr. David Campbell
425 Scientific Collections
University of Alabama
"I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams"
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