Mike wrote:
"Overwhelming percentages of scientists working in basic (91%) and applied research (81%) cite federal government sources as among the most important in their specialty, as do more than eight-in-ten across all scientific disciplines."
I'm not sure how one ignores the fact that the vast majority of scientists depend on a continual stream of government money.
Well, the vast majority of scientists don't depend on government money, but AAAS scientists may well.
The poll was no doubt way short on scientists in industry. Most industrial scientists I know get no strokes for being aware of what is going on in every other branch of science and hence don't regularly read Science and are not AAAS members.
The petroleum industry alone, where I worked, very likely has more than the 130 000 scientists who belong to AAAS. On the basis of long familiarity I believe they're rather more conservative than the Pew sample.
Don
----- Original Message -----
From: Schwarzwald<mailto:schwarzwald@gmail.com>
To: asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 10:20 PM
Subject: Re: [asa] Scientists, Religion, and Politics
Heya Mike,
As I said, I have no idea whether this complaint is valid nor have I dug into it too deeply. Just repeating a common complaint I see floating around that I thought may be of interest. I don't even know what proportion of scientists at large join the AAAS. (Or even what definition of "scientist" Pew was using. I wonder if psychologists and economists count? They do mention social sciences & policy, so I'd assume so.)
Reading through the poll, what mostly stands out to me is the tremendous representation of those from the "biological/medical" discipline. 51%, with the next closest being chemistry at 14%. Along with the number employed by a university/college. Neither of those are necessarily criticisms of the poll, mind you - just "huh, interesting".
On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 12:33 AM, Nucacids <nucacids@wowway.com<mailto:nucacids@wowway.com>> wrote:
Lame complaint. It's common for many scientists to join AAAS, the largest general scientific society, just to get their subscription to Science. There is no evidence to think AAAS members are any different from non-AAAS members.
Mike
----- Original Message -----
From: Schwarzwald<mailto:schwarzwald@gmail.com>
To: asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 12:00 AM
Subject: Re: [asa] Scientists, Religion, and Politics
Incidentally, with regards to the original poll: One complaint I'm hearing is that Pew didn't poll scientists generally, but specifically members of the AAAS. Which is apparently a rather politically active organization? I honestly am not too familiar with them, but I thought those of us who read the poll with interest may want to check up on this and decide for themselves if it taints the poll in any way.
On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 9:38 PM, Freeman, Louise Margaret <lfreeman@mbc.edu<mailto:lfreeman@mbc.edu>> wrote:
Well put, Randy. My pastor was preaching on Romans 3:4 "God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar" last week and made an anti-evolution dig, asking "how often do we hear of man's scientific wisdom changing?" I sometimes wonder if pastors would understand this better if scientists called new theories "reformations?"
__
Louise M. Freeman, PhD
Psychology Dept
Mary Baldwin College
Staunton, VA 24401
540-887-7326
FAX 540-887-7121
-----Original Message-----
From: "Randy Isaac" <randyisaac@comcast.net<mailto:randyisaac@comcast.net>>
To: <asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>>
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:08:46 -0400
Subject: Re: [asa] Scientists, Religion, and Politics
That's fair enough, Don, as far as it goes, but I think we need a more complete picture to understand what this person was saying about conservatism in scientists. Indeed, breaking new ground and having innovative ideas is the essence of science. That's just the ticket to get in and play. Conservatism is not rejecting new ideas, it is the rigorous and strict adherence to the discipline of scientific methodology. In other words, coming up with new ideas isn't the hardest part, it's figuring out which new idea correctly explains the world around us and convincing the scientific community that this new idea is right. That takes a heap of hard-core conservatism--how you carefully prepared your samples according to time-tested methods, how you meticulously avoided all contamination, how you set up the experiment to differentiate all other possibilities, etc., etc. And until you convince the community that you did it all correctly, and they independently reproduce it all, it's just another firecracker in the air.
Unfortunately, too often the innovative spirits who claim to have better knowledge than the broader scientific community--be it the young age of the earth, opposition to global warming, the shortcomings of evolution, or whatever--forget the core conservatism that makes science work. One must do the hard work of sound scientific methodology and convince the scientific community that it was done it correctly. Until then, those ideas are wannabe's. They may be right in the long run and, if so, the scientific community will figure it out sooner or later, but it is highly unlikely. No, claiming that the scientific community is biased and simply refuses to listen to these superior ideas doesn't wash. That's a copout and a refusal to do the really hard and thorough scientific work.
Conservatism in science means having clear, core values and rigorous methodology for accepting new ideas into the scientific community.
Randy
----- Original Message -----
From: Don Winterstein<mailto:dfwinterstein@msn.com>
To: asa<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 12:26 AM
Subject: Re: [asa] Scientists, Religion, and Politics
My two cents' worth:
The very nature of scientists' work is to challenge authority, the received "truth," and replace it with deductions from carefully measured data. One of a scientist's joys is proving an accepted theory incomplete or wrong.
The root meaning of conservatism has to do with opposing change and preserving the ways of the past. Religions also impose from on high, declare truth on the basis of "authority."
Hence a scientist who's immersed in his work and allows its methods to reach into the rest of his life will tend to challenge and oppose both standard versions of religious truth and conventional ways of living and governing.
The fact that scientists as kids often don't fit in probably contributes to the phenomenon.
Don
----- Original Message -----
From: Randy Isaac<mailto:randyisaac@comcast.net>
To: asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2009 9:01 AM
Subject: Re: [asa] Scientists, Religion, and Politics
I recall that when I was in graduate school, oh so long ago, someone on the
faculty made the comment that scientists tended to be more liberal in
politics to counter their need to be so conservative in their science. I'm
not sure if there's any evidence for a human being to need a balance of
liberalism and conservatism in one's life, but it's an observation that
stuck with me.
Randy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ted Davis" < TDavis@messiah.edu<mailto:TDavis@messiah.edu>>
To: "asa" < asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>>; "Merv Bitikofer" < mrb22667@kansas.net<mailto:mrb22667@kansas.net>>;
"Nucacids" <nucacids@wowway.com<mailto:nucacids@wowway.com>>
Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2009 11:17 AM
Subject: Re: [asa] Scientists, Religion, and Politics
> Polls of this sort are never easy to interpret with much confidence. What
> polls have shown consistently for many years is that academics (including
> scientists) are far more "liberal" both politically and religiously than
> the general American population. That is a generalization, obviously, and
> any given academic or scientist can be a right-wing atheist, a left-wing
> Christian, or any other combination you can imagine.
>
> The reasons for this are not really clear to me, but even 60 years ago it
> was probably true that a large majority of leading physicists (confining
> my comments to physicists, since they are based on what I know anecdotally
> about the Manhattan Project) were very liberal politically and mainly
> irreligious. Some, like Oppenheimer, had considered Communism very
> seriously (his wife was the genuine article), and a few even worked
> covertly for the Soviets (American versions of Klaus Fuchs), as documented
> extensively by the new book, "Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in
> America," based mainly on Soviet archives that became available briefly
> several years ago.
>
> I won't try even to guess at the reasons for this type of demographic, but
> I think it would not be too hard to refute a trivial conclusion that
> intelligence results in liberal political views and religious scepticism.
> Plenty of corporate executives, attorneys, and other folk are also highly
> intelligent, and the demographics among them are probably not similar to
> those among academics and scientists. People in all walks of life tend to
> encourage and empower people who think similarly to themselves, and
> similarities of beliefs in these areas are surely part of that. As
> someone from a top research university once said to me, "places like [the
> university of X] don't hire people from places like Messiah."
>
> Ted
>
>
>
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