{"id":39770,"date":"2011-09-24T10:00:17","date_gmt":"2011-09-24T15:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=39770"},"modified":"2011-11-11T09:51:55","modified_gmt":"2011-11-11T14:51:55","slug":"are-both-political-parties-science-skeptics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/09\/24\/are-both-political-parties-science-skeptics\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Both Political Parties Science Skeptics?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Cross-posted at <a href=\"http:\/\/montclairsoci.blogspot.com\/2011\/09\/false-equivalence.html\" target=\"_blank\">Montclair SocioBlog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Do Democrats and Republicans have a similar lack of respect for science?\u00a0 Alex Berezow seems to think so.\u00a0 The title of his\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/news\/opinion\/forum\/story\/2011-09-20\/gop-democrats-science-evolution-vaccine\/50482856\/1\">op-ed in USA Today<\/a> is \u201cGOP might be anti-science, but so are Democrats.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I hope that others will point out the false equivalence.\u00a0 For evidence of\u00a0 Democrats\u2019 anti-science, Berezow cites mostly fringe groups like PETA, which objects to scientific research on animals, and fringe issues like vaccination.\u00a0 According to Berezow, many people who oppose vaccination are Democrats.\u00a0 True perhaps, but these positions are held by only a small minority of Democratic voters.\u00a0 And neither of these positions has been espoused by any of the party leaders.*<\/p>\n<p>Compare that to Republican anti-science.\u00a0 Most of the leading GOP presidential hopefuls, now and in the previous election, have voiced their skepticism on evolution and global warming.\u00a0 Only Huntsman and Romney have hinted that they agree with the near\u2013unanimous opinions of scientists in these fields.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe the candidates take these anti-science positions because the people whose votes they want \u2013 the GOP faithful \u2013 also reject the scientific consensus.<\/p>\n<p>Here are the results of a recent\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gallup.com\/poll\/145286\/Four-Americans-Believe-Strict-Creationism.aspx\">Gallup poll<\/a> that asked which position\u00a0 \u201cComes closest to your views.\u201d<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10 000 years or so<\/li>\n<li>Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process<\/li>\n<li>Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/09\/118.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-39771\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/09\/118.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"416\" height=\"307\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/09\/118.jpg 594w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/09\/118-500x368.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 416px) 100vw, 416px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Half of all Republicans think that humans have been around for only 10,000 years.<\/p>\n<p>The Republican base is also much more dubious about global warming than are Democrats.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/09\/24.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-1\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-39772\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/09\/24.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"470\" height=\"305\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The graph goes only to 2008, and beliefs about global warming since then Americans\u2019 have become somewhat more skeptical about the issue, but I am certain that Republicans are still well above Democrats on the chart.<\/p>\n<p>As for the anti-vaccine crowd, Berezow sees them as mostly Prius-driving, organic-vegan liberals.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Maybe so.\u00a0 I have a scientist friend whose son runs an organic food co-op, and she is furious at his decision not to have his kids (her grandchildren) vaccinated.\u00a0 (FWIW, she drives a Prius.)\u00a0 But is there more systematic evidence of this liberal\/anti-vaccine connection?\u00a0 Here\u2019s Berezow\u2019s proof.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230;a public health official once noted that rates of vaccine non-compliance tend to be higher in places where Whole Foods is popular \u2014 and 89% of Whole Foods stores are located in counties that favored Barack Obama in 2008&#8230; With the exception of Alaska, the states with the highest rates of vaccine refusal for kindergarteners are Washington, Vermont and Oregon \u2014 three of the most progressive states in the country.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Areas with Whole Foods have both more vaccine skeptics and more Obama voters.\u00a0 The thread of the logic is a bit thin (how big a difference is \u201ctends to be higher\u201d?), and it runs the risk of the ecological fallacy.\u00a0 But it sounded right to me \u2013 my friend\u2019s son lives in Vermont \u2013 and 75% (three states out of four) is pretty impressive evidence.<\/p>\n<p>But there are 46 other states plus DC, and I wondered if they too followed the pattern.\u00a0\u00a0 So I looked up the CDC data on the\u00a0 percentages of vaccination refusal for non-medical reasons in each state (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/mmwr\/preview\/mmwrhtml\/mm6021a4.htm%29\">here<\/a>).\u00a0 I also got data on how Democratic the state was \u2013 the margin of victory or loss for Obama in 2008.**<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/09\/32.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-2\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-39773\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/09\/32.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"368\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/09\/32.jpg 500w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/09\/32-110x90.jpg 110w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Sure enough, the top three &#8212; Washington, Vermont, and Oregon &#8212; are all on the Obama side of the line, though it\u2019s worth noting that in Washington, vaccine exemption was as common in the conservative eastern part of the state (near Idaho, which also has a high exemption rate and was strongly for McCain) as it was in the more liberal western counties.\u00a0\u00a0 And of the states with 3% or more taking non-medical exemptions from vaccination, eight were for Obama, four for McCain. But overall, the correlation (r = 0.12) is not overwhelming.\u00a0\u00a0 And even in the most anti-vaccine, pro-Whole Foods states like Washington and Vermont, nearly 95% of parent s had their kindergartners vaccinated.\u00a0 That\u2019s hardly convincing evidence that Democrats are anti-science.\u00a0\u00a0 Compare that with the 50% of Republicans (and 75% of their presidential hopefuls) who think evolution is a hoax or at best \u201cjust a theory.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>*Berezow notes that seven Democratic senators (and one Republican) wrote a letter to the FDA \u201cthreatening to halt approval of a genetically modified salmon.\u201d\u00a0 But he implies that their position had more to do with money than anti-science.\u00a0 They were from the salmony Northwest, while the company seeking approval is in Massachusetts.<\/p>\n<p>** The CDC had no data for Arizona, Colorado, New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Wyoming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog. Do Democrats and Republicans have a similar lack of respect for science?\u00a0 Alex Berezow seems to think so.\u00a0 The title of his\u00a0op-ed in USA Today is \u201cGOP might be anti-science, but so are Democrats.\u201d I hope that others will point out the false equivalence.\u00a0 For evidence of\u00a0 Democrats\u2019 anti-science, Berezow cites [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[85,238,290],"class_list":["post-39770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-politics","tag-election-2008","tag-sciencetechnology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39770"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39776,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39770\/revisions\/39776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}