I slam Scientific American in these fora, what, 2 days ago? and here I am quoting from them. Oh well, when they're right they're right.
Conservatives have no monopoly on the stupid:
The Liberals' War on Science - Scientific American
And here's one from Reason Magazine:
The Left's Bad Ideas About Science Are More Harmful Than the Right's - Reason.com
The only proof anyone needs that liberals are as anti-scientific as anyone who came down the pike is in Whole Foods, where the most incredible pseudoscientific claims are being made to sell stuff, and progressives just eat it up:
Whole Foods: America's Temple of Pseudoscience - The Daily Beast
Left:
anti-vaxxers - very small minority
anti-GMOers - also small miority
anti-nuclear - This is exaggerated. Most acknowledge technology has made it a lot safer.
anti-fracking - for good reason
Right:
anti-vaxxers - very small minority
anti-GMOers - also small miority
anti-evolution - because god
anti-stem cell - god said something that someone else interpreted as "every human cell is sacred until it is born", so learn to live with brain damage and the incurable diseases that cause it.
anti-global warming - where did the snowcaps that used to top all those mountains go? The Grinch probably stole them!
Fossils were put there to test your faith
A womans body shuts down during legitimate rape so she can't get pregnant.
I know there's more, but I haven't the time....
Anti-Vaxxers are bipartisan
The Pew Research Center finds modest differences in views about vaccination—34 percent of Republicans, 33 percent of independents, and 22 percent of Democrats believe parents should have final say on vaccination—while we know from anecdotes that vaccine rejection is present in conservative religious communities (like the Amish in Ohio) as well as in crunchy college-town communes like Boulder, Colorado. In fact, the available data shows stability in anti-vaccination views across ideology—neither side is substantially more likely than the other to hold anti-vaccine beliefs.
Hmm...34%R and 22%D, we can probably get away with calling this strictly a conservative thing, right?
All of which raises a question: When is an anti-science belief political? At the risk of tautology, it’s when it becomes an agenda item for the party in question. Neither vaccine skepticism nor its cousin, GMO skepticism, is a particular Republican or Democratic problem, because neither party advances policies or agendas around either concern. (Although, if either issue developed a distinct political constituency, that could happen, which is one critical reason we don’t want vaccination to become part of the partisan landscape.) By contrast, something like climate skepticism is a Republican problem—distinct from other anti-science beliefs—because of its huge currency in actual Republican politics. Sure, both parties have members with anti-science beliefs. But it’s the GOP that’s elevated a few of those beliefs to the party platform.
By this standard, things like anti-vaxx and anti-GMO never made to any parties platform, and thus can't really be said to be taken seriously by the actual political parties in question. You want to talk about the beliefs of the fringe, well that could be entertaining.