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The Liberal's War on Science

LowDown

Curmudgeon
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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
 
Scientific American used to be such a great magazine - back when they still devoted a page or two to "The Amateur Scientist" and before some editor decided to make political "science" a focus.
 
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

So who's left? Is there room anywhere in your country for reason and intelligence?
 
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

*sigh*

Here we go with the false equivalencies again. Yes, many liberals don't agree with mainstream scientific thought...but your own references show that the percentage of liberals who disagree with mainstream scientific thought is significantly SMALLER than the percentage of conservatives who disagree with mainstream scientific thought.

But this is nothing new - I've long since learned that in conservative fantasy land, a liberal molehill of wrong is precisely equal to a conservative mountain of wrong.
 
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

I agree wholeheartedly with you Lowdown. The idiots in wholefoods that are buying homeopathic products or that somehow think organic produce is somehow more nutritious than other produce are as idiotic and utterly stupid as the the idiots that believe in climate change conspiracies, or that climate change is made up pseudo science, or that evolution isn't true, or the global flood etc.


Thanks for pointing that out :)
 
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

I think what you really have a problem with is that a lot of **** is made up in order to sell stuff to people with irrational fears. Whether it's the church or the board room, it's a dirty game to deceive the masses.

And, yes, there is a certain brand of liberal who is so concerned (ie., fearful) about things that they are easy rubes for anyone with a fake study. I think what you're talking about is dogma and there's no shortage of takers on either side. The primary difference, I suppose, is the natural trust that some liberals have of anything with the pretense of scientific credentials as opposed to the natural credulity of conservatives toward anything religious. Actually, the PRIMARY difference is that false scientific claims can be proven to be false and false religious claims cannot...ever.

Even with the number of lies in each camp, I'll take science over religion any day as a way to get rational answers.
 
mixing science and politics is always bad and ugly and brings out the worst in people, in my opinion. you are immediately put in group A(science can fix everything) or group B(religion trumps science). never any middle ground, never anywhere to compromise. It's depressing really
 
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

Sometimes you can tell just from a thread title that it is going to fail miserably, and probably be painfully stupid. This is one of those cases. Let's look at that scientific American article(reason and the daily beast are not exactly places I go to to find out about science, I leave that to those who want people to tell them what they want to hear):

We are well aware of the Republican war on science from the eponymous 2006 book (Basic Books) by Chris Mooney, and I have castigated conservatives myself in my 2006 book Why Darwin Matters (Henry Holt) for their erroneous belief that the theory of evolution leads to a breakdown of morality. A 2012 Gallup poll found that “58 percent of Republicans believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years,” compared with 41 percent of Democrats. A 2011 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 81 percent of Democrats but only 49 percent of Republicans believe that Earth is getting warmer. Many conservatives seem to grant early-stage embryos a moral standing that is higher than that of adults suffering from debilitating diseases potentially curable through stem cells. And most recently, Missouri Republican senatorial candidate Todd Akin gaffed on the ability of women's bodies to avoid pregnancy in the event of a “legitimate rape.” It gets worse.

The left's war on science begins with the stats cited above: 41 percent of Democrats are young Earth creationists, and 19 percent doubt that Earth is getting warmer. These numbers do not exactly bolster the common belief that liberals are the people of the science book. In addition, consider “cognitive creationists”—whom I define as those who accept the theory of evolution for the human body but not the brain. As Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker documents in his 2002 book The Blank Slate (Viking), belief in the mind as a tabula rasa shaped almost entirely by culture has been mostly the mantra of liberal intellectuals, who in the 1980s and 1990s led an all-out assault against evolutionary psychology via such Orwellian-named far-left groups as Science for the People, for proffering the now uncontroversial idea that human thought and behavior are at least partially the result of our evolutionary past.

So to start with, the left's war on science is, in part, because not all of them believe in man made global warming and evolution. Not as many as the right, but still some.
 
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.
 
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

Practically no one is "anti-science". A great many people doubt one scientific dogma or another, but no one is against science as a concept.
 
*sigh*

Here we go with the false equivalencies again. Yes, many liberals don't agree with mainstream scientific thought...but your own references show that the percentage of liberals who disagree with mainstream scientific thought is significantly SMALLER than the percentage of conservatives who disagree with mainstream scientific thought.

No, there's not that much difference. Read the article from Scientific American I linked. For example, they claim that 58% of conservatives are creationists vs. 41% of liberals. Not exactly a huge difference.
 
Sometimes you can tell just from a thread title that it is going to fail miserably, and probably be painfully stupid. This is one of those cases. Let's look at that scientific American article(reason and the daily beast are not exactly places I go to to find out about science, I leave that to those who want people to tell them what they want to hear):



So to start with, the left's war on science is, in part, because not all of them believe in man made global warming and evolution. Not as many as the right, but still some.

"Still some". 41% is "some". The author's take on it is different. "These numbers do not exactly bolster the common belief that liberals are the people of the science book."

Sorry, but the "facts and reason based community" meme is mortally wounded.
 
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