Chris C. Mooney's Blog, page 14

Our ScienceOnline2012 Session: Covering Political Neuroscience in the Blogosphere

[image error]Tomorrow I head off to ScienceOnline2012 (#scio12), where Andrea and I will be convening the following session at 4pm on Thursday:

Covering Political Neuroscience in the Blogosphere. Recent research suggests that liberals and conservatives differ, in a measurable way, in brain structure and function. Yeah. Think about that. This work is far from phrenology, but interpreting its meaning is difficult and contentious. And indeed, given the massively controversial nature of this research, how can...

A New Champion in the Battle Against Global Warming Denial: Eugenie Scott and the National Center for Science Education

[image error]It is rare that I build episodes of Point of Inquiry around news or breaking events. This week, though, I made an important exception.

I interviewed Eugenie Scott, the longtime head of the National Center for Science Education, about her new push into defending the teaching of accurate climate science in classrooms. Climate has fast become the "new evolution" when it comes to attacks on teachers who simply share mainstream scientific knowledge with their students–and there was a crying need...

Republicans, Not Democrats, are the Dinosaurs-With-Saddles Crowd. QED.

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(Source: Wikimedia Commons; John Scalzi)

I soundly refuted Kenneth Green yesterday, but he doesn't seem to recognize that. He's got a new post that starts with an ad hominem attack–yes, I am a college English major, as are many science journalists–and goes on to make a complete muck of the polling data on evolution and what it means.

Again.

* Shorter Kenneth Green: Green contends that you don't really accept evolution unless you accept an atheistic or naturalistic form of it that rules out any...

The Psychological Truth About Economic (Not Religious) Conservatives

Following his last post, Everett Young has now provided the evidence for thinking that fiscal or economic liberals, and fiscal or economic conservatives, are very different people. Let's remember why this matters–we tend to think that it is the religious conservatives who are characterized by some type of rigidity or closed-mindedness. But Everett's work finds it is much more complex than that. Here's what he has to say; I've added links and references:

I'd certainly start with the Gerber et...

AEI's Kenneth Green Tries to Show that Democrats Are Anti-Evolution Too!

Last time we encountered Kenneth Green, it was at the end of our debate over the left, the right, and science.

Now he's back, reviving that debate by trying call into question the obvious fact that evolution denial is largely a politically conservative phenomenon in the United States. See the exchange here.

Just one problem–the Gallup survey that Green cites refutes his own claim. Gallup asked Republicans, Democrats, and Independents the following question and got the following results:

 

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Why Doesn't PolitiFact Cover Falsehoods About Evolution?

[image error]Recently I tested a little hunch of mine and performed a search of the archives of the leading political fact-checking site, PolitiFact, for coverage of evolution. The result is reported here:

I was stunned to find that the search only yielded 13 items—and upon perusal, it quickly became apparent that in most of these, the word "evolution" was not even being used to refer to the scientific theory, but rather was employed colloquially (e.g., the "evolution" of a politician's position on an...

Friedrich Hayek on the Conservative Denial of Science–50 Years Ago

Here's something that the evolution skeptic and Hayek admirer Ron Paul ought to pay attention to.

What is astonishing about the quotation below, from Hayek's "Why I Am Not a Conservative" essay, is just how much it seems to stand outside of time, as if it could have been written now, rather than when it was written, in 1960:

Personally, I find that the most objectionable feature of the conservative attitude is its propensity to reject well-substantiated new knowledge because it dislikes some...

Why Republicans Deny Science: The Quest for a Scientific Explanation

I have an item up at Huffington Post Science today–here's a brief excerpt:

Recently, I posted a list of seven recent scientific studies showing that liberals and conservatives differ in ways that go far beyond their philosophies or views on politics. We're talking about things like physiological responses when shown different kinds of words or images, and performance in neuroscience tests. Take just one recent example: Conservatives show stronger responses to negative and threatening stimuli...

Does Geoengineering Activate Liberal Anti-Scientific Biases? And Does It Matter?

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(Image: visualization of geoengineering schemes)

For a long time, I've been interested in the subject of geoengineering. Basically, this is the idea that, since we can't seem to find a more, uh, civilized way to cut our greenhouse gas emissions–and since global warming is getting so bad that we're going to be grappling with a dramatically altered planet–it may be time to start further planetary modifications so as to offset rising temperatures. Among these, the most popular suggestion seems...

Most Nobelists Were Younger Than Today's Average First Time NIH Grantee When They Did Their Breakthrough Research

This really tells you something about the calcification of scientific innovation in the U.S. From Rice University:

In the past 30 years, the average age of biomedical researchers has steadily increased. The average age of an investigator at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) rose from 39 to 51 between 1980 and 2008. The aging of the biomedical workforce was even more apparent when looking at first-time NIH grantees. The average age of a new investigator was 42 in 2008, compared to 36 in...