Anti-Science Party

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Republicans are the anti-science party, unless we're talking about 9/11 truthers, Hillary started the Obama birther movement, Hollywood anti-vaxxers, GMO's, Organic (food grown in sewage is better for you), anti-Nuclear energy, green energy, Keynesian economics (which was disproven many times), minimum wage helps, "free” anything (healthcare, education, etc), Global Cooling, CO2 (Global Warming), Fluoride, Killer Bees, Bees (Colony Collapse Disorder), fracking, exaggerated scares about obesity or second hand smoke or DDT, gluten phobia, all the FDA's discredited stuff, banning bottled water, alar, salt in your diet, fat in your diet, polyunsaturated fat in your diet, every kind of artificial sweetener or food coloring, diet soda, DDT, Electromagnetic Fields (EMF), Bird Flu, SARS, twice as many democrats believe in astrology or UFO’s are visiting us than republicans, twice as many dems believe in Ghosts or they’ve been in contact with the dead, 50% more believe in reincarnation or fortune telling, Bermuda Triangle, spiritual energy, more believe the gender pay gap is >3%, Paul Ehrlich and the population bomb, peak oil theory, Ozone hole, gun control works, don't believe life begins at conception or viability, gender feminism, those that claim citizens united conferred corporate personhood (anti-history/facts), and then we get into Science becoming a religion (or some people acting like it is: where there can be no doubt/questioning/etc), and so on, and so on.

Much of the real PR fight is about funding, politics and control. Putting the politicians in control of science funding (running funding from the Federal government), is politicizing science. And most of the attacks over being "anti-science" is actually a proxy war for those against the waste and fraud that's rampant in our science "research", that Democrats/media support, and the right and public opposes. If you care about science, you should be on the Republican's side to stop diverting money from the economy and real science.

So both sides have issues with waste and some of their own pet-causes that certainly aren't pro-science. It's just the left/media pretends that those that oppose their waste or superstitions are "anti-science", knowing their base isn't informed or motivated enough to become informed about the real issues being discussed.

Details

The media, uninformed and partisans (but I repeat myself), often like to pull up the old disproven canard that the Republicans are anti-Science party, and that the Democrats are pro-Science. Which only demonstrates the bias or blindspots of the myth-pasters. There's pro and anti-science people on both sides of the aisle, and if anything, polls and common sense show that if Democrats/Left aren't the stronger anti-science believers in numbers, they're by far the more vocal about their disbeliefs.

What anti-science stuff, did the Democrats give us?

  • over half believing in divine intervention wrt creation/evolution
  • 9/11 truthers (like Louis Farrakhan).
  • fear of frankenfoods
  • transfats
  • BPA in plastic
  • Cell phones cause cancer
  • electronic cigarettes
  • Oregon did the floride paranoia thing
  • Hollywood is full of anti-vaxxers (though they’re split roughly equally by party)
  • GMO's are bad
  • all the FDA's discredited fat/salt/dietary stuff
  • Food grown in sewage is safer than purified fertilizers (Organic movement)
  • Anti-Nuclear energy
  • Green Energy
  • CO2 scares
  • exaggerated scares about obesity or second hand smoke or DDT
  • magnetic fields from high power lines mess with people
  • Keynesian economics (which was disproven many times)
  • minimum wage has no negative impacts to poor, teens or business
  • over 50% more dems believe the gender pay gap is >3%
  • dems believe the middle class has been flat or declining
  • "free” anything (healthcare, education, etc)
  • fracking causes flaming water
  • twice as many democrats believe in astrology or UFO’s are visiting us (than republicans)
  • twice as many dems believe in Ghosts or they’ve been in contact with the dead
  • 50% more believe in reincarnation or fortune telling or spiritual energy
  • Paul Ehrlich and the population bomb (Malthusian disaster)
  • peak oil theory
  • gluten phobia
  • gun control works
  • don't believe life begins at conception or viability (and I'm pro-choice),
  • Gender feminism, which thinks gender is taught and there's no differences in brain development
  • claims citizens united conferred corporate personhood (anti-history/facts)
  • Bush lied, Iraq was about oil, and other historical delusions
  • transgender idiocy that a mental disorder is more important than chromosomes or chemistry
  • You don't grow brain cells as you get older[1]
  • and so on, and so on...

But even in ALL of those lefty started or majority things, there's mixing in both sides. Like all the ones that left attacks the right over, often started on their side too, they're just better at suppressing people publicly with political-correctness and bullying.

Then when you look deeper, you find degrees of stupidity within those movements. E.g. not everyone that's anti-vaxxer is equally wrong. There are educated and non-educated anti-vaxxers. Those claiming the ties to autism could be very scientific, just going with old (and long disproven) data. But there are very valid examples of vaccination causing harm (like happened in Japan with their tainted MMR vaccine). And then you get into realities of herd immunity, and threshold's in your community, and it gets fuzzier. I've heard very intelligent and scientifically valid anti-vaccination arguments, and some very dumb (anti-science) pro-vaccine arguments. And I'm pro-vaccine. So believing the risks outweighs the rewards, isn't irrational or anti-science, it's how extreme and how willing you are to consider new facts that defines whether you're anti-science or not.

The same with many of the other issues. There's a rational anti-GMO subset, and an irrational one. You need to talk with them on why, and see how open they are to facts, before making a judgement off more than "yes/no".

There are pro-science (and anti-science) folks on both side's of every argument, even when I disagree with them (and I almost always lean towards pro-science view myself). But to get any depth of understanding, you'd have to see which of those arguments appeal to which side.

So it's not just about the issue, but how you argue and think about the issues. And historically, the left was called bleeding-heart and knee-jerk, and so on, for reasons: because they often don't value the deeper arguments and facts, as much as the emotion, compassion, consensus/collectivism, and immediate reaction. (Which is anti-science).

So you want to know who is anti-science? Look at how they respond to data that they don't like? Do they attack the presenter, or consider it? Do they block people with different views, or welcome them? That's more pro/anti-science than where you come down, ultimately.

So to me, despite dozens of articles and arguments disproving their hypothesis (that the right is clearly more anti-science than they are), if they still repeat it, it proves the opposite of what they say. Repeating something after it's proven non-conclusive or worse, is a great demonstration of being anti-science.

What is most of the "war" on science really about?

Money and corruption.

The media and left wants an unlimited purse to funnel money to special interests and political supporters, in the name of science. And any attempts to reign ridiculous spending in, is attacked as being, "anti-science".

The National Science Foundation scientific research includes:

  • a climate change-themed musical ($700,000)
  • An investigation of tea party activity on social media ($919,000)
  • To study bicycle designs ($300,000)
  • Ancient Icelandic textile industry: $487,049
  • Ecological consequences of early human-set fires in New Zealand: $339,958
  • History of Chiapas, Mexico (350 B.C.-A.D. 1350): $280,558
  • Mayan architecture and the salt industry: $233,141
  • Do Turkish women wear veils because they are fashionable?: $199,088
  • How local Asian Indian politicians can improve their performance: $425,000
  • Lawsuits in Peru from 1600-1700: $50,000
  • National Institutes of Health has engaged in the funding of wasteful projects like $258,000 on a website for the first lady’s White House garden.

Each time the NSF or NIH funds one of these projects, that much money is getting sucked out of the economy (jobs/growth) and getting diverted from going to real science. And every time the Republicans try to control any of that, it gets labeled as political interference and an attack on science, and the gullible buy-in. If you care about the war on science, the anti-science jihadi's are those who opposed reigning in this kind of waste, and that's the Democrats.

Science becoming a religion

There's the real debate about religion, with coastal liberals bashing on the religious views of the right, and failing to get that roughly 3/4ths of democrats and 4/5ths of independents believe in the Bible too. Or missing how separated belief in science and religion can be: Darwin, Einstein believed in God, while Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot were atheists. And Hitler, would public praise religion while privately deriding it. That isn't to play guilt by association, but just to point out that we can cherry pick examples to prove what we want. Religion is just one small aspect of someone's lives, and humans can compartmentalize, and religion and science are not mutually things on the same dimension, nor is bad behavior coupled with religion, or science coupled to being objective, as some will try to sell you.

Then there's turning science into a religion (taking the next step). Where science stops become about doubt and skepticism, but anyone questioning the consensus, must be destroyed. That's anti-science -- Science is skepticism, Fascism is consensus.

There's very few scientific facts, and most of the past ones we were 100% sure were right, turned out to be wrong later. There are LOTS of scientific theories, that the layperson thinks is fact, like anthropogenic global warming, that oil is dinosaur juice (Fossil Fuels) versus abiotic oil. There's a whole lot that's new or relatively new: like the whole concept of tectonic plates and how the earth moves was popularized in my lifetime (1960's). There's a whole lot of unknowns that we just can't explain at all like Sonoluminescence (how the fuck does a sound wave convert to light, underwater?). Then there's things we can only hypothesize about, but have no way to prove/disprove, thus it's a scientific religion: dark matter, dark energy, how many dimensions in super-string theory, and so on. These people are unaware of the 4 Stages of Scientific Discovery.

The democrats are often screaming about how, "Science" validates their view, but only by ignoring all contradictions, skeptics and doubters, then they want to legislate and force others into acceptance, based on "science". When science is the people still questioning the claims, not those that are bleating like sheeple and following it.

If you want to see how sincere they are in their beliefs, just jujitsu them and agree. Fine, let's punish those that don't agree with science like those that us billions of wasted dollars on embryonic stem cell research (that was less effective than the alternatives), organic food would be outlawed for false advertising by the FDA, vaccine non-compliance would be a crime, GMO's would be mandatory in all foods, Nuclear Power Plants would spring up like dandelions, vegan-raw-foodies would be put up for child abuse, PETA and Greenpeace would be outlawed for the damages they did to science (and as terrorist organizations). Is that REALLY the world you want to live in? It seems to be what democrats advocate, unless you start trying to apply their rules fairly (e.g. back at them).

It's fine if you think you know (or don't know) something. The problem is when you can no longer leave enough room in the universe for others to disagree with you.

References

Science is a religion:

The Science News Cycle

  • ScienceNewsCycle.jpg

Sonoluminescence

  • Sonoluminescence.jpg