Science is not supposed to be a democracy, you are indeed swallowing the propaganda of the anti-scientists that are using double speak to get their way.
Not much that would do when elsewhere the actions of the Republicans speak loudly of how unscientific they are when the science is against them.
From the same report:
Indeed, if true, this is disturbing, but is is really pathetic to put this at the level of what the previous administration was doing.
Yeah, I was going to say that also. The only rich people I can imagine riding Amtrak are rail enthusiasts who might do it just for the experience. Certainly no rich no person is riding for its “turndown service” or any of its other alleged luxuries.
And as for the food, we’re not talking gourmet here. We’re talking about stuff that would Denny’s seem like haute cuisine.
And BTW I too think it wouldn’t be a bad idea for the sleeper service to be forced to pay for itself.
I’ve never ridden Amtrak, so I don’t know what ‘first class’ provides. But it’s clearly a higher-priced premium service for those who can afford it. Not only that, but sleeper cars are less energy efficient per passenger. Why in the world would you want to subsidize that kind of thing? How is that good policy in any way?
No, but do you know what IS a Democracy? Democracy. Last time I checked, that’s what the U.S. was, and that means when science wants to use funds provided by citizens, the citizens have the ability to have some choice in how their money is spent.
So do Democrats. Science is used as a pawn by both sides - heralded when it favors one side, demonized or ignored when it favors the other. Democrats have no problem exaggerating the effects of global warming when it suits their political needs. Al ore, that beacon of Democratic scientific thinking, has been spouting complete bullshit for years, and no one calls him on it. He was doing it when he was a Senator and a Vice President as well. And you can find examples of Democratic politicians engaging in wild hyperbole on issues from second-hand smoke to the damage to the environment that would be caused by drilling in Alaska. They’ve promoted shoddy research into gun violence, and over-hyped the dangers of DDT and Asbestos. Democrats generally oppose nuclear power on demonstrably false grounds, and hype any research that suggest risks and downplay or deny research that show safety. Noted Democrat Bill Maher is an anti-vaccination nut.
I never said a thing about the previous administration. The question is whether or not YouCut is a front for an anti-science inquisition, or whether YouCut proves that Eric Cantor is an ‘Anti-Science Scourge’.
That trump card is getting a little worn out, by the way.
I would not argue that Republicans are innocent of manipulating science. I might even agree that they do so more than do the Democrats. But YouCut certainly doesn’t do that, and it’s most definitely not a front for an anti-science inquisition.
Just to get things back on topic, could someone explain this to me?
What exactly went on here? How do you “slander” someone “into the House record”, on “behalf” of someone, no less? I don’t understand the actual exchange that took place regarding the “sex slave.” What relation did she have either to Jack Abramoff or to any possible goings-on in the House record?
Please, someone explain.
And it is interesting that no sooner that was said that then we got:
And that is why it is folly to put science into a popularity contest.
There you go again with the DDT conservative shibboleth “science” point.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/ddt/
And funny thing that I do not agree with that and I still have to see Bill Maher elected to a position to cause harm.
When they said that they are going to check first for what is funded in science it is clear to me that you did drank the kool aid for the way you are attempting to minimize this. That conclusion comes from your last reply as you still have not learned anything from previous times when you got burned for what conservative sources are saying about scientific issues.
Remember when I said that chances are that the Republican politicians are the ignoramus with the examples they made on the YouCut review video?
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2010/12/03/citizens-against-peer-review/
What a leadership we got for the next 2 years at least… the saddest thing will be to see a chunk of people falling for that fake leadership when we all will have to work to solve serious difficult issues in the near and far future.
Because it’s not really accurate (well, it is accurate that sleeper cars are less energy efficient). It’s an accounting artifact. As Andrew Selden (VP of the United Rail Passenger Alliance) explains:
nvm
Did not know that. Wonder why? I mean, isn’t science essentially apolitical? Even political science?
Well, it makes sense that grant-funded science would be friendly to Democrats. Since, AFAIK, most scientists are employed in the private sector, though, that doesn’t explain why 55% are Democrats.
Actually, before inauguration in '09 the Obama transition team did have a website up asking for citizen input on government priorities, including a section on health funding to which I contributed.
The reason I heard about this is that the site was flooded with calls to fund all sorts of “alternative medicine” initiatives and treatments, and the evidence-based science community was encouraged to respond.
No commitments were made by the transition team to advance legislation on any of these things, but it disturbed me that pressure groups for woo might be able to advance their agendas through such a “vote”. It is similarly worrisome that Republicans might fall for “the will of the people” in deciding which science projects are worth supporting. If Sarah Palin isn’t qualified to pass judgment on research priorities (she isn’t), then her supporters are even less qualified to do so.
The Tea Partyites scoff at pointy-headed intellectual experts, their Know-Nothing counterparts on the Left are suspicious of anything they can link to Our Omnipresent Corporate Overlords. I don’t want either side telling the NSF and NIH what to do.
It doesn’t help that Republican leaders keep saying things that sound like a translation of “Jesus sucks dead donkey balls” into science-speak.
Not necessarily. It could be pure correlation with a hidden dependent variable - maybe the same impulses that make you a liberal also make you want to be a scientist, without there being a causal connection between them.
We can speculate on why scientists trend liberal, but there could be lots of reasons. For example, it could be that being liberal drives you towards specialties that are more abstract, or which avoid the messiness and complexity of real life. As the esteemed Dr. Raymond Stantz said, “I’ve worked in the private sector - they expect results.”
In my experience, engineering is even more lopsided than science - only in the other direction. Most engineers I know are more centrist or libertarian than is the public at large.
This study shows that while 45.2% of Ph.D’s in the physical and biological sciences describe themselves as liberal, only 10.7% of Ph.D’s in computer science and engineering call themselves liberal.
We can speculate all day about what the difference might be, but speculation will probably say more about our own biases than about real differences. For example, it seems to me that a big difference is that engineers and computer scientists work in the real world of messy answers, complexity, economic constraint, and practicality, while scientists operate in the abstract world of theory.
In the PEW poll, a large percentage of scientists said that their motivation was to solve big problems and do good for society. That’s a liberal mindset: the idea that really smart people can come up with solutions and apply them to society to make it better. Engineers and Comp Sci types are more likely to understand the limitations of what they can achieve and are more practical, hard-headed types who don’t think in terms of universal solutions to universal problems.
It’s pure liberal conceit to draw the conclusion that scientists are liberals because ‘reality has a well known liberal bias’. If that were the case, you would expect engineers, health care Ph.D’s and computer scientists to also be liberals, but they’re not. It probably has a lot more to do with the nature of the work and the environment around the work than to be any kind of statement about whether liberalism is ‘better’ or more reflective of reality. If you want to go down that road, I’d argue back that engineers and comp-sci people have a much better grasp of real-world conditions than do ivory-tower academics, and they’re not liberals.
Another potential factor for academic bias in the sciences is that the sciences saw a huge growth in population during the years when teenagers who grew up in the 60’s entered college. The paper I linked to found that the incidence of liberals spikes among faculty members who were between the ages of 50-64 in 2007. That would be the baby boom generation. Professors outside this age cohort were less liberal. Notably, the comp-sci and engineering faculties very likely trend younger than the physical sciences - notably so in the case of computing science.
Another possible source of difference - women in the social sciences. They are overwhelmingly liberal, and there are large numbers of them. Comp-sci and engineering are largely male specialties.
But finally, there’s a lot of strangeness in the data that’s simply not easy to explain. For example, 31.6% of professors of electrical engineering described themselves as Republican, while only 13.2% described themselves as Democrats. On the other hand, only 6.3% of professors of Mechanical Engineering described themselves as Republican, while 28.1% described themselves as Democrats. That’s a huge difference in political ideology between two sub-specialties of engineering. I have no idea why that would be the case. Maybe it’s just sampling error, or the effect of some powerful influencers in one of the fields or something.
One thing I will note is that ‘conservatism’ alienates all of them. I think it’s fair to say that religious conservatives alienate all highly educated people with their anti-science, anti-reason positions. It could well be why 78% of engineers and comp-sci people describe themselves as independents - they’re not liberals, but they can’t find a home in the conservative wing as long as it remains so resolutely anti-science and anti-intellectual.
This.
As a scientist with my degrees in electrical engineering, I CANNOT STAND the Republican Party and the conservatives that control them. I think President Obama is OK and that he is relatively centrist in his policies. I would not call myself a Liberal, though I am very civil libertarian and I distrust the anti-regulation stance of most economic conservatives. But I CANNOT STAND conservatives, CANNOT STAND them. Ick!
Neither can I when they attempt to either pander to deniers or are they themselves the deniers of science:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/12/07/cantor-jobs-climate/
Ah yes! The old “climate changes, so what we see is natural or/and that there is still many doubts on how much humans are responsible” point
Your understanding is incorrect. Defense was declared untouchable, of course, as it always is.
I’m sorry but these statements are absolutely ridiculous. It’s the typical “ivory tower elitist” bullshit label given to scientists by ignorant rightwing pundits. You really have no clue.
Yeah, Sam likes to make long good looking posts that have plenty of good points but always manages to add a squick item.
