# Most politicians are shockingly ignorant **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [July 13, 2016, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-politicians-are-shockingly-ignorant/759856 "2016-07-13T22:44:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2016, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-politicians-are-shockingly-ignorant/759856/1 "2016-07-13T22:44:09Z")
> **[I was too hard on Mike Pence, and I’m sorry](https://www.vox.com/2016/7/13/12159000/mike-pence-sorry)** > > Not knowing what you’re talking about is normal for Congress. Matt Yglesias writes this as an apology to Mike Pence, because he had originally thought Mike Pence was a moron and found out that he’s one moron in a chamber full of them. It’s not that these people aren’t smart, it’s that the way they see their jobs gives them little incentive to actually know anything about policy. > [@](#): > > Today, more than a decade removed from the first time I met Pence, I can say that it’s actually quite common for members of Congress to have no idea what they’re talking about. > > There’s a real problem here, but it doesn’t relate to Pence personally. And it doesn’t particularly even relate to individual members of Congress personally. It’s a deep institutional problem that is both a cause and an effect of Americans’ entrenched cynicism about Congress, politics, and governing elites. > [@](#): > > What now surprises me is when I come across a member of Congress who really does understand a particular issue in detail. And this sometimes does happen. Little pockets of expertise are scattered hither and yon all throughout Capitol Hill — especially when members dig in to work on idiosyncratic pieces of legislation that are off the radar of big-time partisan conflict. But on most issues, most of the time, most members of Congress are more or less blindly following talking points that they got from somewhere else and that they don’t really understand. > > Members form identities as a certain kind of politician — a New Democrat or a progressive, a leadership ally or a rock-ribbed true conservative — and then they take cues from how a politician like that ought to respond to the controversy of the day, and their staff hastily assembles some stuff to say about it. > > And the problem here isn’t that the members are dumb, as I used to think. It’s that Congress hasn’t set itself up for individual members to be well-informed. Staff budgets are generally low, and a decent share of staff effort has to be put into constituent service and answering the mail. Senators, who have larger staffs, are generally competent to discuss a wider range of issues. And committee staffs have more policy expertise, so committee chairs and ranking members are often fairly knowledgeable about the subjects under their jurisdiction. > > But typical members have little chance to build in-house knowledge on policy issues, and as matter of economic necessity skilled staffers have to be looking for their next job. Nor do the members themselves exactly have a ton of time to delve into issues and talk to policy experts. They’re expected to commute back and forth to their home districts, show up routinely at community events, and spend vast amounts of time raising money in small increments. > > A consequence of this is that members become dependent on interest groups not just for money but for actual knowledge and information. The typical member of Congress, faced with some arbitrary policy issue, has neither the personal nor the staff capacity to actually research the issue and come up with a fair-minded and independent judgment about the merits of the issue. > > This tends to leave Congress members dangerously dependent on lobbyists (or at times pure hucksters) for analysis, which fuels public contempt of Congress, which makes it all the more unthinkable for Congress to try to vote itself the extra money for staff and expertise building that could fix the problem. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2016, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-politicians-are-shockingly-ignorant/759856/2 "2016-07-13T22:49:08Z")
I don’t thikn he’s totally right about the staff thing though. If your staff knows things, that doesn’t mean you know things and it certainly doesn’t mean you understand anything. Matt Yglesias didn’t become a policy wonk by hiring a staff. None of our best Dopers have a staff. The purpose of a staff isn’t to teach you things and I thikn it says a lot about how bad things are that we’re resigned to politicians beingless knowledgable than your average Doper. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2016, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-politicians-are-shockingly-ignorant/759856/3 "2016-07-13T23:00:24Z")
“Not being set up for individual members to be well-informed.” I should be pointed here that the Republicans under Newt Gingrich made a lot of that current setup possible. [http://io9.gizmodo.com/a-key-reason-why-u-s-politicians-dont-understand-scien-1575132934](http://io9.gizmodo.com/a-key-reason-why-u-s-politicians-dont-understand-scien-1575132934) > [@](#): > > In 1995, Congressional Republicans shut down the Office of Technology Assessment. For 23 years, this agency had published reports that provided legislators with nonpartisan analyses of science and technology issues. Last week, Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) tried to reopen the agency with minimal funding. > > He failed. > > The legislation—a proposed amendment to the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act that would have provided $2.5 million for the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) —was defeated in the House by a 248-164 vote, with 217 Republicans opposing and 155 Democrats supporting. > > Holt, a former research physicist, has been a longtime advocate of reopening the office. In a recent press release, he noted: > > > [@](#): > > > > ``` > > OTA was an agency dedicated to serve Congress. When Newt Gingrich came to power in the 1990s, he eliminated OTA to cut costs. But this turned out to be a foolish move, as OTA had always saved taxpayers far more money than it cost. An OTA study on Agent Orange, for instance, helped save the government $10 million. Another report recommended changes in computer systems at the Social Security Administration that saved more than $350 million. Studies on the Synthetic Fuels Corporation helped save tens of billions of dollars. > > > > Although in ending OTA Gingrich said Congress could get help elsewhere, that hasn't worked. When OTA shut down, technological topics did not become less relevant to the work of Congress. They just became less understood. And scientific thinking lost its toehold on Capitol Hill, with troubling consequences for the ways Congress approaches all issues— not just those that are explicitly scientific. > > > > ``` IIRC Newt later claimed that the reason was that it was not needed to have an internal group to analyze issues that involve science, because they now could find their own experts furnished by the interest groups they consult. What could go wrong? :smack::smack::smack: ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2016, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-politicians-are-shockingly-ignorant/759856/4 "2016-07-13T23:03:00Z")
I agree with Holt there, but that’s not knowledge either. Looking something up doesn’t make you understand anything. True understanding of issues comes from being involved with and thinking about those issues, often outside the box, for years. We elect older people to office because presumably their lives have involved learning about these things. Instead, they rely on 20 year old staffers. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2016, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-politicians-are-shockingly-ignorant/759856/5 "2016-07-13T23:24:31Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > I agree with Holt there, but that’s not knowledge either. He was a scientist too so I would think he had knowledge. 🙂 > [@adaher](#): > > Looking something up doesn’t make you understand anything. True understanding of issues comes from being involved with and thinking about those issues, often outside the box, for years. We elect older people to office because presumably their lives have involved learning about these things. Instead, they rely on 20 year old staffers. The point as Iglesias said is that: > [@](#): > > Pence may well have been dumber or more ignorant than your average member of Congress, but most fundamentally\*\* he was an integral part of a larger institutional framework that cultivates and promotes ignorance. \*\*That system, more than anything about Pence himself, is what’s really scary. Knowing how inadequate that framework is it means that there should be offices that would help reduce that ignorance in congress. Because unless we become a technocracy we will continue to have congress critters that are ignorant and with staffers that are also. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2016, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-politicians-are-shockingly-ignorant/759856/6 "2016-07-13T23:27:58Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > He was a scientist too so I would think he had knowledge. 🙂 No, Rush Holt has knowledge. He’s one of the genuine geniuses in Congress. > [@](#): > > Knowing how inadequate that framework is it means that there should be offices that would help reduce that ignorance in congress. Because unless we become a technocracy we will continue to have congress critters that are ignorant and with staffers that are also. But that won’t make much of a difference because they don’t CARE. Being knowledgeable does nothing for their political career. Serving the interest groups they need to please in their district or state is where their expertise lies. There are some exceptions. We call them “mavericks”. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2016, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-politicians-are-shockingly-ignorant/759856/7 "2016-07-13T23:32:07Z")
BTW, before this was as important as it is now noted, staffers and even congress people had a chance to ask questions directly to the experts in the science office. They got direct explanations about issues dealing with science. One reason why the Republicans did not like it is that many times they did not confirm the biases they were bringing with the Newt revolution. So Newt and others decided to vote for ignorance. And then we started going on this path in congress. And the rest is history… that should not had been there but thanks to ideology. As I saw once an expert that was interviewed for the Ebola emergency say: “eventually politics has to yield to science”. Following interest groups has limits when the use of the manufactured contrarian information from lobbyists does harm to all. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2016, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-politicians-are-shockingly-ignorant/759856/8 "2016-07-13T23:38:42Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > I don’t thikn he’s totally right about the staff thing though. If your staff knows things, that doesn’t mean you know things and it certainly doesn’t mean you understand anything. Matt Yglesias didn’t become a policy wonk by hiring a staff. None of our best Dopers have a staff. The purpose of a staff isn’t to teach you things and I thikn it says a lot about how bad things are that we’re resigned to politicians beingless knowledgable than your average Doper. But do you think that Congresspeople have the amount of time to discuss the issues on message boards that the average Doper does? We may know more intricacies about issues not because we’ve done the grunt work and research, but because we all bring our areas of expertise together and someone who is an expert in a field may make an argue and cite a website, giving us information we wouldn’t normally have… Hmmm… that kinda sounds like what Congressional staff does ;). ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2016, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-politicians-are-shockingly-ignorant/759856/9 "2016-07-13T23:42:36Z")
You can’t be universally knowledgeable. You can’t be deeply knowledgeable on more than a handful of issues. There simply isn’t enough time in a day. Congress has never been a cadre of subject matter experts, not at any time in its history. I’m doubtful about how much of an expert Matt Yglesias is on those issues you consider him a policy wonk on. I used to read him regularly when he was at Slate. He had strong opinions, but I disagreed with much of what he said, not on ideological grounds but because they were poor, half-thought-through remedies. He only has one thing to do with his time. Congress is supposed to deal with hundreds or thousands of the most complicated issues in the world. You expert better of them than him? GIGObuster is correct. Congress had better internal non-partisan sources of information at one time. They were eliminated because reality has a liberal bias. Non-partisan facts are normally antithetical to conservative ideology. If you don’t like what Congress has become, look in a mirror. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2016, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-politicians-are-shockingly-ignorant/759856/10 "2016-07-13T23:47:28Z")
Congressmen have something much better than message boards: 1. Life. In 40-60 years, these folks should have learned an awful lot, both from their usually high level of education and also with valuable life experiences and their careers. I just don’t get how so many of these folks come in as mostly blank slates. Oh wait, they are often lawyers who didn’t even practice. They have no life experience worth talking about, they have no career experience other than politics. But in theory, there are a lot of people who could bring a ton of valuable knowledge into Congress: teachers, police officers, accountants, IT professionals, military, doctors, financial experts, scientists, etc. Very few politicians come from those backgrounds. 2. Study. A lot of people love learning stuff. I would hope that the next generation of politicians actually has spent a lot of time on discussion boards like this one, writing a blog, and being kept up at night because you just thought of a way to fix the Agriculture Department and you can’t wait to flesh it out more fully and run it by people who are also interested in how to fix the Agriculture Department. And when they explain to you why your idea sucks, you’ll learn a lot of new things you didn’t know in that process. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2016, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-politicians-are-shockingly-ignorant/759856/11 "2016-07-13T23:50:30Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > You can’t be universally knowledgeable. You can’t be deeply knowledgeable on more than a handful of issues. There simply isn’t enough time in a day. Congress has never been a cadre of subject matter experts, not at any time in its history. That’s a great point too. But there are some things you HAVE to know to be a good legislator, and the example Yglesias points out, “moral hazard”, is one of them. > [@](#): > > I’m doubtful about how much of an expert Matt Yglesias is on those issues you consider him a policy wonk on. I used to read him regularly when he was at Slate. He had strong opinions, but I disagreed with much of what he said, not on ideological grounds but because they were poor, half-thought-through remedies. Well yeah, because he’s a young guy and most smart young guys think they are smarter than they are. But that quest for knowledge leads to real understanding down the road, which is why Matt Yglesias at 50 would probably make a heck of a Senator. What will actually happen is he’ll be a staffer, because if you have brains that’s what you do in Washington. Or go work for a think tank. > [@](#): > > GIGObuster is correct. Congress had better internal non-partisan sources of information at one time. They were eliminated because reality has a liberal bias. Non-partisan facts are normally antithetical to conservative ideology. If you don’t like what Congress has become, look in a mirror. That’s part of it, but the other part is simply that most Congressmen probably didn’t care. Knowing about science doesn’t win you votes. Knowing that there’s a lot of anti-vax sentiment in your district is important though. The other part of that is that one doesn’t have to UNDERSTAND the views of your constituents, you just need to know what they are. Most scientific subjects cannot be legislated on simply based on a report you got from some experts. It’s better than nothing, to be sure, but aside from Rush Holt, no one’s going to read one of those and actually be able to write a climate change plan the next day. And even Democrats aren’t interested in a scientific climate change plan. Democrats are interetrd in a climate change plan that works POLITICALLY. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2016, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-politicians-are-shockingly-ignorant/759856/12 "2016-07-13T23:56:11Z")
Another aspect of REAL knowledge is knowing who to ask and what questions to ask. An ignorant person might say, “Okay, I want to fix climate change, I’ll consult climate experts.” A person who actually knows what they are doing will say, “I need to consult climate change experts, then I need to consult economic experts since we’re trying to change economic incentives here and we don’t want to hurt the economy, then I need to consult government experts to see what challenges will be faced in implementation.” And that’s just what I know and I’m a dumbass who just reads and thinks a lot. I’m sure there are a lot more people who need to be consulted that I’m not thinking of. Oh yeah, such as “how did climate change plans in other nations work?” ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@Johnny\_Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ace)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2016, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-politicians-are-shockingly-ignorant/759856/13 "2016-07-14T00:23:50Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > But do you think that Congresspeople have the amount of time to discuss the issues on message boards that the average Doper does? We may know more intricacies about issues not because we’ve done the grunt work and research, but because we all bring our areas of expertise together and someone who is an expert in a field may make an argue and cite a website, giving us information we wouldn’t normally have… > > Hmmm… that kinda sounds like what Congressional staff does ;). A Congresscritter could do worse than to have a staffer or two who were covert members of the Dope, lurking or initiating topics. Of course, they’d have to be Democrats… $2.5M is petty cash. It’s sad that they couldn’t open the purse-strings that little bit. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2016, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-politicians-are-shockingly-ignorant/759856/14 "2016-07-14T00:27:43Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > That’s part of it, but the other part is simply that most Congressmen probably didn’t care. Knowing about science doesn’t win you votes. Knowing that there’s a lot of anti-vax sentiment in your district is important though. The other part of that is that one doesn’t have to UNDERSTAND the views of your constituents, you just need to know what they are. Most scientific subjects cannot be legislated on simply based on a report you got from some experts. It’s better than nothing, to be sure, but aside from Rush Holt, no one’s going to read one of those and actually be able to write a climate change plan the next day. And even Democrats aren’t interested in a scientific climate change plan. Democrats are interetrd in a climate change plan that works POLITICALLY. Now that is a bit ignorant indeed. The IPCC has gone for advising us to not go cold turkey, and not just for political reasons, but because they do not want to sent us back to the stone age indeed. Too bad that the Republicans in congress do think that the whole thing is a hoax. Regardless of the Democrat plans, even scientists do know that the weakest link are the Republicans that are in the way of effective legislation. > **[Hillary Clinton's Plan to Combat Climate Change](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hillary-clinton-s-plan-to-combat-climate-change/)** > > If elected President, Clinton would tackle global warming via energy supplies ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2016, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-politicians-are-shockingly-ignorant/759856/15 "2016-07-14T00:39:53Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Another aspect of REAL knowledge is knowing who to ask and what questions to ask. An ignorant person might say, “Okay, I want to fix climate change, I’ll consult climate experts.” A person who actually knows what they are doing will say, “I need to consult climate change experts, then I need to consult economic experts since we’re trying to change economic incentives here and we don’t want to hurt the economy, then I need to consult government experts to see what challenges will be faced in implementation.” And that’s just what I know and I’m a dumbass who just reads and thinks a lot. I’m sure there are a lot more people who need to be consulted that I’m not thinking of. Oh yeah, such as “how did climate change plans in other nations work?” If you were aware of what is going on, you should know that the Republicans avoid to ask the proper experts **at all the levels you mentioned**. Even economic experts are willfully ignored. In the next link William D. Nordhaus who later became president of the American Economic Association had to explain how misinformers got his study wrong. Misinformers that BTW have been found more often than not to be paid shrills by conservative think tanks helped in turn by fossil fuel money. Many of those have been used by Republican congress people as “experts” in congressional hearings no less. > **[Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong | William D. Nordhaus](https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2012/03/22/why-global-warming-skeptics-are-wrong/)** > > The threat of climate change is an increasingly important environmental issue for the globe. At a time when we need to clarify public confusions about the science and economics of climate change, skeptics have muddied the waters. I will describe... ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2016, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-politicians-are-shockingly-ignorant/759856/16 "2016-07-14T00:58:22Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > That’s part of it, but the other part is simply that most Congressmen probably didn’t care. Knowing about science doesn’t win you votes. Knowing that there’s a lot of anti-vax sentiment in your district is important though. The other part of that is that one doesn’t have to UNDERSTAND the views of your constituents, you just need to know what they are. Most scientific subjects cannot be legislated on simply based on a report you got from some experts. It’s better than nothing, to be sure, but aside from Rush Holt, no one’s going to read one of those and actually be able to write a climate change plan the next day. And even Democrats aren’t interested in a scientific climate change plan. Democrats are interetrd in a climate change plan that works POLITICALLY. > [@adaher](#): > > Another aspect of REAL knowledge is knowing who to ask and what questions to ask. An ignorant person might say, “Okay, I want to fix climate change, I’ll consult climate experts.” A person who actually knows what they are doing will say, “I need to consult climate change experts, then I need to consult economic experts since we’re trying to change economic incentives here and we don’t want to hurt the economy, then I need to consult government experts to see what challenges will be faced in implementation.” And that’s just what I know and I’m a dumbass who just reads and thinks a lot. I’m sure there are a lot more people who need to be consulted that I’m not thinking of. Oh yeah, such as “how did climate change plans in other nations work?” Could you explain your point in one syllable words? I don’t understand what you’re saying or even what you think you’re trying to say. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2016, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-politicians-are-shockingly-ignorant/759856/17 "2016-07-14T01:13:36Z")
Politicians prioritize poiltics even when they know better. You cannot learn enough about issues just by consulting people or Googling, no matter how good the sources. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2016, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-politicians-are-shockingly-ignorant/759856/18 "2016-07-14T01:43:46Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Politicians prioritize poiltics even when they know better. > > You cannot learn enough about issues just by consulting people or Googling, no matter how good the sources. That is why there are experts out there. The problem is when a politician denies even that reality and thinks that science is just pick and choose an “expert”. And then one should wonder if that kind of congress does represent what even their constituents do want. [http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/04/13/3769104/climate-scientific-consensus-real/](http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/04/13/3769104/climate-scientific-consensus-real/) > [@](#): > > That’s been changing, however. Last March, some 64 percent of adults said they are worried a “great deal” or “fair amount” about global warming, up from 55 percent at that time last year. According to the Gallup poll, concerns about global warming have increased among all party groups since 2015. Moreover, activists are pushing to unveil what they describe as decades of misinformation campaigns funded by fossil fuel interests. Indeed, it’s been widely reported that secret donor networks have funded groups that attack peer-reviewed scientific research. > > Meanwhile, 59 percent of the Republican House caucus and 70 percent of Republicans in the Senate deny the scientific consensus that climate change is happening and humans caused it, according to a recent analysis from the Center for American Progress Action Fund. That means more than six in 10 Americans are represented by someone in Congress who denies climate change. > > Adam Frank, professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester, said that disconnection between the consensus and politicians is worrisome. “We are a nation whose national treasure is our prowess of science,” Frank, who wasn’t part of the study, told ThinkProgress. “Once you start downs this road of pushing against science because it has political ramification, then all of science opens up to it.” ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2016, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-politicians-are-shockingly-ignorant/759856/19 "2016-07-14T01:52:50Z")
But that’s why the pick and choose “experts”. If your knowledge of basic scientific principles wouldn’t win you $1000 on an episode of “Are you Smarter than a 5th grader”, then you have no way of analyzing the information you get. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2016, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-politicians-are-shockingly-ignorant/759856/20 "2016-07-14T02:23:45Z")
What about knowledge of transportation issues? Of infrastructure issues? Of trade issues? Of banking issues? Of gun issues? Of abortion issues? Of poverty issues? Of education issues? Of budgets and national defense and terrorism and ecology and farm subsidies and Native American reservations? Repeat ad nauseum for the several thousand issues that Congress must deal with. Of course politicians prioritize politics. Have you just suddenly realized it? Has something just changed in reality? That’s why I’m asking you what your point is. What world have you been living in? Why are you saying this now? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-politicians-are-shockingly-ignorant/759856.md?page=2)