Yeah I know but when you are comparing things that have a subjective value, those “facts, cites and stuff” don’t provide much in the way of argumentative eloquence (unlike you sir)
An educated opinion will always be better that the ones that come with no support whatsoever.
In the cases mentioned there is indeed direct evidence showing the Republicans of today making legislation that goes against what many would call reason. You may think that we should always follow or assume subjective values, but this is science what we are talking about. Assuming that on many of the subjects that both sides are equally bad is silly when one can check the evidence that doesn’t recognize political affiliations.
GIGO,
your response had fuck all to do with science, it had everything to do with enumerating the “fact” that the big bad Republicans do it more, or more badder, or something (all of which are subjective)
The fact that you bring cites, facts, and head bashing doesn’t change that simple truth.
Until such time that you or your brethren here on the SDMB can prove, somehow, that your objective reasoning is more important than say Bricker’s (I’d never let you off the hook by proposing myself, ah the humility), I’d stick to arguing FOR your side instead of against the opposing one.
It still amazes me that you call your opinion “educated” while you toss others away (Hint: They are both opinions)
You are agreeing with what I said.
Shucks, I was hoping that was a link to a video of a wind turbine tearing itself apart, which would have been awesome. No such luck. Actually, the turbines I’ve seen, (here in Northern California and in Copenhagen) are so far from anything that hardly anyone would notice them disintegrating.
That’s a privately funded outfit so far as I can tell.
I agree with this. When I originally said there was a one-for-one match between Republican and Democratic idiots, that was a figure of speech. It’s probably about 2-1 Republicans and I agree that Republicans are more aggressive in their defiance of various scientific consensuses. However, this is not an inherently Republican problem as the OP has tried time and again to claim. Democrats have nothing to be proud of here.
But the question I keep asking, and that nobody has touched, is why the public doesn’t trust scientists. Saying “because people are stupid” may make you feel superior but it doesn’t solve the problem. Was it eugenics? Social Darwinism? The A-bomb? Where did we go wrong? Or, have people never trusted scientists?
Of course they are both opinions, but on an anonimous message board that deals with ignorance, just posting opinions with no supporting information is just next to useless. Specially when the subject is science. If you have a mess of information on your side it is just self defeating to assume that all are just looking for elocuence and that we shuld declare a winner in discussions dealing with science just for their pretty prose.
The scary thing about certain elements of the far right ( the Rick Santorum - Discovery Institute crowd) and science is that these people aren’t necessarily stupid. They really just don’t CARE about the scientific truths regarding evolution, psychology, neuroscience, biology or earth sciences.
They believe scientific knowledge has a corrupting influence and there is an organized right wing campaign aimed at suppressing knowledge and keeping our children stupid. They call the strategy “The Wedge” and they tend to try to pretend that THEY are the open-minded ones, calling for more discussion on “controversial” issues like evolution and the sun rising in the east.
Their position paper is here. It may be the scariest thing you ever read.
[quote=“Hyperelastic, post:146, topic:636856”]
That’s a privately funded outfit so far as I can tell
QUOTE]
They have an exceedingly right wing Republican agenda
For me personally, it was a combination of the things we were told were oh so safe, except later they weren’t. I don’t know if any of it was the fault of scientists, but these days when a new drug/chemical/whatever comes out, I look at it with a jaundiced eye until it’s been around long enough to kill someone. Or not.
You are not even wrong. 
The biggest open secret is that in reality most of the public does trust science, but as demonstrated many times, most of the conservatives have trouble with it.
That’s what makes science work: New evidence can change what we know. I prefer this to Dogma.
See, it’s okay to have change. It just has to be change we can believe in. 
It’s not subjective as a simple reading of this thread will show anyone who doesn’t already have a preconceived notion that both sides are equally bad and no evidence will dissuade them.
It’s not subjective that Republicans do, in fact, do more to harm science than Democrats. There are numerous, numerous citations in this very thread of anti-science views from the right, numerous polls that show conservatives are generally more science-illiterate than those who do not label themselves conservative; numerous citations on how voting for science funding is partisan.
Yes, there are a few instances of wackadoo Democrats. Most of them that have been mentioned above have actually been debunked. The few that haven’t been have not shown to have a huge affect on policy compared to their Republican counterparts.
There is nothing subjective about this at all. To state that there is is cognitive dissonance.
I can see that on some specific subjects there is distrust, just by memory, I do know that Evolution is one that makes a lot of people uncomfortable with science. But, generally speaking, the American people does trust science.
And yet, there are surprises, many posters before constantly said that regarding Global Warming most people did not trust the science or the scientists, and yet, that is not the case.
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kgrenfell/new_yale_poll_shows_strong_pub.html
And that takes us back to the item at hand, the reality is that the current Republican congress critters are going against many of the people that they supposedly do represent, and I do think that the mainstream media, that is for the corporations, is partly responsible for not informing the people more about the boneheaded positions that the Republicans are taking in government.
Yeah, I have no problem with change, it’s just that change has to prove to me that it’s good! 
I would say it’s more like 200-1, as you came up with a single example of a Democratic Congressman propping up woo. And Harkin supports ordinary research far more than his alternative nonsense. Among the public though, I agree there are wackos on both sides: but the lefty wackos no longer get traction. I trust things will rebalance some day, but it would be wrong to posit an equivalence where none exists.
Trust rises and falls. But I suspect that the origins can be traced to the left. Environmentalism challenged the chemical, nuclear, and fossil fuel energy industries and that took the aura off of many of the hard scientists during the 1970s. The A-bomb didn’t help either.
True, there were the Darwin trials of the 1920s, but Bryan was a former lefty in that case anyway.
Looking at history might be a mistake though. Bob Lutz, tech head of GM, postures as a global warming skeptic. Just this week former GE President Jack “Neutron” Welch embraced BLS conspiracy theories. For this I blame modern conservatism, which makes an insufficient distinction between fact and opinion. Fox News and the WSJ editorial pages have had a pernicious influence on American conservative thought.
Blather. If there was ever an era when our nation was more interested in science, with all it’s possibilities, it was the the dawn of the Nuclear and Space Age.
You can’t say the scientific critique of the ramifications of it’s effects caused it’s downfall without mumbling into incoherence.
The dawn of the Nuclear and Space Age was in 1959. I would say that science’s rep peaked just after the launch of Sputnik. Maybe it hit its nadir during the Three Mile Island incident in 1979.
That’s the secular trend. On top of that is the rise of conservative nutbar worship. I think the two components should be viewed as independent. The latter can be traced as far as Goldwater and the water fluoridation loons of the 1950s. But I’d focus on the early 1990s and the rise of Fox News, squawk radio, and Gingrich’s movement conservativism which put a focus on de-legitimazation.
Republicans are the nation’s leading post-modernists. GW Bush’s administration were a good example of that. They ignored regional experts both during the invasion of Iraq and critically as they sent staff during the post-invasion cleanup. So while implementation of their program was completely cocked-up, with subsequent massive losses of US lives and treasure, the experience had very little effect on modern conservatives. Empirical reality doesn’t hold much sway on these folks.
Josh Marshall: Everyone is compromised by bias, agendas, and ideology. But at the heart of the revisionist mindset is the belief that there is really nothing more than that. Ideology isn’t just the prism through which we see world, or a pervasive tilt in the way a person understands a given set of facts. Ideology is really all there is. For an administration that has been awfully hard on the French, that mindset is…well, rather French. They are like deconstructionists and post-modernists who say that everything is political or that everything is ideology. That mindset makes it easy to ignore the facts or brush them aside because “the facts” aren’t really facts, at least not as most of us understand them. If they come from people who don’t agree with you, they’re just the other side’s argument dressed up in a mantle of facticity. And if that’s all the facts are, it’s really not so difficult to go out and find a new set of them. The fruitful and dynamic tension between political goals and disinterested expert analysis becomes impossible. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0309.marshall.html
That’s the essence of the Republican War on Science. It’s not that they distrust people in white coats. They just don’t believe in the idea of empirical investigation: to them, that’s just a figleaf for a pre-existing agenda. They figure that if they themselves see the world that way, so must everyone else.
The dawn of the nuclear age was 1945, and judging from magazines from the time that might have been close to the peak. Atomic bombs and atomic power were pure science fiction - until the ended the war. That was the first time that science - and science that seemed to be purely of theoretical interest before - became vital to the survival of the country. Space only became important because we lost and felt threatened. Eisenhower refused von Braun’s requests to send up a satellite before Sputnik - that he was ready was why we were able to respond so quickly.
Then they are like a milquetoast version of the Taliban. To deny or willfully ignore proven knowledge, facts…is to deny truth. Isn’t that we we are all supposed to be seeking? Wait…we are talking about politicians here. See, politicians are supposed to lie about stuff they say they are going to do, not defy provable scientific facts! That’s just stupid!