# Tea Partiers Are Well Versed in Science **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 18, 2013, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tea-partiers-are-well-versed-in-science/671574 "2013-10-18T13:53:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tea-partiers-are-well-versed-in-science/671574/21 "2013-10-18T16:34:00Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Were there any specifics on what kind of science knowledge we’re talking about here? [Tea Partiers reject the science that shows global warming is happening.](http://environment.yale.edu/climate-communication/files/PoliticsGlobalWarming2011.pdf?utm_source=Yale+Project+on+Climate+Change+Communication&utm_campaign=b83a63aa7a-Politics_and_Global_Warming9_6_2011&utm_medium=email) (PDF warning) > [@Marley23](#): > > [They don’t think much of evolution either.](http://publicreligion.org/newsroom/2011/09/news-release-climate-change-evolution-2012/) Just because they **know** science don’t mean they **like** it. [Michael Lind](Sounds like the average Fox News fan, doesn’t it? ) is probably right that the TPers are not nearly as crazy nor ignorant as others commonly assume. Nevertheless, many of them do seem to have the kind of minds that obstinately and persistently substitute their own reality for reality. They **have** brains, they just won’t **use** them to engage the facts, but only to invent and rationalize their own. “The Communist and the Catholic are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent.” – George Orwell If he were alive and in America today, he would add “Tea Partier” to the list. In fact, I think they’re a prime example of what Orwell called “nationalists” in his 1945 essay, [“Notes on Nationalism”](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part30). > [@](#): > > By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’. But secondly–and this is much more important–I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality. > > \ > > Every nationalist is haunted by the belief that the past can be altered. He spends part of his time in a fantasy world in which things happen as they should–in which, for example, the Spanish Armada was a success or the Russian Revolution was crushed in 1918–and he will transfer fragments of this world to the history books whenever possible. Much of the propagandist writing of our time amounts to plain forgery. Material facts are suppressed, dates altered, quotations removed from their context and doctored so as to change their meaning. Events which it is felt ought not to have happened are left unmentioned and ultimately denied. In 1927 Chiang Kai Shek boiled hundreds of Communists alive, and yet within ten years he had become one of the heroes of the Left. The re-alignment of world politics had brought him into the anti-Fascist camp, and so it was felt that the boiling of the Communists ‘didn’t count’, or perhaps had not happened. The primary aim of propaganda is, of course, to influence contemporary opinion, but those who rewrite history do probably believe with part of their minds that they are actually thrusting facts into the past. When one considers the elaborate forgeries that have been committed in order to show that Trotsky did not play a valuable part in the Russian civil war, it is difficult to feel that the people responsible are merely lying. More probably they feel that their own version was what happened in the sight of God, and that one is justified in rearranging the records accordingly. Sounds like the average Fox News fan, doesn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tea-partiers-are-well-versed-in-science/671574/22 "2013-10-18T16:57:59Z")
I’m a little concerned about this: > [@](#): > > Proponents of the “asymmetry thesis” tend to emphasize the existence of a negative correlation between conservative political outlooks and various self-report measures of cognitive style–ones that feature items such as “thinking is not my idea of fun” & “the notion of thinking abstractly is appealing to me.” > > These sorts of self-report measures predict vulnerability to one or another reasoning bias less powerfully than CRT and numeracy, and my sense is that they are falling out of favor in cognitive psychology. So were the respondents asked to answer factual questions to demonstrate they knew scientific information? Or where they just asked if, in their opinion, they were informed about science? There’s obviously a major possible difference between a group of people being well versed in science and a group of people who believe they are well versed in science. ---
**Author:** ![Paranoid\_Randroid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/paranoid_randroid/32/18_2.png) [@Paranoid\_Randroid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paranoid_Randroid)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tea-partiers-are-well-versed-in-science/671574/23 "2013-10-18T17:07:15Z")
> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > On that note, there is a more fundamental problem. The result he is talking about is not, strictly speaking, statistically significant! He reports that p = .05! The criterion is p \< .05. Because he reports that p = 0.05, I strongly suspect that he rounded the p-value estimate. It could’ve easily been something like 0.049 \< 0.05. But rather than messing with the criterion for statistical significance I’d much prefer some meaningful interpretation of the results. This is almost contentless: > [@](#): > > identifying with the Tea Party correlates positively (r = 0.05, p = 0.05) with scores on the science comprehension measure A small positive correlation between a binary identifier for party affiliation and a categorical indicator for “science comprehension”? Well, okay, how’m I supposed to interpret that? Exactly what do the results predict about how a tea partier would respond differently (and to what questions)? _Then_ we can talk about whether the results have any practical significance. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tea-partiers-are-well-versed-in-science/671574/24 "2013-10-18T17:15:10Z")
Since I could not readily find details of what parameters of science these people were quizzed about, I am reserving judgment. It does seem unlikely that tea partiers are more science literate than the rest of the population, given the reported prevalence of evolution and climate change denial among this population. And were the left-leaners quizzed specifically about biotechnology (irrational anti-GMO sentiments tend to occur disproportionately among left-wingers)? As for antivaccine sentiment, I’d expect it to be a wash, with some antivaxers comprising a more affluent left-leaning group decrying “toxins” and “non-natural” medicine, while more rightist/libertarian antivaxers are hung up on “autonomy” and preserving their precious bodily fluids from government incursion (and both sides seeing corporate and Establishment conspiracies all over the place). ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tea-partiers-are-well-versed-in-science/671574/25 "2013-10-18T17:31:45Z")
I’d suspect that basic science knowledge is higher among Tea Partiers, because they disproportionately went to college. That doesn’t mean they aren’t delusional and unthinking now. Anecdote: I know an older man who has a master’s degree in chemistry. He knows evolution is real. But he is all mixed up about teaching it school. He wants them to “teach both sides” and gets upset when you ask him to justify that. He isn’t stupid, or even ignorant, it’s just that he’s lost, on that topic, the ability to reason because of how emotionally inflamed he is by his RW ideology and misinformation. ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tea-partiers-are-well-versed-in-science/671574/26 "2013-10-18T19:07:04Z")
Anecdotal, obviously. But I am member of the Tea Party, and consider myself well versed in the basics of physical science. (Not that it matters a great deal, but I do teach SCI 101 for a local college in the evenings.) ---
**Author:** ![Blaster\_Master](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/cab0a1/32.png) [@Blaster\_Master](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blaster_Master)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tea-partiers-are-well-versed-in-science/671574/27 "2013-10-18T19:07:16Z")
As other said, I’m not really sure this means anything. If you pick a fairly large group, like liberals or conservatives, chances are you’re going to get something pretty close to the mean, or at least something fairly close to what you’d expect for that population. The issue here is that “Tea Party” is almost a proper subset of “Conservative”, so you are basically getting a smaller sample within the larger one thus, even if there is no difference, you’ll get more variability just from having a smaller set. That said, if we assume it is ultimately accurate, it’s not really that surprising, and it doesn’t necessarily mean what the results might naively imply. At least in my observations, generally as a population is closer to a moderate position, they seem to tend toward the middle in terms of most other measurements, because it’s got the broadest appeal. As you get to more extreme positions, whether to the right or left, it’s more likely to be made up of the people on the tails. This intuitively makes sense because more intelligent people will tend to get attached to more complex and wild ideas that they’ve over-intellectualized, and less intelligent people can easily get sucked into an extreme idea, but not really have a grasp of why. This follows from my observations of the Tea Party particularly, because I have met a number of very bright Tea Party people, highly educated, and they’ll say that we need to lower taxes and justify it, rightly or wrongly, because of the Laffer Curve or various other economic principles. And then I’ll talk to a fairly dull Tea Party person who says we need to lower taxes because taxes are bad and so-and-so said it was better. So, given that it seems these populations are quite possibly of a somewhat more even or perhaps even inverse bell-curve, all it really takes is a small imbalance in the population to have an affect on the mean. And none of this has to appeal to a nefarious motive of duping the public or whatever that some others have postulated. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tea-partiers-are-well-versed-in-science/671574/28 "2013-10-18T19:11:56Z")
> [@scr4](#): > > If I read the [original blog post](http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2013/10/15/some-data-on-education-religiosity-ideology-and-science-comp.html) correctly, it’s saying that those who identify as Tea Party test higher than the _rest of the sample, including liberals_. _ahem_ Post 4. ---
**Author:** ![Nancarrow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c37758/32.png) [@Nancarrow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nancarrow)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tea-partiers-are-well-versed-in-science/671574/29 "2013-10-18T19:12:31Z")
r=0.05? Fuck that noise. ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tea-partiers-are-well-versed-in-science/671574/30 "2013-10-18T19:14:49Z")
> [@Lobohan](#): > > I’d suspect that basic science knowledge is higher among Tea Partiers, because they disproportionately went to college. > > That doesn’t mean they aren’t delusional and unthinking now. > Anecdote: I know an older man who has a master’s degree in chemistry. He knows evolution is real. But he is all mixed up about teaching it school. He wants them to “teach both sides” and gets upset when you ask him to justify that. > > He isn’t stupid, or even ignorant, it’s just that he’s lost, on that topic, the ability to reason because of how emotionally inflamed he is by his RW ideology and misinformation. I hang around a lot of “patriot” types. The ones I know are very normal, sane, and educated. Yet most of them also believe in government conspiracy theories. I just roll my eyes and try to change the subject when they bring one up. ---
**Author:** ![Karrius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/71c47a/32.png) [@Karrius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Karrius)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tea-partiers-are-well-versed-in-science/671574/31 "2013-10-18T19:15:40Z")
It also depends on what parts of science are being tested. Engineers tend to believe that evolution is false a hell of a lot higher than you’d expect for people with a heft amount of “science” education. Just because they know whatever bit of engineering they know doesn’t mean they aren’t dumb for thinking evolution is fake. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tea-partiers-are-well-versed-in-science/671574/32 "2013-10-18T19:18:43Z")
> [@Karrius](#): > > It also depends on what parts of science are being tested. Engineers tend to believe that evolution is false a hell of a lot higher than you’d expect for people with a heft amount of “science” education. Just because they know whatever bit of engineering they know doesn’t mean they aren’t dumb for thinking evolution is fake. Well, their field is not a biological one. I daresay the number would be lower for doctors. ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tea-partiers-are-well-versed-in-science/671574/33 "2013-10-18T19:25:30Z")
> [@Karrius](#): > > It also depends on what parts of science are being tested. Engineers tend to believe that evolution is false a hell of a lot higher than you’d expect for people with a heft amount of “science” education. Just because they know whatever bit of engineering they know doesn’t mean they aren’t dumb for thinking evolution is fake. Totally agree. I’m an engineer at a nationally-renowned R&D lab, and some of the engineers I work with are considered to be #1 or #2 in the world in their area of expertise. (Not me. I’m just a lab rat.) And even they believe in some… strange stuff. One of them is a Christian fundamentalist, and seriously believes Obama is Satan and actively trying to destroy the U.S. ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tea-partiers-are-well-versed-in-science/671574/34 "2013-10-18T19:36:43Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > “The Communist and the Catholic are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent.” > > – George Orwell I find it amusing that you use this quote in your argument that TPers invent facts and don’t use their brains. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tea-partiers-are-well-versed-in-science/671574/35 "2013-10-18T19:39:24Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > _ahem_ Post 4. I was trying to confirm your statement and provide additional evidence for it. I’m sorry if that offended you. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tea-partiers-are-well-versed-in-science/671574/36 "2013-10-18T19:43:47Z")
I wonder if there’s also a racial component to it. I know there are a few black politicians and pundits who identify with the Tea Party, but at the grassroots level it seems to be a largely white movement. And of course white people are more likely to have gone to college than other races in the US. ---
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tea-partiers-are-well-versed-in-science/671574/37 "2013-10-18T21:08:36Z")
Let’s accept the data at face value and make the reasonable assumption that Tea-Party identifiers are a subset of conservatives.\* We know that for “scientific knowledge” Liberals \> conservatives & Tea Party \> not Tea Party From which we can conclude Liberals \>\> conservatives not in Tea Party But we can make no conclusion at all about Liberals vs. Tea party members. That depends on by how much the previous \>\> holds. That would require more data than given on the blob though presumably available in the original study. ## Also note that 37% of those identifying as conservative are also identified as Tea Party members. That sounds very high. If it’s not very high, then Tea Party is not a fringe of conservatives and presumably not a fringe of the Republican party. \*Recall that when the Tea Party was formed it was strongly proclaimed it was not a conservative organization, but attracted people from both sides of the spectrum; nevertheless, I think the assumption is valid. ---
**Author:** ![lazybratsche](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ba8739/32.png) [@lazybratsche](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lazybratsche)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tea-partiers-are-well-versed-in-science/671574/38 "2013-10-18T21:21:23Z")
> [@Nancarrow](#): > > r=0.05? > > Fuck that noise. Hah! I was about to start writing a post about how multiple comparisons will dredge up any fact you want if you look hard enough, particularly in the realm of 0.01 \< p \< 0.05. But a correlation that weak isn’t worth another sentence from me. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tea-partiers-are-well-versed-in-science/671574/39 "2013-10-18T21:36:48Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I think that is because, for the most part, and contrary to popular assumptions, [Tea Partiers are not ignorant yokels, but Southern and Western “local notables” with some education.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=704287) This is not a point in their favor; it shows that the TP movement is not a populist one, but exists only to preserve local notables’ local power and privileges from federal interference, and to allow them to continue to exploit their local workers however they like. If I read the blog post correctly, the author analyzed the relationship between pairs of variables. What I would like to see is science knowledge as a function of education and ideology. I suspect that what we’re seeing here is a confounding effect: higher education leads to greater knowledge of science. Tea Partiers tend to be better educated than other conservatives and other broad groups. So they know a little more about science. But that’s education affecting matters, not their world view. There are standard statistical techniques that can sort this out. Heck, even Excel can run multivariate [OLS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinary_least_squares). Put another way, David Koch sponsored Nova for a while. He still props anti-science groups. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tea-partiers-are-well-versed-in-science/671574/40 "2013-10-18T21:39:29Z")
> [@Nancarrow](#): > > r=0.05? > > Fuck that noise. Or in other words, r[sup]2[/sup] = 0.05^2 or: **0.25% of the reason why someone is science-literate or not is explained by their Tea Party “membership.” ~99.75% can be explained by other factors.** And then the sentence after: > [@the Article](#): > > Again, the relationship is trivially small, and can’t possibly be contributing in any way to the ferocious conflicts over decision-relevant science that we are experiencing. His words after are a bit vague, though I get the sense that he’s not blown away that the TP is so smart, but surprised that they aren’t as dumb as he thought. ETA: and please read his last sentence, which acknowledges **lazybratsche** ’s point. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tea-partiers-are-well-versed-in-science/671574.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tea-partiers-are-well-versed-in-science/671574.md?page=3)