I think in the United States today it is hard to win an election if most people notice that you are smarter than they are. We do not often hear candidates praised for their intellegence, but rather that they’d be good company for drinking beer.
Also, it can’t help that many scientists are athiests, more than a few openly so, and in the US it would be pretty hard to get elected as an athiest. For that matter, some state constitutions prohibit athiests from elected office.
Getting a PhD also requires a single-mindedness of purpose and focus, whereas politicians tend to have to be generalists.
Scientists as elected or appointed leaders of the state is a old cliche in science fiction. It makes some superficial sense - why not have the smartest people in charge? However, in real life, while scientists can be absolutely brilliant in their specialty, they can be and usually are about as smart or dumb as anybody else about everything else.
If you include undergrad degrees there are scientists in congress.
http://sharp.sefora.org/issues/111th-congress-degrees-by-type/
I’d say at least 60 (including those with professional degrees, which require undergrad science degrees) have at least a bachelors in science.
However there are very few graduate degreed scientists in congress.
Also, if a scientist goes into full-time politics, like German chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel (a physicist), he/she has to abandon science for good. Merkel hasn’t done research since 1990 i.e. she won’t have a chance to re-enter physics. If Merkel were a lawyer she’d have been able to practice law while a member of parliament, and on leaving the chancellorship she’d be able to take it up again. If she were a teacher (the most frequent original professions of German politicians: lawyers and teachers) she’d be able to go back to teaching at any time.
Nitpick, because this is a pet peeve of mine: An “atheist” is someone who doesn’t believe in God or gods, or disbelieves in God or gods, or believes in the lack of gods, or whatever. An “athiest” is someone who’s more athy (whatever that is) than anyone else.
We like to think of electoral democracy as being open, representative, egalitarian, etc, etc. But the truth is that participation in electoral politics – successful participation, enjoyable participation - requires particular skill set, personality type, etc. And people with that personality and those skills find themselves more drawn to being lawyers, teachers, union officials, etc than to being scientists and technicians.
It may not be a coincidence that China features in the list of countries that do have scientists in positions of power.
You want more scientists in political office? You want to give up on this electoral nonsense!
I agree to get elected you have to appeal to EVERYONE, not just those who are intelligent enough to understand you.
Nothing puts a person off more than if he thinks your condescending to him.
If someone asks a candiate “Do you believe in God”? They are gonna say yes, whether they believe or not. Because athiests usually aren’t going to be offeneded enough to NOT vote for someone if he believes, but many religious people WILL be offended enough not to vote for that person if he declares himself to be an athiest.
I don’t think that’s true. There are several practicing physicians in the US Congress, and I’d say that’s probably harder to go back to (or at least, the consequences are more dire if your skills are rusty), then being a physicist. The US Sec of Energy (not an elected position, but still) has published papers since assuming his current position. The research behind them was done before he assumed office, but he apparently still spends part of his free time writing stuff up and corresponding with collaborators.
I actually wonder if the current era of “big science” won’t lead to more scientists making the jump from running large national labs and experiments to running for office. It seems a pretty natural transition in a lot of ways.
A NYT article from when Foster was elected.
It is notable that leaders of China and many other countries have generally been scientists, and America tends to favor lawyers. I remember reading an Economist article about that but dang if I can dig up a link to it now.
I think it has more to do with Americans wanting to vote for someone who they think is just like them, the “have a beer together test”, and scientists are perceived as … different. Somehow, not to be trusted. Maybe even a little arrogant, the damn eggheads.
First time a scientist official feels America is doomed, he’d be putting his infant son in a rocket, or some damn thing.
As Lewis Black says, if you are in a voter booth and there are 2 candidates to choose from, one of whom is “the sort of guy/gal you could have a beer and goof around with”, choose the other one.
The obsession with the beliefs of those elected is an American phenomenon. It doesn’t apply in the UK, where mentioning God or religion too much in an election campaign will doom a candidate. I don’t think you can point to the atheism of scientists as the reason they’re not running for office.
Politicians and political comentators tend to deride “technocrats”, making it clear that engineers and scientists should stay in the kitchen and let the grown lawyers do the thinking. In a course on Political Science I took last year, the professor referred to economists as technocrats - I’m still wondering what terms would he use for all those engineers who’ve been Ministers of Industry or scientists who’ve been Councilors for Technological Development.
Hey physicians aren’t scientists! 
Dr. Chu is a Nobel Prize winner who has been around for a while. Scientists at his level don’t need to be around the lab anymore but they still prefer to be associated with something scientific. It makes sense that he would be sec. of energy as opposed to an elected politician.
I think most scientists have absolutely no interest in selling themselves as is required in democracies (particularly the superficial politics of the US). I think US politics would make their heads 'splode.
I don’t know about that, it certainly is big in the US and apparently not in much of the UK, but I’m sure there are plenty of nations where it is important (I know it was brought up when I was in India), certainly religion must have an influence in Northern Ireland.
Any theory you create that claims to explain which countries tend to have few scientists in office and which countries have many is going to have many of them to take into account the countries in each camp. The U.S. has relatively few (or so the OP claims). I’m told that Russia, France, Japan, and China have relatively many. Which countries have few of them? Which countries have many of them? Does anyone have a citation for any of those numbers? All you’re doing at the moment is coming up with random theories that that might fit the U.S. but probably don’t fit anywhere else. That’s a worthless theory. What you want to claim is that only countries that fit into category X will have few scientists in office and countries that don’t fit into category X will have many scientists in office. Then you have to show that the first group of countries really do fit into category X and the second group of countries really are not in category X. then you’ve got to show that the number of scientists in office really is few in the first group and many in the second group. Until you’ve got a list of the proportion of scientists in office in a bunch of countries and a list of which of those countries fit into category X, you’ve got nothing.
None of this applies in Canada, where there’s no Republican party, nobody really gives a shit what the PM’s religion is, and personal finances don’t help that much in attaining power. And yet our politics are absolutely lousy with lawyers, with economists being third (the current PM is an economist) and rich businessmen running second.
So it appears that we’ve got to find something that’s true of the U.S. and Canada and not true of Russia, Japan, France, and China, since it appears that in the first two countries it’s true that few scientists go into politics and in the second four countries it’s true that many scientists go into politics.
I badly screwed up the first sentence in post #37. It should say this:
> Any theory you create that claims to explain which countries tend to have few
> scientists in office and which countries have many is going to have to take into
> account for the countries in each camp.