A new study measures the rejection of science by political party. You'd think findings would surprise no one. But science writer Chris Mooney takes a closer look at the results and finds you might still be shocked:
Gauchat further validates the argument of The Republican War on Science by showing that the decline in trust in science was not linear. It occurred in association with two key “cultural break” points that, I argue in the book, heightened right wing science politicization: The election of Ronald Reagan, and then the election of George W. Bush. .. Gauchat also captures, once again, the “smart idiot” effect: Conservatives becoming more factually wrong—or, in this case, more distrusting of science, which to me is basically the same thing—as their level of education advances.
The first part is nothing new, but the second graph about the smart idiot effect is a topic we have yet to explore in much detail in these parts. It's just too freakin depressing. The data, and Mooney's own work in his
newest book—soon to be reviewed right here, I might add—suggests that dismissing scientific reality grows
more resolute the more educated the wingnuts are.
- Speak of the devil—which I argue here is most likely the Koch Brothers—the NCSE updates us on a state house bill that combines teaching the "evidence against" evolution and global warming in one tidy little legislative face/palm measure. Is this the future for anti-evolution efforts? Creationists joining forces with the fossil fuel industry's crusade against climate science makes sense; it means the corporate coffers are open to those selling all flavors of willful ignorance.
- Hominid fossil hunters find a revealing clue in the form of a rare fossil of fragile hominid footbones. Or as I like to say it, Satan plants another fake clue for godless atheistic materialist evolutionist darwinist communist fascists to crow about.
- This is your distant universe on science, as revealed in the ESO's ultra deep-field view courtesy of Starts with a Bang! If the holotype winguts get its way, pretty soon your kids will be learning all this and more was created in the last 10,000 years.
- I guess we're not the only fucked up country when it comes to science, click on the image below and learn about Ms. Vedischeva, the new head of media relations for the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos.