Mike Palij asked Jim Clark to: "Remember that this thread was started by my making reference to published research that has shown that people who self-identify as conservatives on the GSS have demonstrated a decreasing pattern of trust in science over time. For those Tipsters just entering this thread, this is a good website to see the figure that is being referred to: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/29/10911111-study-tracks-how-conservatives-lost-their-faith-in-science?source=science20.com";
Then Mike indicted me as a water muddier because I dared go "beyond the original article". I further egregiously took the thread astray by referring to postmodernism (although, in my defense, I didn't link to the Wikipedia article on postmodernism or actually cut and paste paragraphs of that article into my messages for everyone to wade through). :) Mike asked us to "Consider: PoMo and related tendencies would have most likely affected liberals or people tending toward liberal ideas and one would have expected that as PoMo developed in popularity, at least in academia, we should see a decrease in trust in science among liberals especially during the 1990s -- but there isn't this trend. During the 1990s, liberals had the lowest trust in science in 1990 and every subsequent year during the 1990s shows an increase in trust in science -- while conservatives show a trend for decreasing trust in science." Mike, through independent reasoning, came to the basis for my original question: I would have expected that everyone in our culture would have been losing trust in most institutions and I wondered why science wouldn't be included with the institutions liberals would lose confidence in. I won't consider it plagiarism but just a happy coincidence that great minds think alike. I just thought it counterintuitive (not wrong), given the cultural changes since 1974, that liberals would not have lost any confidence in science. I believe Jim Clark, in a subsequent contribution, may have found a very reasonable answer to my question by pointing out that, while liberal trust in science remained high as questioning of all other societal institutions increased due to what might be called decentralization or increasing individualism (or whatever if PoMo is too faddish of a label), extent of liberal trust in science (5 on a 10 point scale) is still not very high and leaves a lot of room for the liberal science skeptics I mentioned to exist on the lower end of that scale. Conservatives and Moderates are both about 4 on the same scale (down from a matching 5 with liberals in the mid-70s; moderates were never really higher than 4.5). I believe there may also be a good reason why Mike may be correct in his assertion that the majority of critiques of science are coming from conservatives. That is only to be expected when one realizes that, according to Gallup (http://www.gallup.com/poll/148745/political-ideology-stable-conservatives-leading.aspx), since 1992, political affiliations have remained fairly stable with moderates and conservatives (who according to the graph in the article referenced by Mike have similar views toward science) maintaining almost a 4:1 advantage over liberals. (This is probably highly US-centric.) With that many more adherents, one would expect the most criticisms coming from that direction. The title of this thread seems to imply there is something in the nature of conservativism that explains why conservatives distrust science. Given the divergent trends of Conservatives and Liberals from 1974 until today (moderates have always had a generally lower opinion of science), it seems that the answer may lie either in cultural changes (or changes in the perception of science) or some interaction between conservative opinions and cultural changes. Rick Dr. Rick Froman, Chair Division of Humanities and Social Sciences Professor of Psychology Box 3055 John Brown University 2000 W. University Siloam Springs, AR 72761 [email protected] (479)524-7295 http://bit.ly/DrFroman --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=17097 or send a blank email to leave-17097-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
