If you've ever expressed any skepticism about the increasingly ineffectual campaign against global
warming climate change, chances are pretty good you've been accused of being against science. Global
warming climate change activists pride themselves on their superior understanding of science. Just ask them.
It is precisely this measure of erudition among the scientific elites who support lavish funding of their research, and the young acolytes who believe in Science, that makes it easy to find signatories at the latest global
warming climate change confab in Cancun (natch, why go to Copenhagen again and risk it snowing during your presentations)
who would put their John Hancocks on a petition to ban an especially odious chemical compound, the dreaded global warming agent DHMO*.
Wonder if Kate Knuth signed this one. . . .
*DHMO is Dihydrogen Monoxide, also known as water.
4 comments:
Mark,
Was just reading this in the Economist:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/12/science
Thought it was apropos to your post. Which of the 3 reasons do you buy into? Or do you have your own?
Happy belated birthday. Your older than me again;)
Regards,
Rich
Thanks for the birthday greetings -- much appreciated!
Depends on how you define scientists. If you're talking about research scientists who are dependent on the grant process or the government dole, they have a powerful incentive to become Democrats. You are loyal to your paymaster.
If you're talking about private sector scientists or engineers, you'd see much different results. I know a number of engineers and they tend to be Republican far more often than Democrats.
Mark,
I generally agree with your generalizations;)
But I would note that even in the field of engineering, the more traditional engineering fields (mechanical, electrical, civil, etc.) do trend toward the starboard side. But practitioners of the newer sub-disciplines, like software engineers and nano-technologists, display a decidedly leftist bent.
Maybe many of them are more like me...anthropologists trapped in a software engineers body.
I also question your assumptions about the cash nexus driving political ideology. You would be hard pressed to find a more conservative group, politically, than Big Pharma. You would also be hard pressed to find a 'private' industry less addicted to government largesse.
Regards,
Rich
Well, yeah -- of course they are generalizations.
We'll see if the leftist tinge on the newer disciplines survives the next few years.
As far as pay goes -- you can be a lefty and remain the private sector; plenty of people do. But it's exceptionally difficult to be in the public sector and remain on the Right. Or if you are, you have to be pretty quiet about it.
I agree with you about pharma, although I don't know too many people in that industry. I know a lot of people in the medical device industry, since Medtronic is headquarted only a few miles from my house. Those folks are all over the map politically.
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