Republican Scientists

I'm a bit baffled by articles decrying the partisan polarization of climate science and laying the blame on the absence of Republican scientists. For example:

A Pew Research Center Poll from July 2009 showed that only around 6 percent of U.S. scientists are Republicans; 55 percent are Democrats, 32 percent are independent, and the rest "don't know" their affiliation.

...Consider the case of climate change, of which beliefs are astonishingly polarized according to party affiliation and ideology. A March 2010 Gallup poll showed that 66 percent of Democrats (and 74 percent of liberals) say the effects of global warming are already occurring, as opposed to 31 percent of Republicans. Does that mean that Democrats are more than twice as likely to accept and understand the scientific truth of the matter? And that Republicans are dominated by scientifically illiterate yahoos and corporate shills willing to sacrifice the planet for short-term economic and political gain?

Or could it be that disagreements over climate change are essentially political—and that science is just carried along for the ride? For 20 years, evidence about global warming has been directly and explicitly linked to a set of policy responses demanding international governance regimes, large-scale social engineering, and the redistribution of wealth. These are the sort of things that most Democrats welcome, and most Republicans hate. No wonder the Republicans are suspicious of the science.

Or this:

But anyone who’s thought about this for more than a few minutes knows a very specific answer to the question of why there are no Republican scientists: it’s because contemporary science is an empirical, reality-based intellectual enterprise and all such enterprises are inherently non-conservative, unless they involve making a lot of money (there are probably some forms of business that fit the above description and I would not be surprised if some of the people who do them are conservative). If contemporary science was based on reasoning from principles (like the sort of “science” Aristotle liked to do), it might be of interest to conservatives. But it’s not.

Well, in my book, science is about puzzling out the Laws of the Universe and it's inherently neither conservative or liberal in nature; or, to be more-specific, it's conservative in its reliance on immutable law, and liberal (if that's the right word) on choices of methods. Science is a hybrid.

People who think and write about politics often rely upon ideology. Ideology is abbreviated thought. When you rely upon an ideology, you don't have to completely rethink matters from first principles - you just cut to the chase - and that's important when there's no time for thought, like in debate. Ideology can mislead, however - sometimes you do have to go back to first principles - so people who rely only on ideology are often in error.

Historically, scientists usually are born into families of professionals and laborers of various sorts - teachers, clerics, independent farmers, engineers, sailors, etc. They usually don't come from the merchant class, however. The root of why so many scientists are Democrats lies in this dichotomy, since modern Republican leaders usually come the merchant class. Nevertheless, with the rapid expansion of college education after World War II, scientists from all kinds of backgrounds are now walking the Earth, including those from the merchant class.

There are Republican scientists out there, even in climate science. The writers of these articles just aren't looking hard enough for them.

I remember when I was in grad school in the 80's, we had two students who might strike most people as conservative Republicans, by today's definitions. One fellow was a lay evangelist. He eventually left grad school, partly because of the hostile social environment of being the only Bible banger in a sea of skeptics, but, in the end, mostly because his interest in serving the Lord exceeded his interest in science.

The other fellow, though, was a classic modern Republican conservative. He was a Son of the South, and Republican in every instinct. His interests, however, took him into the light-scattering properties of aerosols, which naturally took him straight into the science of Global Warming. Today, he is a pillar of the Global Warming establishment.

Things look differently when you actually make the calculations yourself as compared to when you rely upon an ideology to do your thinking for you. I'm sure his thoughts are just as Republican today as they ever were, but unlike most people, he has highly-nuanced views regarding Global Warming. Some aspects of Global Warming he accepts without argument; others with caveats, and others he rejects outright as garbage. And he can do this because, unlike most people, he has thought things through. From first principles. By himself. I'd love to sit down with him again and shoot the breeze and see what his views are these days!

So, the Republicans are there in the sciences, as they should be - they are just hard to spot, sometimes.