Simon_R wrote:Before we get too excited, maybe we ought to determine what is science.
the definition I get is.
the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.
I see no one waging a war against this.
The most we could say is some people disagree with the conclusions of other people who use science.
however changeing the title of this post to
Some people disagree with the conclusions of some other people
would be a bit tedious.
The point is that bias enters into the picture even in rational science. Stephen Jay Gould, an ecologist and paleontologist, wrote extensively about this back in the 80's. His famous book, The Mismeasure of Man, explored the hundreds of cases where human bias influenced scientific work. To this day there is still ongoing controversy over some of his claims. Read here
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cro ... terminism/Pop's post is just trying to gently nudge everyone away from a reductionist position that the political right and republicans is the sole domain of this bias.
Why do we have so many double blind controlled experiments if not to attempt to weed out inherent subjective bias?
The very polarity of liberal / conservative actually creates an ideological divide that has now cemented itself quite deeply in American culture. You do not see this quite so defined in other cultures. It almost approaches the way racism runs deep in our culture and regardless of how much one tries to not be affected by it, it remains the elephant in the room when mixed races gather. Of course there are some important exceptions but so be it.
Take GMO crops and Monsanto which perhaps is the best example of liberal anti science bias. If you go to a social gathering in Seattle for example and bring up the topic of Monsanto, just sit back and listen to the adjectives of evil and all kinds of claims regarding gmo crops that is so non scientific it borders exactly on the same level as listening to baptists from Alabama talking about evolution.
For those who are genuinely concerned about agriculture and teasing out the benefits and detriments of industrial agriculture, this kind of liberal bias is actually not helpful. Climate change has some of the same polarized issues.
I don't think there is much of an argument around the scientific consensus of climate change, but ask yourself a moment why the ideological opposition gets the traction that it does? A big reason is because of the extremes to which liberals take climate change science and project it on to their ideological beliefs.
The planet's biosphere can really give a damn about humans petty quarrels.