{"id":31647,"date":"2011-02-20T16:43:47","date_gmt":"2011-02-20T16:43:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/why-are-scientists-so-often-liberal-in-political-outlook-the-intersection\/"},"modified":"2011-02-20T16:43:47","modified_gmt":"2011-02-20T16:43:47","slug":"why-are-scientists-so-often-liberal-in-political-outlook-the-intersection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/why-are-scientists-so-often-liberal-in-political-outlook-the-intersection.php","title":{"rendered":"Why Are Scientists So Often Liberal in Political Outlook? | The Intersection"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a fascinating discussion thread<\/a> at Quora on this question–check it out. <\/p>

First of all, I am not disputing the premise: This Pew survey<\/a>, for instance, found that <\/p>

More than half of the scientists surveyed (55%) say they are Democrats, compared with 35% of the public. Fully 52% of the scientists call themselves liberals; among the public, just 20% describe themselves as liberal.<\/p><\/blockquote>

So, scientists are, in aggregate, more liberal than the rest of America…but why<\/em>? <\/p>

I am not going to be satisfied with a “really smart people are liberals” kind of answer. I know too many smart conservatives. Other arguments that I’ve seen in the thread that sound more plausible:<\/p>

1. Republicans have taken a lot of anti-science positions lately (climate, evolution, etc) and scientists are just responding to that.
2. Academia is a very liberal environment, and that’s where scientists cut their teeth.
3. Smart and talented conservatives don’t hang around for a Ph.D., they want to get out of the ivory tower (which they perceive hostile anyway) and into the business world.<\/p><\/blockquote>

What do others think?<\/p>

<\/a>
<\/a><\/p>

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a fascinating discussion thread at Quora on this question–check it out. First of all, I am not disputing the premise: This Pew survey, for instance, found that More than half of the scientists surveyed (55%) say they are Democrats, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31647"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31647\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}