A while back Bill O’Reilly got his panties in a twist when he found out that the vast majority of social studies teachers at an Oregon college were Democrats. He assumed hiring bias, and did one of his patented ambush interviews with the department head to make his point.
I suspect that if they did a study of the business school at the same college, they would find a preponderance of Republicans. There’s no bias involved – just an attraction of certain types of people to certain professions. I am a CPA, and a European-style socialist. But the vast majority of accountants and CPA’s are conservative and Republican. The profession does not attract many socialists, and tends to favor black/white thinking – hence, conservatives.
Pew Research did a study that gave me pause for thought – I never would have guessed this. Among the general public, 23% consider themselves Republican, 35% Democrat. Among scientists, the numbers are wildly skewed – only 6% Republican, and 55% Democrat. When pressed as to which party they “lean” to, it gets even wilder: 12% Republican, 81% Democrat.
There have been some self-selected and non-scientific polls showing that in journalism, most reporters are Democrats. Conservatives assume hiring bias, but a more likely explanation is that more Democrats are drawn to journalism than Republicans. I might even take it a step further – given their exposure to a wide variety of issues and people, and the need to examine all sides, journalists develop a more open and questioning thought processes (or had that tendency to begin with), and end up as Democrats because the party is less doctrinaire than the other.
But that’s just a guess. Regarding the wild skew in the number of Democratic scientists, I’m both surprised and at a loss. Hard scientists are trained in hard science, and would, in my mind, tend to be apolitical. There is no political indoctrination going on in science classrooms … maybe I’ve hit on something there.
Maybe not. I’m stumped.
Piece of Mindful 
Soft or hard science.
I thinks its the collective bargaining, in regards to wages and bennies, that puts them over the top.
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I don’t see why scientists would confuse you if you’re assuming that an open and inquiring mind leads to being a Democrat. Seems like that’s an likely trait for scientists. Especially when you realize that the survey of scientists isn’t people with a science degree, but members of the AAAS. They’re surveying academics and leaving out people who work in industry. I’m going to hazard a guess and say that the people who are getting Chem-E doctorates and taking Pharma jobs skew a little Right.
Then you could consider the largely conservative attacks on certain scientific conclusions. Are you going to become an academic scientist when you’re a creationist? Or climate change-denier? It seems less likely and those are positions taken primarily by conservatives.
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Science research and journalism tend to attract the utopian “I want to change the world” type of people, and they tend towards the left.
Hard scientists are trained in hard science, and would, in my mind, tend to be apolitical.
In my experience hard scientists tend to hold pretty strong political views. It seemed that one saw more extreme views in this group — hard left, hard right, and libertarian.
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Science research and journalism tend to attract the utopian “I want to change the world” type of people, and they tend towards the left.
From my ass to your plate.
In my experience hard scientists tend to hold pretty strong political views. It seemed that one saw more extreme views in this group — hard left, hard right, and libertarian.
There may be something to that, but my experience is with engineers and geologists, the former tending towards loopy beleifs, the latter towards flaky. What I see, especially in debates like Global Warming, is near unanimous support among scientists for the science confronting wily PR types who spin them into a corner. They are just off the turnip truck in the political game.
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