Political views dictate what science issues receive the most attention

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In American scientization of politics culture, evolution acceptance is a big deal, as is climate change. Yet other science acceptance issues get much less attention.

Why? Evolution and climate change are not the most pressing short-term science issues we face, food, energy and medicine are. I am in awe of evolution but no one dies if some crank school district wants to put religion side-by-side with biology in a classroom, and American CO2 emissions from energy, obviously our biggest polluter, are back at early 1990s levels, thanks to science finding ways to make natural gas extraction better.

Some biologists worry more about food and medicine while some worry more about evolution education in schools. The reason may be as simple as the politics of academia versus the politics of private sector biologists. Government-funded life sciences academics vote 84 percent Democrat, and they can shroud their decision in a cloak of reason if they make political choice solely about evolution: because more Republicans deny evolution, Republicans are anti-science and we can’t vote for them.

It’s a fine narrative, it just takes ignoring inconvenient truths, like that the difference between Democrats and Republicans is only 9 percent on that topic, and that in areas other than evolution and climate change, Democrats are much farther from the science consensus than Republicans are – of 55 politicians in Congress who wanted to put warning labels on GMOs, 53 were Democrats. That is real anti-science belief that correlates with a political party. The most anti-vaccine hotbeds of the most anti-vaccine state, California, are all 80 percent Democratic so that also correlates to political party if evolution and global warming belief does.

Read full, original article: Acceptance Of Evolution Is Far Higher Than Acceptance Of Other Biology

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