Conservatives Attack Scientific Findings About Why They Hate Science (Helping to Confirm the Science

[marmar]

AlterNet / By Chris Mooney

Conservatives Attack Scientific Findings About Why They Hate Science (Helping to Confirm the Science)
Some would like to dismiss the inconvenient findings about the political right, but the science won’t let them.

May 29, 2012 |


Two months have passed since my new book, The Republican Brain, was published, and so far it has gotten a lot of media attention. However, the coverage has followed a noteworthy pattern: while progressives and liberals seem intrigued about what I’m saying, the so-called “mainstream” media—the CNNs of the world—have shied away from the subject.

What’s up with this? Well, a book with conclusions closely related to mine—Norman Ornstein’s and Thomas Mann’s It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism—seems as though it is being handled similarly by some in the press. And perhaps there’s a reason: Centrist (aka “mainstream”) journalists might well prefer that the findings of these books not be true.

You see, if I’m wrong, then the press can happily go on doing what it has always done: Splitting the difference between the political left and the political right, and employing “on the one hand, on the other hand” treatments that presume we’re all equally biased, all equally self-interested...just in different directions.

The trouble is, I’ve presented a substantial body of scientific evidence suggesting that this simply isn’t the case. More specifically, the science I’ve presented suggests that the political right and left are quite different animals; that they perceive the world differently and handle evidence differently; and most importantly, that the polarization and the denial of science in modern American politics are fundamentally the fault of the authoritarian right. (Mann and Ornstein argue something very similar about today’s Republican Party.) .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/books/155646/conservatives_attack_scientific_findings_about_why_they_hate_science_%28helping_to_confirm_the_science%29/

[longship]

1. Wow! Great read!

Mooney is articulate and stands by his reportage on how the right wing thinks.

A highly recommended click through.

[Major Nikon]

2. Even just a casual observation confirms this

When you have a large group of voters who consistently vote against their own self interests, it's hard to imagine they have any respect for facts and reason.

[Igel]

5. So a robust prediction is that (R) and (D) are set early on.

And are fairly immutable.

For anything else would require--depending on who you talk to--either a wholesale revision of the cognitive structure of a brain or (what might amount to the same thing, for those who argue a genetic component) a revision of the DNA.

Meaning that all the (D) I know who became (R), as well as all the (R) I know who became (D), can't exist.

Neo-cons are simply impossible.

Well, now that we've taken care of that problem by saying they simply don't exist, we can move on to perfecting the ultimate caramel latte.

Or psychologists are just as susceptible to confirmation bias and have their own cognitive filters as everybody else. It's noteworthy that for the last 150 years good, solid, unchallengeable reasons rooted in the "best" scientific thinking of the day have been advanced for why every threatening group believed to be inferior--not just mistaken, not just deluded, but inferior in an irremediable way. (Before 150 years ago, reasons were still advanced, they just were rooted in other kinds of thinking.)

[siligut]

3. Conservatives don't like science when it interferes with their greed

The evidence for my thesis—that liberals and conservatives differ by personality, psychological needs, morality, and numerous other traits; and that this is what is lurking behind our political battles over what is true, on issues ranging from global warming to whether President Obama is a socialist--was lying in plain sight in the scientific literature. I simply compiled it and reported on it. Notably, this evidence is not dependent on the work of any one scientist or group of scientists, on any one methodology, or on any one discipline. It is cross-disciplinary, and it is growing.

Why face the real world when the fantasy one is so much more gratifying? Never mind that the real world is suffering from conservative policies and liberals are the ones who have to fight to prop it up.

[ladjf]

4. I agree with your post. I'd like to add that, in my opinion, the Conservative Mind's primary flaw

is that in their attempt to evaluate themselves in relationship to others, chooses to fabricate
personal aspects rather than to be objective. That is the fallacy in their deductive process that leads them down the road of fantasy and destruction. Everything goes "down hill" from that point on. Unfortunately, in this interconnected society, if too many individuals base their actions upon
false premises, it not only dooms their own existence but drags down the more enlightened
ones as well.