the last comment is gold

Why is this a shock? Government is the tit at which these government science shills suck. Every once in awhile an article about pork spending appears, and that's these assholes' time to shine! While you struggle to pay bills these clowns are performing valuable research, spending 200 grand to find out why men hate to wear condoms and determining "cities with the largest populations have the most people".

Pay-to-play government shills, and if in order to get a government grant they have to sign a paper claiming they believe in global warming or that "secondhand smoke" kills half-a-million people every year, so be it.

And Stink Uyger can cram it, as usual.

>> ^quantumushroom:
Why is this a shock? Government is the tit at which these government science shills suck. Every once in awhile an article about pork spending appears, and that's these assholes' time to shine! While you struggle to pay bills these clowns are performing valuable research, spending 200 grand to find out why men hate to wear condoms and determining "cities with the largest populations have the most people".
Pay-to-play government shills, and if in order to get a government grant they have to sign a paper claiming they believe in global warming or that "secondhand smoke" kills half-a-million people every year, so be it.
And Stink Uyger can cram it, as usual.

You're right...who needs science? We don't need medicine or technology...everything we need is in the bible. Oh but I guess we'll be handwriting them from here on out...with quills...and berry juice for ink.

QuantumPushBroom, you can be so silly sometimes

Scientists are only interested in facts, and we all know facts have a well known liberal bias.

Why is this a shock? Government is the tit at which these government science shills suck.


I don’t know if you realize this or not, but the vast majority of scientists in this country work for big corporations, such as chemical companies, pharmaceuticals and the oil industry, entities that are not know for having a liberal bias. The number of scientist that depend on the government for their funding is very small and is made up overwhelmingly of those working for military contractors.

Scientists are human, fallible, biased, cliquish, etc. Like everyone else with a job, they also have to deal with politics. When money speaks, the truth keeps silent, and there are infinite ways to distort raw data, so the idea that real science is somehow immune to politics and economics is farcical.

There's more junk science than real science being reported by the media charlatans. Lots of scary bullshit that never comes to pass, and the taxpayers always get stuck with the bill for the next round of tyrannical laws which do nothing except expand the size of government.

If facts/reality were really liberally-biased, you wouldn't need so many liars and shills (Obamedia) spouting off around the clock.

And Stink Uyger can cram it as usual, and take rottensheep with him.

>> ^quantumushroom:
Scientists areThe "authors of the bible" were human, fallible, biased, cliquish, etc.


Fixed that for you.

I'm not surprised that so few are Republican (Einstein was a Communist, and many of Oppenheimer's relatives were, too), but I wonder how many today are Libertarian-types, since so many identify as independents?

And how many are pro-democracy? I would argue that science and democracy don't really work together well. For one thing, scientists are very smart, while the majority of the human race is probably embarrassingly foolish in their eyes. So are scientists (elite eggheads) really in favor of having the unwashed masses rule the world? I gotta wonder.

A scientist libertarian party guy makes sense to me though. Free market stuff is like a form of social darwinism. Survival of the fittest. Evolution. Science. Brutal, cold, efficient, and without any silly Bible or Quran to teach hippie whatever egalitarian "love your neighbor" principles that are in there.

A scientist fascist makes sense to me, too.

I guess a scientist Communist (which was VERY popular in the past) actually makes the least amount of sense to me. The only part that makes sense is the tenet of Communism that opposes faith in God. If high #s of scientists are not religious, then I can see the appeal of Communism. But all the other aspects of Communism, which is really based on the idea of majority rule ("The People!"), seems to go against what scientists would favor. Then again, I guess convincing the world that there was no afterlife after a nuclear world-destroying war.. would be the most important thing to do for the time being. Kinda like an Ozzymandias from The Watchmen type thing.

Its actually not much of a surprise that 94% of actual scientists are NOT Republican. The GOP is an organization that prides itself on dogma (religious, political and economic). A sort of 'our way or the highway' mentality. Or as Mr. Bush once said "Your with us or against us". This is not the sort of attitude that makes a scientist good at their job. In addition, it should be noted that scientists are not just limited to Physics, Chemistry and Biology. A medical doctor, is a scientist of the human body. A psychologist, is a scientist of human mind and behavior.

When you hear, that the GOP has a list of 40-50K scientists that claim Global Warming is false, is this 6% of the total Scientists. When they say Creationism/Intelligent Design is correct & the Theory of Evolution is wrong....is this 6%.

To be a scientist means to know how to not just read, but to think critically. Critical thinking, is a concept not very often taught at a conservative (academically version of 'conservative', not the poltical version) college or university. It *IS* taught at liberal school.

But then again, many of us knew this. Think on the educational caliber of people that watch Fox News, and believe that station at face value, and never question it.

>> ^jerryku:
I'm not surprised that so few are Republican (Einstein was a Communist, and many of Oppenheimer's relatives were, too), but I wonder how many today are Libertarian-types, since so many identify as independents?
And how many are pro-democracy? I would argue that science and democracy don't really work together well. For one thing, scientists are very smart, while the majority of the human race is probably embarrassingly foolish in their eyes. So are scientists (elite eggheads) really in favor of having the unwashed masses rule the world? I gotta wonder.
A scientist libertarian party guy makes sense to me though. Free market stuff is like a form of social darwinism. Survival of the fittest. Evolution. Science. Brutal, cold, efficient, and without any silly Bible or Quran to teach hippie whatever egalitarian "love your neighbor" principles that are in there.
A scientist fascist makes sense to me, too.
I guess a scientist Communist (which was VERY popular in the past) actually makes the least amount of sense to me. The only part that makes sense is the tenet of Communism that opposes faith in God. If high #s of scientists are not religious, then I can see the appeal of Communism. But all the other aspects of Communism, which is really based on the idea of majority rule ("The People!"), seems to go against what scientists would favor. Then again, I guess convincing the world that there was no afterlife after a nuclear world-destroying war.. would be the most important thing to do for the time being. Kinda like an Ozzymandias from The Watchmen type thing.




Maybe scientists are elite egg heads, but you know who else were also elite eggheads? Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Orville and Wilbur Wright, Thomas Edison, Dr. Salk, Neil Armstrong. It was American eggheads that led the way to map the human genome. Nearly everyone on tonight’s shuttle launch is a science/math geek, and all but two are American. I for one am proud that my country has produced so many eggheads.

Science has done very well under democracy, and amazingly well under American democracy. In our brief history, American scientists (or at least scientists that came to and did their best work while in America [i.e. Nikola Tesla, Alexander Bell, Wernher von Braun]) have given the world the greatest number of advances in science, medicine and technology of the modern era. It makes totally sense; a free society, where ideas and information can be easily exchanged, coupled with a healthy amount of capital from the private sector to fund research is the best environment for scientific advances.

Just because a person is not religious does not mean they would automatically find communism attractive. If everyone that didn’t believe in a god were also a communist, communism would be a lot more successful than it is. I would venture to say that a disbelief in a god is more likely to happen in the above-mentioned free and open societies as opposed to one where everyone are told what to think. Communism (at least as in the form of China, Cuba, North Korea and the USSR) is not a “majority rule” government, but one where a small, self appointed, insular group at the very top controls everything. Majority rule is, however, a tenet of democracy.

>> ^quantumushroom:


Scientists are human, fallible, biased, cliquish, etc. Like everyone else with a job, they also have to deal with politics.
I have a job and I don’t have to deal with politics. I come in, do what is expected, and every two weeks they cut me a check. No politics, no drama. Although, I have noticed over the years very often people that are not good at their jobs blame “politics” for all their woes.

When money speaks, the truth keeps silent,

If that was true, and considering the deep pockets of big tobacco, then the health risks associated with smoking would have never seen the light of day.

and there are infinite ways to distort raw data,

Until another scientist comes along, discovers the distortion and blows the whole deal. Scientific frauds are very hard to pull off, and when a fraud is discovered, its always discovered by another scientist.

There's more junk science than real science being reported by the media charlatans.

And how’s that the scientists fault? They don’t have a say in what the talking heads report.

Lots of scary bullshit that never comes to pass, and the taxpayers always get stuck with the bill

Yea. Reagan’s SDI program comes to mind.

for the next round of tyrannical laws which do nothing except expand the size of government.

The size of the government expanded at an astronomical rate under Bush and the Republican controlled congress, a president and congress that was also somewhat less than enthused about science. If one wants an example of conservatives ignoring science while interjecting themselves in the private life of citizens, look no further than the Terri Schivo debacle.

I can think of no examples where scientists have bowed to political pressures, out side of instances like when they had to build a working a-bomb, or get a man on the moon. I can however instantly cite Copernicus and Galileo as examples of where scientists have stood their ground against political pressures.

QM,
You don't like science, eh? NO INTERNET FOR YOU! Come back, 1 year! (grabs keyboard)

>> ^videosiftbannedme:
QM,
You don't like science, eh? NO INTERNET FOR YOU! Come back, 1 year! (grabs keyboard)


Yeah, science = teh bad

QM's just waiting for steam powered internet to come back then he's ditching all this electronic shite and keeping it real with his Amish homies...

" Communism (at least as in the form of China, Cuba, North Korea and the USSR) is not a “majority rule” government, but one where a small, self appointed, insular group at the very top controls everything. Majority rule is, however, a tenet of democracy."

You're mixing a lot of ideologies in your post. There's nothing about democracy that requires free speech, and free speech does not require democracy. Free speech can exist under a capitalist non-democracy, for example. Free speech (ie lack of regulation) is simply not democratic at all.

You also mention many American intellectuals/scientists of the past who would be pretty upset about modern day America's current situation. Most of those guys probably did not want to see democracy taken to the stage that it is at now. A lot of the Founding Fathers, for instance, were not very interested in giving political power to the common man.

As for communism being about majority rule, that's what it's supposed to be. The dictatorship of the proletariat, which is inherently majoritarian since the bourgeoisie are always the minority. It's an ideology built for the largest group of people in the world.. the working class. Not the scientist class, business class, or religious class. So I'm really surprised that so many scientists of the past supported Communism.

It seems 100 years ago it was much less skewed, but the intelligent conservatives of that day are now a tiny minority of the modern, religious fundamentalist Republican party.

>> ^jerryku:
.


Honestly, I have no idea what you’re talking about here, as much of it seems to bear nothing even close to what I wrote. Maybe you didn’t read my post, or perhaps I didn’t make my self clear. Let me try again. The idea that democracy and science don’t work well together is simply not born out by the existing facts. If democracy and science don’t work well together, then how do we account for the disproportionate number of patents awarded to scientists working in democratic societies, the overwhelming number of advances in science made in the last hundred plus years by Americans and/or people living here under a democratic system? You don’t see how science and democracies are compatible? Fine. I’m just pointing out that there is no evidence for this claim, if anything there is a wealth of proof showing the opposite.

I listed the “intellectuals/scientists of the past” simply to point out that these egghead elites have done great work and done tremendous good in raising America’s prestige the world over.

As far as “intellectuals/scientists of the past who would be pretty upset about modern day America's current situation.” Unless you are in possession of a flux capacitor, assigning the thoughts on present day situations to people that have long been dead and were the product of a far different time and environment is a foolish endeavor. (I will concede however that Thomas Jefferson would most likely be mortified to learn that thanks to science, and a science he helped pioneer, future generations uncovered his little secret regarding Sally Hemmings) I’m sure that some of the founding fathers did not want to give political power to the common man. But I suspect they may have been the same people that had no issue with owning slaves, or treating women as second class citizens, so what they thought then bears little relevance to what we have now.

As far as your claim that so many scientists were communists, your post listed only two. How does two translate to “so many” in a vocation that has millions the world over? Additionally, as the Communist Manifesto was published only 150 years ago, and men have been practicing science for centuries, the idea that “so many scientists of the past supported Communism” is to put it kindly, a little hard to swallow. Considering how much scientists and researchers depend on the free market system to fund their work, I would hazard to guess they would be more interested in living under that system than not.

In regards to “There's nothing about democracy that requires free speech, and free speech does not require democracy.” I really have no clue as to how this relates to anything I posted, or where you felt such a statement fit in to the overall argument.

so boring... so boring...

They're socially liberal almost without exception, but split on economics. Demographically speaking, the only reason for someone to not be socially liberal is old school religion, and scientists tend to be atheist, agnostic, or members of more reformed sects. If the republican party gets any atheist votes, it's for economics and not the social agenda.

His sidekick here is a jackass.

All these means is that the democrats are the ones who know how to rig the new voting machines.

Ah another "wave of the future" story. Wake me up when it's over, and the posturing is done. Most people I know in the scientific field are apolitical.

^"Apolitical" means you believe in evolution and don't object to reading the New York Times. That is, in today's political climate, you're a liberal. "Conservatives" like Limbaugh regard the NYT as being a far-left rag, rather than being one of the most prestigious publications in the world.

That's the whole point... it can't be sustained for conservatives to be ruled by the fundamentalist far-right so completely that they're isolated from the professional intellectual community.

^"apolitical" means you don't give a rats ass about politics because it's beneath your notice until it directly impacts on you. Even then, in most casts when it does impact you, you still don't give a shit.

Nice try on attempting to turn it a political flaming match, but you're happily throwing out your own bias for the world to see. It's a shame you really don't understand the nuances of the political spectrum.

If you don't understand politics, let alone how something like this fits into the spectrum. Don't even try.

Citrohan, it's odd that you would leave out the huge number of democracies in Latin America and Africa that are not perceived as scientifically productive. Many of these democracies have far higher voting participation rates than America, and yet this has not led to any major scientific breakthroughs from these societies. We don't have to constantly judge democracies on a national scale either. We can go city by city, too. How scientifically productive are the democracies of Baltimore or Washington DC, for example?

There are probably more scientific breakthroughs coming from the non-democratic society of China than from all of the democratic societies of Africa and Latin America, too. Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were capable of far surpassing modern day Africa and Latin America's achievements in science as well. Both societies were probably far more oppressive than, say, Jamaica or Costa Rica. Scientifically speaking though, Nazi Germany and Communist Russia were far more impressive.

As for why I brought up free speech vs democracy, you said this: "It makes totally sense; a free society, where ideas and information can be easily exchanged, coupled with a healthy amount of capital from the private sector to fund research is the best environment for scientific advances."

In this one statement, you seemed to combine free speech, capitalism, and democracy into one whole body that cannot exist separately. I think this is very incorrect. Capitalism and democracy are very much at odds at each other. At best, they are checks against each other's excesses. Free speech is not necessary for either of the two, as well. This is why I don't think science and democracy make sense together. Democracy doesn't care about the truth, it cares about what's popular. Many aspects of science are highly unpopular to this day. One could argue that global environmental catastrophe is approaching quickly, and that this is well known amongst the scientific community, and has been for decades, and yet the world's democracies have done nothing and have basically led us to our doom.

And is capitalism compatible with science? I'm not sure, but I think it's more compatible with science than democracy is. At least capitalism has a kind Social Darwinism going for it, where the uneducated and lazy masses can be tossed aside with little guilt, left to die early in poverty. Scientists seem like elitists just by their nature, able to ply their trade to great economic benefit, rising to the top of the income brackets. Capitalism is very much the ideology of the elites it seems..