Dear Science Marchers: Are You Actually Promoting Science?

The March For Science protesters sadly got caught up in the latest, trendy anti-Trump protest gig. Though nominally nonpartisan under the hashtag #NoSidesInScience, Brittney McNamara at TeenVogue correctly identifies these Earth Day marchers as merely anti-Trumpers (though I disagree with her that they are “woke,”– more like well-meaning, slumbering bubble-dwellers). Yale University professor Dan Kahan, an elite, self-identified bubble-dweller, found that Tea Partiers, i.e. many people in President Trump’s core base, are actually more scientifically literate than non-Tea Partiers! Kahan has the intellectual honesty to confess: As I pushed the button to run the analysis on my computer, I fully expected I’d be shown a modest negative correlation between identifying with the Tea Party and science comprehension. But then again, I don’t know a single person who identifies with the Tea Party.  All my impressions come from watching cable tv — & I don’t watch Fox News very often — and reading the “paper” (New York Times daily, plus a variety of politics-focused internet sites like Huffington Post & Politico).   I’m a little embarrassed, but mainly I’m just glad that I no longer hold this particular mistaken view. Of course, I still subscribe to my various political and moral assessments–all very negative– of what I…
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