Tom Jacobs — Ideology Often Trumps Science, Especially Among Conservatives – Studies

In recent years, two narratives have been competing to explain the often-testy relationship between science and ideology. One asserts that all political partisans tend to deny scientific findings when they threaten their world view. The other insists that conservatives are much more resistant to accepting settled science than liberals.
A pair of new studies featured in a special “politics and science” edition of theAnnals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science suggests both assertions are fundamentally correct. 

One paper, by an Ohio State University team led by Erik Nisbet, finds both liberals and conservatives express negative feelings towards the scientific community when research results challenge their assumptions. But the researchers found the intensity of conservatives’ reactions was four times greater than that of liberals. 

The other, by Joshua Blank and Daron Shaw of the University of Texas-Austin, concludes that while Americans’ willingness to defer to science “varies considerably across issues,” Democrats “are relatively more likely to say they defer to scientific expertise.”…

Overall, the Blank-Shaw paper is more optimistic, emphasizing that “scientific recommendations on public policy are taken seriously by partisans of all stripes.” In contrast, Nisbet and his colleagues Kathryn Cooper and R. Kelly Garrett “distressingly” conclude that political polarization “has the potential to depress trust in science.”

Pacific Standard
Ideology Often Trumps Science, Especially Among Conservatives
Tom Jacobs