Over the years, I’ve been codifying bits and pieces of (mostly liberal) human behavior into what I call “Berg’s Laws”.<\/p>\n
I’m adding a new…well, not so much “law” as corollary to a law; an observation completely supported by the law.<\/p>\n
The Law in question is Berg’s Fourteenth<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u00a0The more strenuously a media organization identifies itself as “fact-checkers”, the more completely their “fact checking” will actually be checking statement for congruency with liberal conventional wisdom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I’m adding the brand-new but utterly-sensible Maddow Corollary<\/a>:<\/p>\n The same goes for science<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I did it after reading this Glenn Reynolds piece in the <\/a>NYPost<\/a>, <\/em>pointing out the facts behind the latest blitz of self-congratulatory articles by liberals lauding themselves for their greater supposed belief in science than conservatives.<\/p>\n These articles always trip the BS detector, naturally; they’re like the articles pointing out the”science” showing that liberals having higher IQ, or are less racist, or other such fripperies; bad science to reinforce a bad and – more importantly – meaningless conclusion.<\/p>\n Of course, as Reynolds points out, the whole tendency goes a solid level of illogic deeper. \u00a0He starts by noting that in 1974, a University of North Carolina sociologist Gordon Gauchat noted that in 1974, conservatives had a demonstrably higher <\/em>likelihood to trust science than liberals. \u00a0I’m going to add some emphasis:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Gauchat points out, correctly, that you can\u2019t lay the blame at the feet of biblical creationists and anti-evolutionists, who were no less common in 1974. Nor is sheer ignorance responsible, as the decline in trust rose with education<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So wait – the more educated a conservative, the less likely he or she is to trust science?<\/p>\n Why, that suggest that this lack of trust isn’t just love of snake-handling, doesn’t it?<\/p>\n Why yes. \u00a0It does:<\/p>\n Instead, he suggests that it\u2019s the increasing use of science as ammunition for big-government schemes that has led to more skepticism. Reynolds does what everyone needs to do when they analyze polling information; looks at the original questions.<\/p>\n Gauchat\u2019s paper was based on annual responses in the General Social Survey, which asks people: \u201cI am going to name some institutions in this country. As far as the people running these institutions are concerned, would you say you have a great deal of confidence, only some confidence, or hardly any confidence at all in them?\u201d One institution mentioned was \u201cthe scientific community.\u201d Of course, people today have less faith in general in “institutions” than they used to. \u00a0Journalism, the police, the courts, the government, all are less trusted than they used to be.<\/p>\n So has…not “science”, as in the “scientific method”, but the institutions that run it, and especially the ones that use it toward their political ends.<\/p>\n
\nThere\u2019s probably something to that, but if you read the actual paper something else becomes clear. Despite the language in the coverage, it\u2019s not science as a method that people are losing confidence in; it\u2019s scientists and the institutions that purport to speak for them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nSo when fewer people answered \u201ca great deal\u201d and more answered \u201chardly any\u201d with regard to \u201cthe scientific community,\u201d they were demonstrating more skepticism not toward science but toward the people running scientific institutions.
\nWith this in mind, a rise in skepticism isn\u2019t such a surprise.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n