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Do health sciences professors really prefer George Bush?
The topic of academic bias has been done to death in the blogosphere, nonetheless I was startled by this recent result. When it comes to the 2004 election, polled health sciences professors were 48.1% for Kerry, 51.9% for Bush, at least according to one poll. The social science professors were more than 87% for Kerry, and the physical and biological science professors were more than 77% for Kerry. Even business professors were more than 65% for Kerry.
What is going on in the health sciences? They don't sound especially conservative to me. On p.28 the authors note that in their sample this is mostly professors of nursing.
Note that the linked article contains some interesting remarks by Larry Summers on the topic of academic bias.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on October 8, 2007 at 07:48 AM in Education | Permalink
Comments
Most of them are probably practicing doctors who teach an occasional class at the at the medical school.
Posted by: Rachel Soloveichik at Oct 8, 2007 7:56:41 AM
Maybe they look around and see all the "politically realistic" health policy proposals on the national agenda. Perhaps they don't like what they see. As the effected industry, they probably know more than the rest of us (on average).
A different way to spin this is that they're self-interested bastards looking to preserve their restricted-provider rents; Bush is most likely to keep them living high on the hog (at the expense of the rest of us).
Posted by: skuzzle at Oct 8, 2007 8:48:32 AM
Doctors have an amazing command of details that they can bring to bear on any particular case. But they are terrible at abstract reasoning. Their world is very meritocratic and authoritarian, where abstract considerations outside the details of the case at hand get little weight.
Posted by: Robin Hanson at Oct 8, 2007 8:51:55 AM
That's possible, Rachel. But I think nursing professors generally have Masters degrees in nursing.
I remember nurses being divided during the 2004 campaign. The American Nurses Association backed Kerry. But I've read that only 10% of nurses belong to that group. A rival group named Nurses for Bush was formed to counter the immpression that ANA spoke for all nurses.
Posted by: John Dewey at Oct 8, 2007 9:00:44 AM
Most of the health sciences professors in the sample are Nursing Professors. I'm not sure that they are representative of the views of the health sciences establishment in general.
Posted by: vanbush at Oct 8, 2007 9:13:40 AM
Robin hanson: "Their world is very meritocratic and authoritarian"
Do you think the medical profession is any less meritocratic and authoritarian than most industries?
The health sciences professors were more likely nurses with masters degrees, not medical doctors. Do you think such nurses are also incapable of abstract reasoning?
In any case, how did you arrive at your conclusion that health professionals are incapable of abstract reasoning? Have you seen any research that confirms your assertion? or is this just your gut feel?
Posted by: John Dewey at Oct 8, 2007 9:13:58 AM
What makes the results especially odd is the fact that women vote Democratic in greater percentages than men, yet health sciences professors probably are predominately women.
Posted by: Peter at Oct 8, 2007 9:55:59 AM
I think the "physical and biological science professors were more than 77% for Kerry" is the buried lede. Maybe that's because I've got an old chem degree.
Really though, I think a disrespect of basic science, as this administration has, is a disrespect for reality.
Posted by: odograph at Oct 8, 2007 10:04:50 AM
Given that the general population was 50.7% in favour of Bush and 48.3% in favour of Kerry, I do not think the correct conclusion is that health science professors are more conservative as a result of their profession---it seems that their profession does not inform their politics. Or at the very least, the result of the study is indistinguishable from the results that would occur if a branch of academia had an absence of political bias.
Posted by: Jeremy Clark at Oct 8, 2007 10:11:31 AM
Most of them are probably practicing doctors who teach an occasional class at the at the medical school.
No, as stated in the original report as well as the summary presented here, they are not medical school professors, but nursing professors. There may be some nursing programs in medical schools but by and large medical schools are post-graduate-only programs which are excluded from the study.
Posted by: Greg Laden at Oct 8, 2007 10:18:08 AM
Many of the tenured radical could be a ketman like one comment
at the linked article says
Posted by: jean at Oct 8, 2007 10:40:48 AM
There could be another factor that no one has even considered: Kerry's running-mate is a reknowned ambulance-chaser. I know one doctor who refused to vote for Kerry just because of his choice of Edwards for VP.
Posted by: Christina at Oct 8, 2007 10:41:12 AM
odograph: "I think a disrespect of basic science, as this administration has, is a disrespect for reality."
Can you elaborate on this administration's disrespect for basic science? What exactly are you meaning?
Posted by: John Dewey at Oct 8, 2007 10:44:11 AM
To put the cat amongst the pigeons, how many Americans prefer a fundamentalist Christianity to a scientific world view (be that a scientific Christianity or anything else)?
Might the marked difference between "health" and "science" professors reflect something about wider American society?
Get more data. See how many in each group self-identify as "Christian" or "evangelical" and then ask each a litmus-test question about evolution.
Posted by: odograph at Oct 8, 2007 10:45:07 AM
John, the disrespect for science is very widespread. At the most basic level, it is 'whenever science might give us an answer we don't like, defund that science.'
It's happened in fisheries science, climate science, health science ...
Posted by: odograph at Oct 8, 2007 10:48:16 AM
"Kerry's running-mate is a reknowned ambulance-chaser."
Good point. Nurses as well as doctors generally hate lawyers. Lawyers force R.N.s to spend less time on patient care and more time on cover their backside documentation. Every nurse can provide an example of an arrogant lawyer-patient who made their worklife miserable. I don't know how lawyers can look at themselves in the mirror.
Posted by: John Dewey at Oct 8, 2007 10:49:29 AM
odograph: "the disrespect for science is very widespread"
Can you give a specific example of this alleged dsisrespect?
Defunding science research is not disrepect for science. It is more likely disrespect for public versus private funding of programs. It may also simply reflect priorities. Protecting our lives by securing air travel is more important to Republicans than traveling to Mars, for example.
Posted by: John Dewey at Oct 8, 2007 10:54:12 AM
I think you are playing games John. You would have to be spectacularly uninformed not to have any examples of your own. There is a whole book of examples, as it happens.
Should I suspect that you will not trot out the 'talking point' responses to that?
FWIW, I am a life-long conservative and Republican. I grew up at a time when it was possible to bet a Lutheran and Scientific education without conflict. I've seen conservative politics lurch away from me.
We are less WFB Jr. now, less rational, less interested in reality.
Posted by: odograph at Oct 8, 2007 11:05:03 AM
John Dewey,
Bush himself refuses to come out on the side of evolution and thinks that intelligent design ideas should be taught in science classes as part of the "debate." That's about as disrespectful of basic science as one can get.
Posted by: chukuang at Oct 8, 2007 11:06:53 AM
BTW, the Mars mission you site is an interesting example. What happened even as grand Mars plans were made?
Bush seeks funding cuts for Earth monitoring satellites
(should be "get" for "bet" above, of course)
Posted by: odograph at Oct 8, 2007 11:08:11 AM
I think nursing is a subject that often has a relatively bigger faculty size and more prominence at Christian colleges when compared to normal colleges. It might just be that therefore the sample of faculty in this particular subject included much more members of the religious right than the samples of professors of other subjects, which might have driven the results.
Posted by: Sander Wagner at Oct 8, 2007 11:45:11 AM
I think nursing is a subject that often has a relatively bigger faculty size and more prominence at Christian colleges when compared to normal colleges. It might just be that therefore the sample of faculty in this particular subject included much more members of the religious right than the samples of professors of other subjects, which might have driven the results.
Posted by: Sander Wagner at Oct 8, 2007 11:45:50 AM
Perhaps the reason why more heath science professors prefer George W. could be that polls don't look at every heath science professor, they look at just a sample of them. Some like Bush. Some like Kerry. I think that all polls are skewed unless they poll the entire population of the group. I think that there is too much over-analysis when it comes to polls like this. It is a poll, just a random sample of the professors. It isn't a full scale count of all of them. Perhaps the heath science professors prefer Kerry more, but the poll didn't get enough information to convey this.
Posted by: Robert Edwards at Oct 8, 2007 12:47:46 PM
I'm puzzled by the apparent belief of the commentators that persuading juries to give millions of dollars to babies with cerebral palsy, by trotting out the phony theory that mistakes in the delivery room are the cause, constitutes sound science. Cui bono, I guess. Obviously those who support this behavior don't actually want our health care practices to be guided by scientific principles. Which is why I don't take such people seriously when they prattle about science. It's all just political posturing.
Posted by: y81 at Oct 8, 2007 12:59:22 PM
Odograph,
Given that science has so clearly and obviously sold out to politics (ie embryonic stem sells as the ultimate panacea for every illness, anthropogenic global warming as catastropic certainty, the Larry Summers debacle, etc.) is it that surprising that politicians feel increasingly free to pick and choose which science to listen to?
After all, Democrats have been ignoring the laws of economics for generations (and sadly the Republicans have joined them over the past decade or so).
Posted by: Matthew C. at Oct 8, 2007 1:04:26 PM
Too bad you are talking to a Republican, educated in Science. I call B.S. on that 'liberal conspiracy' theory.
Posted by: odograph at Oct 8, 2007 1:31:54 PM
BTW Matthew, lets say that anthropogenic global warming is an area of much political and scientific interest. Why would we cut funding for earth-monitoring satellites? Do satellites have a 'well known liberal bias?'
Posted by: odograph at Oct 8, 2007 1:47:14 PM
Odograph,
You need to reread what I wrote. I said nothing about "liberal conspiracy". As for being educated in "Science", well that's the problem right there. Science is a methodology, not an orthodoxy. When we turn it into a capital letter "Science", ie a belief system, then it loses its status as truth approaching and becomes instead a set of dogmas just like the dogmatic religions it supplanted.
I'm not at all surprised to see less respect for science by politicians and many others more recently, since the institutions that claim the mantle of science are largely about their own status and power rather than a dispassionate investigation into reality. Questioning authority includes questioning the self-appointed guardians of "scientific truth".
Posted by: Matthew C. at Oct 8, 2007 4:41:09 PM
Interesting the contradiction or assumptions in these who lines:
As for being educated in "Science", well that's the problem right there. Science is a methodology, not an orthodoxy. When we turn it into a capital letter "Science", ie a belief system, then it loses its status as truth approaching and becomes instead a set of dogmas just like the dogmatic religions it supplanted.
Actually the capitalization was my allusion to the Early Days of Science when things were Capitalized Strangely.
But nice to see that you can jump from there to Assumptions about the Politics of the Author.
Posted by: odograph at Oct 8, 2007 5:10:28 PM
Not sure if this link can be pulled out of it's original, but here's an example of what I mean.
Posted by: odograph at Oct 8, 2007 5:15:21 PM
BTW, if a Scientist is defined merely as One Who Does Science, what does that say about the modern (lay) Republican position that we should mistrust Scientists?
It's a tidy self-sealer, if you aren't too bright. Whole fields of study cannot be trusted because no one who does them can be trusted. Indeed, you must always look for Someone Who Does Not Do Science to get your opinion. That is, you have to find people who have Not Dedicated Themselves To The Field.
Thus, washouts with D's in their last science class become the go-to-guys on climate, etc.
Posted by: odograph at Oct 8, 2007 5:27:50 PM
I can't find anyone that's mentioned it, but being a "professor of nursing" is *not* like being a "professor of economics." Nursing professors get *less* education than, say, an RN (according to two of my friends who decided to become nurses). So the whole inclusion of them in the category is a bit strange.
Posted by: asdfs at Oct 8, 2007 7:20:37 PM
Thus, washouts with D's in their last science class become the go-to-guys on climate, etc.
Who specifically are you referring to?
On NPR today, on the way home, I got to hear about how global warming is going to cause severe storms and destroy crops. That is a controversial idea among climate researchers, but it has already become the incontrovertible truth among most of the media.
This is exactly what I mean by the institutional corruption of science. You can be sure that the global warming alarmists will not be calling NPR to inform them of the weak scientific basis for those statements.
As someone who studied geology in school before my career as a software developer, I was extremely well informed of real climate change back in the late 1980s. The history of the planet is the history of climate change. Vast world-encompassing ice ages, followed by stifling heat-waves that flooded much of the continents. And all of it happening long before the invention of the internal combustion engine. It's certainly possible, even likely, that CO2 emissions are contributing to the current warm spell. It's also possible that changes in solar emissions are primarily responsible. In any event, if anthropogenic warming becomes a problem, there are a multitude of possible, relatively inexpensive technological fixes to reduce the planet's albedo and hence solar flux. The current furor and frenzy about global warming is a sociological phenomenon, not a scientific one.
Posted by: Matthew C. at Oct 8, 2007 7:25:14 PM
I was responding to your claim:
I'm not at all surprised to see less respect for science by politicians and many others more recently, since the institutions that claim the mantle of science are largely about their own status and power rather than a dispassionate investigation into reality. Questioning authority includes questioning the self-appointed guardians of "scientific truth".
Sounds like you just ruled out everyone who does science as a vocation. Who does that leave?
Posted by: odograph at Oct 8, 2007 7:44:49 PM
Robert Edwards,
And there you cavalierly dismiss an entire 100-year-old field of study in one blog comment. Statistics isn't a science in the way that the ones Bush disrespects are, but it's still highly disrespectful to dis something you obviously know nothing about (with a 95% confidence interval and a 5% margin of error).
Posted by: jb at Oct 8, 2007 9:27:17 PM
The Congress members (Democrats in particular, although not alone) reveal all their lack of respect for science every time they vote in favor of some stupid economic anachronism. Moreover, the same people that tend to think of their own intellectual achievements highly in other fields of science can be extremely superstitious and ignorant when it comes to basic economics. Interestingly, those ignorant savants also have a tendency to vote Democrat.
Posted by: Badger at Oct 8, 2007 9:34:57 PM
From these sites:
http://www.payscale.com/research/ca/People_with_Jobs_as_Physicians_%2F_Doctors/Salary
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/People_with_Doctor_of_Medicine_(MD)_Degrees/Salary
It looks like American doctors are making 20%-40% more than Canadian doctors.
Posted by: Mr. Econotarian at Oct 8, 2007 11:29:02 PM
Not just Edwards. Bush pushed tort reform in general, which probably improved his numbers with health care providers. They might also be a demographic that likes the prescription drug entitlement.
Posted by: Jim Hu at Oct 9, 2007 3:36:32 AM
Thanks for the link to that report. I ended up writing a long post about it
(http://gregladen.com/wordpress/?p=1445)
Obviously, a person's politics emerges from the interaction of their cultural environment and other factors. Then, there may be further selection as the particular cultural patterning of a "place" in society sorts you out further (through hiring practices, for example)
On reading this over and thinking about it, I have come to believe (provisionally) that nursing people and business people are part of the same initial cultural/demographic environment (and distinct, presumably from medical doctors and med school professors, etc.). In other words, I don't think the similarity in patterning shown in this study between these two groups is a coincidence.
Posted by: Greg Laden at Oct 9, 2007 11:06:23 AM
"Why would we cut funding for earth-monitoring satellites? Do satellites have a 'well known liberal bias?"
Well, because there are competing budget priorities. Astronomers are complaining, too, as planetary missions are cut back or reduced in scope. Doesn't prove some malevolent design, despite the AAAS
Posted by: Rich Berger at Oct 9, 2007 1:29:41 PM
chukuang: "Bush ... thinks that intelligent design ideas should be taught in science classes as part of the "debate." That's about as disrespectful of basic science as one can get."
I personally believe in evolution. But I'm willing to accept that others have a different belief. If Bush tried to use the power of government to suppress the teadching of evolution, then I would agree that he was being disrespectful.
Chukuang, not everyone's beliefs are the same. It is a sign of respect to acknowledge that. I will agree with you that intelligent design is not science and should not be taught in science classrooms. But you and I don't make the rules. Local school boards should be making the rules. Those who would impose their beliefs on others - which I suspect you would do - try to use courts and the federal government tocarry out their bidding.
IMO, the president of the U.S. is a politician first and foremost, and has no business getting in the middle of a debate about evolution and intelligent design. But I do not see how doing so indicates a disrespect for science.
Posted by: John Dewey at Oct 10, 2007 9:46:17 AM
odograph: "I think you are playing games John. You would have to be spectacularly uninformed not to have any examples of your own."
I do not have any examples of my own. I do not play games. I would appreciate it if you gave me specific examples of what you mean when you say that George W. Bush does not respect science.
I do not see how giving a lower priority to environmental monitoring satellites indicates a disrespect for science. It is the responsibility of the president somewhat but especially the Congress to determine which programs are funded. That every program is not funded to the satisfaction of the American Association for the Advancement of Science does not indicate disrespect. Rather, it indicates that a governmnet cannot fund everything that everyine wishes, and choices must be made.
If you made this statement:
"Bush and Congress believe the government's national defense mission is more important than its science research role."
then I would agree with you.
Posted by: John Dewey at Oct 10, 2007 9:55:16 AM
Here are some links regarding Bush administration and science
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=2&articleID=0001E02A-A14A-1084-983483414B7F0000
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/78916.php
http://www.space.com/news/bush_warming_041027.html
http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/news/2004/02/62339
Posted by: Shane Milburn at Oct 10, 2007 11:59:50 PM
Shane Milburn,
I wonder if anyone bothered to follow your link to this quote:
"Daniel Sarewitz of Arizona State University said, "I think the opportunity to use science as a political tool against Bush has been irresistible -- but it is very dangerous for science and for politics"
One of your links quotes James E. Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York:
"The administration wants to hear only scientific results that fit predetermined, inflexible positions."
That statement could be equally applied to Al Gore, to most climatologists, and to nearly all Democrats, who want to cripple the nation's global competitiveness.
Contrary to the false arguments of liberals, scientists have not reached a consensus on the cause and effect of global warming. Climatologists who desire more funding have, of course, agreed that more research is needed.
Posted by: John Dewey at Oct 11, 2007 9:36:56 AM
he made the unfullfiled promise of put a caP ON DAMAGE AWARDS AGAINST DOCTOR.ThAT S WHY LAWYERS HATE HIM
Posted by: Jules at Oct 15, 2007 9:37:11 PM
Posted by: 鑽石 at Apr 2, 2008 10:28:34 PM
