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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
