Science Policy, Not Partisan Politics

This is Part II of a guest post by Josh Witten.

A few ideas of dubious merit, assuming that you are not cool with science policy continuing to be enslaved to partisan politics:

Independents acting like independents
Although 81% of scientists lean Democrat, 32% of scientists actually identify as independents. If these independents act like independents who prioritize science policy above all, rather than Democrats who forgot to check the party affiliation box on their voter registration[4], that would give Republican candidates the opportunity to compete for almost half the votes of scientists.

Embrace diversity
The survey results indicate that the scientific community has not yet achieved political homogeneity, but it acts like it has. I spent graduate school watching talented researchers embed juvenile jokes about George W. Bush’s intelligence into their presentations. I sat in on numerous conversations in which my colleagues bemoaned the obvious evil and imbecility of anyone who voted Republican. Unsurprisingly, this silences voices that do not agree with the majority. I have known graduate students that lean conservative who fear that having their views exposed would damage their careers – not for being conservative, but for being perceived as an idiot, which is apparently required for voting Republican. Sadly, these silent voices are the ones that would advertise to Republican candidates that there are pro-science votes for which they can compete.

Get over their “wrongness”
It is tempting to point out how “wrong” the Republican rhetoric is on many science issues. This would imply that the onus is on these Republican politicians to improve their thinking and move their positions toward those with scientific support. Fine in theory, but these are human beings. We are going to have to appeal to them. Yes, I know they are wrong. Get over it.

Label changes
Abandon partisan labels. Using generalizations, like Republican anti-science (as above, below, and throughout), seem like handy shortcuts, but exacerbate the “us” and “them” mentality. It forces ownership of general trends within a party on all members, like a stereotype. It also avoids directly criticizing the people making spouting the rhetoric.

Embrace the public
Turns out scientists are more popular than politicians. Remember 84% of the public think science has a mostly positive effect on society. An astounding 70% say that scientists contribute a lot to the well being of society. We should use that. We need to embrace the entire public as advocates for science and focus energy on generating public enthusiasm for candidates based on their science policy, not political party[5].

Conclusion
While it is important to understand why people hold the views they do and how the current partisan situation around science policy came to be, it is more important to find ways to recover from this situation. Equally, it is important that we do not ask anyone to compromise their views on science issues to pander to candidates. Here, I prefer to argue that we should make science more important than ever. More important than our political affiliations and certainly more important than the cheap thrill of feeling superior to another group.

When we face the reality that politicians face more significant pressure to appeal to voters that might actually vote for them than the do to be effective leaders, we are also presented with options to save science from partisanship; but will we take those opportunities?

Notes
4. Yes, I am aware that there are many non-partisan, science advocacy organizations that already exist. There is, however, an important distinction between nominally non-partisan groups and actually non-partisan voters. We need to demonstrate that the latter actually exist in the science community.

5. ScienceDebate is trying to do this. Their treatment in 2008 clearly indicates that candidates from both parties did not see the value in competing for the votes of the pro-science voters.

Josh Witten practices science as a Career Development Fellow at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK studying the regulation of splicing of mRNAs by protein-RNA interactions and writes about science at The Finch & Pea. He earned a PhD in Molecular Cell Biology at Washington University in St. Louis studying genetics in yeast and humans. In a previous life, Josh has spent time as a high level rugby player, hat model, whale rider, and magician’s assistant.