Helping Scientific American's Michael Shermer with Basic Statistics

Michael Shermer, who writes for Scientific American -- but, I might add, is not a scientist (he has a PhD in history and calls himself "Dr. Shermer") -- has a recent column entitled The Liberal's War on Science. To the extent the thesis of that column is that there are a lot of liberals who hold unscientific ideas and values, he's right. And he is right to decry that in general.

But that is not, alas, his thesis.  As you can tell from his title, he argues that liberals taken as a whole are against science. I don't know if all liberals should be lumped together except for the most general purposes any more than most conservatives should. But, regardless, such lumping he does, and he gets it a bit wrong.

Let's look: he states that 41% of Democrats are young Earth creationists (he says 58% of Republicans are), and that 19% of Democrats doubt global warming (while 51% of Republicans do). Accepting these as valid (he does not provide the study), they still unfortunately do not support his thesis of a "liberal a war on science." Let's help him.

By his numbers 59% of Democrats -- a majority -- are not young Earth creationists. So if "not being a young Earth creationists" is a measure of being "scientific" (and all Democrats are liberals, as he equates them), then a majority of liberals are scientific. Hmmm. And, by his numbers, a majority of Republicans, 58%, are not scientific.  Likewise, if believing in global warming is a measure of being "scientific," as he asserts, then the fact that 81% of Democrats believe in global warming would mean the majority of liberals are scientific. On the other hand, the fact that a majority of Republicans, 51%, doubt global warming, would make them not scientific. Again, hmmmm.

So, I am puzzled by Shermer's claimed "liberal war on science." Here, I've drawn a graph to help him (top right). I have real doubts whether he or his editors at Scientific American understand what a majority constitutes. Ascribing the views of a minority as the overall views of a group (no matter how ill defined) is a mistake. It suggests elementary innumeracy.

But wait, we should say. If you're going to speak about Democrats and Republicans, as he does, shouldn't we look to see if these parties actually staked out a position on these issues?

Well, in fact, they did! Both did in their platforms for the election held two months ago. The Democrats recognized global warming and have not recognized young Earth creationism. The Republicans opposed the idea of man made global warming and supported teaching creationism. I am having a hard time squaring this with Shermer's statements.

Let me just cut to the chase: in my view -- and I've believed this for a while (even despite sharing some of the views he advocates) -- Shermer is a hack. Scientific American or not, his income comes from the lecture circuit and selling books, like Ann Coulter. He gets mileage and money from making provocative statements, like Coulter. His attributing a view of a minority as the view of a group and not even carefully defining the group or the issue nor even bothering to state where he garnered his statistics is, ironically, unscientific. He should know this. And we can say this, because the norms are well enough established as to what "science" is. His views about "science" should not be ones of public current.

Nonetheless, it is true (and obvious) that many people, Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, and lots and lots of people who would not fit either model, believe lots of "unscientific" nonsense. We should try to change that. If the Democrats did advocate young Earth creationism (or its "teaching") or were global warming deniers, they should be excoriated. Most, however, do not.