The Republican Brain (33 page)

These are by far the two most prominent cases of conservatives resisting scientific reality, but there are many, many others. Indeed, as I was finishing this book, I got into a pitched blog debate with a conservative—Kenneth Green of the American Enterprise Institute—about whether the left or right was more anti-science. I won the debate (at least if you consider getting your opponent to hurl charges of “socialism” a win) in part by showing the egregiousness and the extent of Christian Right attacks on science related to reproductive health, abortion, and sexuality.

There is a vast clustering of scientific falsehoods on the Christian Right, especially when it comes to matters having anything to do with sex. And indeed, this is probably one of the biggest reasons that Republicans and conservatives today are so factually wrong about science: They have a political base composed of conservative religious believers who are convinced that reality and the Bible (read literally, interpreted conservatively) must comport. So it is not just factual errors with these folks—it is entire
doctrines
that do not align with science, but that are clung to in the face of refutation.

Indeed, Christian conservatives have a strong penchant for fostering counterexpertise to thwart mainstream knowledge. They
always
have their own expert or experts on hand to make ideologically reinforcing arguments on matters of science, social policy, and much else—usually, experts who are also pro-life, devout Christians. There are conservative Christian PhDs who attack evolution (chiefly housed at Seattle's Discovery Institute), who downplay the effectiveness of contraception, who call gay and lesbian Americans mentally ill and try to convert them to heterosexuality, and who argue that abortion harms women physically and mentally and causes fetuses pain.

These critiques are all far outside of the scientific mainstream, but that doesn't stop them. Often, you'll find just one or two Christian Right scientists who make a speciality out of attacking mainstream knowledge in one tiny area.

I've already shown how this works with respect to claims about fetal pain. But let's take another example of recent relevance—attempts to use Christian Right social “science” to undermine same sex parenting.

As more states and localities allow same-sex marriage, more of these couples will also become partners in raising children, and indeed, many are already doing so outside of marriage. Accordingly, religious conservative “experts” have sought to show—sometimes in court—that social and psychological damage is inflicted on children raised in same sex households, or that they're indoctrinated into the gay lifestyle.

But the strategy isn't going very well, because, as the American Psychological Association explains, the relevant research shows that the “development, adjustment, and well-being of children with lesbian and gay parents do not differ markedly from that of children with heterosexual parents.” How do you counter an organization with so much expertise and credibility? Christian conservatives and their allied experts strive to find a “scientific” counterargument, but it's pretty thin gruel.

One favored strategy is literally citing the wrong studies. There is, after all, a vast amount of research on kids in heterosexual two-parent families, and mostly these kids do quite well—certainly better than kids in single-parent families. Christian conservatives then cite these studies to argue that heterosexual families are best for kids, but there's just one problem (which happens to be absolutely fundamental). In the studies of heterosexual two-parent families where children fare well, the comparison group is families with one mother or one father—not two mothers or two fathers. So to leap from these studies to conclusions about same sex parenting, explains University of Virginia social scientist Charlotte Patterson, is “what we call in the trade bad sampling techniques.”

One go-to person for the Christian Right on this topic has been psychologist and Baptist minister George Rekers, who has testified in several court cases involving gay adoptions and foster care. Rekers has written that “to search for truth about homosexuality in psychology and psychiatry, while ignoring God, will result in futile and foolish speculations.” Not surprisingly, he contests the research showing that the kids are all right in families with same sex parents and argues that lesbian and gay parents are more likely to have tumultuous relationships, substance-abuse problems, and various psychological conditions.

In Arkansas and in Florida, however, judges have strongly criticized his testimony. “Dr. Rekers' beliefs are motivated by his strong ideological and theological convictions that are not consistent with the science,” wrote Judge Cindy Lederman in a 2008 Florida gay adoption case. “It was apparent from both Dr. Rekers' testimony and attitude on the stand that he was there primarily to promote his own personal ideology,” wrote another judge, Arkansas' Timothy Davis Fox, in a 2004 case involving gay foster care.

Thus, on the well-being of children raised by same-sex partners—as in many other areas—conservative Christian “counterexpertise” forays are often easily spotted. They haven't fared well in court (whether in cases involving evolution or same-sex parenting) or gained purchase within the scientific community.

But no matter—they never stop coming.

Fetal pain and same-sex parenting are classic examples of the Christian Right coming up with dubious scientific claims. So is pretty much everything said in the unending attempt to “scientifically” undermine evolution. But what's striking is just how many other perfectly parallel examples there are. Here's a quick staccato summary:

Confronted with such sweeping evidence of conservative error, there remains the counterargument: What about cases where liberals and Democrats are
also
doggedly wrong about something important? Such cases certainly exist—though as I will show, they're rarer and of far less political significance.

Still, they cannot be ignored. Chapter 12 will consider several such cases, explicitly related to science. But let me acknowledge, up front, the single most egregious left-wing delusion that is currently relevant and of which I'm aware. In a 2006 Scripps Howard survey, Democrats were found to be significantly more likely than Republicans to endorse the wild “Truther” conspiracy theory about the Bush government either directly assisting in the September 11 attacks, or letting them happen because Bush wanted a war in the Middle East.

That's a pretty clear instance of grave liberal delusion. But even here, there remains a key distinction between left- and right-wing misinformation. And that is that you don't find Democratic elites, intellectuals, or elected representatives endorsing 9/11 Trutherism. They know it's embarrassing, and they stay away from it. But that is not the case with right-wing equivalents, ranging from global warming denial (which essentially postulates a global scientific conspiracy to deceive us all) to claims that President Obama was not born in the United States.

Although this is less directly relevant to national public policy, let me also concede that certain types of paranoid conspiracy thinking, and also certain kinds of woolly-headed pop health and medical thinking, are either bipartisan or perhaps even left-clustered in some cases. When it comes to believing in poorly supported (and in some cases unsupportable) alternative health remedies and diets, and shunning mainstream medicine, this is also known to be a phenomenon of bicoastal liberal elite cities and lefty college towns.

I certainly do not contend, then, that those on the left are incapable of delusion, motivated reasoning, or the rest. That would be foolish. However, I do strongly contend that there is a
vastly
disproportionate distribution of political falsehoods in mainstream American politics. Not only are the bulk of them coming from the right, but the left is more willing to weigh counterarguments and modify its stance when proven wrong—or at least, liberals are more than happy to attack their own for being in error. And liberal elites usually do not lend credence to these claims. The right behaves differently.

To show this, I now want to focus on two more areas where the U.S. political right is exceedingly
wrong
and engaged in a dramatic amount of biased and motivated reasoning: economics and U.S. history.

Notes

171
two scientists appeared
The hearing occurred on February 25, 2010. The transcript is available online at http://www.legislature.ne.gov/FloorDocs/101/PDF/Transcripts/Judiciary/2010–02–25.pdf.

171
“that does not put me at odds with my maker”
Transcript, Nebraska State Legislature, February 25, 2010.

172
Scientific reviews . . .
Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, “Fetal Awareness: Review of Research and Recommendations for Practice,” March 2010. Available online at
http://www.rcog.org.uk/files/rcog-corp/RCOGFetalAwarenessWPR0610.pdf
.

172
. . . concur in this conclusion
Susan J. Lee et al, “Fetal Pain: A Systematic Multidisciplinary Review of the Evidence,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
, 2005, Vol. 294, No. 8, pp. 947–954.

173
consilience
William Whewell,
The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded upon their History
, London: John W. Parker, 1840.

174
2010 election study
Program on International Policy Attitudes, “Misinformation and the 2010 Election,” December 2010. Available online at
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/dec10/Misinformation_Dec10_rpt.pdf
.

175
mistaken beliefs about the newly passed healthcare law
Kaiser Family Foundation, “Pop Quiz: Assessing Americans' Familiarity With the New Health Care Law,” February 2011. Available online at
http://www.kff.org/healthreform/upload/8148.pdf
.

176
analyzed PolitiFact's work
“Selection Bias? PolitiFact Rates Republican Statements as False at 3 Times the Rate of Democrats.” February 10, 2011, Smart Politics blog, Humphrey School of Public Affairs. Available online at http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cspg/smartpolitics/2011/02/selection_bias_PolitiFact_rate.php.

177
Pinocchios
For the
Washington Post
Fact-Checker's explanation of its methodology, see here
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2011/01/welcome_to_the_new_fact_checke.html
.

177
our analysis
(This note is by Aviva Meyer.) There is an inherent selection bias in the work of fact checking organizations, as the statements they choose to analyze tend to be chosen because of their egregiousness. They aren't going to examine a politician saying George Washington was the first president of the United States. PolitiFact and the
Washington Post's
Fact-checker both use reader interest (determined by the outlet, and from reader feedback) to influence their editorial choices of what to analyze; the Fact-checker says it aims for statements that “cry out for fact-checking.” Also unlike PolitiFact, the Fact-checker doesn't hand out ratings of truthful statements (although it does have a very rarely awarded Gepetto rating). So one should hesitate at interpreting the data as providing some exact indicator of an individual's honesty. However, it seems fair game to point out not just Republicans' more frequent dishonesty, but the clear pattern of their lies being (statistically) worse lies.

The meta-analysis of the
Post
's Fact-checker counted each individual item as containing a single rating, unless the author clearly stated that the same grade was being given for separate statements by different people (this often occurred when two individuals made statements on the same topic). However, more than a few times a single rating was handed out for a series of statements, such as when the Fact-checker analyzed 5 different statements made during a half-hour long interview with Newt Gingrich. In a case like this, it wasn't clear whether to use the final grade for the interview as a whole, or each of the statements; the meta-analysis erred on the side of the former.

178
Sarah Palin
Glenn Kessler, “Sarah Palin Collects a Bushel of Pinocchios on her Bus Tour,” June 3, 2011. Available online at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/sarah-palin-collects-a-bushel-of-pinocchios-on-her-bus-tour/2011/06/02/AGkNAbHH_blog.html
. This item blasts five separate Palin claims from one interview.