Donald Trump’s Lack of Respect for Science Is Alarming - Scientific American

[Native]

...one of the two major party candidates for the highest office in the land has repeatedly and resoundingly demonstrated a disregard, if not outright contempt, for science. Donald Trump also has shown an authoritarian tendency to base policy arguments on questionable assertions of fact and a cult of personality...

Scientific American is not in the business of endorsing political candidates. But we do take a stand for science—the most reliable path to objective knowledge the world has seen—and the Enlightenment values that gave rise to it. For more than 170 years we have documented, for better and for worse, the rise of science and technology and their impact on the nation and the world. We have strived to assert in our reporting, writing and editing the principle that decision making in the sphere of public policy should accept the conclusions that evidence, gathered in the spirit and with the methods of science, tells us to be true.

It won't come as a surprise to anyone who pays even superficial attention to politics that over the past few decades facts have become an undervalued commodity. Many politicians are hostile to science, on both sides of the political aisle. The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology has a routine practice of meddling in petty science-funding matters to score political points. Science has not played nearly as prominent a role as it should in informing debates over the labeling of genetically modified foods, end of life care and energy policy, among many issues.

The current presidential race, however, is something special. It takes antiscience to previously unexplored terrain. When the major Republican candidate for president has tweeted that global warming is a Chinese plot, threatens to dismantle a climate agreement 20 years in the making and to eliminate an agency that enforces clean air and water regulations, and speaks passionately about a link between vaccines and autism that was utterly discredited years ago, we can only hope that there is nowhere to go but up.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/donald-trump-s-lack-of-respect-for-science-is-alarming/

[Moostache]

1. This is just another case of Trump regurgitating Right Wing memes as talking points.

The Talking Yam is the living embodiment of GOP policies and fact-free scare mongering for votes come to life. Somewhere there is an echo of Norquist and Priebus screaming "It's ALIVE!!! ALIVE!!!" like some kind of Frankenstein's echo...

The one thing I strongly disagree with in that article from Scientific American is the kowtow to false equivalency that they give:

Many politicians are hostile to science, on both sides of the political aisle. The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology has a routine practice of meddling in petty science-funding matters to score political points.

I am sorry, but this is pure, uncut bullshit. The point scoring and meddling in science is 100% allocated to one side of the aisle. The Republican vandals like Inhof, Cruz, Gomert and the rest are the guilty parties and they are craven opportunists concerned only with their own re-elections and power.

[HereSince1628]

9. People make arguments to suit their needs.

At this time dems just don't seem to support as many issues that benefit from arguments that deny science. It doesn't mean there are none, and it doesn't mean that dems wouldn't deny scientific evidence if it suited them.

Perhaps the most obvious example of bending around science for dems, a significant number of democrats ascribe to non-biological notions of 'life begins at'. Those arguments completely ignore the basic and fundamental principle of natural biology that life is passed on in an unbroken continuity.

[ProfessorPlum]

2. "on both sides of the political aisle" Oh, for fuck's sake

Scientific American almost takes a stand, but has to cowardly throw in some both siderism.

[immoderate]

3. Ken Salazar, fracking activist, just became head of Hillary's transition team.

That could be what they mean.

--imm

[ProfessorPlum]

4. perhaps

but when it comes to denouncing scientific expertise, I don't think the Democrats can hold a candle to the Republicans antics, do you?

[immoderate]

5. Well, Republicans really believe that shit. Democrats are in it for the money.

Bakken pipeline has just been approved. Almost as long as the Keystone.

--imm

[NuclearDem]

8. The left is the home of anti-GMO hysteria, anti-nuclear woo

anti-vaccination, and "natural" woo.

The right doesn't have a monopoly on science denial.

[pampango]

6. "A respect for evidence is not just a part of the national character. It goes to the heart of

the country's particular brand of democratic government. When the founding fathers, including Benjamin Franklin, scientist and inventor, wrote arguably the most important line in the Declaration of Independence—“We hold these truths to be self-evident”—they were asserting the fledgling nation's grounding in the primacy of reason based on evidence.

Donald Trump also has shown an authoritarian tendency to base policy arguments on questionable assertions of fact and a cult of personality."

[dickthegrouch]

7. He'd find it damned difficult ...

To build those towers without a healthy amount of science
To reach his audience without a healthy amount of science
To keep his fancy cars on the road, fancy airplanes in the sky and fancy food on his table without a healthy amount of science