5 Reasons it Sucks to be a Scientist: Part 3, Science Doesn't Belong in Politics

If you're interested in reading parts 1 and 2, they can be found at the links below.
(Part 1, Skepticism)
(Part 2, Science Ruins Everything)

Part 3 of this little series is quite important to consider, especially since this year is an American presidential election year.  Coming up in discussion are hot button issues, like global warming (climate change is the more encompassing term, but less of a useful soundbite), gay marriage (which is more about general equal rights than just gays, but still, soundbite), taxes, abortion (HOW IS THIS STILL A DEBATE), healthcare (ALSO, HOW IS THIS A DEBATE), and education (BECAUSE SOMEHOW WE THINK GUNS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE PEOPLE WHO WILL USE THEM).  And for the first time in my series, this isn't about how science ITSELF can suck for scientists, it's about how everyone ELSE sucks, and it makes being a scientist hard.

You have 2 sides desperately vying for the vote, and so often they have to have a dialogue about important things, and very scary topics.  I mean, WHO WANTS TO TALK ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING?  IT'S SO SCARY!  Drought, increased wildfires, lessened availability of groundwater, increasing CO2, methane buildup in the atmosphere, it's horrifying!  And frankly, the more science that gets introduced, the scarier it gets.  You stop talking about just temperatures, and you add in how it's contributing to a new mass extinction, SCARY!  You start talking about how some poisonous plants are getting MORE POISONOUS, and how flooding might increase some places, drought in others, fire in even more, SCARY.  You say skin cancer continues to rise, and the exact cause isn't known but COULD BE RELATED, SCARY!???!

LET'S AGREE NEVER TO TALK ABOUT SCIENCE WHEN WE DISCUSS POLITICS EVER AGAIN.

"Ignore science?  I don't even know what it is, but you've got a deal."

The problem is, we probably should talk about it.  After all, Mitt Romney, the republican candidate, actually stated he doesn't know if there is climate warming, much less what could be causing it, but that he didn't buy into the official story (LINK, LINK 2). Sure, he's changed his statement, but that's understandable, science is confusing.  I mean, I was pretty damned sure that I was made of solid matter when I was a kid, but now I'm apparently composed of protons and neutrons and electrons, and actually...mostly empty space between those subatomic particles (WHICH IS SORT OF SCARY, SINCE THAT MEANS I'M LIKE 99.999% SPACE BETWEEN PARTICLES, AND THAT IS CONFUSING AND FRIGHTENING). Romney's totally allowed to backtrack when he learns new information, so long as that new information is scientific, right? I mean, if you had to accurately take into account every last piece of science in every single field of study, you'd need...well, a friggin' doctorate just to understand the basics of what's being written in most scientific journals (which is probably why most researchers and professors of science have doctorates, probably).

Well, if you think that's right, and that it's probably just easier to ignore the science, you're wrong. Also possibly stupid.  Yes, offense intended.

You see, science is something that it seems NO ON WANTS TO HAVE IN POLITICS....aside from rarely a few doctors. Heck, the New York Times wrote a fantastic article about this EXACT SUBJECT!  (LINK). Because scientists are always butting in places and trying to make some point about 'apocalyptic catastrophe' and 'danger to human life' and 'the importance of accuracy and information', they can be pretty damned unlikable. What nerds, am I right?

But seriously, as we enter into an election year and a lot of the big topics of conversation come up, and especially those big topics in political conversation peek their ugly heads through, it becomes incredibly unpleasant to be a scientist. Mostly, of course, because no one seems to know the answers, and those that do are either ignored or insulted. 

For example, in this next election the issue of gay rights will be coming up.  If you can ignore the religious debates (which is nearly impossible when Mitt Romney talks about God more often than he dodges questions about his own family fortune or makes hilariously oblivious comments on his ludicrous wealth and Barack Obama needs to prove his Christianity 5-10 times a week, which apparently isn't working) then perhaps, just perhaps, you can get to arguments that involve facts. 

Facts like how homosexuals are not choosing to be gay, and that their brains may be the cause of their sexual orientation?  Or how we have science that shows the strength of gay versus straight families, and shows no difference in the children's success?  Or perhaps, we can show the evidence for homosexuality being tied to other characteristics outside of the individual's control, like their birth order or genetic predisposition?  Because...we CAN! (LINK, LINK 2, LINKS TO EXPLANATIONS ON WIKIPEDIA 1, 2 AND 3) The reason so many scientists are extremely vocal about gay rights, or climate science, or any other big issue isn't because they're all crazy, left-wing, secretly homosexual, hippie-minded, communist bastards....it's because they KNOW the science, and think that the big debates are STUPID.  When you know the neuroscience, the sociology, the psychology, the ecology, the mammalian or avian behavioral ecology, you start to SEE INFORMATION...THAT APPLIES TO REAL LIFE. And it's quite frustrating that what you see evidence and logic and explanations for, other people see as 'inconvenient and hard to learn'.

But science isn't something people want to talk about.  Science isn't something that people are interested in, often because they don't understand.  If you want to know why, it might be because we're not even in the top 10 nations in terms of science and math, and are even further behind in biology specifically, but it's more than that....science is wildly inconvenient, and therefore, people hate it in politics. No one wants to hear truth from a politician, because the truth is scary!  So, we'd far rather hear them debate healthcare in a simplistic, often wildly innaccurate way, because that's like watching gladiators, instead of intelligent debaters, and I can tell you right now that gladiators tend to be debaters in combat...since they have weapons, not words, and a shouting contest isn't won by reasonable debate.

So, back on topic, why does it suck to be a scientist?  Most scientists are specialists in a specific area of a specific subset of a specific field.  I mean, I say I'm a biologist, but I'm really an ecologist, or more accurately, I study plant-animal interactions involving variations in plant chemistry in response to outbreak insect attacks....otherwise known as a super specialized area of ecology, which is itself only a very small subset of biology. 
But scientists don't just learn our specialized subject area of work because we also need a lot of background work.  I took classes in math, biology, chemistry, physics, computer science, geology, psychology, bioethics, and research design to get my biology degree, so I know a LITTLE BIT about a LOT of subjects, and that means that when something comes up in the news about science, I tend to at least understand the basics. However, most people in America really don't.  In fact, we SUCK at science.  We're not even close to where we seem to think we are. We're literally not in the top 10, and depending on the year, sometimes we're not even in the top 20, 30, or worse...at least in terms of science education, which most Americans appear to believe we're great at.

MOST PEOPLE DON'T UNDERSTAND SCIENCE IN THIS COUNTRY!  And when they talk about how 'Those gays are ruining America, they can't force their lifestyle choice on me', scientists want to retaliate because someone knows the numbers understands the real facts pretty well can definitively show that those people are wrong!

For me, when someone is a creationist, I don't think, "Oh, what a pleasant person whose faith is important to them", I tend to think, "DEAR GOD THEIR KIDS ARE GOING TO BE SO MISINFORMED ABOUT HOW EVOLUTION, THE CORNERSTONE OF MOST MODERN BIOLOGY AND MUCH MEDICINE, WORKS!"  If evolution isn't real, then what the HELL did we do to the elephant population through artificial selection, and how do those crazy bacteria keep becoming resistant to antibiotics?  If you don't believe in evolution, you're probably not just misinformed, you're downright wrong about dozens or hundreds of other related pieces of information, some of which (like antibiotic resistance and how that works) actually matter to your daily life.

And when a possible future PRESIDENT OF MY COUNTRY tells me that global warming, climate science as a whole, might be lying? I think, "HOLY CRAP HE DOESN'T KNOW THE SCIENCE, AND TO TEACH HIM WOULD REQUIRE A BASIC UNDERSTAND OF CHEMISTRY, GEOLOGY, METEOROLOGY, AND POSSIBLY EVEN BIOLOGY."  I don't think he's a man of faith, I think he's a buffoon whose knowledge of the real world is limited to studying politics and money, not people and their lives.

What else do scientists have to offer, that comes up in the news and media all the time?  Let's go with the basics...like getting your children vaccinated.  People heard about this big scare where vaccines supposedly cause autism, right?  WRONG!  In fact, that case ended up being a result of someone LYING, and creating a huge health scare.  But it's still pervasive. The debate is still being examined by science because science wants to always seek the truth, but there is no evidence for the claims...and hundreds of thousands of vaccinations have been skipped, and many children horribly harmed, because the science wasn't listened to, a writer who misrepresented the truth was listened to.  We listened to the uninformed media over the actual researchers, and we and thousands or millions of children paid and still pay the price. Or perhaps it's the fact that there are a surprisingly HUGE number of people who just deny that HIV is real, or causes AIDS...we can go on an on, talking about chemtrail conspiracies, or people who still believe the earth is flat, or again, CREATIONISTS. 


Most of the other 5 parts of this series focus on the scientist themselves thinking in a way that doesn't work well with others, and to a degree, part 3 here does too.  But unlike part 1, where I pointed out how scientists are often TOO skeptical, or part 2 where I pointed out that science can be a HUGE GODDAMNED DOWNER, in part 3, the reason it sucks to be a scientist is everyone ELSE. 

Scientists can't talk politics because we're not talking opinions, we're talking facts.  We're not regurgitating Fox News (which has been shown to LOWER instead of raise your level of information) or the most recent, and also highly biased, Huffington Post piece.  I admit I get information from both from time to time, more for amusement than education, but the truth is that scientists aren't just reading the secondhand or even further along information, they're actually doing the research, reading the original work, and studying the facts without outside interpretations. We're talking about peer reviewed scientific research, long histories of research information, sometimes even centuries of background work, like evolution.  The problem with being a scientist and talking about politics is that most people don't know the facts, and don't have the background to make it easy for them to LEARN the facts. 

The best way I can explain it is to imagine a room with while walls and 1,000 blind people living in this room.  There is one person, though, who somehow, through study and luck, begins to regain their sight, and finds a book about colors, and several confirming reports that show that the color of the walls of this room are white.  The 1 individual, the scientist of the group, tells the others that the room has white walls! The response?
"WELL, MY BLIND UNCLE TOLD ME THE WALLS ARE PURPLE, AND THAT'S MY RELIGION, SO SHUT UP AND STOP OPPRESSING ME."

If it's not clear enough already, I'm an atheist, left-leaning, environmentally focused 20-something.  So, of course, I don't LIKE the creationism, or climate-science deniers, or general misinformation perpetrated by misinformed or uninformed tea-partiers and politicians.  But my point's not just about one specific belief, or one type of politician, it's about the truth:

Most people don't know, or even WANT to know the science. Bring the science up can make them feel stupid, or threatened, or confused, and in politics where most discussions seem to be more about how to win over votes than the actual SUBJECT of the vote, people try to avoid scientists.  Instead of saying, "I should go read a book", they call scientists and educated people "snobs" and claim they're in a separated "ivory tower". Some days, especially when talking politics or debating hot-button issues, it sucks to be a scientist.  Particularly when your peers, or the politics itself, isn't interested in being correct, they're interested in being believed.

However, for part 3 of my 5 part series, I'll end on a positive: 
SCIENTISTS, PLEASE LISTEN UP:  IT CAN SUCK TO KNOW THE SCIENCE, AFTER ALL, IGNORANCE IS BLISS.  Listening to the rantings and ravings of under-informed liars and fools, while being ignored or insulted for being aware and logical is not fun, and frankly, it's a big part of why being a scientist can really suck some days.

However: I'd FAR rather be uncomfortable and informed than angry, ranting, and spewing lies and deceit, as well as hateful epitaphs and moronic bullshit for a political group who I only seem to agree with because it allows me the most freedom to be a hateful bigoted jackass, and control others with the same aforementioned lies and deceit...

Not that I'm thinking of specific PEOPLE, mind you Mr. Limbaugh.