Neil Degrasse Tyson to Bill Maher: Liberals Are Anti-Science Too
When Bill Maher claimed yet again on his HBO show "Real Time" that conservatives deny science more than liberals, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who was one of the panelists, quickly corrected him, saying the liberal left is not any different either.
"Let's not pretend that Democrats and Republicans equally deny science," the political comedian said on his show "Real Time With Bill Maher" Friday night.
Tyson, one of the panelists along with Reason magazine editor-in-chief Matt Welch, Daily Beast editor-in-chief John Avlon and restaurateur Eddie Huang, responded by saying, "Don't be too high and mighty there because there are certain aspects of science denials that are squarely in the liberal left."
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"I know one, but I don't want to get into it," said Maher, who's known to believe that vaccines cause autism.
"Vaccines!" the panelists said in unison, to which Maher responded, "Yes."
"There're more," Tyson said, further explaining that liberals also believe that genetically modified organisms are dangerous, and advocate for "alternative medicine," which is a denial of some forms of established science.
"Undermining the future of genetically modified crops — a process, that in one form or another, humans have been engaged in for around 10,000 years — probably hurts society (the poor, in particular) more than any global warming denial ever could," David Harsanyi, a senior editor at The Federalist, wrote in an article earlier. "Across the world, almost every respected scientific organization that's taken a look at independent studies has found that GMOs are just as safe as any other food."
About climate change, Harsanyi wrote, "We could start with our own Malthusian Science Czar, who once predicted that climate change would cause the deaths of a billion people by 2020 and that sea levels would rise by 13 feet. In 2009, James Hansen, one of nation's most respected climate scientists, told President Obama that we have 'only four years left to save the earth.'"
He added, "If there weren't some kind of left-wing ideological endgame propelling this tendentious guesswork and scaremongering about a relatively small changes in earth's climate, it would be laughed out of any serious debate."
Last year, a study found that liberals can be just as anti-science as conservatives.
"The Partisan Brain: How Dissonant Science Messages Lead Conservatives and Liberals to (Dis)Trust Science," challenged previous research reporting that the brains of conservatives are different than the brains of liberals and "are fundamentally less capable of rationally processing scientific evidence."
The study found that liberals, moderates and conservatives were all less trustful of the science that was related to political debates compared to the ideologically neutral science. In other words, conservatives were less trustful of science related to fracking and nuclear power, though not as distrustful as liberals, compared to science related to ideologically-neutral astronomy and geology findings. And liberals were less trustful of science related to climate change and evolution, though not as distrusful as conservatives, compared to the ideologically neutral science.
