Policy Decisions Affected by Party Affiliation, Views About Science

Science is supposed to be fact-based and objective, but new research shows the way it is being used is definitely not.

The Northwestern University study found that partisan use of scientific data in policymaking has increased in the past 25 years and confirms a widening gap between Democrats and Republicans. Researchers found Democrats cite science nearly twice as often as Republicans in congressional committees and five times as often in think tanks.

Alexander Furnas, research assistant professor in the Center for Science of Science and Innovation at Northwestern, said the pattern is consistent across multiple policy areas, and some findings were more obvious than others.

“It was not obvious to me going into this that what we would find would be, the difference would be quite so large or quite so widespread,” Furnas explained. “Certainly, the different relationships to climate science are very unsurprising.”

What was surprising, he noted, is the magnitude of the partisan gap across nearly all scientific disciplines. They also studied political elites and policymakers and found significantly lower levels of trust in scientists and scientific institutions among Republicans compared to Democrats.

Furnas pointed out that previous research focused on public statements by politicians, but the new study examined actual policy documents. He stressed that even in documents on the same issues, they found major differences in which scientific papers were cited by Republican versus Democratic sources.

“We observe these partisan differences both in their attitudes towards science and in the kind of documents that these folks actually produce that have policy impacts,” Furnas added.

Furnas thinks the implications are vast, especially for those who believe science should establish facts about the world, while politics can determine what to do about those facts.

“It’s important for science and the future of science, for any possible governing coalition to see high-quality scientific evidence as a sort of socially important thing that they want to use and trust,” Furnas urged. “And insofar as they don’t, I think that’s threatening to science because ultimately, a lot of funding for science comes from the government.”

While there has historically been bipartisan support for science-related funding, the Trump administration has proposed significant cuts to scientific agencies.

This story was originally published by the Public News Service and Illinois News Connection, a news partner with KRCU Public Radio.