Hot-button scientific topics have been politicized. Not by Republicans, however.

ENV’s David Klinghoffer has a piece in The American Spectator looking at the manipulation of science for political gain by liberals. One way this goes on is for liberals to demonize conservatives as anti-science, and mock them for their skepticism on controversial science issues like climate change and the teaching of evolution.

In the religious world you will sometimes read articles or hear sermons trying to understand the mindset of unbelievers and lamenting the lure of apostasy. The funny thing is, in entirely secular venues you will also find people worrying about the power of heresy to seduce the unwary from the true path. In the secular world, that path is called “science.”

About such scientific heresy, the level of anxiety seems higher now than any time in recent memory. Republican presidential candidates continuously being probed on their scientific beliefs, ranked by media liberals on the basis of their adherence to scientifically orthodox ideas about evolution, global warming, and stem-cell research, has been the most obvious way this came out recently.

What’s wrong with Republicans, anyway? Scientists and journalists offer a variety of diagnoses. Some say a backwoods element in the population has abandoned the Enlightenment, a result of poor education or religious fundamentalism or both.

Other experts find no convincing sociological explanation and opt for a more scientific (or scientific-seeming) approach, pointing to faulty brain chemistry. A forthcoming book title by journalist Chris Mooney says it all: The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science and Reality.

Read the full article at the American Spectator website.