Politicians vs Scientists

Romney claims to be strongly against congressional "earmarks", provisions in Congressional legislation that allocates a specified amount of money for a specific project, program, or organization (Merriam Webster). Meanwhile it was recently announced that he in fact supported earmarks in his job as Governor of Massachusetts. President Obama laid out his Comprehensive Tax Plan earlier in his term, which included ending income tax for seniors making less than $50,000. This promise has been both broken and ignored (Politi Fact).


Some people might say, "Whatever. Politicians lie all the time". And they'd be partially right. Inherent in the job of a politician is using the emotions and morals of their constituents to either support a cause, or unite against a cause. Look at our recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. President Bush didn't go on TV and give the American people data about our military spending, the projected casualties, and number of Iraqi soldiers and weapons. He appealed to the American ideals of freedom, democracy, and being a moral leader in the world.



When President Obama was giving the State of the Union a few weeks ago, did he focus on giving us detailed analysis of the unemployment data and how it is either sustainable or unsustainable based on the market and past trends? Of course not. He spoke about uniting as a country, and regaining our stature globally. He used our emotions and values to motivate us and get us behind an issue.


People ask, why is it that so many politicians are caught lying, are caught in scandals, and are caught withholding information from the public? Why are politicians never honest, and why do honest people never run for political office? The reason is because scientists and politicians are in essence two radically different types of people.

Scientists base their entirely livelihood on making assumptions, arguments, and analysis off of data. Cold, hard, unbiased data. That's probably one of the reasons that there are very few, if any,  physicists in political office today. If I spent several hours a day procuring data and making analyses of it, I'd be disgusted to see our politicians casually disregard the truth the way they do so adoringly. And so regularly.

Why do you think so many Senators, Representatives, and even Presidents were and are lawyers? Lawyers use facts given to them not for calm, emotionless argument, but for bending, reexamining, and reinterpreting. Sometimes they may even blatantly deny claims they know to be true. The same idea holds for actors. Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger come to mind.


I can't think of two disciplines whose core philosophies differ more than those of scientists and politicians. Scientists conduct experiments, observations, and surveys. Then (ideally) they draw conclusions from the data, regardless of their views. Politicians do the opposite. They have their views and they use data to strengthen those views, often in an effort to further a cause or legislation.


Are you a scientist? Or a politician?


Some interesting sites to check out about the topic are politifact.com, factcheck.org, politico.com, and livescience.com