Politics of science note

The January issue of Phactum, the newsletter of the Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking, has a brief write-up about my talk there in November. Ray Haupt, Phactum's editor, has commented on several blog posts here at Quicksilber in recent months. Here's the write-up:

PhACT and Politics of Science
PhACT's speaker for November 2012, Kenneth Silber, is a journalist and blogger who describes himself as a RINO (Republican in Name Only). At the meeting, Mr. Silber discussed politics and science and how the two parties differ in their biases and are distrustful of science in differing degrees depending on the matter under consideration. For example, Republicans tend to be more skeptical in matters of climate change and Democrats more skeptical about vaccines. There are exceptions on each side, of course.
     Mr. Silber has a blog where readers may comment:
                                         http://quicksilber.blogspot.com

Me: Thanks to Ray for the mention and again to PhACT for having me speak. Readers looking into the topic further may be interested in my reviews of the books The Republican Brain and Science Left Behind (both of which I discussed in the talk). As for being a RINO, there's more to be said about that, but for now I'll point readers to my year-ago discussion of RINOs and rhinos.

UPDATE: I have posted my slides.