For years liberals have been saying that Tea Party members, and conservatives in general, are ignorant about science, that they are even anti-science. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s because conservatives pay close attention to scientific arguments that they are the one group that most respects the scientific process.

Consider this study from a self-admitted liberal:

“Dan Kahan, professor of law and psychology [at Yale], found that those who identify with the Tea Party score higher than non-Tea Partiers on a measure of science comprehension.”

Dr. Kahan’s study of science comprehension went against everything he had been told by the media and political pundits. Note that Dr. Kahan admits that he lives in an academic and political bubble:

“As I pushed the button to run the analysis on my computer, I fully expected I’d be shown a modest negative correlation between identifying with the Tea Party and science comprehension.

“But then again, I don’t know a single person who identifies with the Tea Party. All my impressions come from watching cable tv — & I don’t watch Fox News very often — and reading the ‘paper’ (New York Times daily, plus a variety of politics-focused internet sites like Huffington Post & Politico).

“I’m a little embarrassed, but mainly I’m just glad that I no longer hold this particular mistaken view.”

Of course, there is antipathy toward scientism among many conservatives. Scientism is the belief that science can and does explain everything. This is a well-guarded myth.

The creation-evolution debate is one area where the science does not work for the claim that all that surrounds us — including ourselves —somehow came into existence spontaneously. One of the first things a young person learns in science class is that something can’t come from nothing. There are too many scientific laws that address the impossibility of spontaneous generation. Spontaneous generation is a fundamental necessity in evolutionary dogma.

Scientific arguments that claim that global-warming is the result of human impact also have a suspicious scientific pedigree. That’s why Global Warming has morphed into Climate Change. Any change in weather patterns becomes evidence for more taxation, environmental regulations, and government spending. Even cold spells can be blamed on Global Warming, I mean, Climate Change.

Even with contrary scientific evidence, the climate-change radicals will not yield because the Global Warming fiction has been all about money and growing government and not about science. Consider this report from Climate Depot:

“There have been many forecasts in the news in recent years predicting more and more extreme weather-related events in the US, but for 2013 that prediction has been way off the mark. Whether you’re talking about tornadoes, wildfires, extreme heat or hurricanes, the good news is that weather-related disasters in the US are all way down this year compared to recent years and, in some cases, down to historically low levels.

“To begin with, the number of tornadoes in the US this year is on pace to be the lowest total since 2000 and it may turn out to be the lowest total in several decades.”

Are we surprised that Paul Thornton, editor of The Los Angeles Times “letters section, recently wrote . . . that he won’t publish some letters from those skeptical of man’s role in our planet’s warming climate”?

Former astronaut Walter Cunningham observed that “‘true believers’ in the dogma of global warming ‘are beyond being interested in evidence; it is impossible to reason [people] out of positions they have not been reasoned into.’” (Quoted in Melanie Phillips, The World turned Upside Down: The Global Battle Over God, Truth, and Power (New York: encounter Books, 2010), 32.))

Has Dr. Kahan’s worldview changed because of his study? Not at all: “Of course, I still subscribe to my various political and moral assessments — all very negative — of what I understand the ‘Tea Party movement’ to stand for.”

Dr. Kahan knows where he gets his grant money, and it’s not from the Tea Party, so the facts be damned.