Exactly. My wife goes to a chiropractor 2-3 times a month for relief of moderate pain caused by a minor spinal birth defect. She has been quack-resistant all her life and the chiro she sees never suggests that he can “cure” any other ailment she may have.
Whereas the MD’s offered, as I said, spinal surgery with a low (but non zero) possibility of permanent spinal nerve damage, or, eventually addictive medications for essentially forever. She picked door number three.
What gets me is any occupation that’s not something like “senior corp mgmt” or some sort of Wall St., Gordon Gekko type trending Republican. Do they just like being screwed over ?
Any medical insurance policy I’ve ever seen, and Medicare too, have a PT benefit which is defined as a limited course of treatment designed to help in recovery from surgery or injury. They do not pay for long-term therapy used to relieve chronic pain. (I’d be only too happy to find out about a third party payer that does cover long term PT, if you know of one).
Once you no longer have an active qualifying diagnosis, or the therapist has said, “There’s no longer any prospect of improved motion or strength”, your therapy coverage is over. At that point it’s a lot cheaper to see the chiropractor who has a low price for cash patients.
Had to do a side-by-side, so chemistry is really an average of the two, assuming a disjoint set. It’s still pretty red for the sciences, which confirms my observational bias. I tend to think of chemistry as the science you go to if you want to call yourself a scientist but cling to a lack of understanding of evolution. At any conference of evolution deniers, any scientist they have on is likely a chemist or biochemist. Chemists are also more likely to work or to have worked in the petroleum sector.
Surprised that mathematicians are so liberal, though.
If you look at the breakdown, that’s all due to software engineers. The more traditional engineering professions are more like 50/50, and I would say that a lot of the reason they don’t swing further right is because of the preponderance of immigrants in a lot of those fields.
Pretty much this. Also can be done with a lot less deep, abstract thought than physics. As a physicist, I have a lot of trouble seeing how any physicist worthy of the name could support a party that takes it as an article of faith that thermodynamics is a communist plot.
Talking more about wet chemistry there, than, say p-chem, but the kinds of chemists we’re talking about lean more towards that side than the p-chem/materials science side, too. I got within a year of a biochem degree, and actually got my degree in physics, so I think I’m in a position to compare.
I expected that my profession would be blue (Pediatrics), but I guess I didn’t realize how red Urologists are. I know there is a joke in there somewhere… “something something being around dicks all day.”.
Well, there’s your problem. 
I don’t know what the biochem students I’ve come across are learning, but there’s definitely a cultural and intellectual rift between them and us-- at least at my school (which of course, means that it applies to schools everywhere because reasons.)
I mean biochemists think that oil molecules “repel” water molecules when any good chemist knows that its a statistical function of molecules finding their most stable energy configuration with respect to intramolecular forces and that “repulsion” is a weird way to think of VdW attractions with respect to water molecules. This is a summary of an entire argument I had with a biochem student yesterday, hence the unnecessary passion. But then, I always liked equations a lot more than pushing electrons.
That’s a good premise for a sitcom
I am shocked by this. Most of the engineers I’ve known who are politically outspoken are Libertarian leaning conservatives. Maybe the liberals are just more quiet about it, and are entering the workforce as the conservatives are aging out of it.
As an engineer, I’d say that a lot of that is the influx of immigrants in the profession. Also, I think that among the American contingent, many are pretty libertarian-leaning regardless of whether conservative or liberal. (ie, there are conservative leaning libertarians, but me and a lot of others are left-libertarians who would only align with the democratic party if you put a (metaphorical) gun to our heads and made us choose between them and a rightwing fascist and/or theocrat nutjob.) That’s something that this study really doesn’t account for at all.
Checked the list,and both my education and actual job are safely in the blue column. No surprises here.
Of course, I still suspect that I’m a political minority at work, when you look at our choices over here.
I think the liberal vs conservative thing is more a function of age that anything else. I’m not sure how or even if immigrants vote as a bloc, but that may have something to do with it too.
I think you’re right about engineers being libertarian as opposed to authoritarian. “Because I said so” doesn’t really fly with us. Also we tend to have political opinions that don’t account for people behaving irrationally.
Computer Scientist: 89 vs 11
Software Engineer: 79 vs 21
Okay, so I guess it wouldn’t be too terrible if I ever moved to the US.
I haven’t checked, but I assume Trumpism, just like its European counterparts, has a strong negative correlation with formal education?
In that case, I’d love to be able to compare the political leanings of various jobs that require the same amount of formal education, or other comparisons with the effect of formal education filtered out.
I guess the difference between an Archeologist (94 vs 6) and a Petroleum Geologist (13 vs 87) is not a matter of education.
And I don’t get the subcategories of Religion.
Apparently they separated out the Catholic Priests from the rest (WTH is wrong with American Catholics, btw?). Catholic Bishops and other Bishops are lumped together. Which of the typically American Churches do even have bishops?
Aren’t Pastors, Reverends, Ministers different words for Priests, depending on which denomination/tradition they belong to? And aren’t they all “Clergy” (except for the missionaries)?
On second thought, I can’t vouch for Catholic priests in Austria, either. The run-of-the-mill believers are mostly decent, and so are the bishops (1 crazy right-wing religious nut out of 15 is not too bad). But the priests… The Church in Austria is suffering from a shortage in priests, so we import priests from more religiously conservative countries that have a surplus of priests. At least of 10% of parish priests in Austria are from Poland now. Which leads to interesting events like a (Polish) priest quitting in protest when the archbishop confirmed the election of an openly gay parish councilor.
There are also Episcopalian, Orthodox, Lutheran, and Methodist bishops. I think Mormon as well, but I don’t know. I know bishops are very important in Orthodox Christianity.
Ministry and priesthood are different as well. They may look the same to an outsider, but they are different in ways that I can’t really explain. A minister is the leader of a church and church related activities, but a priest is more connected to the church than the people, I guess? I can’t really explain how. Priests are more of a Catholic, Episcopalian, and Orthodox thing, and ministers are protestant. Also, Roman Catholic priests can’t marry, but Episcopalian, Orthodox, and Eastern Rite Catholic priests can.
I don’t understand Reverend being on the list. Calling a religious leader Reverend is like calling a judge Your Honor. It’s a form of address, not a title.
Thanks for pointing that out. I failed to recognize you could break it down further by clicking on it. Some of the other sub-fields were also not as conservative as the traditional ones.
I notice biomedical engineering is not on the list – but software engineering probably includes a lot more people.
ETA: quote.
Huh. Look at the difference between Farmer and Retired Farmer. What turns them suddenly so liberal?
It’s the safety net, isn’t it?
