> There is very strong agreement about the stereotypes of fields' degree of scientificness and politics of professors (r's > .90). Interestingly, Democrat and Republic voters both agreed that the fields with the most centrist or apolitical professors are the most scientific (e.g. physics).
It looks like your politics-related charts all concern perception of politics in the field and not actual politics in the field?
I was surprised by this summary; I would have guessed that the field with the most centrist professors was something more along the lines of economics. It has a pronounced rightward slant... for academia. That makes it likely to be relatively close to the political center. I expect math professors to be overwhelmingly leftist, because that's what the campus environment is like and, studying math, they have no particular reason to develop independent beliefs. The math is the same either way.
Nursing faculty are 53% liberal / 47% conservative, or by affiliation 32% Democrat / 26% Republican, matching well with the perception reported in the graphs.
Mathematics faculty are 69% liberal and 17% conservative - overwhelmingly leftist, as expected - or by affiliation, 43% Democrat and 15% Republican.
Computer Science faculty, perceived as less extreme than the math guys, are in fact 74% liberal / 26% conservative, or 43% Democrat / 21% Republican.
Economics faculty are 55% liberal / 39% conservative, or 36% Democrat / 17% Republican, a bit more liberal and markedly less conservative than the nurses. But decently close to the center, as expected.
(Engineering faculty are a bit less liberal than the economists, but much less conservative. The actual winner of "most centered", among the fields in the table, is Business if you go by % liberal (closer to 50 is better), with % conservative breaking the tie with Engineering, and Nursing if you go by % liberal minus % conservative (closer to 0 is better).)
I can only conclude that the perceptions of professorial politics you're working with are wildly out of touch with reality. What gives? Is there a point in trying to draw conclusions from them?
(It's also interesting, to me, that the Nursing and CS faculty liberal/conservative self-IDs add up to 100%, a trait these faculties appear to share only with Performing Arts.)
> It seems ordinary people consider centrism or apoliticalness a hallmark of good science.
Based on the actual political valence of academic fields, I would have to say that while this might be true, people are inventing political centrism to attribute to fields that they perceive as scientific. They certainly aren't judging fields as scientific based on the political centrism of those fields, and they certainly aren't judging the political centrism of those fields based on the politics of those fields.
Who in the world thinks that Anthropology professors are more than 30% Republicans?
To engage in the more cognitively demanding fields requires the ability to focus attention on something requiring mental effort to hold in one's thoughts, and to do this for extended periods of time. To be, as they say, in the zone.
I suspect this ability strongly correlates with being productive in technical fields.
I also suspect this trait is more or less a male characteristic
Seb Jensen found in a study that the overrepresentation of men in the most demanding fields cannot be explained by the difference in mean IQ and standard deviation.
> There is very strong agreement about the stereotypes of fields' degree of scientificness and politics of professors (r's > .90). Interestingly, Democrat and Republic voters both agreed that the fields with the most centrist or apolitical professors are the most scientific (e.g. physics).
It looks like your politics-related charts all concern perception of politics in the field and not actual politics in the field?
I was surprised by this summary; I would have guessed that the field with the most centrist professors was something more along the lines of economics. It has a pronounced rightward slant... for academia. That makes it likely to be relatively close to the political center. I expect math professors to be overwhelmingly leftist, because that's what the campus environment is like and, studying math, they have no particular reason to develop independent beliefs. The math is the same either way.
And indeed I see in this table ( https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Political-identification-of-college-professors-by-field_tbl1_40823273 ) that...
Nursing faculty are 53% liberal / 47% conservative, or by affiliation 32% Democrat / 26% Republican, matching well with the perception reported in the graphs.
Mathematics faculty are 69% liberal and 17% conservative - overwhelmingly leftist, as expected - or by affiliation, 43% Democrat and 15% Republican.
Computer Science faculty, perceived as less extreme than the math guys, are in fact 74% liberal / 26% conservative, or 43% Democrat / 21% Republican.
Economics faculty are 55% liberal / 39% conservative, or 36% Democrat / 17% Republican, a bit more liberal and markedly less conservative than the nurses. But decently close to the center, as expected.
(Engineering faculty are a bit less liberal than the economists, but much less conservative. The actual winner of "most centered", among the fields in the table, is Business if you go by % liberal (closer to 50 is better), with % conservative breaking the tie with Engineering, and Nursing if you go by % liberal minus % conservative (closer to 0 is better).)
I can only conclude that the perceptions of professorial politics you're working with are wildly out of touch with reality. What gives? Is there a point in trying to draw conclusions from them?
(It's also interesting, to me, that the Nursing and CS faculty liberal/conservative self-IDs add up to 100%, a trait these faculties appear to share only with Performing Arts.)
> It seems ordinary people consider centrism or apoliticalness a hallmark of good science.
Based on the actual political valence of academic fields, I would have to say that while this might be true, people are inventing political centrism to attribute to fields that they perceive as scientific. They certainly aren't judging fields as scientific based on the political centrism of those fields, and they certainly aren't judging the political centrism of those fields based on the politics of those fields.
Who in the world thinks that Anthropology professors are more than 30% Republicans?
One other thing.
To engage in the more cognitively demanding fields requires the ability to focus attention on something requiring mental effort to hold in one's thoughts, and to do this for extended periods of time. To be, as they say, in the zone.
I suspect this ability strongly correlates with being productive in technical fields.
I also suspect this trait is more or less a male characteristic
Seb Jensen found in a study that the overrepresentation of men in the most demanding fields cannot be explained by the difference in mean IQ and standard deviation.
Source :
https://www.sebjenseb.net/p/women-and-low-iq-majors-why-do-they?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2