A recent Northwestern-led study found that Democrats in Congress and think tanks cite and trust science in policymaking more than Republicans. Kellogg Prof. Dashun Wang, who led the research, said he hopes the findings will encourage policymakers and think tanks to reflect on how they use science to support their arguments.
The publication, co-authored by Kellogg Prof. Alexander Furnas and James Madison University Prof. Timothy LaPira, analyzed the difference in citation practices between the parties.
They analyzed data from two datasets: one containing U.S. government and think tank policy documents from 1995 to 2021, and another with scientific publications.
“We were really interested in seeing how, in this era of heightened partisanship and polarization, how science is used by political elites with partisan affiliations,” Furnas said. “Essentially, how do partisan factions rely on science or use science differently?”
The report revealed that Democrat-controlled congressional committees are 1.8 times more likely to cite scientific research than Republican-controlled committees, in their respective committee reports. Left-leaning think tanks are also more than five times more likely to cite scientific research than right-leaning ones across all 23 scientific fields and 17 policy areas studied.
A positive finding, Furnas said, was the overall increase in science citations across policy documents from less than 20% in 1995 to more than 35% in 2020. Though the study does not pinpoint the cause of the increase, Furnas speculated that increased accessibility to studies via the internet as a contributing factor.
However, only 5 to 6% of scientific papers cited by either party are cited by both parties when examining nearly identical policy topics — just half of what was statistically expected.
Furnas said the group’s findings demonstrated a lack of shared factual basis between parties but emphasized that they could not prove any intentional “cherry picking” for information to support previous beliefs.
“In an ideal world, evidence-based policymaking would draw on a broad synthesis of all relevant science, and then the political struggle would not be about what is true, but about values,” Furnas said.
Democrats and left-leaning think tanks also tended to cite more works that were peer-reviewed or “hit papers” — the top 5% most cited in their field that year — than Republicans.
Beyond citation practices, the study also examined attitudes towards science within the partisan divide. Wang said that science is traditionally a “politically neutral, trusted source of information,” but the study highlighted a decline in that perception. The work also surveyed Democratic and Republican elites, finding that 63.7% of Republicans trust scientists to produce unbiased knowledge, as opposed to 96% of Democrats.
“This erosion of trust and political divide not only weaken our ability to collaborate to address pressing societal challenges efficiently and effectively, but also undermine the foundational principles of scientific inquiry,” Wang said.
However, the paper notes that fewer science citations do not necessarily mean less evidence used overall by Republicans. For example, the investigation does not account for non-scientific sources, including industry and interest groups, for decision-making processes.
University of Illinois Chicago Prof. E.J. Fagan studies expert influence in policymaking decisions. He said the NU study succeeded in providing concrete evidence of the partisan differences in citing scientific findings, but could have considered the role of think tanks as complementary to congressional committees, rather than as entirely separate entities.
Think tanks act as a bridge between the scientific and policymaking worlds, and congressional committees rely heavily upon think tank analyses for scientific citations, Fagan said.
The study’s examination of think tanks did reveal a “closed Republican ecosystem,” citing a relatively small group of professors that are often linked, a finding Fagan said he found striking. The paper made clear evidence of the partisan scientific divide more direct than it ever has been, according to Fagan.
“There are very oblique ways we’ve been able to measure influence of science before this article,” Fagan said. “I think this is the most direct, most scaled way that we’ve done it before.”
Email: [email protected]
Related Stories:
— Sociology Prof. Andrew Papachristos talks research, preventing gun violence
— Prof. Shalini Shankar discusses career in anthropology
— Q&A: Anthropology Prof. Sera Young discusses her research with water, global health
