I just received a copy of Science Left Behind: Feel-Good Fallacies and the Rise of the Anti-Scientific Left. As I now have some marginal time I’ll probably be reviewing it in concert with the The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science–and Reality, in the near future. Of all the intellectual activities in my life my striving toward a better appreciation of the shape of reality which science outlines for us has always been of the first rank. I had a “STEM” orientation before I even knew what that stood for. But I part from the culture of science as it is in that my politics are not with sympathy with the Left. In most cases this is not relevant, but it does loom relatively large in the number of instances where normative considerations conflict with scientific possibilities. I have expressed my frustration with this in the past. In general I believe that most scientists are less open to genetic dispositions in behavior than they would otherwise be because genetic dispositions seem rather unsavory on normative grounds (that is, the Zeitgeist of Left-liberalism in the West holds genetic dispositions in bad odor). A smaller set within science take their normative frameworks to such heart that they transform science into a political agenda (see The Dialectical Biologist).
As I have argued before to me a boundary condition in regards to this issue is the domain of sex differences. Though I think details are still to be worked out, the extreme negative reaction of some to any possibility of sex differences rooted in biological differences is clearly normative in its basis. I can understand having a discussion as to whether male or female aptitudes in mathematics at the tail of the distribution may differ, but I have a hard time taking seriously anyone who expresses extreme skepticism at the possibility of greater innate male aggressiveness expressed in physical conflict. My own personal sentiment is probably to class those who are very skeptical of greater innate male aggressiveness as no different from what is fashionably termed “denialism” (and the reality is of course that there is a school of “difference feminism” which accepts these biological differences wholeheartedly, though generally for the purpose of casting males in a negative light).