The Mad Political Scientist

I’ve heard a good bit of late about Swine Flu. Apparently I’m not the only one. The interesting thing about this isn’t the disease. It’s basically Spanish Influenza, as far as I’m aware. What really interests me are the responses to the vaccine. Some people are actually treating this as a political issue, and I’m really not sure why. Actually, I have a strong suspicion, but you might not like the answer. Here’s one sample from Facebook (names deleted, grammar cleaned up a little, just because I can):

[status] Who on here is going to get the swine flu vaccination? Also, if you have kids, who will give it to them? I am so worried about it, but I’m scared not to get it. My baby’s doctor tells me to get it, everyone at work (who are nurses) tells me to get it. Any comments for or against?

I have been having the same issues w/my little ones. It’s just so scary w/it being new. I think I’m going to give it a couple of weeks and see if anyone has any problems after getting it.

Not us!!! We don’t trust it. It is WAY too new. We don’t know what side effects it is REALLY going to have. Also, think it is going to take more than a couple weeks or possibly even months to figure out what the side effects WILL be. It’s not a question of if there will be side effects. It is what will they be.

I haven’t decided yet. [We'll get t]he regular flu shot yes, but I don’t know about the swine flu yet. A couple of kids I know have had swine flu along with my sister and it only last[ed] 3 days. Not that I want [my son] to get it, but I don’t trust anything Obama says or does!

A couple of those objections are probably in keeping with what a lot of people’s concerns about a new innoculation. They’re not incredibly well-founded, according to the CDC and NPR. And frankly, I found that via my Facebook page (I’m a fan of NPR) and Google. It’s not as if the information isn’t out there.

It’s that last comment, though, that really intrigues me. A woman is not going to have her son inoculated because she doesn’t, “trust anything Obama says or does!” Um….really? He’s a politician, so I guess that’s a safe guess most of the time, but…really? You’re exposing your son to a disease against which no one under age 50 has any immunity because of your dislike for a man with no direct link to the formulation of the vaccine? If she had said she didn’t trust anything that pharmaceutical companies said or did, it might be indicative of a little too much time listening to Jenny McCarthy, but it would at least be relevant.

On a serious note, this is one of the weird little things about how people think about politics. We call it a heuristic. We only use that word to justify the piles of money and years of our youth we spent on education, though; “shortcut” is an equally good word. Basically, our erstwhile Obama opponent is saving herself the trouble of thinking carefully about the issue of the H1N1 vaccine. Googling “swine flu” and reading the first few articles from reputable sources is time consuming. (The easy part is already done for you here. Also, I’m kind of a jackass.) It’s much easier to think about who is in power (Obama) and one’s opinions of Obama, then come to a quick conclusion. This is a bit like being called on in class and yelling “pi!” because you see a circle on the board. Then remembering that it’s history class. However, people do it all the time, and somehow, the world keeps turning. I have to wonder, though: if there are Republicans who are skeptical of using a private industry, already successful on the open market, to create new health care techniques, what’s left? Surely there’s some sort of OPTION for a PUBLIC method.

(Note: as a kid, I was the type to kick a hornet’s nest and run away. My sister is terrified of all insects to this day. I’ll let you do the math.)

I have to say, I was both shocked and disappointed the other day. Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) has proposed an Amendment to prevent the National Science Foundation (NSF) from funding political science projects. (Coburn’s argument for the amendment can be read here.) Coburn makes some decent points, but he also makes a few that show that he doesn’t really know what political science is or what its practitioners do. To quote the amendment author of the amendment:

The largest award over the last 10 years under the political science program has been $5.4 million for the University of Michigan for the “American National Election Studies” grant. The grant is to “inform explanations of election outcomes.” The University of Michigan may have some interesting theories about recent elections, but Americans who have an interest in electoral politics can turn to CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, the print media, and a seemingly endless number of political commentators on the internet who pour over this data and provide a myriad of viewpoints to answer the same questions. There is no shortage of data or analysis in this field that would require the government to provide funding for additional analysis.

In some internet circles, this could be answered by simply captioning the above quote with the words, “epic fail.” Since this is a political science blog, however, I’ll go the other, more dignified route. The ANES is the most thoroughly controlled, carefully sampled, and most thorough battery of questions in existence. Even the most thorough things I see on Rasmussen (a good resource, by the way) are child’s play compared to the stuff in the ANES. One can’t take a Fox News poll and test theories about the effects of education on political orientation across incomes, for example. Or, at the very least, a poll testing these theories won’t also have information on voter turnout, racial attitudes, and the dozens of other variables captured in the instrument. It would be impossible (or at least woefully impractical) to administer such an instrument in the short time span that the current news cycle dictates. Furthermore, some ANES items have been asked in exactly the same way since the 1960’s. Even if an item is being asked in the popular media today, chances are slim that plentiful data exists from 1978 that is in exactly the same format with exactly the same control variables worded the exact same way, which is what political scientists require for time-series analysis (which is exactly what it sounds like). The ANES is likely the most-cited and most-useful tool available to public opinion scholars. It fuels a great many research programs, and is responsible for a great deal of the research being done today, even outside of the University of Michigan.

At this point, I’ve said a great deal about the importance of a specific survey, but I haven’t really said much about what we do as political scientists or why the discipline itself important. At the risk of oversimplifying, we use empirical scientific methods to study political phenomena. Sometimes, this means running laboratory experiments, usually involving human subjects answering a survey or playing a carefully structured “game” under controlled conditions. Other times, it means using sophisticated statistical techniques to parse out the effects of various causal processes. Regardless of the specific method, we begin by developing (or building upon established) theories, then turn those into testable hypotheses, then proceed to perform those tests. The results are then written up for a journal article, book, or (if you’re really lucky/famous) both.

OK, so I’ve answered the first question. I’d dare say the previous paragraph is inclusive enough that most political scientists would be willing to accept it as a definition of our discipline. Now a word on the importance of political science is in order. Political scientists study causal processes. If you want to know the causes of terrorism, a political scientist is your best bet. Do you want to know why some black candidates do better in polls than elections? Again, a political scientist is working on the answer. Are you curious as to the reasons some policy options, though seemingly ideal, are never really on the table in public discourse? Not only will you find the answer in political science, but you’ll find that it’s much more interesting than the simple notion that “they” won’t allow it. In fact, one could argue that some political scientists have successfully figured out who “they” is. Also, a political scientist just managed to write a sentence using the phrase, “who ‘they’ is” correctly. OK, that’s not exactly a lasting contribution, but hey, it’s proper grammar on the internet, so I feel it should be observed.

So to sum up, political science is, as the name implies, a science. There are some implications in the statement accompanying the amendment that hint at an ideological motivation for Coburn’s move. That, however, is for another time. If you want a political scientist’s take on it, I guess you’ll just have to keep reading.