The right-wing attack on Neil deGrasse Tyson — which has reached a sort of apogee in the National Review cover story — is notable for a number of reasons. What’s especially interesting, as I see it, is the attempt to have it both ways. On one side, there’s the sneering disapproval of anyone who tries to bring facts and evidence into political debate — you think you’re so smart, huh? At the same time, there’s the claim that liberal “experts” are poseurs, not real experts. Hey, we’re not anti-science, not us!

One question you might ask, then, is whether the likes of Mr. Tyson are unrepresentative — whether the predominance of liberals among the nerds one sees in the public sphere is strongly at odds with the political leanings of scientists as a group. Well, we know the answer to that question:

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Scientists as a group are, in fact, a lot more liberal and Democratic-leaning than the population as a whole. In fact, in other contexts conservatives use this disparity to attack scientists, or academics in general, for their bias.

So what’s going on here? One simple explanation would be that current Republican doctrine really is anti-science and anti-intellectual, and that scientists are responding to that. But that would, of course, be an unbalanced view. So the right tries to insist both that public figures like Mr. Tyson are poseurs and that there is some kind of conspiracy causing scientists in general have similar views.

How about just using Occam’s razor?