Though science is supposed to be about objective interpretations, science often finds itself at the heart of political debates. The intermingling of political and scientific beliefs leads to a pretty obvious question: does political affiliation inform consumption of science, or does consumption of science inform political leanings? A recent paper published in Nature suggests that political and scientific beliefs go hand in hand, which may contribute to the “echo chamber” phenomenon.

This study looks at consumers’ online book purchases at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Using this data, the authors tried to tease out whether people co-purchase books on political and scientific topics. They started by identifying political books, classifying them as either "conservative" or "liberal" based on their content. Additionally, the authors looked at books that contained scientific information, dividing them into scientific domains. Then, they looked for relationships between purchases of liberal/conservative books and books that covered specific scientific fields.

The good news is that everyone loves science. The data shows that people who buy books with overt political content (both liberal and conservative) are more likely to purchase books about science compared to books on other subjects. This initial piece of information reinforces the researchers’ hypothesis that science has political relevance.

When the data is examined more closely, another pattern also emerges. The authors saw that people who purchased political books with liberal content tended to also purchase books on "basic" science disciplines, such as astronomy and zoology. People who purchased books with conservative political content, by contrast, tended to purchase scientific books that focused on "applied" sciences, such as organic chemistry and medicine.

While the data is clear, it's hard to draw conclusions from this finding—does this suggest that liberals are more interested in science for science's sake and conservatives are more interested in practical applications? Perhaps, or perhaps it means that liberals are more likely to work in basic sciences, and conservatives are more likely to work in applied sciences.

The authors also saw that books on some scientific topics were purchased equally by both liberals and conservatives, though the actual titles these two groups purchased rarely lined up. For example, though conservatives might purchase books on climatology or environmental science, the ones they purchased tended to have views outside of the scientific mainstream. By comparison, when liberals bought books on climatology or environmental science, their purchases tended to fall within the cannon of widely accepted work in these fields, with the books supporting the idea that the current climate change is a human-driven phenomenon.

The authors of this paper take care to note that this research is not a complete study of liberal and conservative book purchasing habits. Instead, this data only provides insights into the behaviors of liberals and conservatives who enjoy purchasing books that are overtly political in content. Many people don't purchase books that specifically speak to their political beliefs, and this study doesn’t describe their choices.

Overall, this study showed partisan individuals tend to select scientific reading material that reinforces their previously held political views. The authors of the paper, scientists themselves, assert that this partisan consumption of science impedes science’s ability to truly inform political debate, since the two sides are not consuming the same information.

Nature, 2017. DOI: 10.1038/s41562-017-0076 (About DOIs)