Science and politics are both all about numbers. In science numbers are used to track patterns, statistics, changes in variables etc. In politics numbers are used to count and buy votes.Science, at least we are told, uses numbers fairly. When the numbers change or are unexpected, science doesn’t change the numbers -- it changes the theory. In politics we have come to expect the opposite. If the outcome of a certain vote is important, the desired outcome can usually be obtained by changing the numbers …  buying a few more votes. Politicians also use, or pretend to use, numbers in the polling process. Polls are taken of the people and then politicians, in theory, respond to the wishes of their constituents.Scientists have traditionally claimed that opinions and polling had nothing to do with science. Whether or not a scientific theory was either true or false depended on the numbers obtained in the experiment, not in the numbers obtained by an opinion poll.That seems...(Read Full Post)