Politics and Science: Can they coexist?

[Zucas]

SciFiBoy said:

Edit: let me see if I can elaborate a bit here, okay, both Science and Politics have issues that they aim to address, however not all these have a definitive answer, some issues in both have conflicting ideas or theories behind them, in politics an example is the different theories on how best to run an ecenomy, in science its something like gloabal warming where some scientists look at there research and say "its affected by human activity" and others say "its not", you see the point im making? this becomes in a sense "corruptable" as politicians take sides on scientific debates too which in turn affects there policy stance(s).

Ok I think I see more of what your saying.  Yes of course there are going to be competing theories, but for the most part with science we can see a dominated theory that is "accepted" by the scientific community.  This doens't mean it is polarization but what they see to have the most evidence behind.  Doesn't mean it is correct but they have much more confidence in that than any other. 

But aside from that yes that is what I was stating in the first post was that when it comes to the science in politics it becomes more of a polarizing mechanism.  Meaning instead of discussing the affects of pollution, outcomes of stem cell research, and the human involvement in the environment we are simply polarizing different sides of the story for outside purposes.  As you can see even with competing theories in politics there is still need of discussion to see how this will eventually affect the nation as a whole.  But instead of doing that doesn't it seem like the issues become more of a campaign on a person's moral or political views rather than the actual issue. 

Even if we don't know the answer to something 100% (which we can never know) that doesn't mean we can't discuss it or play ockham's razor and discuss thereof.  But do we ever get there in politics?  Thus I go back to the heart of my question is what is infringing this scientific discussion in politics.  Is religion still playing far too large of role... politicians more worried about position... etc.