This study is a way in which we're
looking at two domains of knowledge. 
What we were interested is really
understanding whether the political
polarization that we see today ends up
influencing the way in which people
consume science or if science is a
neutral ground, a Switzerland the place
where we can come together and appeal to
questions of nature and questions of fact.
The data that we used were co-purchases
of books political books and
science books from amazon.com 
and from Barnes & Noble.
We got a sense of how consumers of 
conservative and liberal ideologies
also consumed science in
similar or different ways. 
People who are interested in politics and purchase
political books are also interested in science.
If you look at the science books
that they buy, they tend to buy books
from very different kinds of fields
conservatives tended to appreciate and
purchase books in more applied
disciplines more commercial disciplines.
Things like criminology and law. 
Liberals on the other hand tended to prefer the
study of evolution, relativity in physics,
you know like basic scientific questions.
Basically conservatives really focused
on applied things, liberals tend to be
focused on basic things. 
Some of the fields that both sides tend to be
interested were best represented the
social sciences and the humanities. 
So both were interested in political 
science both were interested in law. 
It's just they were interested in completely
different political science, philosophy and law.
One of the reasons why as a society 
we invest billions of dollars in
scientific investigation is so that it
can furnish us insights that help us
understand who we are and to 
solve our biggest problems.
If our exposure to those questions 
and answers is polarized
it's very difficult for us to use those
as part of our arguments it's very
difficult for it to enter public debate. 
It's very difficult to imagine a
political debate that becomes informed
by science if the two sides are 
reading very different kinds of books,
if they don't have access to 
the same kinds of facts.
