Sorry Scott, it was not meant as criticism of your post. It was just an attempt to understand better what you where getting at.

I know that asking questions is often used as a form of rethoric to undercut what somebody is saying, but this was actually to attempt to get clarification, as I think it is important to understand feedback from readers.

Do you have suggestions for how we are to study the political views of scientists? The reason I added this plot, was because an earlier commenter insisted that I had not shown any data supporting the premise of the article about scientists being more leftist.

What seemed natural to me then was to compare voting patterns of scientists and the public at large. But that was just the most obvious choice that came to mind. If you think there are better ways of doing this which does not make it look as if the population is divided into "the untutored common folk" and experts I am willing to list.

I have been updating this article based on feedback.