It’s too sweeping of a statement to say “Scientists hate Republicans” because clearly not all of scientists do, and not all self-declared Republicans hate science.

I do agree that the tobacco research imbroglio was a turning point, where corporations really started to see that it was in their best interests to use government to constrict scientific discoveries from being given force in public policy. It didn’t start there, but it turned out to be a very important cause for the tobacco industry, and for the tobacco growing states in the South. I will note that at that time it was also Democratic Party politicians who didn’t like what was being discovered about the ill effects of tobacco.

Big business generally speaking had been a friend of scientific discoveries, being the importance of industry and agriculture and how both of those fields of human economics rely on engineering and science.

In my perspective the real roots of the problem lay with the rise of Fundamentalism in the early 20th century, and out of this social movement the energy was found for those who would prefer ignorance over discoveries.

Today’s GOP is an anomaly compared to the first century of the GOP’s existence. It is the result, I propose, of entering the end-game in the battle of western world-views, which kicked off big time with the Enlightenment, reached it’s meaty-middle in the Scopes Trial, and now is seeing an increasingly bitter end-game ahead as ideological bubbles become the only way for the old-thinkers to survive.