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Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

theatlantic.com

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Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#51

Post by knodi123 »

tomjen3 wrote: post #18
croon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When science is a partisan issue, what else can you do?

Right, but then why would you back a party that hates GMOs and vaccines?

because you're not a single-issue voter, and you agree with the majority of their policies and are actually trying to pull them in a less-extreme direction?

Seriously, your argument is just the party-level version of "why would you run for office in america, a country that elected someone who denies climate change and says vaccines cause autism?" Easy - to lead them in a positive direction!

Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#53

Post by Retra »

virmundi wrote: post #39
maverick_iceman wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forget that Bernie Sanders wants mandatory labeling of GMO foods. That's also anti-science scaremongering.

Why is it scaremongering? Why should consumers not be informed what's in their food? We're told how many carbs something has. This allows keto followers to chose accordingly. We're told if it's kosher. This allows Jews and Muslims and people with taste to choose accordingly. We label the ingredients at a chemical level. This allows consumers to pick the types of fats or sweeteners. Why should we exclude stock/source…

It's scare-mongering because all food is GMO food. There's no reason to put "GMO" on it except to scare people who have an irrational fear of it.

Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#54

Post by omginternets »

aphextron wrote: post #40
nonbel wrote: post #32

Ok, but please do not vote for anyone calling themselves "scientist" who practices NHST, you will only be perpetuating this nation- (even civilization-) destroying practice: "We are quite in danger of sending highly trained and highly intelligent young men out into the world with tables of erroneous numbers under their arms, and with a dense fog in the place where their brains ought to be. In this century, of course,…

>Ok, but please do not vote for anyone calling themselves "scientist" who practices NHST, you will only be perpetuating this nation- (even civilization-) destroying practice: Can you expand on this? What is NHST?

Null-hypothesis statistical testing

The parent poster has ... for some inexplicable reason ... decided that this technique is invalid. This reeks of a profound misunderstanding of the technique, and a failure to discriminate between poor use and invalidity.

Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#55

Post by Arizhel »

jackmott wrote: post #27
hueving wrote: post #11

>For now, 314 Action will only back Democratic candidates. Great. When you're being accused of being partisan, the best way to come back is to form an organization backing potential political candidates of just one party. What a joke. This is a squandered opportunity to try to get scientific minded people into running for the republican seats, which is how you would get real change in the discourse. Anyone who thinks…

The republican party is simply unacceptable on many levels for any intelligent, honest person. I realize that you, like many people, simply do not see it that way, and imagine that there is some kind of equivalence or near equivalence in how corrupt and crazy both parties are, but most of us don't. What we are seeing is horrific, a party that is against reason and goodness and civility at almost every step. They pick…

>and that religion was crazy.

This is the real sticking point here. If you're not a highly religious person (or at least willing to claim to be one), and not willing to publicly advocate religion in your campaign, then you're not going to get anywhere in the Republican Party.

Republican voters simply will NOT vote for someone who isn't religious. And non-religious voters will not vote for a Republican.

Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#56

Post by knodi123 »

virmundi wrote: post #39
maverick_iceman wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forget that Bernie Sanders wants mandatory labeling of GMO foods. That's also anti-science scaremongering.

Why is it scaremongering? Why should consumers not be informed what's in their food? We're told how many carbs something has. This allows keto followers to chose accordingly. We're told if it's kosher. This allows Jews and Muslims and people with taste to choose accordingly. We label the ingredients at a chemical level. This allows consumers to pick the types of fats or sweeteners. Why should we exclude stock/source…

> Why is it scaremongering?

Because, like it or not, a label that says "note, this product contains acids" would alarm many people who would immediately ask themselves "Wait, why do they need to tell me that? Better just play it safe."

> Why should we exclude stock/source information from the consumer?

It's not about hiding information, it's about the regrettable fact that mandatory labelling communicates a lot more than just the words on the label.

Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#57

Post by jedi_stannis »

jackmott wrote: post #27
hueving wrote: post #11

>For now, 314 Action will only back Democratic candidates. Great. When you're being accused of being partisan, the best way to come back is to form an organization backing potential political candidates of just one party. What a joke. This is a squandered opportunity to try to get scientific minded people into running for the republican seats, which is how you would get real change in the discourse. Anyone who thinks…

The republican party is simply unacceptable on many levels for any intelligent, honest person. I realize that you, like many people, simply do not see it that way, and imagine that there is some kind of equivalence or near equivalence in how corrupt and crazy both parties are, but most of us don't. What we are seeing is horrific, a party that is against reason and goodness and civility at almost every step. They pick…

> This is a squandered opportunity to try to get scientific minded people into running for the republican seats, which is how you would get real change in the discourse.

I believe his point is that getting scientists into Republican seats might re-shape the party from being anti-science, to being a pro-science, fiscally conservative alternative to the Democrats.

One of the major parties being unacceptable is highly problematic.

Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#58

Post by nonbel »

aphextron wrote: post #40
nonbel wrote: post #32

Ok, but please do not vote for anyone calling themselves "scientist" who practices NHST, you will only be perpetuating this nation- (even civilization-) destroying practice: "We are quite in danger of sending highly trained and highly intelligent young men out into the world with tables of erroneous numbers under their arms, and with a dense fog in the place where their brains ought to be. In this century, of course,…

>Ok, but please do not vote for anyone calling themselves "scientist" who practices NHST, you will only be perpetuating this nation- (even civilization-) destroying practice: Can you expand on this? What is NHST?

Null hypothesis significance testing. It is a "method" of statistics that resulted from confusion between Ronald Fisher's significance testing with Jerzy Neyman and Egon Pearson's hypothesis testing sometime in the 1940s. None of those three are free of blame either.

While there is all sorts of things wrong with NHST, the primary thing is that researchers never actually test their own hypothesis. Instead they test a "null" hypothesis that acts as a strawman, usually that some parameter equals exactly zero. Then when the strawman is "rejected", they go on to say the results support whatever theory/idea it is they favor.

Rather than come up with precise predictions deduced from their idea, they leave them vague (If I am right, A will be correlated with B). Then calculations are used to reject the very precise strawman, giving an entirely false sense of rigor to a handwavy, nonsensical ritual.

It is very common, and seems to get more and more popular every year despite all efforts by scientists and statisticians to stop it (because it lets you seem scientific about proving whatever you want). I was trained to think that way myself not too long ago, with absolutely zero mention of any controversy.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4347431/

http://library.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/ft/gg/GG_Mindless_2004.pdf

http://www.fisme.science.uu.nl/staff/christianb/downloads/me...

http://andrewgelman.com/2016/09/30/why-the-garden-of-forking...

Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#59

Post by hueving »

jackmott wrote: post #27
hueving wrote: post #11

>For now, 314 Action will only back Democratic candidates. Great. When you're being accused of being partisan, the best way to come back is to form an organization backing potential political candidates of just one party. What a joke. This is a squandered opportunity to try to get scientific minded people into running for the republican seats, which is how you would get real change in the discourse. Anyone who thinks…

The republican party is simply unacceptable on many levels for any intelligent, honest person. I realize that you, like many people, simply do not see it that way, and imagine that there is some kind of equivalence or near equivalence in how corrupt and crazy both parties are, but most of us don't. What we are seeing is horrific, a party that is against reason and goodness and civility at almost every step. They pick…

>The republican party is simply unacceptable on many levels for any intelligent, honest person.

Anyone who would say this with a straight face isn't intelligent or isn't honest, so they can't speak for intelligent honest people.

>but most of us don't.

Who exactly do you think you are speaking for? Identity politics and strong liberal populations in universities has made it social suicide for anyone to admit they have any doubts about the Democratic party.

>We wouldn't be allowed to run as a republican if we were 'fiscally conservative' but felt that gays should be treated as people

Two seconds of Googling reveals your bullshit: http://ijr.com/2014/10/185584-9-prominent-republicans-who-su...

Humans have and can be elected into the Republican party and that's how you achieve change.

>freedom and NOT BE fiscally conservative in the way the republican party is. It has no evidence supporting its efficacy!

The situation in Greece and various other European countries seems to suggest you can't buy your way out of a recession with entitlements either. You'll find very little evidence supporting the efficacy of any system that translates well to the US, which has the irritating job of being the entire Western World's military.

Re: Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

#60

Post by niij »

virmundi wrote: post #39
maverick_iceman wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forget that Bernie Sanders wants mandatory labeling of GMO foods. That's also anti-science scaremongering.

Why is it scaremongering? Why should consumers not be informed what's in their food? We're told how many carbs something has. This allows keto followers to chose accordingly. We're told if it's kosher. This allows Jews and Muslims and people with taste to choose accordingly. We label the ingredients at a chemical level. This allows consumers to pick the types of fats or sweeteners. Why should we exclude stock/source…

Because "GMO" is not an ingredient.
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