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Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

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Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#101

Post by gcp »

Maro wrote: post #92
gcp wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well-versed may be a very relative term. I've been exposed to physics, engineering and computer science. The physicists had the scientific method drilled in deep. The engineers a bit. The computer scientists had vaguely heard about it. We still call them computer scientists. Your wife may suffer from a similar "relative difference". (Coincidentally, I could repeat your story with my wife, who's a computer scientist w…

One thing that comes up again and again is understanding significances, errors and such. This stuff is second nature to a good (and honest) physicist coming out of University, even before he becomes a "pro". In my experience, to a doctor, even a good one, _at first_ it's just an annoying thing they have to do to get published and they don't really understand the significance of significances. (LOL.) I would argue tha…

You have my vote.

Lots of policy decisions are made based on statistics. Yet they are easy to fool someone with if he or she does not understand them properly enough.

In my experience, to a doctor, even a good one, _at first_ it's just an annoying thing they have to do to get published and they don't really understand the significance of significances.

Slightly disappointing. I'd have expected doctors to have an understanding of placebo effects, and the field of medicine is one where you regularly hear (even outside medicine) about studies being discredited afterwards for wrong/improper controls, positive results being unreproducible etc.

I don't remember the last time I heard a comp sci paper being withdrawn for bad statistics. (They tend to have none, even when they should)

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#102

Post by thecabinet »

prewett wrote: post #22

Why don't Americans elect scientists? Because current American culture is anti-intellectual. I can't really back this up concretely, but as an American, it's hard to find anything intellectual around. A long time ago, people went to hear lectures on the weekends, and the Lincoln-Douglas debates were well attended. Now, TV "news" is a joke, and even NPR is becoming a bit entertainy. I get the feeling that few American…

One thing I absolutely despise about the phrase "anti-intellectual" is the ambiguity about what it means. There was a great explanation of why people should be suspicious of "intellectuals" in an HN comment from a year ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2400310. ESR also had examined the various possible meanings: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4001

In general, though, "anti-intellectual" seems to usually mean, "Why won't those damn hick Republicans just get out of the damn way!?"

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#103

Post by feralchimp »

Why do Americans elect lawyers?

Laws and contracts are the operands of government. Money and a convincing demeanor are the operators of elections.

Government is not really an experimental enterprise. Science is about constructing interesting subsets of general-purpose reality to eliminate variables, then testing other variables and seeing what happens. The history of Legislative attempts to eliminate real-world variables is the history of horrific side-effects: wars, market crashes, value destruction, and freedom-trampling.

The chief complaint about current US reps isn't that they're not scientific, but that they're not aware of facts and that they're only aware of some people. Scientists make no claims on being aware of people, and are deeply aware of some facts.

What we need in Government are intelligent yet humble people who have personally experienced some tragedy brought about by ill-conceived legislation, tensioned by CFOs who in their personal lives give a shitload of money to the poor.

Good luck on that talent search, America.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#104

Post by 9diov »

adrianN wrote: post #59
smsm42 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People still go to lectures - or find them on YouTube, download them from the web or torrents, etc. And the debates are as much "attended" and more - people just don't have to be physically there anymore. It's all right with Americans and thinking - it's just most of them don't turn their thinking towards government. Which is a blessing - it is brilliant minds who brought us the current financial crisis, for example,…

Except Marxism was extremely anti-intellectual. You didn't have scientists in positions of power, instead peasants became majors. Children of intellectuals were forbidden to attend universities and forced instead to work in the industry.

Really? Have you read Marx at all?

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#105

Post by twstws »

kolinko wrote: post #44
prewett wrote: post #22

Why don't Americans elect scientists? Because current American culture is anti-intellectual. I can't really back this up concretely, but as an American, it's hard to find anything intellectual around. A long time ago, people went to hear lectures on the weekends, and the Lincoln-Douglas debates were well attended. Now, TV "news" is a joke, and even NPR is becoming a bit entertainy. I get the feeling that few American…

Anti-intellectuality aside. Understanding science is important, but a good scientist ≠ good manager. A scientist is usually someone with narrow, but deep knowledge/experience, as a politician I want someone with a broader set of experiences & knowledge. I mean, MSc president - sure. PhD president - probably no, thank you :)

This attitude is frustrating and sadly widespread. Basically, you're saying that you can trust someone with some scientific training, but only up to an arbitrary limit. You assume this is a zero sum game, that it is impossible to learn a lot about biology without simultaneously acquiring some compensating deficiency. Or that only the deficient personality would pursue a Phd.

How is it anything but anti-intellectual to say that having too much expertise makes one a less capable leader?

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#106

Post by Tripatimishra »

In India we the Indians have elected DrManmohan Singh as our prime minister. He was very known internationally as a good economists. He was also governor of Reserve bank of India before coming to politics. Because of his reputation of a good economist he was offered the post of finance minister in the late nineties. He supported very much to the policies of globalization,liberalization and India became a member of this draconian policy. The poor people of India thought that by this change in economic policy their standard of life will change. But it is very unfortunate that after two decades of its implementation the poor people are ruined now. The marginal farmers are ending their life by taking pesticides and insecticides due to debt. More and more people are coming under below poverty line. Every night some million Indians are going to the bed in empty stomach. Inflation level is increasing day by day. Industrial workers are losing their job on daily basis. On every part of this universe Indians are working as daily wage laborers. Employment is a very big problem. Day by day the crime graph in India is increasing. Transparency International in its annual survey report termed as a most corrupt country. So leadership is not measured by some sort of degrees or phd.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#107

Post by larrydag »

eftpotrm wrote: post #82
pranjalv123 wrote: post #5

I think the really big factor here is that scientists don't want to go into politics! Maybe I'm painting the world with an overly broad brush here, but politics and science approach the truth in exactly opposite ways. I'm not going to say that politics is a game of lies, because it's not, but politicians essentially invent the truth as they go along. It's similar in some ways to law or the humanities, where the truth…

Why don't they want to enter politics though? If we drew up a hypothetical list of attributes for a scientist, how many could cross over into politics? Significant intellect and a desire to exercise that in significant work? Yes. Deep interest in a field and a wish to explore that further? Yes. (In the sense that many such people seem capable of maintaining multiple such interests.) Interest in complex work and abili…

One of the most failed "experiments" of science and politics was Robert McNamara as U.S. Secretary of Defense under JFK. He used a lot of scientific methods to evaluate his political decisions with war and intervention. All of his evaluations pointed out that the U.S. should intervene in Vietnam and look how that turned out. In politics there are too many variables at play. Perhaps politics is good for the "intellectual" but not for the scientist.

As an aside I think its a little bit dangerous to put intellectual and scientist in the same category.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#108

Post by Maro »

gcp wrote: post #101
Maro wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that comes up again and again is understanding significances, errors and such. This stuff is second nature to a good (and honest) physicist coming out of University, even before he becomes a "pro". In my experience, to a doctor, even a good one, _at first_ it's just an annoying thing they have to do to get published and they don't really understand the significance of significances. (LOL.) I would argue tha…

You have my vote. Lots of policy decisions are made based on statistics. Yet they are easy to fool someone with if he or she does not understand them properly enough. In my experience, to a doctor, even a good one, _at first_ it's just an annoying thing they have to do to get published and they don't really understand the significance of significances. Slightly disappointing. I'd have expected doctors to have an unde…

I'm not saying doctors doing research never learn this stuff, just that they come out of University without this knowledge. (I certainly don't know enough about medical research literature to make a statement like this.)

Curiously, at one biomed lab (can't remember if it's the wife's) they have a dedicated person (shared by several labs) to do the statistics for the presentations and the papers. Kind of weird if you ask me, you'd think understanding whether your results are meaningful is not something you calculate at the end!

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#109

Post by Maro »

barry-cotter wrote: post #96
Maro wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that comes up again and again is understanding significances, errors and such. This stuff is second nature to a good (and honest) physicist coming out of University, even before he becomes a "pro". In my experience, to a doctor, even a good one, _at first_ it's just an annoying thing they have to do to get published and they don't really understand the significance of significances. (LOL.) I would argue tha…

In my experience, to a doctor, even a good one, _at first_ it's just an annoying thing they have to do to get published and they don't really understand the significance of significances. There is an entire medical discipline that knowingly uses shitty statistics[0]. Then there are the ones who unknowingly use shitty statistics[1]. Absent someone with a qualification that is impossible to get without learning real st…

Just recently Science published, and NASA had a PR hoopla about a bogus paper about arsenic life, after it went through the usual Science peer "review" process. The paper was dicredited by numerous Comment papers for outrageously bad statistics and bad methodology, which Science actually published. For reasons I don't really understand, Science did not redact the paper and called the ensuing outrage normal scientific discourse, even though I think they would have benefited from a mae culpa moment regarding their peer review.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#110

Post by ashconnor »

smsm42 wrote: post #38
prewett wrote: post #22

Why don't Americans elect scientists? Because current American culture is anti-intellectual. I can't really back this up concretely, but as an American, it's hard to find anything intellectual around. A long time ago, people went to hear lectures on the weekends, and the Lincoln-Douglas debates were well attended. Now, TV "news" is a joke, and even NPR is becoming a bit entertainy. I get the feeling that few American…

People still go to lectures - or find them on YouTube, download them from the web or torrents, etc. And the debates are as much "attended" and more - people just don't have to be physically there anymore. It's all right with Americans and thinking - it's just most of them don't turn their thinking towards government. Which is a blessing - it is brilliant minds who brought us the current financial crisis, for example,…

You just got Marxism mixed up with the dictatorial regimes of the 20th century, such as the Soviet Union.

Please read the Communist Manifesto before you lambast it with an uninformed critique.

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