[flagged]
Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
141–150 of 1001 posts
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#142Science has _always_ been political. On the front page a few days ago was the story of a bunch of physicists bitching at each other over what happened in WWI I have a book from Scientific American from the 1960s that has a whole section removed for the british audience because it contained instructions on how to run experiments on bears. That is a political act. But, seeing as how administrations of various colours h…
Yeah, scanning through the recently published articles it seems "Reason" has no problem with the politicisation of science if it means the slashing of govenment funding.
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#143Trust in institutions is at an all time low. The last thing we need is for these institutions to veer away from their goals to push a political agenda. Good riddance to her.
Interestingly the only people who are not supposed to “push a political agenda” are usually accused of being “woke” in one of the next sentences.
“Keeping politics out” brought the US - and the world - Trump, two times. Most things in life are political.
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is sexual assault in prison otherwise a particular concern of yours? I understand it's a massive issue affecting hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people, is activism on that broader issue how you came to be aware of this? Do you have a connection to any prisoner advocacy groups that have policy recommendations on this? I assume the sexual violence outcomes for trans women in mens prisons isn't very wonderful eit…
[flagged]
[flagged]
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#145[flagged]
Citation needed.
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author's little trans tirade is a great example, and you can start with his "I'm something of a medical expert" line. Pure ideology.
I can't find where the author writes "I'm something of a medical expert". But for myself, I'm not up to date on the research. Does this article misrepresent the current state of scientific understanding?
Yes, it absolutely does.
The Cass Review mentioned was composed by a group of authors who are well-known to be opposed to trans healthcare, its methodology and conclusions are heavily criticized by subject experts (basically, "there is no evidence if you ignore all the evidence"), and even Cass herself has stated after publication that it is flawed. It does not represent the current scientific understanding of trans healthcare, so criticizing SciAm and even calling it "dangerous" for pointing this out is rather dubious.
The Cass Review was written primarily for political reasons. It isn't a peer-reviewed article written by neutral subject experts, and it should not be treated as such. The fact that Reason treats it as ground truth and ignores all the subject experts opposing it should say enough about their view on science.
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#147But denial of evolution is linked to white supremacy. A rejection of the biological links between white people and colored people helps to justify discrimination based on skin color. And non-believers in evolution often share other backwards views.
As for the the bell curve, I'd encourage you to read her article first, befire forming an opinion from disingenuous caricature of what was said in it. She doesn't deny the usefulness of the concept, just points to some harmful and pseudoscientific ways it is/was used. Think phrenology for example.
Reason is a heavily biased right-wing website, as you can see on the articles on the front page. This doesn't necessarily invalidate everything coming from them, but take it with a grain of salt at least, and go form your own opinion based on her articles, instead of the mockery they wrote to make a point about "the woke political agenda controlling academia".
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
So when someone says "trust the science!" they mean "define your null hypothesis, design an experiment to test it, run said experiment, analyze the data for statistical significance and submit for peer review"? Or do they really mean "trust the scientists"?
I think when someone say something you are confused or have doubts about what they mean, then you ask them what they mean. This sentence can be used to mean many things (including mocking up scientists ot trolling). So please next time you see or hear someone says that please ask them that. If I would use it personally I will probably use it to mean trust the evidence based knowledge that the scientific community is…
> If I would use it personally I will probably use it to mean trust the evidence based knowledge that the scientific community is using.
Where can one find this knowledge? Are you suggesting regular folk go out and review the literature themselves (most of which is paywalled)? And even if they did and were able to understand the contents, they'd still lack the required context to weigh contradicting results, dismiss old studies now known to be wrong, etc etc.
And that's why "trust the science" ends up being an appeal to authority.
I'm not saying I have a better alternative than the scientific method, I'm just pointing out that the "scientific consensus" isn't some magical spark that is immediately obvious when one reads the literature, it's something that evolves over many decades of research, conferences, etc. And that's assuming there is a consensus for a given topic at a given time. And I'm not even going to get into why reasonably questioning the scientific consensus is a good thing (otherwise it stops being science).
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#149Every piece called out here is clearly labeled "opinion" - did they even read the normal news and analysis sections? Countless newspapers and outlets and actual scientific journals have opinion/editorial sections that are generally very well firewalled from the factual content. You could collect the worst hot takes from a few years of nearly any site with a dedicated opinion page and pretend that it has gone downhill…
You re making it sound as if every opinion is valid to go in there. For the same reason why they wouldn't publish eugenicist opinions, they should shy away from obvious cringebait.
Afaik science has not yet ran out of much more interesting opinions than the ones mentioned
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#150[flagged]
It's similar to how if you think heterosexuality or homosexuality are choices due to your own experience, that's not everyone's experience, and you're probably bisexual...congratulations.
Even though there are only two sex chromosomes, issues with them can cause people who are physically intersex.
Then there's all the complexity of the sense of self. Some people could feel they have the 'wrong' body and be fine with that. Some can't.
-Heterosexual male tired of oversimplifications