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Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

reason.com

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Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#251

Post by dgfitz »

tiahura wrote: post #212
giraffe_lady wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the group demanding that is "over" what you would consider appropriate? How do their demands restrict your behavior? Personally I've never noticed trans people and their push for rights & recognition having any impact on my life whatsoever. And I say this as a devout member of a rigorous and conservative religious tradition.

Does your daughter play competitive sports? Has she been knocked down by a boy playing on a girl’s team?

Nah that isn’t the problem. If that happened to my kid they would get back up and shove the other kid over.

The problem is maintaining the integrity of sports and competition. Only an uneducated person would ever try to argue that “the best women’s college basketball team would beat the best men’s college basketball team” even 1 out of 100 times.

Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#252

Post by crispyambulance »

I read Scientific American from time to time. It's not what the Reason author claims it is. It's a popular, non-specialist science magazine that reaches out to the public (mostly through Dentist's office waiting rooms). It's OK for it to have a political point of view.

I see this a lot lately. Someone takes issue with something(s) in a magazine or journal and tries to burn them to a crisp because of it. Even on here, folks periodically roast Quanta magazine for something that's not exactly right from a subject matter expert perspective. It's a perfectly good magazine, also for the general public (perhaps a little more high-brow than Sci-Am).

The Reason article takes a very rigid and persnickety point of view, which is common in libertarian arguments. It's like the kind of rhetoric you hear from insufferable debate-club enthusiasts in high-school and college.

Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#253

Post by UncleMeat »

Philorandroid wrote: post #229
wolfram74 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have such low standards for republicans, it's amazing. We complain that democrats are increasingly acknowleding that science is done by humans and humans will tend to ask questions based on what phenomena they've encountered and what explanations they've been given in their lives up til then, but totally give the republicans a pass on catering to groups that deny global warming, evolution or even that the world is…

Tu quoque; Republicans harboring fringe beliefs in some cases isn't a response to Democrats' mainstream acceptance of beliefs that the scientific method doesn't accurately reflect reality.

This is not "some cases." This is core policy of the party. You can see major leaders within state and federal legislative and executive bodies actively denying climate change research on a daily basis.

Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#254

Post by jhedwards »

rayiner wrote: post #67
lmm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with the fundamental point, I find that a kind of ironic choice of examples. I wonder what kind of person attaches so much value to keeping kids in school whether it's good for them or not.

It was well established before COVID that missing in-school days has a major adverse effect on learning. Keeping kids out of school had exactly the predicted effect—reading and math scores fell significantly: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/news/24/01/despite-progres... . We also knew early on that COVID posed little risk to kids themselves. So it was entirely rational for parents, especially of young children, to…

The point (as I understand it) was not to protect the kids themselves from covid, but that kids are active vectors of illness: they get sick easily and rapidly spread it to everyone around them. Sending kids to school during a pandemic is basically asking to fast-track that sickness to everyone in the community.

Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#255

Post by tiahura »

dgfitz wrote: post #251
tiahura wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does your daughter play competitive sports? Has she been knocked down by a boy playing on a girl’s team?

Nah that isn’t the problem. If that happened to my kid they would get back up and shove the other kid over. The problem is maintaining the integrity of sports and competition. Only an uneducated person would ever try to argue that “the best women’s college basketball team would beat the best men’s college basketball team” even 1 out of 100 times.

my kid they would get back up and shove the other kid over.

Therein lies the rub. Some sure do, but most 13 year old girls don’t.

Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#256

Post by PathOfEclipse »

felixgallo wrote: post #227
tlogan wrote: post #222

The issue isn’t that Scientific American leans “pro-Democrat” and it is political. It always has, and that’s understandable. The real problem is that the modern Democratic Party increasingly aligns with postmodernism, which is inherently anti-science (Postmodernism challenges the objectivity and universality of scientific knowledge, framing it as a social construct shaped by culture, power, and historical context, ra…

[flagged]

https://freedompact.co.uk/podcast/128-dr-gad-saad-the-war-on...

"Professor Saad’s latest book The Parasitic Mind: how infectious ideas are killing common sense takes a wonderful look at some of the ideas which are so prominent in society today. We discuss the granddaddy of ‘idea pathogens’ as Gad calls it Postmodernism, we discuss the fear of biology, ..., the war on science, truth and reason that we all have a stake in and much, much more."

Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#257

Post by wtcactus »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #116
blessede wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I thought I recognized the name. I really do not understand how trans debate has come to dominate some online discourse. Much of it is pushback against widespread ideological capture, and in particular the authoritarian idea that everyone else has to change and restrict their behavior to accommodate increasingly absurd and harmful requests from an overly demanding identity group.

What is the group demanding that is "over" what you would consider appropriate? How do their demands restrict your behavior? Personally I've never noticed trans people and their push for rights & recognition having any impact on my life whatsoever. And I say this as a devout member of a rigorous and conservative religious tradition.

> Personally I've never noticed trans people and their push for rights & recognition having any impact on my life whatsoever.

Do you have young children? I don’t live in the USA, I live in Europe, but I have a very small baby and I already did. The daycare, just this year announced they aren’t going to be celebrating Mother and Father’s Day anymore. Instead we will have to celebrate a Parents day.

This is just a small thing of course, there are many other situations where it’s clear an agenda is being pushed over the general population. The only way I can see you never felt it, is if you don’t have children.

Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#258

Post by resource_waste »

abirch wrote: post #153
resource_waste wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was in my 20s, I believed you. Now that I'm in my 30s, I think we need a nanny police state making sure everyone is rational.

I love and hate this quote by Carl Sagan in 1995 I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the peo…

I think this is a universal law of human nature.

Or maybe that cycle of the inferior by circumstance work hard to become the superior and displace the complacent superior. “history is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up.”.

Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#259

Post by KaiserPro »

jhbadger wrote: post #135
KaiserPro wrote: post #106

Science 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…

>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. I think you'd need a bit more evidence for that being "political". A far more plausible reason for the removal is that Britain doesn't have bears to any degree (there have been isolated sightings but most think t…

I need to find it again but it said something along the lines of:

"this chapter has been removed as it describes experimentation on live bears."

it then goes on to apologise and has a lovely passive aggressive:

"we would hope that British readers would not like to carry out such experiments on live animals"

Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#260

Post by UncleMeat »

tlogan wrote: post #243
felixgallo wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Yes, a portion of Democratic Party leadership has appeared to move away from science and reason in some cases. One example that frustrated me as a taxpayer and parent with kids in school: here in California, it was Democratic policymakers who removed Algebra from high school curricula, arguing that it would help address disparities among minority students.

This is a pedagogy and social policy decision, not a scientific one. You can disagree with it, but it isn't like we have scientific research that incontrovertibly provides education policy recommendations to address social disparities.

Changing math curricula isn't denying math and reason itself.

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