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Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

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

#291

Post by thrance »

llm_trw wrote: post #219
thrance wrote: post #147

But 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…

>But denial of evolution is linked to white supremacy. Acceptance of evolution also leads to white supremacy. One only need to read what Victorian Eugenicists had to say about colored people. So if both accepting and rejecting evolution are linked to white supremacy it stands to reason that neither is the causal factor.

Of course they are white supremacists that believe in evolution...

Here is a big, international meta-analysis that finds a link between both views: https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fpspi0000391

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

#293

Post by PathOfEclipse »

crispyambulance wrote: post #252

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,…

> It's not what the Reason author claims it is.

The article literally describes Scientific American as "the leading popular science magazine". What exactly did the author mis-claim?

> It's OK for it to have a political point of view.

Not if that political point of view is anti-science, as others have elsewhere described in this comment page (post-modernism).

> The Reason article takes a very rigid and persnickety point of view, which is common in libertarian arguments.

I'm not a libertarian, But I also have no idea what you're talking about with the "rigid" and "persnickety" descriptions.

> It's like the kind of rhetoric you hear from insufferable debate-club enthusiasts in high-school and college.

I think it's a real problem when a popular science magazine doesn't just get the detailed facts wrong, but takes on a point of view that is hostile to objective scientific inquiry in general, and also attempts to inject poisonous identity politics into subjects as banal as the normal distribution or Star Wars.

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

#294

Post by School-Cotton »

BadHumans wrote: post #270
Philorandroid wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think it is fair to say that through the nomination process, whoever is voted to run as the Republican nominee for president is considered to be the best representative for the party. Looking at the president-elect and all of the leaders of the party, saying they have "fringe beliefs in some cases" is severely downplaying it.

> I think it is fair to say that through the nomination process, whoever is voted to run as the Republican nominee for president is considered to be the best representative for the party.

It is not fair to say that at all. The primary system is highly undemocratic, and what’s more, the people who participate in it aren’t statistically representative of Republican voters as a whole.

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

#295

Post by thrance »

Clubber wrote: post #213
thrance wrote: post #147

But 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…

I've always understood denial of evolution's primary reason is that it contradicts scripture. I've never heard it associated with white supremacy until today. >But 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. How do you…

Here is a link to an international meta-analysis that finds a link between disbelief in evolution and general bigotry: https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fpspi0000391

White supremacy, at least in the United States, finds many of its members (not all, of course) in evangelical circles.

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

#296

Post by insane_dreamer »

leereeves wrote: post #60
insane_dreamer wrote: post #38

I clicked on the links of the articles linked to by the author as "egregious" examples of Helmuth's editorial bias, and they're both clearly labeled _OPINION_. (Opinion articles are not scientific articles because they are __opinion__.) May need to choose some better examples if the author wants to support his point.

"Editorial bias" and "opinion article" aren't mutually exclusive. Is there bias in what opinions SciAm chooses to print?

If that was the point the original article was trying to make then they should have provided evidence of that, rather than selecting a couple opinion articles to try to build a case for their own very clear ideological leanings.

There may or may not be editorial bias at SciAm -- no idea since I don't read it, and not really interested either way -- but that article was a shoddy piece.

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

#297

Post by Calavar »

scarmig wrote: post #283
toshredsyousay wrote: post #208

A lot of criticism of SA seems to be from those who don't read the magazine. It is still mostly just thorough coverage of developments in physics, biology, engineering, and other pretty uncontroversial science topics and this coverage has not 'gone downhill'. It is a lot of work to do good reporting of an area of science by talking to a range of experts in that area and SA still does good work here. Some topics are p…

Looking at https://www.scientificamerican.com/ I see the following front page topics and articles: - Nutrition: It’s Actually Healthier to Enjoy Holiday Foods without the Anxiety - Climate Change: Climate Change Is Altering Animals' Colors - Climate Change: An Off Day in Brooklyn—And on Uranus - Cats: Miaou! Curly Tails Give Cats an ‘Accent’ - Games: Spellement - Opinion: We Can Live without Fossil Fuels - Games: Sci…

The titles are clickbaity, but based on a quick skim of the content of those articles it doesn't feel too removed from reading the print issue ~15 years ago. Especially if you look at the featured articles from the most recent online issue [1]

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/issue/sa/2024/12-01/

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

#298

Post by philipov »

alistairSH wrote: post #292

Does the author not understand the concept of "opinion piece"? Every "article" he takes issue with is NOT a scientific article, but an opinion piece.

A lot of people really don't understand the difference between science and opinion, and that's exactly what's gotten us into the trouble we're in today.

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

#299

Post by jtbayly »

tptacek wrote: post #74

I want to be sympathetic to Singal, whose writing always seems to generate shitstorms disproportionate to anything he's actually saying, and whose premise in this piece I tend to agree with (as someone whose politics largely line up with those of the outgoing editor in chief, I've found a lot of what SciAm has posted to be cringe-worthy and destructive). But what is he on about here? Or that the normal distribution—a…

What a minute, this sentence was literally in the SA piece: “First, the so-called normal distribution of statistics assumes that there are default humans who serve as the standard that the rest of us can be accurately measured against.”

Is that not a denunciation of the normal distribution?

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

#300

Post by know-how »

wolfram74 wrote: post #223
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…

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…

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