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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

#351

Post by ryanjshaw »

tekla wrote: post #25
refurb wrote: post #4

Yikes, quite the scathing article and example of a the politicization of science. “Trust the science” has always bothered me for two reasons: 1) science is frequently not black and white and anyone who has done hard science research knows there are plenty of competing opinions among scientists and 2) while scientific facts are facts, we still need to decide on how to act on those facts and that decision making proces…

Anyone who unironically says “Trust the science” automatically tells me that they are probably not an informed person. I trust that most research is done in good faith and at least some of it is useful. Saying 'Trust the science' might as well be saying 'Trust in God'

The other issue is that science has nothing to say about livelihoods and personal freedom - there's no "Lockdown Science". Those were political decisions, ie. opinions disguised as science to shutdown dissent.

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

#352

Post by vundercind »

llm_trw wrote: post #197
rayiner wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s misguided and toxic to center your worldview around the “most marginalized” or to think that focusing on them somehow gives you the moral high ground or frees you from the obligation to play by the meta-rules of society and its institutions. Or to think that your worldview somehow has a monopoly on helping marginalized people. You invoke “rationality” but as Spock would say, “the needs of the many outweigh the n…

>“the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” The brewer, the baker and the candle stick maker need a new kidney, liver and heart. Thank you for volunteering to be killed so we can harvest your organs and keep the many alive. Alternatively don't base your world view on a TV show from the 1960s.

Even in the movie's own terms, that's an ethical aphorism spoken by a character to justify his act of self sacrifice, and to comfort a great friend that he's coming to his unfortunate end on his own terms and for his own reasons and, in Spock's way, as an act of love, in a sense.

It's not, like, "go shit on minorities if it makes the majority's utility-units increase".

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

#353

Post by tim333 »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #322
partomniscient wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strangely enough, I read about a bear that was lurking around at Paddington Station.

But that's a Peruvian bear.

There were also rumours of a pooh bear in East Sussex.

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

#354

Post by pfdietz »

Philorandroid wrote: post #274
UncleMeat wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So biological denialism is a morally superior position to hold, then? Democratic leaders can't ever seem to acknowledge biological differences between the sexes, certainly not with regards to competitive advantages. As for it being "core policy", I'd need to a see a citation, otherwise it's conjecture. The 2024 GOP platform [1] doesn't mention climate change, global warming, IPCC, et al. once, whereas the DNC's platf…

> biological denialism

What is this? I would have thought that the idea that some people who are outwardly one sex have brain wiring for the other sex is quite plausible. Development is very messy.

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

#355

Post by [deleted] »

everforward wrote: post #172
rayiner wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s misguided and toxic to center your worldview around the “most marginalized” or to think that focusing on them somehow gives you the moral high ground or frees you from the obligation to play by the meta-rules of society and its institutions. Or to think that your worldview somehow has a monopoly on helping marginalized people. You invoke “rationality” but as Spock would say, “the needs of the many outweigh the n…

I trust you’ll maintain that view if and/or when you become a marginalized group, and the dominant group shifts the meta-rules of society and its institutions in ways you don’t like? This view usually strikes me as hypocritical because it’s almost always paired with a paranoia of becoming a marginalized group and a belief that maintaining majority status for their group is “right” in some way. It’s easy to quote Spoc…

[deleted]

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

#356

Post by lmm »

School-Cotton wrote: post #304
stefan_ wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why reorganizing all school systems around teaching the standardized test and judging teachers by these results has been such an overwhelming success that "virtually nobody [..] disagrees with".

The US has probably the least test-focused education system in the developed world (you don’t need to take any exam to graduate high school except in some cases an extremely easy one as a formality). Would you claim the US education system is better than the UK, France or Germany?

The fact that we even have year-by-year, grade-by-grade test figures for the US implies it's significantly more test-focused than the UK, where those tests simply don't exist for most grades.

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

#357

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #322
partomniscient wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strangely enough, I read about a bear that was lurking around at Paddington Station.

But that's a Peruvian bear.

Let me guess, he claims he's just a tourist, but had two 400lb suitcases.

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

#358

Post by raffraffraff »

figlent wrote: post #342
miltonlost wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This is not true at all.

I can't respond to that post because it's flagged, but hard disagree on that too. Jesse Signal is far from transphobic.

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

#359

Post by spamizbad »

School-Cotton wrote: post #275
spamizbad wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author of this article very (in)famously re-launched his career as a writer (prior to GNC youth he wrote mostly culture pieces) by misinterpreting a scientific paper on the subject he now claims to be an expert on. I don’t think he did this maliciously, but I do think, like many writers, he struggles to digest scientific literature accurately.

Which article and how did he misinterpret it? I’m a casual, occasional listener to his podcast (Blocked and Reported) but don’t really know his origin story and am curious to learn more.

Back in 2016 he wrote an article in The Cut titled "What's Missing From the Conversation About Transgender Kids."[1] (which, incidentally, has since been silently corrected by The Cut's editors). It draws some pretty major conclusions from a single study [2] where he seems to overlook some pretty glaring issues that contradict his conclusion. [3]

Signal, to his credit, admits the error, although he goes on to argue it actually strengthens his argument (It does not IMO).

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20171202080010/https://www.thecu...

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23702447/

[3] https://www.emilygorcenski.com/post/jesse-singal-got-more-wr... and https://emilygorcenski.com/post/jesse-singal-still-got-more-...

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

#360

Post by tzs »

llm_trw wrote: post #197
rayiner wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s misguided and toxic to center your worldview around the “most marginalized” or to think that focusing on them somehow gives you the moral high ground or frees you from the obligation to play by the meta-rules of society and its institutions. Or to think that your worldview somehow has a monopoly on helping marginalized people. You invoke “rationality” but as Spock would say, “the needs of the many outweigh the n…

>“the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” The brewer, the baker and the candle stick maker need a new kidney, liver and heart. Thank you for volunteering to be killed so we can harvest your organs and keep the many alive. Alternatively don't base your world view on a TV show from the 1960s.

There was a story in Analog a few years ago called "Dibs" if I recall the title correctly about a world that worked like that.

Whenever someone could be saved by a transplant they would find possible donors and send them a notification that one of their organs could save someone. Usually after a few weeks the potential donor would get notification that the person who needed the organ has died. During the time between those two notifications the dying person was said to have dibs on the organ.

Occasionally someone would get a second notification about someone having dibs on another one of the organs while someone already had dibs on one of their organs. Again what usually is that those people would die soon and the person would go back to nobody having dibs on any of their organs.

Sometimes though a person with people having dibs on two of their organs would get notified that a third person now had dibs on one of their organs. That was enough that the needs of the many thing kicked in and they were required to give up those organs, which would usually be fatal.

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