371–380 of 1001 posts
I grew up believing that science was the search for truth and fact, and that it should be constantly challenged to further that. What has happened I think, is that there has been a great polarization of science as government and groups have used and twisted it to fit a political agenda. Which essentially stops that search for truth. Challenging scientific conclusions should be encouraged not cancelled.
Every 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…
Informed opinion, clearly labeled so, on interesting but non-controversial non-ideological topics can be great instigators of curiosity. What might have come before the Big Bang? Do quantum superpositions really collapse somehow based on some as yet uncharacterized law, or does our universe produce a web of alternate futures, still connected but where straightforward links are quickly statistically and irreversible o…
Singularity.
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,…
On science reporting, Scientific American has been on par with Wired or Technology Review for more than a decade. SciAm wasn't mutated/destroyed by a few recent opinion pieces. (Whether those pieces were unhinged or not. I can't force myself to go and check, because see above.)
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.
In a different context, HN tends to have the same feelings about Scientific American, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29741171 I think there's an argument to be made that Scientific American shouldn't have opinion pieces that readers will misinterpret as scientific fact.
I would guess that if you asked 100 random people who had heard of Scientific American, many/most would say that SA publishes science and has no Opinion section. Before this dustup, I would have been in that camp.
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The second point is critical. Relevant testimony from the former head of the NIH during the pandemic, Francis Collins: https://www.bladenjournal.com/opinion/72679/confession-of-a-... > “If you’re a public-health person and you’re trying to make a decision, you have this very narrow view of what the right decision is.” “So you attach infinite value to stopping the disease and saving a life. You attach zero value to wh…
I'm pretty happy Collins came to that conclusion and learned from it. I don't expect public health officials to have a utilitarian function that maximizes global health considering second order effects. This should have been stated more clearly at the beginning of the epidemic.
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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.
That's a naive way to see it. People vote _against_ the other candidate, against what they fear is worse. And, if the theory that the frontrunner is the best representation of the party holds true, it speaks quite poorly for the Democrats appointing Harris despite Biden winning the vote of his party, no? And, again, tu quoque; even if the GOP was exhaustively comprised of reality-evading lunatics, voters and all, it…
Yes it does. I agree fully.
> the DNC's _explicit_ support of racial identitarianism, benevolent racism, and biological denialism run in direct opposition to this supposed moral high ground they tacitly hold.
I don't think benevolent racism means what you think it means and no one is denying biology. Trans people aren't even denying biology. I would suggest you actually speak to a few trans people in real life.
To be honest, even 18 years ago, long before this editor in chief, I found Scientific American rather ideological. Maybe it got more obvious over time, but I don’t see its recent tone categorically different.
The problem is >40 years old. I was a subscriber in the early 1980's (when SciAm was still quite good), and recall them publishing one of Carl Sagan's articles on the dangers of nuclear winter. Whatever the correctness of Carl's science, he was an astronomer. Not a subject-matter expert. And the the article was very clearly ideological. In an era when the political winds in Washington were blowing hard in the other d…
It seems to have worked, though - the biggest nuclear war skeptic in that administration was Ronald Reagan and he's one of the world's most successful nuclear arms controllers and disarmers, whatever one may think of the rest of his politics and policies.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I sympathize with her. There's a big movement in this country that defines itself largely by opposing what its perceived enemies support. When science (or culture) makes a reasonably sound assertion, and it's met with an opposition that wields rhetoric like a weapon with no regard for rationality, it's tempting to fight fire with fire. And when the victims of that opposition are among the most marginalized in society…
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…