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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

#441

Post by jayd16 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #409

To the "everything is political" crowd: The complaint is not that SciAm writes about politics. It's that they write SCIENTIFIC NONSENSE when arguing for political causes. Exhibit A: "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 nonsense? Isn't it just saying that normal distributions are misleading when multimodal distributions would be more accurate? The indignant tone is unnecessary but it's not wrong to say complex systems cannot be modeled with a simple normal distribution.

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

#442

Post by maybelsyrup »

blindriver wrote: post #317
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.

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

#443

Post by lukas099 »

gadders wrote: post #277
jl6 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Red tribe orthodoxy has a lot of disdain for people with trans identities. Blue tribe orthodoxy has maximal dain for those people. But both tribes are willing to promote pseudoscience to achieve their goals. Singal occupies a narrow sliver of the political possibility space where sympathy for those identities can exist at the same time as supporting evidence-based medicine.

Yes, I think there is a middle ground. Trans people are clearly going through something , and I think a bit more sympathy from the Right, particularly for adolescents wouldn't go amiss. Puberty in the age of social media, anxiety and other mental health challenges is rough. You can hate the policies/movement and still have sympathy for the individuals. However, I'm not sure that encouraging young people to make one-w…

> You can hate the policies/movement and still have sympathy for the individuals.

I think people on the right (outright bigots excepted) would say they do have sympathy, and it's for kids who have been influenced by the media or whatever to think that they are the opposite gender.

> However, I'm not sure that encouraging young people to make one-way decisions (or decisions where we are not yet sure whether they are one way or not) is the correct approach.

And I think the response here is that not taking action is also one-way, causing irreversible changes, like to the bone structure.

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

#444

Post by iwontberude »

throwaway0123_5 wrote: post #436
iwontberude wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does a person want a nail and then lose a shoe? Why does a person want a shoe and then lose a horse? Why does a person want a message but lose the rider? Why does a person want a message and lose the battle? Why does a person want a battle but lose the kingdom? I don’t understand the point or reference being made.

They're talking about a horseshoe on a horse which was being used to deliver an important message

There are too many leaps of abstraction, which to me, proves the missing horseshoe nail is irrelevant in the big picture. Too many other things could have transpired positively for the kingdom in a space so expansive. It’s classic scapegoating. “Bro my controller totally didn’t work that time! We would’ve won the match otherwise I promise.”

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

#445

Post by suzzer99 »

shrubble wrote: post #412
tomgp wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true! Britain has no bears so we like any refrence to them to be removed from our books ensuring we never have to think about them.

There’s a version of a book on birds that doesn’t have the gannet in it. (Monty Python reference)

And a book on trees that doesn't have the larch in it.

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

#446

Post by bee_rider »

vonneumannstan wrote: post #399
bithead wrote: post #364

"In the process, SciAm played a small but important role in the self-immolation of scientific authority—a terrible event whose fallout we'll be living with for a long time." Which is it - small or important? All that seems like a bit much.

For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider the message was lost. For want of a message the battle was lost. For want of a battle the kingdom was lost. Was the nail small or important?

If a tiny problem can cascade like that, it seems that there’s a systemic logistics issue going on here, the problem wasn’t the nail it was some high-level problem in the overall organization.

One nail is small and unimportant but the general problem of getting enough nails is a big important one.

And anyway, the messenger also could have been shot, the horse could also have tripped on a rock, the battle could have been lost even with the message getting through. If their plan hinges on everything going right, the kingdom has put themselves in a position where they don’t have any small problems, just big ones.

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

#448

Post by InsideOutSanta »

BurningFrog wrote: post #409

To the "everything is political" crowd: The complaint is not that SciAm writes about politics. It's that they write SCIENTIFIC NONSENSE when arguing for political causes. Exhibit A: "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."

If you read the whole paragraph, it's obvious what the writer intended to convey: that health research often assumes that there is one average, representative person, and everybody else is clustered around that person in a normal distribution. The author asserts that this is wrong, because people are dissimilar in more complex ways, and instead often fall into different clusters, rather than one bell curve.

In my opinion, the author's assertion is correct; we've seen in the past that research failed to find how medication affects women in specific ways, because that research was based on the premise that people are largely the same, and thus failed to specifically test the effects on each gender individually.

The sentence people quote out of context is, by itself, confusing and weird, and thus should not have been written that way. But in context, it's obvious what the writer intended to convey, and the intent is in no way anti-scientific.

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

#449

Post by GoblinSlayer »

sofixa wrote: post #193
forgingahead wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you vote for or do you support the "opposite team"? Because if your standard is "easy to accuse of 'ism' based on association", you might be in for a rude shock.

I'm not American nor do I live in the US. The mere fact that there are only two teams, and everything has to be the opposite (oh, you don't support X? you must be from party Z because they hate X, and if they hate it, I love it !) even if it's basic scientific facts is infuriating. And one of the teams is actively racist and sexist, has shown a blatant disregard for rules, norms laws and ethics, and now has full powe…

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

#450

Post by thatcat »

jayd16 wrote: post #441
BurningFrog wrote: post #409

To the "everything is political" crowd: The complaint is not that SciAm writes about politics. It's that they write SCIENTIFIC NONSENSE when arguing for political causes. Exhibit A: "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 nonsense? Isn't it just saying that normal distributions are misleading when multimodal distributions would be more accurate? The indignant tone is unnecessary but it's not wrong to say complex systems cannot be modeled with a simple normal distribution.

It is simply saying the assumption of a normal distribution is incorrect for the population, which without context of what particular data they were observing would be impossible to know if it is in fact nonsense.
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