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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

#541

Post by slices »

Eextra953 wrote: post #501
rayiner wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 am taking a graduate level public health course and this trade off is literally covered in the first lecture its something they call prevention paradox. It's surprising to see that the head of the NIH would say something like this when it's literally part of the curriculum for public health. I'm so tired of political opinions masqueraded as we know better than the experts or we know better than the scientist.

how many public health officials acted with awareness of the prevention paradox during covid?

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

#542

Post by mrandish »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #469
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 opi…

I tend to agree, and go even further. The idea of averages and normal distribution means are grossly over-used in medicine and social discourse. They can sometimes be useful for population level discussions, but rarely personal healthcare or decision making. Medicine and public policy is plagued by advice and recommendations for the average person, but the average person does not exist. 50% will be above average, and…

> Medicine and public policy is plagued by advice and recommendations for the average person

To be fair, this is often the fault of the media, pundits and politicians cherry-picking studies and losing significant nuance in the process. At the same time, there are too many papers which do a poor job of sufficiently highlighting uncertainty in their conclusions.

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

#543

Post by PaulHoule »

sixstringtheory wrote: post #482
SolarNet wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the argument the poster is making is as root cause analysis. The root cause of the messenger failing was the missing nail. Sure it could have been many other things, but in this case it was the nail. And if it was a pitched battle that was narrowly lost by one message, sure, they could have won or lost because of a dozen other factors, but in this case it was the missing message. There are likely many other i…

If you look at the problem as a swiss cheese model and not just a teleological propagation from one root cause, then there are many things that need fixing, not just a cobbler being short one nail.

You can't really blame one magazine going lame on the whole culture going bad, yet there is a way that's contagious.

Maybe it's like cheese because culture goes bad the way cheese goes bad?

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

#544

Post by slices »

Symmetry wrote: post #478
tekla wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'

Generally you should trust science on matters of "is". But on matters of "ought" science only bears indirectly.

ideally, science would be the best available information on "is". When the science is i.e. funded by a tobacco company and regarding the safety of tobacco, we should be skeptical. How much of current science falls in a similar class?

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

#545

Post by grecy »

Crayfish3348 wrote: post #523

A book came out in August 2024 called "Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola," by Susan Greenhalgh. She's a professor (emeritus) at Harvard. The book is a history. It shows how the Coca-Cola Company turned to "science" when the company was beset by the obesity crisis of the 1990s and health advocates were calling for, among other things, soda taxes. Coca-Cola "mobilized allies in academia to create a soda…

And this is exactly the problem we face now in so many aspects of life.

If cell phones or microwaves or a hundred other things were harmful we would not find out, because of all the lobbying and armies of scientists paid to find and publish a very narrow version of truth

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

#546

Post by Bhilai »

FredPret wrote: post #434
Bhilai wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SciAm is allowed to be wrong and is allowed to be opinionated as well. The Bro however pretends to ignore proven science in order to have "interesting conversations." The dissonance here is astounding.

[flagged]

Scientific American's challenge to certain political beliefs doesn't undermine its commitment to scientific awareness. I find their articles more informative than arbitrary podcasts. No one claims SciAM is the sole source of truth, but it's a valuable resource. You're free to ignore it, just as I ignore most podcasters. If you rely on Joe Rogan for science and claim it be truer than SciAm, there's little to discuss here.

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

#547

Post by gandalfgeek »

There was one slogan that was repeated during COVID that perfectly encapsulates the degeneration and capture of science: "Follow the science".

That's not how science works. Religions are "followed". Science is based on questioning and skepticism and falsifiability.

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

#548

Post by yamazakiwi »

jl6 wrote: post #489
gadders wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, this is the kind of nuanced take that has been squeezed out by ideological snap-to-grid from the warring tribes.

I rarely see sympathy from anyone, it's easier to be staunch and tapped out unfortunately.

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

#549

Post by slibhb »

rzwitserloot wrote: post #491
slibhb wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (c) There's absolutely nothing "surreal" about taking Wilson to task for his support of scientific racism; multiple headline stories have been written about it, in particular his relationship with John Philippe Rushton, the discredited late head of the Pioneer Fund. The reason it's not surreal is because it's so banal. Wilson viewed Rushton as a case of scientific freedom. I.e. research shouldn't be suppressed for…

Where on the line are we talking? It's one thing to say: "In my view, EO Wilson's association with Rushton is defensible and should not be considered a stain on his career". It's quite another to say: "That, and I believe it so much that I cannot take seriously anybody who disagrees with me on this, I shall call them and their viewpoints names such as 'surreal' and make grandiose claims that their opinion is so ridic…

I think your post is very reasonable. Singal may be exaggerating how bad SciAm is. Though my view is that the Wilson article is part of a pattern.

I responded to this because I read a biography of EO Wilson recently. It's strange to say his association with Rushton was a stain on his career because his career was massive. He published an absurd number of papers, did lots of field work, discovered many new species, wrote many popular science books, and was influential as an early conservationist. He was, by all accounts, an incredibly kind person. His link to some racist is a footnote, not a stain.

It's worth asking why it's even coming up. Here are a few possible reasons:

1. A number of left-wingers attacked Wilson following Sociobiology and it's been open-season on him ever since

2. It's trendy to call famous white scientists racist

3. Highly accomplished people cause envy in others which leads to tendentious attacks

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

#550

Post by jpmattia »

Veen wrote: post #515
jpmattia wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Challenging scientific conclusions should be encouraged not cancelled. Vaccines are on the docket for cancellation, which to be fair, will last only as long as a swath of the population sees their kids incapacitated by some completely preventable virus infection. But do we really have to go through an epidemic (again!) to understand that the science of vaccines is solid? There is such a thing as settled science. Th…

The science on vaccines is solid, but there are potential side effects (that's also solid science). So when it comes to, for example, giving kids the vaccines, we have to balance the likelihood of serious side effects with the necessity of preventing the disease. In the case of COVID, the disease's risk to kids is extremely low, but they are still vaccinated. That is a political decision, and it is perfectly reasonab…

> That is a political decision, and it is perfectly reasonable to dispute it.

"Political decision" as a euphemism for allowing non-experts to decide how to minimize deaths? The same non-experts who couldn't even get the Monty Hall problem right, let alone the complexity of medical probability and statistics of [false | true] [positives | negatives] in Bayesian scenarios?

Good luck with that.

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