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Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

reason.com

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

#551

Post by willy_k »

jhedwards wrote: post #254
rayiner wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was well established before COVID that missing in-school days has a major adverse effect on learning. Keeping kids out of school had exactly the predicted effect—reading and math scores fell significantly: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/news/24/01/despite-progres... . We also knew early on that COVID posed little risk to kids themselves. So it was entirely rational for parents, especially of young children, to…

The point (as I understand it) was not to protect the kids themselves from covid, but that kids are active vectors of illness: they get sick easily and rapidly spread it to everyone around them. Sending kids to school during a pandemic is basically asking to fast-track that sickness to everyone in the community.

That’s why you focus resources on protecting those who you don’t want kids to spread it to, the sick and the elderly, a la the suppressed Great Barrington Declaration.

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

#552

Post by anonfordays »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #452
codocod wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

From the actual paper [0]: "Our long-term genotypic analysis builds on previous work [6, 7] and, through extensive genotyping of thousands of individuals over more than two decades, confirms that white morphs are almost always heterozygous for alternative chromosome 2 alleles (2m/2). We find that 99.7% of white morphs are heterozygous (n = 1,014; Table S1) ... As a consequence of obligate disassortative mating the sp…

>The actual sex chromosomes of the birds, and hence they're gametes, have significant differences between the two colours.

This is an incorrect understanding of gametes and supergenes [0]. There are still only two gametes (only two sexes), but the two morphs (white and tan supergenes[0]) can only effectively reproduce with the same morph of the opposite sex (again, only two sexes, only two gametes between the four morphs). This means each morph only effectively breeds with 1/4 of the population, which gives the aberration of "four sexes", even though there is a small amount (around 1%) of cross-morph breeding.

The claim that this species truly has four sexes (four gametes) is unscientific nonsense.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supergene

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

#553

Post by mrandish »

grecy wrote: post #545
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

> If cell phones or microwaves or a hundred other things were harmful we would not find out

While I agree that there may be things which have subtle but cumulatively harmful effects over time, the two specifics that you cited (cell phones and microwaves) are very poor examples because they've been deployed so broadly for so long, the chances there is some significant medical harm still undetected is vanishingly small.

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

#554

Post by genewitch »

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.

have you ever heard of a lynchpin? They're small and usually extremely important. For example, lynchpins hold the backhoe on to the back of my tractor.

In fact, lynchpins are so small and important that the term is used when there's something that is small but so important that missing it would ruin a project, because the lynchpin ties it all together into a cohesive whole.

Also the replies to my sibling have me confused if i am even awake... who hasn't heard "for want of a nail"?

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

#555

Post by dogleash »

blueflow wrote: post #465
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.

I want to live my way outside of superficial constructs like gender. I do not want to be forced to accommodate people who think that gender identity is something relevant. The current political climate sucks for agender people.

I'm pulling for you.

However. Cultural attitudes are propagated by people who's livelihood is frequent publishing. In that scenario, I think teams "what's to talk about?" and "it's not that complicated" are always going to lose to team "I've got a lot to say about this."

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

#556

Post by nyeah »

WalterBright wrote: post #540
nyeah wrote: post #407

The Reason article blurs the distinction between SciAm's opinion pieces and its factual (or putatively factual) reporting. That's disconcerting. "Opinion piece" objectively means "free bullshit zone". Reason is usually much more responsible than this. SciAm has of course fallen into terrible disrepair. But that happened long ago and the cause wasn't BS in the editorials. Who even reads editorials in a science magazin…

I've seen some of their science articles veer into political assertions.

I can't read it at all, so I have no reason to disagree.

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

#557

Post by kenjackson »

greentxt wrote: post #464

People double down as part of human psychology. Some grasp their own biases much better than others. We should try to train people to be more self reflective and less biased politically. It does not correlate with education level so something is clearly broken in higher ed..

How do you know it doesn't correlate with education level? I'm not saying it does, but it certainly could. I was definitely exposed to more ideas, even conflicting ideas through formal education. That said, I've never been one with strongly held opinions.

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

#558

Post by UncleMeat »

senderista wrote: post #6
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…

"Trust the science" is the very antithesis of the scientific spirit. The essence of science is to distrust authority and received wisdom. If you treat scientists as some sort of infallible priesthood then you've missed the whole point of science.

The process involves collecting data or performing analysis. Simply saying "ugh, why should we listen to received wisdom" and declaring that the experts are idiots is not the scientific spirit.

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

#559

Post by brabel »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #411
underseacables wrote: post #16

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.

Not just search for truth and fact, but use these truths and facts to develop ways that benefit people. The meaning of "benefit" is a philosophical/political consideration.

> Not just search for truth and fact, but use these truths and facts to develop ways that benefit people.

Wait, when did "how to use these truths" become part of science?? How you use science to develop things that benefit people (or organizations) is normally called engineering! Science is normally concerned only with finding useful facts about the world. There are some exceptions, like when you're using the scientific method exactly to figure out what benefits people (or any living organism), for example, using pharmacology to develop drugs that help people. But I would argue that even then, the main concern of pharmacology is to figure out what kinds of drugs have what effects on humans in certain conditions - i.e. it fits perfectly into the definition of "searching for truth and facts".

How you apply that knowledge science gives you to solve problems that affect society is called policy - and policy, while can be analysed using the scientific method, is normally not itself science. It's hard to use the scientific method to study policy, though, because there are far too many factors involved in anything to do with large groups of people, and far too little room to do experiments on them.

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

#560

Post by some_furry »

gandalfgeek wrote: post #547

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.

Vaccine denial's conclusions are so woefully unscientific that one can excuse the lack of technical precision in the synthesis of a pro-vaccination slogan.
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