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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

#601

Post by lazyeye »

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…

I wonder how much of this same kind of manipulation/distortion is going on when we are told to "trust the science" with regard to climate change? The pressure to ignore or minimise inconvenient facts would be overwhelming (career at stake situation).

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

#602

Post by henearkr »

This whole debate is surrealist.

Bigotry and intolerance are fundamentally irrational and illogical, so the so-called "left-bias" of science is just science being itself.

Now the comments in this HN page and the reason.com article are completely ignoring that, and only considering everything through a political filter.

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

#603

Post by GoblinSlayer »

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..

You need autism to be more self reflective. Ar you sure it can be trained?

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

#604

Post by TheBlight »

henearkr wrote: post #602

This whole debate is surrealist. Bigotry and intolerance are fundamentally irrational and illogical, so the so-called "left-bias" of science is just science being itself. Now the comments in this HN page and the reason.com article are completely ignoring that, and only considering everything through a political filter.

Is "intolerance" objectively defined?

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

#605

Post by sangnoir »

GMoromisato wrote: post #578

I'm conflicted about all of this because I gave up reading Scientific American when I felt it had become too political. But of course, you can't remove politics from science. Scientists are human and humans are political. When a scientist chooses an area to investigate, it is influenced by their politics. You can ask scientists to be factual, but you can't ask them to be non-political. It's not SciAm's fault that sci…

> In the 80s, 35% of university employees (administrators+faculty) donated to Republicans

The Republican party used to be the leftwing party, right up until the 1960s - which is the right timeframe for the staff to have grown up in a "Republican family" without being conserve themselves.

AFAICT academia, in any country, since the 18th century, has leaned more towards being progressive than conservative, which is why academia has been consistently near the top of (s)hit-lists by dictators or strong-man "revolutionaries"

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

#606

Post by tylersmith »

anonfordays wrote: post #487

Does the following phenomenon have a name? Open an article about the detrimental politicization of something, click to the social media profile of the offender and you know with high certainty the exact kind of poster they are and posts they make/repost.

Yes, it's called bias.

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

#607

Post by thrance »

Levitz wrote: post #495
thrance wrote: post #147

But denial of evolution is linked to white supremacy. A rejection of the biological links between white people and colored people helps to justify discrimination based on skin color. And non-believers in evolution often share other backwards views. As for the the bell curve, I'd encourage you to read her article first, befire forming an opinion from disingenuous caricature of what was said in it. She doesn't deny the…

And the invention of the keyboard is linked to online bullying. There is a point in which the relation is so far-fetched and non-causal that it doesn't make any sense to mention it, and the link between evolution denial and white supremacy absolutely crosses that line. White supremacy is also linked to the sun rising up each morning, detergent and open borders. None of them relevant.

I'll give you the link I gave the other: https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fpspi0000391

This is a large meta-study finding a link between white supremacy and disbelief in evolution.

The link isn't hard to see either, white supremacists are primarily found in qanon and other right wing conspiracy bubbles. They are more susceptible to believe in bullshit than tolerant people, like creationism.

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

#608

Post by henearkr »

TheBlight wrote: post #604
henearkr wrote: post #602

This whole debate is surrealist. Bigotry and intolerance are fundamentally irrational and illogical, so the so-called "left-bias" of science is just science being itself. Now the comments in this HN page and the reason.com article are completely ignoring that, and only considering everything through a political filter.

Is "intolerance" objectively defined?

Easy enough: make matter things that have no reason to matter.

Like what the skin color has to do with how good your physician is? Nothing.

Science is smart enough to propose the adequate metrics, in this case it does absolutely not include melanin.

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

#609

Post by squigz »

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..

It's difficult for me to believe that higher education levels don't correlate to being more rational. Do you have any source on that?

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

#610

Post by gs17 »

fingerlocks wrote: post #103
watwut wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Libertarianism theoretically could go either way. Theoretically, do what you want with your bodies. However, libertarianias as they exist tend to be socially conservative - somehow they end up agreeing with GOP position on social issues. In this case, convervatives hate trans people, so libertarians too.

Libertarians, at least the ones that subscribe to Reason, are not socially conservative. Just read a few articles and this is very apparent. The 2024 Libertarian Party Presidential candidate was a pro-trans gay man.

> The 2024 Libertarian Party Presidential candidate was a pro-trans gay man.

And is pro-choice (but anti-government funding for abortion). And Reason seems positive about him: https://reason.com/2024/11/06/chase-oliver-calls-libertarian...

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