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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

#631

Post by notahacker »

jl6 wrote: post #524
notahacker wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The statement regarding precocious puberty is entirely factual, and the statement linking that claim to supplying the same hormones to trans kids is linked to an article containing more detail (including a discussion of possible downsides and links to actual papers). I'd agree wholeheartedly that the difference between consensus and evidence-based medicine eludes most participants in the debate, but frankly that seem…

It is certainly not factual to claim that a drug which is safe in treatment X (precocious puberty) is also safe in treatment Y (gender dysphoria). The article conflates both as “puberty delaying treatments”, as if the learning from one is completely transferable to the other. It is not. The differences I mentioned are material. The “side” (scare quotes, for there are multiple positions available, not just those that…

The differences may well be material, but as I mentioned in the post above it's simply false to claim SA conflate the two when they link (multiple times) to an article looking at trans people specifically and also mention that they are healthy and safe when prescribed to other young people for other reasons. An article which links to an article discussing outcomes of a drug in young people that also mentions below that it's routinely and uncontroversially prescribed in old people would not be factually inaccurate, even though young people and old people are evidently not identical and it is not impossible the two have different outcomes.

The Cass Review itself offers no evidence the blockers are dangerous or inevitably irreversible (or if one takes a less cautious approach, cause patients more problems with irreversibility than not using them), merely finding that only two papers providing evidence for the treatment being safe and optimal were of "high quality" with others being of "moderate" quality or "low" quality and calling for another trial. It did not find higher quality papers drawing opposing conclusions. People more knowledgeable and cynical than me have suggested that treatments for other, less politically-charged but complex conditions may also suffer from the literature that supports clinicians preferred approach being of "moderate" quality but seldom face shutdown as a result. The side that trumpeted this conclusion (because it very much is political, even in the UK) delightedly concluded that as the favourably-disposed evidence mostly fell short of excellence, all gender affirming care must be shut down permanently. Perhaps you view things differently and would very much like to see the new clinics opened and a clinical trial designed to Ms Cass' liking devised, but it's safe to say most of the people trumpeting it as the last word in the debate would not.

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

#632

Post by lazyeye »

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…

"Perhaps conservatives began rejecting science..."

Naah...I think left-leaning/collectivists tend to be much less tolerant of people they disagree with, and when the pendulum swing of the wider culture allows it, this is manifested in hiring outcomes over time.

This may swing back in the years to come...

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

#633

Post by MiscCompFacts »

genewitch wrote: post #554
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 conf…

[dead]

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

#634

Post by 4bpp »

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.

This sounds like what you would expect to see if everything subject to politicisation is politicised in a direction opposed by the same "kind of poster". I imagine you could observe the same sort of predictability if you looked at the social media profiles of anyone writing an article that politicization of something is actually unproblematic or good.

When it is this easy to delineate and stereotype those for and those against a measure, the appropriate word is polarisation.

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

#635

Post by tokinonagare »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #620
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…

There are few slogans I hate more than "trust the science", primarily because it aligns scientific results with faith, which is exactly what science is not about. Science is fundamentally about skepticism , not trust. Now, obviously that skepticism can be misused by some rando with no qualifications or even time spent researching telling you to be "skeptical" of people who have spent decades trying to figure shit out…

[flagged]

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

#636

Post by sangnoir »

jjk166 wrote: post #591
mrandish wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> blurs the distinction between SciAm's opinion pieces and its factual (or putatively factual) reporting. To me, based on the content and context, the main quote written by the departing editor the article cited was clearly an opinion (or editor's column) piece and not part of SciAm's science reporting. While this article didn't focus on it, the biggest factor when the editor-in-charge of a publication is biased isn'…

> the biggest factor when the editor-in-charge of a publication is biased The editor-in-charge, and indeed every human being, is always biased. There will always be articles that don't make the cut and there is always going to be some criterion by which a decision is made. Some biases are more disruptive than others. Publicly acknowledged biases can be easily accounted for. You don't want an unbiased editor-in-charge…

> The editor-in-charge, and indeed every human being, is always biased

> You don't want an unbiased editor-in-charge, they're really just a person whose biases you don't recognize.

These 2 truths are hard for some to digest, and they also diffuse the next step they want to implement: thumbing the scales to "Fix the political bias in science" by installing 'neutral' (to them) individuals to swing science rightwards.

Of course, it's not really about the science itself, it's about using science as a new front in the culture wars.

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

#637

Post by lazyeye »

genewitch wrote: post #629
lazyeye wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

what's the bellwether for climate change? Rising temperatures, rising CO2 concentrations? There's strong evidence there actually isn't warming going on. The "warming trend" may be due to the temperature sensor locations. Originally the sensors were put in remote, rural, unpopulated and unused locations (ideally!). As communities grew... you understand that the sensors now are no longer rural, remote, unpopulated area…

Great example of what I was talking about!

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

#638

Post by TimTheTinker »

disentanglement wrote: post #588
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…

Or perhaps the republican party has developed such an astonishing anti-science attitude that hardly any reasonable scientist can support them? Imagine doing research on vaccines and hearing the soon to be secretary of health speak on that topic. As long as these kind of people count as "conservatives" in the US, how could you be a conservative scientist?

> Imagine doing research on vaccines and hearing the soon to be secretary of health speak on that topic.

I hope I'm not entering a minefield here... but from what I've heard, it sounds like he's not against vaccines in principle, just ones that haven't undergone clinical trials equivalent to what the FDA requires for pharmaceuticals.

(A sound byte I heard sums it up, where he said something like "no one called me anti-fish for working to get mercury removed from the fish sold in supermarkets, so I don't see why I should be labeled 'anti-vaccine' either.")

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

#639

Post by nonethewiser »

csours wrote: post #512

I feel like rational communication requires an overlap in perspective - not the same point of view, but some amount of overlap. Science relies on rational communication between people who disagree, because we can fool ourselves, and we can fool our in-group. The narrative fallacy doesn't just affect weak minds; by yourself, you won't outsmart your own filters. To learn about the world, you have to accept the world, a…

> I feel like 'virtue signaling' is poorly named. I think 'Comfort Signaling' and 'Loyalty Signaling' are easier to talk and reason about.

> * I am flying this flag because I want my people to be comfortable with me.

> * I am flying this flag because I want my people to know that I am loyal to them, and I don't care about what other people think. (Or, I'm fine with the other people hating me because of this flag)

Why don't you think "virtue" signaling works for that? That's the same meaning.

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

#640

Post by csours »

nonethewiser wrote: post #639
csours wrote: post #512

I feel like rational communication requires an overlap in perspective - not the same point of view, but some amount of overlap. Science relies on rational communication between people who disagree, because we can fool ourselves, and we can fool our in-group. The narrative fallacy doesn't just affect weak minds; by yourself, you won't outsmart your own filters. To learn about the world, you have to accept the world, a…

> I feel like 'virtue signaling' is poorly named. I think 'Comfort Signaling' and 'Loyalty Signaling' are easier to talk and reason about. > * I am flying this flag because I want my people to be comfortable with me. > * I am flying this flag because I want my people to know that I am loyal to them, and I don't care about what other people think. (Or, I'm fine with the other people hating me because of this flag) Why…

Because I don't feel that the confederate battle flag is virtuous.

Virtue signaling is done by people in every in-group; when it is done by people my in-group is fighting against Virtue Signaling does not feel like a virtue.

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