Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

reason.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

641–650 of 1001 posts

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

#641

Post by wtcactus »

smt88 wrote: post #576
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.

People saying that didn't mean it as "obey the science," they meant, "follow the science to the conclusions it leads you to." For example, people would ask public health officials what they thought about things, and the data wouldn't be sufficient to say with certainty. So they said they'd follow the science, meaning "we'll make a decision based on data." You can criticize a lot of unscientific decisions that people…

> People saying that didn't mean it as "obey the science," they meant, "follow the science to the conclusions it leads you to."

People saying that absolutely meant "obey the science" to the point that a substantial number of them [4] wanted to incarcerate and deprive of their livelihood anyone that didn't obey their idea of science.

- https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/31/us/violating-coronavirus-...

- https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandrasternlicht/2020/04/06/...

- https://oaklandpostonline.com/31966/features/my-familys-smal...

[4] https://www.statista.com/chart/23458/support-for-future-lock...

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

#642

Post by czzr »

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…

I looked at the paper you referenced.

Interestingly, it does not say that the warming trend is not happening, rather they argue that the evidence is insufficient to say for sure if the warming is caused by human-driven causes or natural ones (e.g. volcanic activity or solar changes). They mention the heat island effect as one of the issues that may complicate the attribution of the contribution of different factors to the warming trend.

To quote from the paper:

“To summarize, by varying ST and/or TSI choice and/or the attribution approach used, it is possible to conclude anything from the long-term warming being "mostly natural" to "mostly anthropogenic" or anything in between. While each of us has our own scientific opinions on which of these choices are most realistic, we are concerned by the wide range of scientifically plausible, yet mutually contradictory, conclusions that can still be drawn from the data.”

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

#643

Post by nonethewiser »

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…

There is a pure form of science which are basically just methods and principles. Then there is stuff around that like institutions. Some further the core methods and principles. And sometimes it's quite literally a religion.

There is also a weird thing where people will attribute simple natural phenomena to science. Conflating the subject matter with science itself. I recall seeing a post with these colored ants and a caption like "Isnt Science Cool?" https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/these-rainbow-...

Thats not science. Those are ants being colored by food coloring... that would be true with or without the scientific method and you don't even need it to observe the effect. And when you do need science to discover some phenomena (say the nature of black holes) its not science that is amazing if you are simply talking about how amazing black holes are. Its the method applied to understand them that can show how amazing science is. Black holes arent science.

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

#644

Post by consteval »

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #571
consteval wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple problems here: 1. Science has always been political, this isn't new. Some of the first major experiments were performed in Nazi camps. Cancer treatment began with torturing Black Americans. The entire idea of ethics is political in nature. 2. Science is still the search of truth. If it doesn't match your truth, then that doesn't mean the science is wrong. 3. Challenging scientific conclusions IS encouraged,…

>I mean literally costs lives We have overpopulation anyway. And we don't have shortage of normies by any measure. In fact some social problems like monopolies are due to overabundance of normies.

okay

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

#645

Post by jorgeleo »

Levitz wrote: post #521
jorgeleo wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to reconcile because one thing does not excuse the other. If I go complaining that you go around beating people up, and that is why I will go and beat you up, and at the end I claim that it is ok because I agree with hitting people is ok doesn't excuse my action. Also, stating the obvious (SA needs to get back to its roots) serves in this case as a straw man argument, the point was how bad an inexcusable was…

But there is nothing about that. The point of the article is that SA can't sacrifice science to push propaganda. That's it. Like this point of yours: >but there is a point, in defense of the editor, where people claiming that the earth is flat need to be push back. Objective truth needs to prevail regardless of how people feel about it politically, and it is ok, in my book, to defend that Is true, for the article, no…

And my point is that:

1. Defending science as objective truth is not propaganda, so the editor did not engage un such.

2. The article it self is not about science, but it is weasel propaganda on it self because accusing of propaganda to the editor is a form of propaganda that is presented as "reasonable" but the intended effect is to try to call propaganda what is not.

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

#646

Post by pclmulqdq »

tokinonagare wrote: post #635
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

Lots of individuals denounced the system, but you didn't hear from them because they didn't meet the demands of the entirely-manufactured scientific "consensus" on the wet market theory. As it turns out, that "consensus" was almost entirely driven by Anthony Fauci's camp of virologists (it's not just him, but a relatively small group of people who have a monetary/career interest in continuing the type of research that happens at the Wuhan Institute) who saw the "lab leak" theory as a fundamental threat to their ability to continue doing research that many saw as unethical and bordering on bio-weapon development. In response, they essentially took control of the COVID response and the official COVID narrative.

That is why the director of the NIAID, which is a research organization and not a public health agency at all, took charge of the century's biggest public health situation over the head of the (sadly impotent) CDC, which should have been in charge of coordinating the US's response.

The scientific consensus that you were sold was never really a consensus. It was a power play.

By contrast, there's a strong consensus on climate change, for example, that involves a very large number of scientists who should know and who are not incentivized to believe it.

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

#647

Post by ok_computer »

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…

Ok, arctic sea ice.

Ice exists at temperature below 0C or 32F at 1atm AND at system energy levels below the enthalpy of melting for liquid water, or latent heat for this first order phase change.

Thermodynamics uses temperature and pressure to explain system energy of molecules for liquid vapor solid phase systems. Latent heat is the esoteric part of this phenomenon because it requires a scientific education to understand calculus and work. Understandably, everyone can grasp temperature.

I think your comment is a perfect example of misdirection and people using “data driven methods” to attack a “first principles” explanation of physical phenomena.

Here’s a link because that gives my idea more weight.

https://earth.gsfc.nasa.gov/cryo/data/current-state-sea-ice-...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_sea_ice_decline

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05686-x

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj8469

Computer people talk about scientific methods and their “home lab” stuff, ai and inherent structure of data then absolutely fall for the facebook-grade-misinformation arguments to not trust something that is too mainstream. Jfc

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

#648

Post by Elinvynia »

rayiner wrote: post #67
lmm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with the fundamental point, I find that a kind of ironic choice of examples. I wonder what kind of person attaches so much value to keeping kids in school whether it's good for them or not.

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…

I'm sure the brain damage that COVID still causes (there are 3x more cases this year than in 2020, fun fact) is more of a danger to kids than staying home.

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

#649

Post by almatabata »

sangnoir wrote: post #614
FredPret wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like we're talking past each other. SciAm and the media are held to a higher standard... by themselves. They claim a position of authority. So when they are biased or get something wrong, it's a problem because their brands have a halo of truth left over from olden days. Joe Rogan doesn't claim a position of authority. So when he is biased or gets something wrong, it's just what's to be expected from a bro with…

Your assumption is that there exists an "apolitical truth" that science should aspire to. There isn't. There are many truths that can be discovered through the scientific method. Those truths are inherently political (see elsewhere on this discussion about the truthful obesity research funded by Coca-Cola that focused on exercise rather than sugar intake)

> Your assumption is that there exists an "apolitical truth" that science should aspire to. There isn't.

You can definitely try present different theories on a given topic, citing different papers that defend different viewpoints. You can have a bias for one interpretation, I will not fault you for that. But if you pretend like you favorite interpretation is the settled science and anyone that disagrees is an idiot, then I think you failed at your job as a science publication.

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

#650

Post by dahfizz »

tpm wrote: post #428
dahfizz wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you're nit-picking instead of interacting with the content of my comment. OP did not literally say "Everything is political", they said "There are no apolitical institutions". Which is functionally the same thing. "Everything is political" is a common phrase used to express a common school of thought, [1] for example. I was interacting with this school of thought directly in my comment. I agree with you tha…

> tpm is claiming that any institution which interacts with the government in any way is political in nature I am arguing that any institution is political by its very existence. Even if the true nature of the institutions is hidden by the current regime, as it is often the case in the West. The funniest thing, of course, is that we are arguing under an article containing a political attack in the political magazine…

Can you define "institution" and "political" for me, then?

I would argue that there is nothing political about a local bakery, for example. Just a dude making some cakes. He may occasionally be forced to interact with the government, but his bakery as an institution has nothing at all to do with government organizations or political theory. By its nature, a bakery is apolitical.

Post reply on HN