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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

#741

Post by tombert »

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…

This is kind of why I get annoyed at the "facts don't care about your feelings!!!" crowd.

Sure, the raw facts don't care about your feelings, but the way that these facts are interpreted and presented absolutely do care. Two people can look at the exact same data and draw widely different but comparably accurate conclusions out of it.

Using your Coke example, the raw fact that "exercise is good for reducing obesity" is broadly true and not really disputed by anyone as far as I'm aware, but the interpretation of "exercise alone can be a solution to obesity" or "how much exercise vs how much diet restriction is a solution to obesity" is subject to interpretation and biases.

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

#742

Post by dylan604 »

staunton wrote: post #703
sitkack wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how propaganda works, you don't spread falsities and untruths, but change the mix of what signals get amplified.

This is how propaganda can still work. However, if a propagandist can get away with falsehoods, they will use those just as well. The interesting/newer things start when propagandists have multiple outlets and can distribute a number of mutually incompatible falsehoods to different audiences.

Enhanced by algos that promote those falsehoods in a way that ensures widest possible spread

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

#743

Post by function_seven »

cogman10 wrote: post #691
cromwellian wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he’s pretty much against them and makes a new excuse each time. He would claim that no vaccine ever has gone through enough testing. He also denied HIV causes AIDS, days it’s Poppers or lifestyle. He also pushed ivermectin which studies show has no statistically significant effect on COVID. He also pushed raw milk when prior to pasteurization, milk was the cause of 25% of all communicable diseases (it’s a great m…

I'll also say that this is not unique to him, it's how conspiracy minded people operate. You'll see exactly this playbook playout with flat earthers. "We can't know the earth is round because it's not been tested." or "It's actually industry captured" or "The US government prevents people from doing real tests to see if the earth is flat". You see, if you asked them "what would it take for you to abandon this theory"…

I have avoided so many pointless arguments (or "debates") by leading with this question! I ask, "is there something I could say that would make you change your mind?" If the answer is no—if they can't tell me what will move them off their position—then I can say, "well let's not waste our time here, yeah?" and change the subject.

It's not perfect. But with otherwise-reasonable people, it's a nifty trick.

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

#744

Post by anigbrowl »

Philorandroid wrote: post #229
wolfram74 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have such low standards for republicans, it's amazing. We complain that democrats are increasingly acknowleding that science is done by humans and humans will tend to ask questions based on what phenomena they've encountered and what explanations they've been given in their lives up til then, but totally give the republicans a pass on catering to groups that deny global warming, evolution or even that the world is…

Tu quoque; Republicans harboring fringe beliefs in some cases isn't a response to Democrats' mainstream acceptance of beliefs that the scientific method doesn't accurately reflect reality.

Democrats' mainstream acceptance of beliefs that the scientific method doesn't accurately reflect reality

No such belief exists. Recognizing the existence of bias in a science (with biased input data having detrimental effects on the reliability of the results) or observing the existence of methodological shortcomings is not the same as repudiating the method.

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

#745

Post by someuser2345 »

henearkr wrote: post #608
TheBlight wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's left leaning universities that push for affirmative action policies, which do judge people based on their melanin.

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

#746

Post by fireflash38 »

tiahura wrote: post #212
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.

Does your daughter play competitive sports? Has she been knocked down by a boy playing on a girl’s team?

Amusingly, in my experience, it was the girls in coed soccer that were doing the knocking down. For a few seasons, they were bigger than the boys, and they could more easily use their hips to check people off the ball without drawing fouls.

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

#747

Post by anglosaxony »

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.

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

TIL science ignores sex differences in body strength and endurance, racial differences in average IQ, the Putnam study on diversity and social capital, racial differences in aggression and their link to violent crime, and studies on the effects (irreversible) puberty blockers have on kids, among other things.

You can dislike these results, you can tell me I'm a bigot for even bringing them up, but you cannot correctly dispute them on the grounds of scientific inquiry. The fact that Scientific American would even try, as they have now for years, tells you all you need to know about their attachment to reality.

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

#748

Post by lowkeyoptimist »

TheBigSalad wrote: post #485
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…

I don't think people who say "Trust the science" are saying that science has it all figured out. It's telling people that they should weigh scientific data into their thought process. In reality many people make all of their decisions based on emotions and "feels".

"Trust the science" really came into its full form during the pandemic and was a veiled line in appealing to authority. The CDC, Dr. Fauci, NIH, or any governing body issuing mandates during the pandemic would tell you to trust the science, when in reality they just didn't want people to question their decisions. As it turns out, some of the people questioning school closures or masks were correct! Questioning vaccine safety for young men was and is correct, as long as there were not comorbidities. The people or institutions that were yelling "trust the science" the loudest were indeed saying that they had it all figured out and that anyone that questioned them was wrong.

"Trust the science" became a campaign slogan during the pandemic, and fell into the same realm as "defund the police" or "trust all women".

So yes, "trust the science" does mean what you said that it is a process that should take data new and old into account. However, the sad thing is it was co-opted by people who used it as a cudgel to silence anyone that didn't toe the line.

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

#749

Post by nataliste »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #730
y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have yet to see a convincing motivation for doing something like that. There's more money to be made in denying climate change it seems, so what's the driving factor then?

If you publish new evidence in favour of a popular theory, your paper gets published – sometimes in a prestigious journal. Whereas if you demonstrate compelling evidence overturning a high-profile scientific dogma of international import, you… *checks notes* win the Nobel Prize in Physics. Hm. Maybe the Nobel Committee is in on… no, that'd only affect whether they awarded the prize, not whether people expect them to.…

>If you publish new evidence in favour of a popular theory, your paper gets published – sometimes in a prestigious journal. Whereas if you demonstrate compelling evidence overturning a high-profile scientific dogma of international import, you… checks notes win the Nobel Prize in Physics. Hm.

The last time a Nobel Prize was awarded to someone overturning a long-held charged dogma was in 2005 when Barry J. Marshall and J. Robin Warren won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. They demonstrated that Helicobacter pylori bacteria, not stress or excess stomach acid, were the primary cause of peptic ulcers.

Whereas the inverse--suppression of findings that invalidated long-held scientific dogmas--are numerous throughout the last 150 years. Stegener faced ridicule and suppression for continental drift. So did Semmelweiss for germ theory. And Mendelian inheritance. And Lemaître's expanding universe. And Prusiner's prion theory. And Margulis's endosymbiotic theory. And horizontal gene transfer.

Beyond Marshall and Warren, Prusiner was the only one to receive a Nobel for their findings and that was fifteen years after consensus had emerged from below.

And in the case of Marshall and Warren, the findings of a bacterial origin of ulcers had been published in 1906, 1913, 1919, 1925, 1939, 1951, 1955, 1958, 1964, 1971, 1982, and 1983. With this 1983 paper being authored by... Marshall and Warren. They will not receive a Nobel Prize for their findings for another 22 years.

Science is moved forward in spite of dogmatic consensus, not because of it.

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

#750

Post by anglosaxony »

henearkr wrote: post #608
TheBlight wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Deciding "what matters" isn't a question of science, it is a question of dominance and self-interest. You seem intent on dominating others and denying their legitimate self-interests.
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