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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

#751

Post by rurp »

agentultra wrote: post #713

I can't really speak to the author's credentials but they link to two of their own articles and seem to be sour that SciAm didn't publish their work under this out-going editor's direction. In general though, it seems like publications such as SciAm are under a lot of pressure in this political environment. Maybe more than ever. I'm sure they've no doubt faced criticism from scientists that wanted to publish climate-…

I feel like you missed a big chunk of the article. The author points out a number of cases where SciAm published outright false or misleading information, which always echoed progressive activist talking points. This has nothing to do with publishing climate denialism or other pseudoscience, it's about not publishing poor information just because it aligns with a particular world view.

SciAm is hardly an isolated example of this. It is wild to me how many organizations have twisted themselves around to promote various trendy progressive social causes that have no connection to their actual mission over the past decade or so. Mozilla is the poster child for this in tech.

I used to shake my head at this stuff, finding it mildly annoying but not all that consequential. After seeing the results of the last election and what voters have been telling pollsters for years, it's clear that this sort of activism is a massive albatross weighing on every single liberal politician and cause.

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

#752

Post by throwaway657656 »

By chance I just started reading Sci Am after a lapse 10 years. This month, there is an article that mentions that empathy is mentally taxing, which is obvious but worth stating. Shortly afterwards it is followed by a series of articles on sickle cell disease.

I suspect the order of these two articles was a deliberate choice by the editor. Subconsciously I never cared much about sickle cell since I am not black and I am more interested in diseases that would affect me and my family. But then I realized that I am choosing to be dismissive, which has zero cognitive cost, as opposed to empathy which comes at a cost. I read the report and immediately reflected on how I should give more blood since transfusions can ease the unbearable pain of this disease. I learned a lot of science too.

The examples in the parent article make it clear the editor needs be replaced. But like all over-corrections I hope some of the changes made during her tenure remain.

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

#754

Post by anglosaxony »

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?

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

#755

Post by fjh »

agentultra wrote: post #713

I can't really speak to the author's credentials but they link to two of their own articles and seem to be sour that SciAm didn't publish their work under this out-going editor's direction. In general though, it seems like publications such as SciAm are under a lot of pressure in this political environment. Maybe more than ever. I'm sure they've no doubt faced criticism from scientists that wanted to publish climate-…

I'm a bit baffled by this comment, so much so that I find it difficult to believe we've read the same article. I don't see any indication in the article that the author ever submitted any work to SciAm, let alone that he's sore about not being published. None of the examples he cites have anything to do with climate denialism, nor is he defending any pseudo-scientific conspiracy theories. How is any of this responding to the article you're commenting on?

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

#756

Post by Manuel_D »

nemomarx wrote: post #309
gadders wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Cass report in the UK was pretty clear that there isn't enough evidence to base decisions on https://cass.independent-review.uk/home/publications/final-r... >>> While a considerable amount of research has been published in this field, systematic evidence reviews demonstrated the poor quality of the published studies, meaning there is not a reliable evidence base upon which to make clinical decisions, or for child…

The Cass report is pretty questionable quality wise - it was written with political goals pretty directly in mind and it rules out a lot of studies for not being double blind. (Which is necessarily a hard ask here, medical ethics boards aren't going to let you give hormones to the control group children or anything.) And that criticism has come from medical boards in the UK and globally, I believe? Anyway, that's als…

What's the basis for the claim that the Cass Review was written with political goals directly in mind? Is this just based on the conclusion of the report, or is there actual substance for this statement?

Most of the criticism of the Cass Review comes from the US. Most of Europe has either stopped prescribing puberty blockers and cross sex hormones for minors or never did in the first place. The UK is joining the consensus among the majority of developed countries regarding treatment of gender dysphoric youth, now the US and Canada stand as the sole outliers.

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

#757

Post by narag »

treflop wrote: post #682
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 think this related to the “critical thinking” skill that all my teachers always stressed about growing up. But I still don’t know how to put in useful words what “critical thinking” is because it’s not one thing. It requires synthesizing a lot of information together in very specific and meticulous ways. And through feedback, collecting your previous thoughts and keeping track of how often you are correct or incorr…

The real trick is that critical thinking is almost always being critical with someone that's trying to mislead you.

Many people try to do it with many different methods. So you're right it's not one thing. Also nobody will teach you all the techniques because they're keeping theirs secret.

Everybody lies.

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

#758

Post by anglosaxony »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #619
squigz wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be because what being a "conservative" in America means has been grotesquely distorted into what it is today.

> being a "conservative" in America means has been grotesquely distorted into what it is today. I am a recovering conservative and agree with this. Today's right wing occupies a space that I find to be distressing and deeply concerning. From my perspective, conservatism has become thin-skinned, extremely malleable and hair-trigger reactive - the same complaints we lobbed at the left, 20y ago. From my perspective, the…

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

#759

Post by WillPostForFood »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #659
tokinonagare wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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I completely disagree with your characterization of this example, and on the contrary I think your example perfectly shows how "follow the incentives" gives you truer, clearer understanding of what happened: 1. If you dug in to the authors of the now infamous Lancet letter ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_letter_(COVID-19) ), you could see how they had huge conflicts of interests. 2. Early on in the pandemic,…

I agree with #1 and #3, but in trying to be overly fair, you're leaving out some important details in #2.

people went to a lab leak (intentional or not) theory very quickly with no evidence

It was known at the time that the Wuhan lab was studying coronavirus, and known they had both safety and security lapses. That is far from proof, but it is evidence.

Also, the incentive was to blame China was mixed. At the time, Xi had recently the US, and both sides were advancing a trade deal. It was a moment the US govt was trying to improve relations, and particularly get US agricultural sales to China boosted. The lab leak talk was tamped down for months. It wasn't until March that you had US officials really start to talk about it.

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

#760

Post by [deleted] »

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.…

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