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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

#771

Post by jahewson »

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?

Back in 2008 RFK Jr was a Democrat and Obama was considering appointing him to a cabinet post. Anti-vaxers have historically been crunchy-granola hippie folks.

https://www.politico.com/story/2008/11/obama-considers-stars...

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

#772

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

UltraSane wrote: post #739
csours wrote: post #729

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are examples of things that are hard for some to accept as bare facts. Person Y won the election Person Y won the election and that is BAD Person Y won the election and that is GOOD It is not a matter of denial, it is a matter of what story is made to accept the event. If you have not had to fight about the topic, you can just make the first bare assertion. The event happened. If you have fought about the topic…

Sorry but no one is denying that Trump won the 2024 election in the same way Trump and Republicans have denied that Biden won in 2020 and claiming such is very disingenuous. And saying person Y winning the election is good or bad is a matter of opinion, not fact.

You are misunderstanding their point. They are not saying that anybody is denying the election results.

A "bare fact", as they put it, is a statement exclusively of fact. Adding the qualifier to the fact makes it no longer a "bare fact". To use their example, "Snoop won the election," is a bare fact and, "Snoop won the election and that's bad," is not a bare fact.

What they are saying is that some people cannot accept "bare fact" statements as such; they tend to add or expect some qualifier to the effect of "that's good" or "that's bad".

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

#773

Post by wyager »

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…

> I don't know the cause of this.

I think it's pretty clear when you analyze it from the perspective of Selectorate Theory (c.f. Bueno De Mesquita's Logic of Political Survival).

Basically, there's a natural tendency for political parties to bring entire classes of institutions into their patronage network, leading to extremely high polarization within given industries. The choice of which party an institution class gets aligned with may be entirely arbitrary, but you expect it to happen. It's an efficient way to pork-barrel buy votes.

E.g. the education sector is part of the D patronage network and the ag sector is part of the R patronage network. There's no inherent reason this particular selection needs to be the case, but you do expect some kind of polarization to emerge.

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

#774

Post by csours »

UltraSane wrote: post #739
csours wrote: post #729

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are examples of things that are hard for some to accept as bare facts. Person Y won the election Person Y won the election and that is BAD Person Y won the election and that is GOOD It is not a matter of denial, it is a matter of what story is made to accept the event. If you have not had to fight about the topic, you can just make the first bare assertion. The event happened. If you have fought about the topic…

Sorry but no one is denying that Trump won the 2024 election in the same way Trump and Republicans have denied that Biden won in 2020 and claiming such is very disingenuous. And saying person Y winning the election is good or bad is a matter of opinion, not fact.

I also am not denying that Trump won.

I am saying that acceptance is complicated.

Yes people have strong opinions.

Denying that strong opinions exist harms communication.

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

#775

Post by anon291 »

lukas099 wrote: post #581
anon291 wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are legitimate reasons to be concerned over the COVID vaccines that have nothing to do with 'vaccine denial' [1]. What does 'vaccine denial' even mean? I've never met anyone who denies the existence of vaccines. [1] Such as the elevated cardio vascular risk for young men that exceeded their risk from COVID.

If we know that [1] is true, then we know it because of science. So believing it is not against trusting the science.

What does this have to do with 'trusting the science'. I'm wondering what the phrase 'vaccine denial' means.

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

#776

Post by rootusrootus »

grecy wrote: post #545
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…

And this is exactly the problem we face now in so many aspects of life. If cell phones or microwaves or a hundred other things were harmful we would not find out, because of all the lobbying and armies of scientists paid to find and publish a very narrow version of truth

That would be a good time to remind people that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Being skeptical does not mean embrace the conspiracy theory as probably true but not proven yet.

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

#777

Post by hamolton »

The author's critiques seem nit-picky to me. I'd like to hear from somebody that follows this, scrolling through SciAm articles published in the past few years, it seems like the bulk of content is still normal popular science. While it does publish a large chunk of partisan opinions now, a lot of them are pretty normal party-line defenses of democrats and their causes with respect to science, health, and whatnot. While I see they published a half-dozen or so articles defending gender-affirming care in youth, it's not like this is so central to the rag that this was mentioned on the covers. Is the author trying to rationalize an aversion to partisan politics in a magazine coming from a nation with a climate change denialist party?

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

#779

Post by jbstjohn »

csours wrote: post #640
nonethewiser wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The thing is, it's not just loyalty, it's also a 'better than only mid-level believers in the cause'. There's definitely a purity / piety aspect. I do like "piety" as it captures the religious aspect.

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

#780

Post by archagon »

anglosaxony wrote: post #769
archagon wrote: post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Newspeak”? Is there any point in engaging with this comment?

Merriam-Webster changed their definition of "vaccine" in 2021. They did this so the COVID shots could still be called "vaccines" despite not preventing infection, not preventing transmission, and providing only a moderate therapeutic benefit. In doing so they cannibalized and damaged public trust in "vaccines" which the medical community had built for so many years, and at such great expense. As is often the case, th…

Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. And nobody treats them as an authority on labeling. This makes absolutely no sense.
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