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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

#811

Post by trinsic2 »

jmward01 wrote: post #708
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).

I have grown grumpier as the last decade has gone on and it is probably me just getting older but there is a point where you say enough is enough. You are starting with the premise that researchers are manipulating things and ignoring things so you have already 'won' by bringing doubt where there isn't any. 'I wonder how much of horrible terrible evil conspiratorial thing x is happening...' isn't a discussion opener,…

That's a good point. I tend to stay away from negative thinking about hot topics like this for that very reason. Even though I have my doubts about something, I tend to keep it to myself because I don't want to bring people down and anyway someone might come up with a way to look at, or take action in a positive light.

But I still feel its important for people to act from their own values, right or wrong, and not from a "hey trust the science" mentality which reminds me of majority thinking. Just because a lot of people have come to the conclusion that the science is sound, it doesn't make them right. There are plenty of situations where decided by majority viewpoints have been wrong.

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

#812

Post by Manuel_D »

pfdietz wrote: post #354
Philorandroid wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So biological denialism is a morally superior position to hold, then? Democratic leaders can't ever seem to acknowledge biological differences between the sexes, certainly not with regards to competitive advantages. As for it being "core policy", I'd need to a see a citation, otherwise it's conjecture. The 2024 GOP platform [1] doesn't mention climate change, global warming, IPCC, et al. once, whereas the DNC's platf…

> biological denialism What is this? I would have thought that the idea that some people who are outwardly one sex have brain wiring for the other sex is quite plausible. Development is very messy.

It is very common for left-leaning figures in the US to deny that trans women and girls possess any advantage over cis females in sports. In reality trans women still possess greater bone density, higher average height, higher red blood cell concentrations, higher VO2 max, more fast-twitch muscle fiber and more.

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

#813

Post by squigz »

anglosaxony wrote: post #758
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

[flagged]

The fact that you think we can just engineer our way out of climate change is half of the problem - to say nothing of the fact that, as far as I'm aware, the Republican party does not really accept the threat of climate change.

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

#814

Post by [deleted] »

complianceowl wrote: post #803
tombert wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"…

Why is it that people can't wrap their head around the "Facts don't care about your feelings." slogan? I don't agree with everything that movement says, but that slogan means exactly what it's saying; the problem is what everyone like yourself adds to it. What you are adding has originated and lives in your mind, and you project it onto something that has nothing to do with your thought that you are projecting. The s…

[deleted]

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

#815

Post by giraffe_lady »

Manuel_D wrote: post #805
giraffe_lady wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the gender of someone born with XX chromosomes, two ovaries, a penis, and develops male secondary sex characteristics like a beard? Intersex variants are 1% of the population, it's as common as red hair. The strict gender binary is the anti-science view I'm sorry to say. And again I say this as someone who is a member of a rigorous religious tradition that does not have any real flexibility about this. Nonethe…

Intersex are not 1% of the population. That figure comes from a study that included women with Turner Syndrome and PCOS, as well as men with Klinefelter Syndrome as intersex. Even a layperson would have zero trouble classifying the sex of said people if they saw their body. Intersex as defined by genuine ambiguity of someone's sex is around 0.02% of the population: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex > Leonard Sax…

So still like one or two orders of magnitude more common than trans athletes?

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

#816

Post by squigz »

Seattle3503 wrote: post #765

I notice there has been a mixing of expert/academic opinion with advocacy, and this is an example of that. But expertise and advocacy are important but different things.

They don't seem mutually exclusive to me. I would think an issue would only arise if one lets their advocacy jeopardize their expert judgement.

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

#817

Post by jounker »

AcerbicZero wrote: post #721
tokinonagare wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

At the very least it was such an obvious connection that ruling it out should have been an early step; when the PRC clammed up, and stopped letting any data out that should have been seen as the attempt at a cover-up that it likely was. Maybe it didn't come from the lab. Maybe it didn't come from China at all. But maybe we should have checked that? Maybe we should know if some senior coronavirus researchers at that l…

The initial cases of covid 19 cluster around the wet market. The lab is in another part of the city.

If it were a lab leak then we’d expect the initial cases to cluster around the lab, and to show up in those who had contact with lab workers.

Nobody considered the lab as a source because the basic epidemiological evidence doesn’t support it.

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

#818

Post by booleandilemma »

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…

I haven't verified if it's true yet, but thanks for this. I think it deserves to be a whole HN post. It's a shame this place is such an echo chamber.

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

#819

Post by jounker »

jkhdigital wrote: post #788
WillPostForFood wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, X…

The lab wasn’t just studying coronaviruses. The director had intimate knowledge of gain-of-function techniques, with publications and grant proposals to document this. Some of the research was published during her tenure at the lab, so it can be assumed that the research was performed there.

From what I know you’re mischaracterizing the research.

To the extent that they were looking at gain of function, they were also looking at loss of function. My understanding is that the research was looking at how random point mutation affect infectivity, both positively and negatively.

They were using also using virus evolutionary pretty distant from covid 19.

There are corona viruses present in species in the wet market that were much closer to covid 19. (eg pangolin caron’s viruses)

Blaming the wuhan lab is like finding that your child has been eaten by a tiger and the blaming a house cat breeder on the other side of town.

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

#820

Post by ToucanLoucan »

eezurr wrote: post #793
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's completely correct and valid but also in order to see this as a problem one has to presume that that the belief in it, or anything else you might care to put in it's place, is itself flawed. I don't believe in climate change because it's beneficial or not beneficial: I have read numerous things on the subject, all of which paint a consistent, reproducible, and relatable-to-my-life situation which happens to be…

To the downvoters (and ToucanLoucan), I never claimed what I believed in, and you don't have enough information to know anything about it. I'll continue to neither confirm nor deny my stance, for the point Im making is IMO an important one. Can you walk away from this conversation with your eye opened to how your belief is driving you to strike? [0] Here's a near-equivalent real world example: Alzheimer's research ha…

> To the downvoters (and ToucanLoucan), I never claimed what I believed in, and you don't have enough information to know anything about it.

I didn't say anything about your beliefs. I said other people who say similar things believe these things, and when people say things like them, I tend to assume they're about to drop anti-vax nonsense. That's not an accusation, it's the statement of an observed correlation.

> I'll continue to neither confirm nor deny my stance, for the point Im making is IMO an important one.

I mean, again, I wasn't referencing your specific beliefs so I don't really care if you confirm them or not. But I would also say, again as a statement of a correlation not an accusation against you, that the people who espouse the anti-science sentiments I've been discussing also will refuse to lay down specific confirmations of their beliefs, as part of a larger "just asking questions" fallacious argument, in which they take the position of an unconvinced centrist but consistently espouse "questions" that favor one side of it.

Again, to be clear, not accusing, merely observing. You may indeed be someone who is genuinely just asking questions, the problem is a whole lot of shitty people out there corroborate that position to advance bunk. And assuming you're being truthful, which I have no reason to assume you aren't, for that you have my sympathies.

> ere's a near-equivalent real world example: Alzheimer's research has been led in the wrong direction for decades, due to people chasing after power. [1]

Well sure. Science isn't perfect, it's only as good as the people who are doing it. It's the same way that basically every anti-vax sentiment, measure, study, etc. that you can find leads in one way or another back to former-doctor Andrew Wakefield and his junk study about vaccines and autism from back in the 90's. There are still medical practitioners who believe he was correct, there are multiple organizations that are built off of his research who oppose vaccines, we've had numerous outbreaks of various preventable diseases because of vaccine hesitancy. This shit has real consequences.

However, it's worth noting that both that story and the one you're referencing are notable because on the whole, most of the time, science does get it right, and more importantly, if it gets it wrong but it is being done honestly, it is also self correcting.

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