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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

#881

Post by GoblinSlayer »

smaudet wrote: post #531
GoblinSlayer wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Postmodernism has a bit of relevance for hard sciences, because relativity is known to be counterintuitive, and as a consequence theories will have absolutist bias. Consider Roger Penrose's Andromeda argument, where he tries to reason about synchronism in the context of special theory of relativity, but ends up assuming Galilean absolute synchronism, because Lorentz synchronism is counterintuitive.

Bad interpretations of data or theories are always a possibility, however that's only relevant to the interpretation. Unless the data itself is fabricated, i.e. unscientific, the hard sciences are "hard" because they don't suffer from these flaws of interpretation (as much). There of course issues with observability, replicability, however these are issues that can be dealt largely without invoking any societal biase…

It doesn't reject scientific method completely, but you also can't trivially ignore social dynamics, because scientific method routinely deals with issue simply by waiting for the old generation to go extinct, then consensus can be naturally reached.

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

#882

Post by brabel »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #681
brabel wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not just search for truth and fact, but use these truths and facts to develop ways that benefit people. Wait, when did "how to use these truths" become part of science?? How you use science to develop things that benefit people (or organizations) is normally called engineering! Science is normally concerned only with finding useful facts about the world. There are some exceptions, like when you're using the scienti…

Here you said it: "useful". The meaning of the word "useful" is a philosophical/political consideration.

"useful" should be replaced with "interesting" because we never know what will turn out to be useful, but by definition, we only look for things that interest us. And I disagree that's a philosophical or political consideration in most cases. It may be in some institutions, but I am sure most scientists will circumvent any restrictions imposed by their institutions in order to actually study what they themselves find interesting, even if under the covers of what their institutions want them to.

As a tangent: even if you're correct that what scientists decide or are allowed to research is mostly political, the facts they find are not, at least if the scientific method is being used properly. Facts are never racist. Facts do not have opinions. And science should look for true facts, not opinions. Hence, even if your focus is on things you find political, the scientific facts and hypothesis you end up with must not be.

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

#884

Post by marcus_holmes »

yks wrote: post #80
marcus_holmes wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Science advances one funeral at a time" [0] The Scientific Principle (hypothesis -> experiment -> conclusion and all that) does not pay any heed to authority and received wisdom. And it should not; the experiment results are all that matter. Academia, the set of very human organisations that have grown to manage our implementation of the Scientfic Principle, are a long way from perfect and are heavily influenced by…

One funeral at a time is true but “standing on the shoulders of giants” is also true and there is absolutely good science done without redoing all experiments since Newton, like there is a bad science standing on the sand hill of the other bad science. Having distrust by itself will not make one a good scientist and so it can’t be “the essence of science”.

Which is what I said...

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

#885

Post by z3ncyberpunk »

adr1an wrote: post #837
agentultra wrote: post #786

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make of it what you will, but the author's wikipedia page seems to put this article in perspective: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Singal

[flagged]

phobia... sure.

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

#886

Post by wtcactus »

smt88 wrote: post #844
wtcactus wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.forbe…

You're making an enormous leap from "follow the science" to health policy and then again to legal consequences of violating local laws. No one said, "'The Science' told us to arrest people for going to church!" The science did (and does) say that a huge amount of the spread of Covid was due to church attendance (and gyms, concerts, and clubs) at the time, particularly because of rapid singing/breathing and close quar…

> You're making an enormous leap from "follow the science" to health policy and then again to legal consequences of violating local laws.

You are trying to mince words there.

Can you please explain how it is possible to "obey the science" (which these people called for) from a purely political "health policy" perspective but from not "legal consequences" perspective?

What are the "health policy" policies that are to be implemented to "obey the science" (as they were asking for), that don't demand any "legal consequences"?

P.S.: Also, your suggestion of denying aid to these people is just totalitarian, actually. Let's do the same about obese people, then: that would cut health spending by more than half for everyone else.

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

#887

Post by z3ncyberpunk »

rurp wrote: post #761
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…

It's one thing to have liberal beliefs that influence your work in subtle ways, and a whole other thing to actively manipulate research to promote those social causes. Research on gender affirming care for minors should not be published or buried simply based on which side it supports, but that is exactly what has happened in that field. Given how anti-science and anti-education the republican party has become I doub…

> Research on gender affirming care for minors should not be published or buried simply based on which side it supports, but that is exactly what has happened in that field.

Yes, work done by a liberal researcher, was buries because it didn't support her political views. Liberals hinging the entirety of their scientific "evidence" on political pseudo-nonsense like the WPATH files. Republicans maybe anti-science and anti-education, but the other side is very much the same. One cult does not excuse the other.

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

#888

Post by z3ncyberpunk »

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?

In what way are democrats pro-science and not simple pro-paycheck? "Science" today is a joke and most research is lacks reproducibility, rigor, or depth thanks to things like publish or perish. Quality science is almost impossible in today's academic and "scientific" ecosystem.

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

#889

Post by henearkr »

bitcurious wrote: post #711
henearkr wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Until a few years ago, if my physician was educated in the United States and were Asian American they had to have a measurably better academic track record to overcome anti-Asian bias in university admissions. Does that mean they are a better physician? Probably not - in my experience the difference between good and bad in a medical context is patience and care, not knowledge. However it’s not absurd to make the oppo…

(EDIT: I had not read thoroughly your comment, see my PS below for a direct reply.)

Your point is to use a proxy for the variable that really matters.

Unfortunately that proxy is neither reliable, nor has good impact on the society in general.

It is better to just use the pertinent variables directly without a proxy.

Your physician is good if e.g. they have also a research formation, if their patients are satisfied and have a good recovering rate for illnesses that promise recovery, etc.

PS: ok, I see that you also point to variable trust from the patient to the physician based on superficial criteria. I hope that can change in the near future when everybody has the mindset "the appearance is not what matters". The patients themselves will benefit from growing their openmindedness.

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

#890

Post by henearkr »

Manuel_D wrote: post #690
henearkr wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Like what the skin color has to do with how good your physician is? Nothing. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Malpractice and disciplinary rates among Black and Latin physicians are higher: https://www.library.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Medica... > After controlling for a number of other variables, Latino/a and Black physicians were both more likely to receive complaints and more likely to see those comp…

Same as my other comment.

Don't use a proxy.

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