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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

#921

Post by valval »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #620
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…

There are few slogans I hate more than "trust the science", primarily because it aligns scientific results with faith, which is exactly what science is not about. Science is fundamentally about skepticism , not trust. Now, obviously that skepticism can be misused by some rando with no qualifications or even time spent researching telling you to be "skeptical" of people who have spent decades trying to figure shit out…

Unlike what you say, I think the real issue is people who have been studying something for a long time still being wrong about a subject. It’s not uncommon in any human endeavour. You can go to the gym for 20 years and never make any gains. You can also play badminton for 20 years without ever learning some essential strokes. You can study any subject without learning, it’s the default setting actually.

This becomes problematic since low quality experience is easily used to make arguments from authority with very high confidence.

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

#922

Post by dahfizz »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #695
dahfizz wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Everything is political" is such a boring tautology. Everything exists within the political climate of modern society. Institutions are forced to navigate the political landscape in which they exist. But that does not make the institutions political in nature. There is absolutely nothing political about studying the mating patterns of beetles or the composition of rocks. When people say that SA is being political, t…

"There is absolutely nothing political about studying the mating patterns of beetles" It will be used as an example of how we are wasting tax money by politicians. It will be used as an example of how homosexuality is natural by one side, and then it will be used as an example of how science is used to "groom" children by the other. There will be fights about whether it should be in school books, and then some states…

The important distinction is that it is possible, and should be the expectation, that you can study beetles and publish the results without any sort of political motivation or bias.

In that sense, it is perfectly possible and reasonable to "take the politics" out of scientific research. Simply do the research and publish the results. There absolutely is a thing as "no politics".

Once the results are out in the world, politicians and pundits are going to talk about it. That doesn't make the science itself a political act.

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

#923

Post by mapt »

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…

If you run 200 studies trying to show nonsense that protects your industry, and you set a statistical significance level of p>0.05 in seeking statistical correlation, you will find 10 studies that achieve statistical significance without fudging any numbers. Then you will announce that an exhaustive meta-analysis of ten studies supports your contentions about your profitable activity.

You cannot entirely separate intention from the merit of the science. Those 200 studies are an elaborate propaganda campaign, and they always were, each and every one of them, regardless of the fact that they had an internal logic.

Scientists should react with violent disgust and ostracism at clear attempts to attain a specific result without a lot of very explicit framing (eg: pre-announcing, announcing the other 190 studies, having a third party independently replicate the 10, etc), but they can't, because this sort of industrial campaign is funding such a huge percent of scientific research.

The NSF is doling out 9 billion dollars a year to run at least semi-objective science, and if this was 90 billion or 900 billion, things would be quite a bit different, and motivated "research" would not have the same place. We are dramatically over-supplied on researchers, to the point that a lot of them are making sub-minimum wage working as adjuncts, postdocs, "grad students", baristas. We built a system of university research that is the envy of the world, that exports knowledge and culture en masse, and we're not using it for more than 0.03% of GDP because some Congressperson has a poster of researchers "Spent $1.5M studying the mating habits of fruit flies, like some kind of pervert", and because Reagan hated government and wanted Coca-Cola to do our science for us.

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

#924

Post by InsideOutSanta »

dahfizz wrote: post #922
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There is absolutely nothing political about studying the mating patterns of beetles" It will be used as an example of how we are wasting tax money by politicians. It will be used as an example of how homosexuality is natural by one side, and then it will be used as an example of how science is used to "groom" children by the other. There will be fights about whether it should be in school books, and then some states…

The important distinction is that it is possible, and should be the expectation, that you can study beetles and publish the results without any sort of political motivation or bias. In that sense, it is perfectly possible and reasonable to "take the politics" out of scientific research. Simply do the research and publish the results. There absolutely is a thing as "no politics". Once the results are out in the world,…

"Simply do the research and publish the results"

And then you don't get any grants anymore.

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

#925

Post by lupusreal »

UltraSane wrote: post #714
csours wrote: post #512

I feel like rational communication requires an overlap in perspective - not the same point of view, but some amount of overlap. Science relies on rational communication between people who disagree, because we can fool ourselves, and we can fool our in-group. The narrative fallacy doesn't just affect weak minds; by yourself, you won't outsmart your own filters. To learn about the world, you have to accept the world, a…

This comment started off really well with the need for successful communication requiring at least a partial overlap of of worldviews but then goes into the weeds with the comment about Trump. No one is denying that Trump won the election. But a huge percentage of Republicans believe that Trump actually won the last election. This is a real example of how worldviews on the right and left differ radically. The drag sh…

> No one is denying that Trump won the election

Not strictly true, is it? There's a bizarre theory floating around in some liberal circles that Elon Musk somehow stole the election using Starlink satellites. And in years past, George Bush stealing his election was a pretty popular theory.

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

#926

Post by blueflow »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #909
blueflow wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to live my way outside of superficial constructs like gender. I do not want to be forced to accommodate people who think that gender identity is something relevant. The current political climate sucks for agender people.

There is a thing I've noticed. Some percentage of people do not strongly identify with any particular gender. I was assigned male at birth, I look stereotypically male, everyone assume I'm male and addresses me as such, but honestly, I don't care one way or the other and if I was female instead I doubt I would care. Let's say 50% fall here. Another group of people strongly identified with one gender or the other, and…

I noticed that too, and not only that. I and my peers in school had words for it: "girl" for people that were just female, and "girl girl" for people who were female plus "extra ideas". Same for boys.

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

#927

Post by maeil »

tokinonagare wrote: post #635
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are few slogans I hate more than "trust the science", primarily because it aligns scientific results with faith, which is exactly what science is not about. Science is fundamentally about skepticism , not trust. Now, obviously that skepticism can be misused by some rando with no qualifications or even time spent researching telling you to be "skeptical" of people who have spent decades trying to figure shit out…

[flagged]

Accurate. A few bits to support this:

- Yishan Wong, once Reddit CEO and still very much in the know, admitted to the following (direct quote):

> Example: the "lab leak" theory (a controversial theory that is now probably true; I personally believe so) was "censored" at a certain time in the history of the pandemic because the "debate" included ...massive amounts of horrible behavior, spam-level posting, and abuse that spilled over into the real world - e.g. harrassment of public officials and doctors, racially-motivated crimes, etc.

- Twitter had a CCP-affiliated person on their board of directors during Covid

- I assume everyone here is familiar with the Lancet letter.

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

#928

Post by tombert »

valval wrote: post #918
tombert wrote: post #835

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am saying that the statement “facts don’t care about your feelings” is a useless statement and it doesn’t make people who say it seem smart. People who say the slogan seemingly universally seem to think it makes them very smart. It doesn’t convey any information to anyone, all it is used for is for morons like Ben Shapiro to automatically dismiss people for being emotional. You’re right, I don’t like conservatives…

It didn’t take much prodding to make you show your entire hand. Might be time to look inwards.

Sorry, I think I'm missing something? I don't feel like any of my opinions were secret on pretty much anything?

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

#929

Post by CamperBob2 »

grecy wrote: post #899
mrandish wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If cell phones or microwaves or a hundred other things were harmful we would not find out While I agree that there may be things which have subtle but cumulatively harmful effects over time, the two specifics that you cited (cell phones and microwaves) are very poor examples because they've been deployed so broadly for so long, the chances there is some significant medical harm still undetected is vanishingly small…

> because they've been deployed so broadly for so long, the chances there is some significant medical harm still undetected is vanishingly small. Cancer rates continue to rise, and will be well over 50% of all people in my lifetime. There is no doubt our current world is making us very sick.

If you don't die of something else first, cancer is what will get you. Increased cancer rates are merely a side effect of improvements in other aspects of health and longevity.

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

#930

Post by ruszki »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #909
blueflow wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to live my way outside of superficial constructs like gender. I do not want to be forced to accommodate people who think that gender identity is something relevant. The current political climate sucks for agender people.

There is a thing I've noticed. Some percentage of people do not strongly identify with any particular gender. I was assigned male at birth, I look stereotypically male, everyone assume I'm male and addresses me as such, but honestly, I don't care one way or the other and if I was female instead I doubt I would care. Let's say 50% fall here. Another group of people strongly identified with one gender or the other, and…

> Some percentage of people do not strongly identify with any particular gender.

I’m the same. But, and this is a huge but: it’s my privilege to be able to think this way. I know that there are people who simply isn’t allowed to do this.

The same thing with skin color. I don’t care. However, my brother has a darker skin tone, he simply cannot have that luxury to not care, because other people force him. For example, when he wasn’t allowed to buy stuff at the nearby bakery because of his skin. He had to move to a country where people care less, because he didn’t want to put up his kids to the same. (Btw our country of origin is Hungary)

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