Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science • Hacker News Board

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

#931

Post by warmcompress » Wed, Nov 20, 2024, 3:23 PM UTC

crackercrews wrote: post #328

insane_dreamer wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does a scientific magazine have an Opinion section in the first place? Nature has an Opinion section. New Scientist does too. Most magazines do. > I would guess the number of Opinion pieces has gone up dramatically in the last decade Did you do any research on this or just throwing out random guesses?

> Did you do any research on this or just throwing out random guesses? As I said, I said it was a guess. I tried chatgpt, but no help there. I was hoping that people here who are more regular SA readers than me would have a sense of this. It is well-known that people do not discern reporting and opinion coverage. IMO this barrier is exacerbated in scientific publications, where science-like language is used throughou…

> As I said, I said it was a guess. I tried chatgpt, but no help there.

"We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas"

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

#932

Post by xpe » Wed, Nov 20, 2024, 4:04 PM UTC

dahfizz wrote: post #397

xpe wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Everything is political" is such a boring tautology. 1. The comment above didn’t say “Everything is political”. 2. "Everything is political" isn’t true. One might say that many things are influenced by politics; that’s fine, but downstream influence is neither pure single-factor causality nor equality. 3. "Everything is political" isn’t a tautology either. Support for #2 and #3: There are things in the universe th…

I believe you're nit-picking instead of interacting with the content of my comment. OP did not literally say "Everything is political", they said "There are no apolitical institutions". Which is functionally the same thing. "Everything is political" is a common phrase used to express a common school of thought, [1] for example. I was interacting with this school of thought directly in my comment. I agree with you tha…

I read tpm's core points as (1) all institutions are downstream of politics (meaning government, whatever its form) and (2) Therefore, don't take institutions for granted; they rely on compatible upstream governance. I think tpm most wanted to impress the second point upon readers.

When reading dahfizz's comment ""Everything is political" is such a boring tautology."... (a) I didn't see how a point being boring has any bearing on tpm's second point; (b) So I couldn't tell if dahfizz agreed or disagreed with tpm's second point; (c) As a result, dahfizz's comment felt nit-picky to me.

Meta-commentary: It would seem that dahfizz and I both feel like the other is being nitpicky. It seems to me this is a signal that some kind of breakdown is happening on at the conversational level.

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

#933

Post by pclmulqdq » Wed, Nov 20, 2024, 4:08 PM UTC

maeil wrote: post #904

pclmulqdq wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of individuals denounced the system, but you didn't hear from them because they didn't meet the demands of the entirely-manufactured scientific "consensus" on the wet market theory. As it turns out, that "consensus" was almost entirely driven by Anthony Fauci's camp of virologists (it's not just him, but a relatively small group of people who have a monetary/career interest in continuing the type of research tha…

If you're going to name one person, it definitely should not be Fauci, it should be Peter Daszak and his Ecohealth Alliance. For the curious reader, here's a short introduction, the tip of the iceberg. > Daszak’s $3.7 million NIH grant first set off alarm bells in early May 2016, as it entered its third year. The NIH requires annual progress reports, but Daszak’s year-two report was late and the agency threatened to…

Yeah, Fauci has the most recognizable brand name (hence why I used his name), but it's not really him who is the ringleader of this club. He may actually be the official "fall guy."

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

#934

Post by xpe » Wed, Nov 20, 2024, 4:08 PM UTC

dahfizz wrote: post #397

xpe wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Everything is political" is such a boring tautology. 1. The comment above didn’t say “Everything is political”. 2. "Everything is political" isn’t true. One might say that many things are influenced by politics; that’s fine, but downstream influence is neither pure single-factor causality nor equality. 3. "Everything is political" isn’t a tautology either. Support for #2 and #3: There are things in the universe th…

I believe you're nit-picking instead of interacting with the content of my comment. OP did not literally say "Everything is political", they said "There are no apolitical institutions". Which is functionally the same thing. "Everything is political" is a common phrase used to express a common school of thought, [1] for example. I was interacting with this school of thought directly in my comment. I agree with you tha…

Here, I'm thinking out loud. Are "Everything is political" and "There are no apolitical institutions" are functionally the same thing?

When I read "everything is political", I interpret that as meaning "all human interactions involve power relations, competing interests, and/or resource allocation".

When I read "there are no apolitical institutions", I interpret that as meaning "all institutions are downstream of politics (meaning government, whatever its form)".

I think it is useful to differentiate between the two phrases and their meanings. But of course they are closely related. Beyond each of us understanding what the other means, I'm not sure we're making specific enough claims to warrant litigating if "they are functionally the same". It seems like a contextual and subjective choice of where to draw a line. Feel free to say more if I'm missing something.

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

#935

Post by blueflow » Wed, Nov 20, 2024, 4:17 PM UTC

ruszki wrote: post #930

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #909

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

This is not an argument. That your brothers rights are not respected does not say anything about your rights and whether you are morally right to enforce them.

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

#936

Post by xpe » Wed, Nov 20, 2024, 4:34 PM UTC

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,…

Yes, neutrality is an important principle: we want a study to proceed without outside influence.

Yet, there is an additional point worth mentioning: to the extent public money is allocated to e.g. study beetles, it is downstream of a political process. Meaning, there was allocation of resources that allows the study to proceed.

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

#937

Post by dpkonofa » Wed, Nov 20, 2024, 4:37 PM UTC

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…

Critical thinking is one thing but that "thing" is a process rather than an individual item. Critical thinking, like science, is a process that iterates upon itself. You analyze the information you have and make a conclusion based on that information. The "critical" part comes in when you take a step back and then use that same process to analyze your conclusion and poke holes in it, checking to see if the information you have supports that hole or supports the conclusion.

It's like saying that a computer is one thing despite the fact that the one thing is made up of multiple pieces.

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

#938

Post by xpe » Wed, Nov 20, 2024, 4:39 PM UTC

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #924

dahfizz wrote: post #922

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>> "Simply do the research and publish the results"

> And then you don't get any grants anymore.

This is exaggerated to make a point, which I interpret as: savvy researchers are mindful of how to conduct their work and communicate their results so they get more grants in the future. To what degree does this distort or corrupt an ideal research process? This is complicated. Political economists often frame this as a principal-agent problem. Organizational theorists discuss concepts such as resource dependence. (What other concepts would you include?)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal–agent_problem

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_dependence_theory

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

#939

Post by UltraSane » Wed, Nov 20, 2024, 4:55 PM UTC

lupusreal wrote: post #925

UltraSane wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Trump still says he won the last election.

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

#940

Post by lupusreal » Wed, Nov 20, 2024, 5:06 PM UTC

UltraSane wrote: post #939

lupusreal wrote: post #925

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Trump still says he won the last election.

I didn't say otherwise.