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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

#951

Post by randcraw »

teekert wrote: post #797
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"…

Perhaps not disputed, but exercise’s effect is probably overestimated, and thus, damage was done. https://youtu.be/vSSkDos2hzo?si=3U2UxQOa_ZgdmT37

Exactly. If your objective is to control your weight, changing your diet has probably 5x to 10x more impact than changing your physical activity.

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

#952

Post by smaudet »

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #881
smaudet wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you'll find upon inspection the hard sciences are based on consensus reached and not overturned for centuries, not generations.

If you were arguing with me in the 11th century perhaps you'd have a valid concern, at the point at which we've been successfully doing this for almost a whole millennia, I strongly disagree with your assertion(s).

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

#953

Post by anankaie »

lupusreal wrote: post #901
noworriesnate wrote: post #861

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big part of the problem here is that the term "conspiracy" has multiple meanings. Here's the dictionary definition: > An agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act. This means that for there to be a conspiracy, the conspirators have to communicate with each other about it. Many people would read your post and conclude that you think that there's a centralized organization that all the jou…

I think you're right about this. The appearance of conspiracy can easily occur among people who aren't covertly communicating with each other when they have aligned values and incentives.

And also journalists keep getting leaked as having internal journalist-only messaging lists, and often discuss the seemingly coordinated articles (or at least the events leading to them) in advent of publishing. See the JournoList (and related) scandals.

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

#954

Post by tombert »

alsetmusic wrote: post #948
complianceowl wrote: post #803

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The slogan is directed at fragile liberals who would rather yell like a toddler at a town hall meeting than have an informed discussion centered around facts. Who created chaos at school board meetings with yelling about trans kids and history books over the last couple of years? I have yet to hear anyone who isn't on the Right freak out about "what they're teaching our kids" the way that conservatives do.

Conservatives also like pretending to be offended by the term "Happy Holidays" every year.

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

#955

Post by [deleted] »

quasse wrote: post #597
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…

> Perhaps conservatives began rejecting science and driving scientists away There isn't even a "perhaps" about this. My parents (both physicists at a research university) voted Republican my whole childhood. The last 15 years has changed that despite the fact that they are still fairly conservative. Why would they align with people who are vocally anti-education, consistently work to undermine trust in the scientific…

[deleted]

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

#956

Post by sitkack »

staunton wrote: post #703
sitkack wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how propaganda works, you don't spread falsities and untruths, but change the mix of what signals get amplified.

This is how propaganda can still work. However, if a propagandist can get away with falsehoods, they will use those just as well. The interesting/newer things start when propagandists have multiple outlets and can distribute a number of mutually incompatible falsehoods to different audiences.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit

Disinformation is so much easier when truth is not a dimension you care about.

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

#957

Post by moralestapia »

washadjeffmad wrote: post #916
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…

"Trust the science" was also a propaganda campaign. What they meant was "Don't question our data or our decisions". Science isn't trusted, it's understood and practiced. Not everyone has enough scientific literacy to understand the difference between being data driven and hypothesis driven, even if they intuit parts of it on a daily basis. We can easily be misled by data, but when we make decisions by evaluating the…

Glad that this can be openly said nowadays.

The tide seems to be turning, indeed.

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

#958

Post by agentultra »

xp84 wrote: post #946
agentultra wrote: post #794

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turns out the author has no scientific credentials of any kind. They've been criticized for having an anti-trans bias in their writing [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Singal

It's obvious that he would be criticized for "having an anti-trans bias" because saying anything that doesn't directly support the 'progressive agenda' about trans issues is, to those activists, an "anti-trans bias." Many trans people have an 'anti-trans bias,' by those same criteria.

I think his credentials speak for themselves. He cites, as expertise, two articles (in popular magazines mind you, not scientific journals) and a book he wrote. That makes him an expert on gender health issues?

He has no medical degree, no published research to speak of.

GLAAD reviewed one of the articles and catalogued it: https://glaad.org/gap/jesse-singal/

The conclusion and many points in the article hinge on his self-claimed expertise. There is no expertise.

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

#959

Post by valval »

alsetmusic wrote: post #949
valval wrote: post #918

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not the person you replied to, but what? The person you accused of being tricked into showing "their entire hand" was unashamed about their position and didn't try to hide it.

The difference in tone between their former and latter messages is obvious.

They went from a passive aggressive “I don’t understand this idiom” straight to an unhinged tirade of “conservatives are morons” without much provocation.

Of course you share that sentiment, like the overwhelming majority of people on this very left leaning message board, but I still find it funny when it comes out so explicitly.

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

#960

Post by tombert »

valval wrote: post #959
alsetmusic wrote: post #949

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the person you replied to, but what? The person you accused of being tricked into showing "their entire hand" was unashamed about their position and didn't try to hide it.

The difference in tone between their former and latter messages is obvious. They went from a passive aggressive “I don’t understand this idiom” straight to an unhinged tirade of “conservatives are morons” without much provocation. Of course you share that sentiment, like the overwhelming majority of people on this very left leaning message board, but I still find it funny when it comes out so explicitly.

I didn't say that I "didn't understand it", I said I get annoyed with it because I think it's a stupid statement. I stand by that.

"Unhinged tirade" seems like a bit stretch. I called Ben Shapiro a moron, a statement I also stand by, then I said that I don't like conservatives very much, which I also stand by, and that left-leaning people who fetishize stoicism are also dumb, so it's not really just about conservatives.

I'm genuinely confused how you got "conservatives are morons" out of that. Yes, Ben Shapiro is a moron, but I also called left-leaning people dumb.

What I'm trying to get at, and what you seem desperate to dismiss out of some strange partisanship, is that I think it's really dumb to dismiss emotions as part of an argument. I don't really care if it's a lefty or a conservative or a libertarian or communist or anything else I'm missing; emotions are important, and pretending that you're somehow "above" feeling emotional about a subject doesn't make you smart.

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