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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

#271

Post by [deleted] »

everforward wrote: post #172
rayiner wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s misguided and toxic to center your worldview around the “most marginalized” or to think that focusing on them somehow gives you the moral high ground or frees you from the obligation to play by the meta-rules of society and its institutions. Or to think that your worldview somehow has a monopoly on helping marginalized people. You invoke “rationality” but as Spock would say, “the needs of the many outweigh the n…

I trust you’ll maintain that view if and/or when you become a marginalized group, and the dominant group shifts the meta-rules of society and its institutions in ways you don’t like? This view usually strikes me as hypocritical because it’s almost always paired with a paranoia of becoming a marginalized group and a belief that maintaining majority status for their group is “right” in some way. It’s easy to quote Spoc…

[deleted]

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

#272

Post by dahfizz »

tpm wrote: post #224
dmagee wrote: post #3

Trust in institutions is at an all time low. The last thing we need is for these institutions to veer away from their goals to push a political agenda. Good riddance to her.

There are no apolitical institutions. You would see that more clearly when visiting (or god forbid living in) a dictatorship or totalitarian regime, where all institutions are either brought in line with the regime or abolished. And I do mean all including gardening clubs. Enjoy institutions having the freedom to express political opinions, it is not guaranteed to last.

"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, they mean that SA is using science to thinly veil their political activism. That's very different from your definition of "political"

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

#273

Post by HideousKojima »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #116
blessede wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I thought I recognized the name. I really do not understand how trans debate has come to dominate some online discourse. Much of it is pushback against widespread ideological capture, and in particular the authoritarian idea that everyone else has to change and restrict their behavior to accommodate increasingly absurd and harmful requests from an overly demanding identity group.

What is the group demanding that is "over" what you would consider appropriate? How do their demands restrict your behavior? Personally I've never noticed trans people and their push for rights & recognition having any impact on my life whatsoever. And I say this as a devout member of a rigorous and conservative religious tradition.

[flagged]

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

#274

Post by Philorandroid »

UncleMeat wrote: post #253
Philorandroid wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tu quoque; Republicans harboring fringe beliefs in some cases isn't a response to Democrats' mainstream acceptance of beliefs that the scientific method doesn't accurately reflect reality.

This is not "some cases." This is core policy of the party. You can see major leaders within state and federal legislative and executive bodies actively denying climate change research on a daily basis.

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 platform [2] discusses it at length.

[1] https://ballotpedia.org/The_Republican_Party_Platform,_2024 [2] https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/FINAL-MASTE...

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

#275

Post by School-Cotton »

spamizbad wrote: post #244
toshredsyousay wrote: post #208

A lot of criticism of SA seems to be from those who don't read the magazine. It is still mostly just thorough coverage of developments in physics, biology, engineering, and other pretty uncontroversial science topics and this coverage has not 'gone downhill'. It is a lot of work to do good reporting of an area of science by talking to a range of experts in that area and SA still does good work here. Some topics are p…

The author of this article very (in)famously re-launched his career as a writer (prior to GNC youth he wrote mostly culture pieces) by misinterpreting a scientific paper on the subject he now claims to be an expert on. I don’t think he did this maliciously, but I do think, like many writers, he struggles to digest scientific literature accurately.

Which article and how did he misinterpret it?

I’m a casual, occasional listener to his podcast (Blocked and Reported) but don’t really know his origin story and am curious to learn more.

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

#276

Post by rayiner »

everforward wrote: post #172
rayiner wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s misguided and toxic to center your worldview around the “most marginalized” or to think that focusing on them somehow gives you the moral high ground or frees you from the obligation to play by the meta-rules of society and its institutions. Or to think that your worldview somehow has a monopoly on helping marginalized people. You invoke “rationality” but as Spock would say, “the needs of the many outweigh the n…

I trust you’ll maintain that view if and/or when you become a marginalized group, and the dominant group shifts the meta-rules of society and its institutions in ways you don’t like? This view usually strikes me as hypocritical because it’s almost always paired with a paranoia of becoming a marginalized group and a belief that maintaining majority status for their group is “right” in some way. It’s easy to quote Spoc…

That’s an invitation to think emotionally rather than rationally. (And not that it matters, but I recall white people literally crying back in 2016 that a certain president would put me and my kids in an internment camp. I’m glad I kept thinking rationally rather than emoting.)

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

#277

Post by gadders »

jl6 wrote: post #220
gadders wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>It's one thing for Singal to have culturally heterodox† views on unsettled trans science and policy issues†† I think his views are culturally orthodox, outside of liberal-left members of the laptop class.

Red tribe orthodoxy has a lot of disdain for people with trans identities. Blue tribe orthodoxy has maximal dain for those people. But both tribes are willing to promote pseudoscience to achieve their goals. Singal occupies a narrow sliver of the political possibility space where sympathy for those identities can exist at the same time as supporting evidence-based medicine.

Yes, I think there is a middle ground. Trans people are clearly going through something, and I think a bit more sympathy from the Right, particularly for adolescents wouldn't go amiss. Puberty in the age of social media, anxiety and other mental health challenges is rough. You can hate the policies/movement and still have sympathy for the individuals.

However, I'm not sure that encouraging young people to make one-way decisions (or decisions where we are not yet sure whether they are one way or not) is the correct approach.

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

#278

Post by malwrar »

pinecamp wrote: post #247
tlogan wrote: post #222

The issue isn’t that Scientific American leans “pro-Democrat” and it is political. It always has, and that’s understandable. The real problem is that the modern Democratic Party increasingly aligns with postmodernism, which is inherently anti-science (Postmodernism challenges the objectivity and universality of scientific knowledge, framing it as a social construct shaped by culture, power, and historical context, ra…

Can you give an example of an evidence-based pursuit of truth that was not in any way shaped by culture, power, or historical context?

The discovery of the atom? Huge cross-continental diverse group of humans of varying levels of power and privilege running successive experiments that led to our current atomic model.

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

#279

Post by throwaway5752 »

taeric wrote: post #88
tptacek wrote: post #74

I want to be sympathetic to Singal, whose writing always seems to generate shitstorms disproportionate to anything he's actually saying, and whose premise in this piece I tend to agree with (as someone whose politics largely line up with those of the outgoing editor in chief, I've found a lot of what SciAm has posted to be cringe-worthy and destructive). But what is he on about here? Or that the normal distribution—a…

Agreed fully on the JEDI stuff. I was somewhat hoping it was from an April first issue. That was bad. And I thought I recognized the name. I really do not understand how trans debate has come to dominate some online discourse. I thought the complaint on the normal distribution was supposed to be claims that many things are not normally distributed? Which, isn't wrong, but is a misguided reason to not use the distribu…

" I really do not understand how trans debate has come to dominate some online discourse."

It is a wedge issue, simply. It benefits entrenched interests because it allows them to anger and control people, just like they do with the War on Christmas, the War on Guns, Welfare Queens, Baby Killers, Wokeism, DEI, and so many other catchphrases that collapse nuanced issues to a sports slogan.

This entire discussion is grossly disappointing. So many otherwise intelligent people thinking they are debating issues, when they are being played like a fiddle.

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

#280

Post by slibhb »

tptacek wrote: post #74

I want to be sympathetic to Singal, whose writing always seems to generate shitstorms disproportionate to anything he's actually saying, and whose premise in this piece I tend to agree with (as someone whose politics largely line up with those of the outgoing editor in chief, I've found a lot of what SciAm has posted to be cringe-worthy and destructive). But what is he on about here? Or that the normal distribution—a…

> (c) There's absolutely nothing "surreal" about taking Wilson to task for his support of scientific racism; multiple headline stories have been written about it, in particular his relationship with John Philippe Rushton, the discredited late head of the Pioneer Fund.

The reason it's not surreal is because it's so banal.

Wilson viewed Rushton as a case of scientific freedom. I.e. research shouldn't be suppressed for socio-political reasons.

You're allowed to disagree with that. But you should understand that the scientifc freedom side isn't racist, even if ends up on the same side as racists.

I don't know what to make of you accusing Singal of "dipping his toes into HBD-ism". Maybe you just phrased that wrong. But it sounds like you're saying "Rushton was a racist, Wilson defended Rushton so he's a racist, Singal defended Wilson so he's a racist". Is that how racism works?

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