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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

#381

Post by Bhilai »

Don't be mistaken, Science and politics are intertwined and have been for a long time. Talk to any lead scientist who has to secure funding for their project and they ll tell you how its all political. So I dont see a problem with science magazine editors taking a political stance.

The Right tends to harp on this purist view from time to time while ignoring their own house of glass. For them, it's ok for for example, WSJ to be a completely biased in one direction. They dont complain about skewed viewpoints then. They will also defend famous podcasters for providing a platform pseudo science people with agendas. But as soon as a science magazine editor takes a stand, they flip out.

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

#382

Post by [deleted] »

refurb wrote: post #4

Yikes, quite the scathing article and example of a the politicization of science. “Trust the science” has always bothered me for two reasons: 1) science is frequently not black and white and anyone who has done hard science research knows there are plenty of competing opinions among scientists and 2) while scientific facts are facts, we still need to decide on how to act on those facts and that decision making proces…

[deleted]

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

#383

Post by malwrar »

pinecamp wrote: post #321
malwrar wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It seems to me like a lot of historical context would go into that discovery. You also mention power, privilege, and collaboration across continents. All of these factors shape the process of doing science. I think it's an amazing (and beautiful!) thing that we can collaborate on such a scale. Science is done by people, and I think it's silly to pretend that people can somehow operate in a way that's entirely removed…

> It seems to me like a lot of historical context would go into that discovery […] it's silly to pretend that people can somehow operate in a way that's entirely removed from history and culture.

Certainly in terms of who was able to participate in the discovery, but I doubt the actual discovered structure was shaped much by the discoverers. Put another way, I would be absolutely fascinated to see other accurate greenfield formulations of an atomic model that do not resemble our current one which could have been invented by another set of possible discoverers enabled by fortune to pursue them. I think that the ideas defining the model comprise the “shape” of the discovery more than the discoverers themselves, who merely stumbled upon them and investigated.

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

#384

Post by exoverito »

davorak wrote: post #58
tekla wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who unironically says “Trust the science” automatically tells me that they are probably not an informed person. I trust that most research is done in good faith and at least some of it is useful. Saying 'Trust the science' might as well be saying 'Trust in God'

> I trust that most research is done in good faith and at least some of it is useful. Saying 'Trust the science' might as well be saying 'Trust in God' Hopefully this is hyperbole. Any faith I have is separate from, for example, if I cancer, I am going to trust the science on the next steps of treatment.

Medicine is extremely complex and medical errors are the 4th leading cause of death in the US. The science on the next steps of treatment is often incomplete, variable, and dependent on the practitioners' experience. You shouldn't simply trust your doctor, but instead get a second opinion at minimum, and probably a third and fourth if you're able. It's best to triangulate on the problem, searching out varying perspectives from subject matter experts, listening to how they disagree, in order to better understand reality.

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

#385

Post by nradov »

jhedwards wrote: post #254
rayiner wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was well established before COVID that missing in-school days has a major adverse effect on learning. Keeping kids out of school had exactly the predicted effect—reading and math scores fell significantly: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/news/24/01/despite-progres... . We also knew early on that COVID posed little risk to kids themselves. So it was entirely rational for parents, especially of young children, to…

The point (as I understand it) was not to protect the kids themselves from covid, but that kids are active vectors of illness: they get sick easily and rapidly spread it to everyone around them. Sending kids to school during a pandemic is basically asking to fast-track that sickness to everyone in the community.

There was never any scientific basis for that belief. It was just made up without conducting experiments. And if fact we saw that some countries like Sweden kept primary schools open throughout the pandemic (without mask mandates) and it was fine.

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

#386

Post by kgwgk »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #343
blindriver wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

What's the gender of someone born with XX chromosomes, two ovaries, a penis, and develops male secondary sex characteristics like a beard? Intersex variants are 1% of the population, it's as common as red hair. The strict gender binary is the anti-science view I'm sorry to say. And again I say this as someone who is a member of a rigorous religious tradition that does not have any real flexibility about this. Nonethe…

> Intersex variants are 1% of the population

Only if you use some definition of “intersex” that has nothing to do with the “two ovaries and a penis” you mentioned before.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0022449020955213...

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

#387

Post by aspenth »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #343
blindriver wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

What's the gender of someone born with XX chromosomes, two ovaries, a penis, and develops male secondary sex characteristics like a beard? Intersex variants are 1% of the population, it's as common as red hair. The strict gender binary is the anti-science view I'm sorry to say. And again I say this as someone who is a member of a rigorous religious tradition that does not have any real flexibility about this. Nonethe…

> What's the gender of someone born with XX chromosomes, two ovaries, a penis, and develops male secondary sex characteristics like a beard?

Did you just make this up or did you have a specific disorder of sexual development in mind? Presence of two ovaries suggests it's a female DSD anyhow.

> Intersex variants are 1% of the population, it's as common as red hair.

This figure is controversial and includes conditions which most clinicians do not recognize as intersex, such as Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, and late-onset adrenal hyperplasia. The true prevalence is more likely between 0.01% and 0.02%.

The trans discussion is separate to this anyway, as it involves individuals without any DSDs who demand that others treat them as if they were the opposite sex.

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

#388

Post by notahacker »

jl6 wrote: post #232
abirch wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What isn’t factual in this article? Is it political because it discusses puberty blockers and transgender adolescents?

One part that isn’t factual is the statement on safety of GnRHs which cites their use in treating precocious puberty, which is a completely different indication and treatment (age of treatment, length of treatment, purpose of treatment), and does not consider the impact on psychosexual development, nor consider the impact on desistance of non-trans kids. The “safe and reversible” narrative originates in medical conse…

The statement regarding precocious puberty is entirely factual, and the statement linking that claim to supplying the same hormones to trans kids is linked to an article containing more detail (including a discussion of possible downsides and links to actual papers). I'd agree wholeheartedly that the difference between consensus and evidence-based medicine eludes most participants in the debate, but frankly that seems to apply far more to the side of the debate whose higher quality analysis is of the form of "it appears the systematic studies the other side have done might exhibit researcher bias, so rather than do our own retrospective on the same research subjects we'll just move for speedy consensus to ban the practice altogether"

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

#389

Post by NeutralCrane »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #237
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…

Like climate change? Like support of masking up when COVID was killing more than a 1000 people a day? Like believing "conversion therapy" doesn't work and is actually harmful? Like understanding sex and gender and two things even though we use the same words to describe both? Like voter fraud is minimal (pop question: after the 2016 election Trump claimed there were more than 3 million illegal votes cast. As presiden…

> Like believing "conversion therapy" doesn't work and is actually harmful? Like understanding sex and gender and two things even though we use the same words to describe both?

Like believing puberty blockers are an effective treatment for gender dysphoria despite historical evidence being extremely weak, ignoring or condemning more modern, rigorous studies [0], and refusing to publish your own studies when they don't confirm your preconceived position [1].

You don't need to convince anyone that Republicans don't care about science. But many of us also see the ways in which the "trust the science" crowd throw actual science out the second it contradicts their position.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/13/health/hilary-cass-transg...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/science/puberty-blockers-...

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

#390

Post by miltonlost »

codocod wrote: post #100
gopher_space wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most importantly, [the article] falsely claimed that there is solid evidence youth gender medicine ameliorates adolescent suicidality, when we absolutely do not know that to any degree of certainty. There's solid evidence youth gender medicine ameliorates suicidality. Cherry picking from a single study is dishonest.

> There's solid evidence youth gender medicine ameliorates suicidality. Not at all true, there is no solid evidence of this. That's why it's so controversial, because ideologues are pushing for these pharmaceutical and surgical interventions on children despite the paucity of evidence.

> ideologues are pushing for these pharmaceutical and surgical interventions on children despite the paucity of evidence.

And you're pushing anti-trans propaganda that surgical interventions are happening on children despite paucity of evidence that it's happening. Not to mention lumping together puberty blockers with surgery, which you should not.

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