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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

#521

Post by Levitz »

jorgeleo wrote: post #504
Levitz wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you reconcile that view with the paragraph at the end? >That doesn't mean the editor needs to be apolitical or that there's no role for SciAm to chime in on social justice issues in an informed manner, with the requisite level of humility and caution. It simply means that Scientific American needs to get back to its roots—explaining the universe's wonders to its readers, not lecturing them about how society shoul…

No need to reconcile because one thing does not excuse the other. If I go complaining that you go around beating people up, and that is why I will go and beat you up, and at the end I claim that it is ok because I agree with hitting people is ok doesn't excuse my action. Also, stating the obvious (SA needs to get back to its roots) serves in this case as a straw man argument, the point was how bad an inexcusable was…

But there is nothing about that.

The point of the article is that SA can't sacrifice science to push propaganda. That's it.

Like this point of yours:

>but there is a point, in defense of the editor, where people claiming that the earth is flat need to be push back. Objective truth needs to prevail regardless of how people feel about it politically, and it is ok, in my book, to defend that

Is true, for the article, not for the editor. That's his whole point.

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

#522

Post by lupusreal »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #416
throwaway5752 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" 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 gro…

[flagged]

> Would you be willing to defuse it by instituting a policy of always saying "merry Christmas" instead of "happy holidays"?

I'm an atheist and this is my approach. I think their religion is complete nonsense but Christmas is a wholly inoffensive Holiday, which is celebrated in a fashion by many secular people anyway. I think the "Happy Holidays" thing is needlessly antagonist. In principle it should be fine but a lot of people take it the wrong way, it is known that many people take it the wrong way, and therefore if I said it then I would be saying it with the knowledge and acceptance that it's going to bother a lot of people (hence, antagonistic.)

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

#523

Post by Crayfish3348 »

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-defense science that would protect profits by advocating exercise, not dietary restraint, as the priority solution to obesity." It was a successful campaign and did particularly well in the Far East. "In China, this distorted science has left its mark not just on national obesity policies but on the apparatus for managing chronic disease generally."

Point being, the science that Coca-Cola propagated is entirely legitimate. But that science itself does not tell the whole, obvious truth, which is that there is certainly a correlation in a society between obesity rates and overall sugar-soda consumption rates. "Coke’s research isn’t fake science, Greenhalgh argues; it was real science, conducted by real and eminent scientists, but distorted by its aim."

"Trust the science" can thus be a dangerous call to arms. Here's the book, if anybody's interested. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo221451...

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

#524

Post by jl6 »

notahacker wrote: post #388
jl6 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 seem…

It is certainly not factual to claim that a drug which is safe in treatment X (precocious puberty) is also safe in treatment Y (gender dysphoria). The article conflates both as “puberty delaying treatments”, as if the learning from one is completely transferable to the other. It is not. The differences I mentioned are material.

The “side” (scare quotes, for there are multiple positions available, not just those that come through the lens of US politics) with the higher quality analysis is that expressed in the Cass Review, which does not call for a ban, but rather for clinical trials and a data linkage study (for which data linking adult outcomes to pediatric gender interventions has so far been withheld by the relevant clinics - draw your own conclusions about why they would not want that to be surfaced).

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

#525

Post by blindriver »

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.

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

#526

Post by yamazakiwi »

blueflow wrote: post #465
giraffe_lady wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

I want to live my life outside of superficial constructs like religions. I do not want to be forced to accommodate people who believe religion is relevant. The current political climate is challenging for areligious people.

I don't get to have this opinion because conservatives are censoring me and are always shoving religion down my throat.

Imitating conservative argument style is fun, you get to tell how you feel but then still get defensive when people say you hate other people based on their identity.

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

#527

Post by pvg »

bell-cot wrote: post #497
pvg wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SciAm's approach had thrown away any chance of appealing to the Washington decision-makers, controlling the nuclear weapons It seems to have worked, though - the biggest nuclear war skeptic in that administration was Ronald Reagan and he's one of the world's most successful nuclear arms controllers and disarmers, whatever one may think of the rest of his politics and policies.

> It seems to have worked, though... Did it? Or did Reagan have clear memories of WWII - when he was 30-ish years old - and the horrific level of death and devastation which even conventional bombing had inflicted upon Europe and Japan? "I don't want any American city to end up like Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, or Hiroshima" was a perfectly acceptable right-wing value. My read is that Reagan understood the difference bet…

Did it? Or did Reagan have clear memories of WWII - when he was 30-ish years old - and the horrific level of death and devastation which even conventional bombing had inflicted upon Europe and Japan?

Yes it did. The influence of media and popular depictions of nuclear war on Reagan is very well documented. His experience of WWII was working on propaganda materials, not exposure to the devastation of war. He was convinced nuclear war was likely civilization-ending, an actual Armageddon. In this he was at odds with the bulk of his administration and US nuclear doctrine. His attitudes and interactions with Gorbachov on these issues are also surprisingly well documented.

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

#528

Post by Aunche »

kmeisthax wrote: post #240
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…

Postmodernism isn't anti-science, it's anti-modernism. Postmodernism doesn't care about science aside from the fact that it happens to make claims to objectivity, which postmodernism disdains. This is sort of like arguing that relativity is anti-science because it denies the existence of a privileged "objective" or "universal" reference frame. To put it another way: if modernism was actually true and science was an i…

Science has been rewarding politics (e.g. securing funding) over achieving objective truths. Objectivity is a modernist value, and proposing ways how to systemically change society to advance modernist values is something we've been doing for hundreds of years. On the other hand, postmodernism tends to criticize the pursuit of objectivity while embracing subjectivity.

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

#529

Post by kgwgk »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #452
codocod wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

From the actual paper [0]: "Our long-term genotypic analysis builds on previous work [6, 7] and, through extensive genotyping of thousands of individuals over more than two decades, confirms that white morphs are almost always heterozygous for alternative chromosome 2 alleles (2m/2). We find that 99.7% of white morphs are heterozygous (n = 1,014; Table S1) ... As a consequence of obligate disassortative mating the sp…

That’s also why it makes complete sense to say that in places/times with anti-miscegenation laws in place there were effectively lots of sexes.
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