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Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

reason.com

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

#941

Post by lupusreal »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #913
lupusreal wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You aren't worried about folks of other religions that don't celebrate Christmas? Only about those that do? Is this some sort of Christian privilege thing?

I've never had members of other religions get upset about me wishing them a Merry Christmas, so no I'm not worried about it. If Jewish people started whining to me about it or something then the equation might change, but in fact those that I know are usually more perfunctory about wishing me a Merry Christmas than I am to them.

As to privilege.. whatever man. The simple fact is that Christians are the predominant religion where I live and they are touchy about this matter in a way other people aren't, so why should I go against the flow? Just to spite people I feel no real animosity against? To undermine a holiday I enjoy? Literally why.

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

#942

Post by immibis »

blessede wrote: post #109
taeric wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

You mean... abortion bans?

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

#943

Post by immibis »

blessede wrote: post #511
mrguyorama wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This graphic (an image macro) has an astute depiction" The actual graphic: "Lesbians must have sex with me!" Get the fuck out of here. This is nonsense.

[flagged]

wtf are you talking about?

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

#945

Post by Seattle3503 »

squigz wrote: post #816
Seattle3503 wrote: post #765

I notice there has been a mixing of expert/academic opinion with advocacy, and this is an example of that. But expertise and advocacy are important but different things.

They don't seem mutually exclusive to me. I would think an issue would only arise if one lets their advocacy jeopardize their expert judgement.

I think Jonathan Kanter lays it out much better than I can here, when it comes to research into monopoly

https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/assistant-attorney-genera...

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

#946

Post by xp84 »

agentultra wrote: post #794
rurp wrote: post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like you missed a big chunk of the article. The author points out a number of cases where SciAm published outright false or misleading information, which always echoed progressive activist talking points. This has nothing to do with publishing climate denialism or other pseudoscience, it's about not publishing poor information just because it aligns with a particular world view. SciAm is hardly an isolated exa…

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.

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

#947

Post by sunshowers »

aint_that_so wrote: post #898
sunshowers wrote: post #791

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your expertise in the field?

About the same as anyone else on that Discord.

Well, in that case I guess they were lucky that their views were closer to reality than yours.

I know plenty of trans women who don't wish to have extensive bottom surgery. Given that you don't have expertise in the field and have basically invented your beliefs from whole cloth, I think you should revise them accordingly and take it as a learning experience about the value of study.

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

#948

Post by alsetmusic »

complianceowl wrote: post #803
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"…

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.

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

#949

Post by alsetmusic »

valval wrote: post #918
tombert wrote: post #835

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am saying that the statement “facts don’t care about your feelings” is a useless statement and it doesn’t make people who say it seem smart. People who say the slogan seemingly universally seem to think it makes them very smart. It doesn’t convey any information to anyone, all it is used for is for morons like Ben Shapiro to automatically dismiss people for being emotional. You’re right, I don’t like conservatives…

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.

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

#950

Post by alsetmusic »

narag wrote: post #757
treflop wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The real trick is that critical thinking is almost always being critical with someone that's trying to mislead you. Many people try to do it with many different methods. So you're right it's not one thing. Also nobody will teach you all the techniques because they're keeping theirs secret. Everybody lies.

> Also nobody will teach you all the techniques because they're keeping theirs secret.

Sounds more like people who like to use propaganda who keep their methods in shadows (not always, though). I try to teach critical thinking all the time. I bet you do too. Do you not try to inform loved ones how detect spam or scams? How to evaluate what's true in their inbox or on a webpage? Do you have anything to withhold in such a scenario?

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