[HN Gopher] Scientific American's departing editor and the polit...
___________________________________________________________________
Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of
science
Author : Bostonian
Score : 413 points
Date : 2024-11-18 22:04 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (reason.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (reason.com)
| favorited wrote:
| > For example, did you know that "Denial of Evolution Is a Form
| of White Supremacy"?
|
| Yes, because I read Inherit the Wind in middle school.
| lanstin wrote:
| Thank you for some historical context.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| _Inherit the Wind_ uses the historical case of the Scopes
| Monkey Trial to discuss the contemporary McCarthyism, neither
| of which is particularly closely tied to white supremacy?
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Ugh. I'm sorry, but could you please explain yourself? I also
| read Inherit the Wind in middle school, and my understanding is
| that it fictionalized the (true) story of the "Scopes/Monkey
| Trial", which was an ideological conflict between science and
| religion. It's been over 50 years, and maybe I'm so pure that I
| disregarded any racial context, but I don't remember any.
|
| How does "White Supremacy" come into the story, or the denial
| of evolution as a whole?
| IvyMike wrote:
| As a whole?
|
| White supremacists hate the idea that they could have had
| non-white ancestors. Belief in a white Adam & Eve is much
| more in line with their world view. Non-whites were created
| by "the Curse of Ham".
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_Ham
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| As usual, when a "Christian" wants to be un-Christian, they
| do it by mining the Old Testament.
| leereeves wrote:
| Surely you understand the difference between "Some X
| believe Y" and "Y is a form of X". Examples of the former
| pattern do not prove the latter.
|
| Even if we correct the logic here, and change the
| conclusion to something like "All people who dismiss
| evolution are white supremacists", that would still be
| disproven by counterexamples, like the many non-white
| people who don't believe in evolution.
|
| _" Acceptance of evolution was lower [than in the US] in
| ... Singapore (59%), India (56%), Brazil (54%), and
| Malaysia (43%)"_
|
| https://ncse.ngo/acceptance-evolution-twenty-countries
| IvyMike wrote:
| I just gave a connection white supremacy and evolution
| denial, not trying to prove any absolutes. Everything you
| are saying seemed kinda obvious and thus I didn't mention
| it.
| leereeves wrote:
| I apologize if I misunderstood. I thought your comment
| was related to the statement being discussed in this
| chain. ("Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White
| Supremacy")
| gopher_space wrote:
| Biological evolution was butting heads with the dying concept
| of social evolution at the time, and that conflict provides
| illuminating subtext to the trial and book.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Which is another interesting aspect of the political use of
| science: that people will cherry-pick and bend all they can
| in ways that support their policies.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| Pretty sure "scientific racism" owes more to pop versions of
| evolutionary theory than it does to a near-Eastern religion
| that endows all people with immortal souls, spreads the faith
| in all languages following Pentacost, tells parables about
| Samaritans, and makes a point of adding Galatians to its sacred
| book.
| dmagee wrote:
| 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.
| red016 wrote:
| I used to love Popular Science but these magazines all died 20
| years ago. Science reporting was the first type of journalism
| to go, much easier to write clickbait about current events.
| Remember Scientific American already endorsed Biden last
| election which was a wtf moment.
| tzs wrote:
| > Remember Scientific American already endorsed Biden last
| election which was a wtf moment.
|
| In his first term the Trump administration tried to massively
| cut scientific and medical research, tried to change the
| rules for the board of outside scientists that review EPA
| decisions for scientific soundness to not allow academic
| scientists so that it would only consist of scientists
| working for the industries that the EPA regulates, tried to
| make it so that most peer reviewed medical research that
| showed products causing health problems could not be
| considered by the EPA when deciding if a chemical should be
| banned, tried to massively increase taxes on graduate
| students in STEM fields, wanted to stop NASA from doing Earth
| science, and let's not forget repeatedly claiming climate
| change is a hoax. I'm sure I'm forgetting several more.
|
| I don't expect my technical publications to have an opinion
| on things politicians do that have nothing to do with the
| fields they cover, but when politicians start doing things
| directly concerning those fields I don't see how it is a WTF
| moment for them to comment.
| ourmandave wrote:
| _I 'm sure I'm forgetting several more._
|
| Like putting a climate science denier in charge of NOAA as
| he was reluctantly heading out the door.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2020/09/12/912301325/longtime-climate-
| sc...
|
| So he could publish a piece under the official NOAA logo to
| try and gain legitimacy.
|
| Looking at all the latest insane picks, can't wait to see
| what toon he install this go around.
| devmor wrote:
| Why do you find it a "wtf moment" that a scientific magazine
| would endorse the opposition candidate to one threatening to
| all but destroy federal funding for most scientific research
| in the country?
|
| It seems clear to me that this would be the most appropriate
| circumstance for such an endorsement.
| ashildr wrote:
| Interestingly the only people who are not supposed to "push a
| political agenda" are usually accused of being "woke" in one of
| the next sentences. "Keeping politics out" brought the US - and
| the world - Trump, two times. Most things in life are
| political.
| Levitz wrote:
| >"Keeping politics out" brought the US - and the world -
| Trump, two times.
|
| Given the degree to which Trump benefits from anti-
| establishment sentiment, I'd like you to ponder if putting
| politics absolutely everywhere might very well be what got
| Trump elected twice. I find the idea that there just isn't
| enough political message completely incompatible with current
| reality.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I believe we are living in an interesting time (yeah, _that_
| kind of 'interesting time"). Decades from now, given a
| historical context, I suspect a lot of the headlines like this
| one will be viewed very differently.
| tpm wrote:
| 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.
| dahfizz wrote:
| "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"
| xpe wrote:
| The word "political" is rife with confusion. Careful
| discussion requires slowing down long enough to make sure
| different people are talking about the same thing.
|
| One of my favorite definitions of politics is the set of
| non-violent ways of resolving disagreements, whether
| interpersonal, organizational, or governmental.
|
| Others may reserve the word politics to only apply to
| governmental issues, campaigning, elections, coalition
| building, etc.
|
| P.S. Language is our primary method of communication.
| Ponder this: why are people so bad at it? Do people really
| not understand that symbols can have different meanings? Do
| they forget? Do they want to get peeved because they want
| to think that other people don't know what words mean?
| xpe wrote:
| > "Everything is political" is such a boring tautology.
|
| 1. The comment above didn't say "Everything is political".
|
| 2. "Everything is political" isn't true. One might say that
| many things are influenced by politics; that's fine, but
| downstream influence is neither pure single-factor
| causality nor equality.
|
| 3. "Everything is political" isn't a tautology either.
|
| Support for #2 and #3: There are things in the universe
| that existed prior to (and independent of) politics, like
| the Earth. There are phenomena influenced by politics but
| not inherently political, such as the phenomena of global
| warming or measuring the level of inflation. What to do
| about global warming or inflation is political, if you are
| lucky, meaning you have some persuasive influence at all
| (not the case in a dictatorship) and/or don't have to
| resort to violence.
| dahfizz wrote:
| I believe you're nit-picking instead of interacting with
| the content of my comment.
|
| OP did not literally say "Everything is political", they
| said "There are no apolitical institutions". Which is
| functionally the same thing. "Everything is political" is
| a common phrase used to express a common school of
| thought, [1] for example. I was interacting with this
| school of thought directly in my comment.
|
| I agree with you that "Everything is political" is not
| true. But tpm is arguing the opposite.
|
| "Everything is political" _is_ a trivially true statement
| when using tpm 's definition of "political", which is the
| point I was trying to get across. tpm is claiming that
| any institution which interacts with the government in
| any way is political in nature. This means that even the
| rocks and trees and oceans are political, because they
| are at the mercy of government policy.
|
| I am arguing against this definition of "political".
|
| [1] https://daily.jstor.org/paul-krugman-everything-is-
| political...
| tpm wrote:
| > tpm is claiming that any institution which interacts
| with the government in any way is political in nature
|
| I am arguing that any institution is political by its
| very existence. Even if the true nature of the
| institutions is hidden by the current regime, as it is
| often the case in the West.
|
| The funniest thing, of course, is that we are arguing
| under an article containing a political attack in the
| political magazine Reason, published by the political
| Reason Foundation. That's not the ideal starting point if
| you want to prove the possibility of _apoliticalness_ of
| anything.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Can you define "institution" and "political" for me,
| then?
|
| I would argue that there is nothing political about a
| local bakery, for example. Just a dude making some cakes.
| He may occasionally be forced to interact with the
| government, but his bakery as an institution has nothing
| at all to do with government organizations or political
| theory. By its nature, a bakery is apolitical.
| tpm wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institution is as good as
| any. I would not consider a small (one person or family)
| bakery an institution. A large one (measured by number of
| employees etc) would be an institution, and defining the
| threshold is not important here.
|
| Political - relating to the government or public affairs
| of a country
| dahfizz wrote:
| Okay. And your argument is that a large bakery is
| fundamentally related to government affairs? What about
| the nature of a large bakery is political?
| tpm wrote:
| My argument is that every institution is political
| whether it wants or not. Bakery is very obviously
| political because everyone tends to eat food and as such
| food is an evergreen political theme. Perhaps this is
| more visible in some countries than others, for example
| in a neighboring country the price of butter is a quite
| common item in TV news (really), and it's not a poor
| country.
|
| But also other than that, a few years ago there were some
| articles about a bakery that refused to bake a wedding
| cake for gays, and it was a public affair for a few
| weeks. Is that political enough for you?
| tpm wrote:
| > There is absolutely nothing political about studying the
| mating patterns of beetles or the composition of rocks.
|
| Well, what about studying the mating patterns of humans,
| studying the decisions to abort, studying the decisions to
| change gender? Still not at all political in your country?
| Then, who decides if a study gets funding, who decides if
| it is ethical, who decides if the results can get
| published? It's all political decisions around the 'pure'
| science, which is why I mention different political regimes
| where stuff like this is often completely explicit unlike
| in more free societies where it may look like it's free of
| politics.
|
| > they mean that SA is using science to thinly veil their
| political activism
|
| And they should be glad, not complaining. Everyone is using
| their position for political activism, business owners,
| unions, all sorts of organisations, churches etc. There is
| no reason SA shouldn't do that. Of course they only
| complain because they don't agree with SA.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Scientific research is apolitical. Even the act of
| studying abortion or transgenderism is not inherently
| political.
|
| Just because scientists have to occasionally interact
| with political institutions does not make Science itself
| a political institution. Science is fundamentally
| apolitical.
| squigz wrote:
| What does politicized science look like, exactly? TFA
| seems to link to several opinion pieces, which aren't
| science, so I'm a little unclear.
| contagiousflow wrote:
| I don't believe anyone here believes that scientific
| research is political. But how a society funds,
| publishes, and integrates scientific research is deeply
| political.
| squigz wrote:
| > 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"
|
| Could you provide some examples? TFA seems to link to
| opinion pieces at Scientific American and not actual
| research, so I'm a little unclear.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| "There is absolutely nothing political about studying the
| mating patterns of beetles"
|
| It will be used as an example of how we are wasting tax
| money by politicians. It will be used as an example of how
| homosexuality is natural by one side, and then it will be
| used as an example of how science is used to "groom"
| children by the other. There will be fights about whether
| it should be in school books, and then some states will ban
| all school books that mention that research, and then
| publishers will be forced to remove it to still have enough
| of a market for their books. The authors will be called out
| on Twitter and receive death threats, their university will
| cut their funding to avoid the controversy, some students
| will complain about it, and then that will be used to show
| how universities indoctrinate our kids.
|
| And so on.
|
| That's what "everything is political" means. When people
| say things like "get politics out of x," they really mean
| "make x match my politics", because there's no such thing
| as "no politics."
| refurb wrote:
| 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 process is most certainly political and
| subjective in nature.
| senderista wrote:
| "Trust the science" is the very antithesis of the scientific
| spirit. The essence of science is to _distrust_ authority and
| received wisdom. If you treat scientists as some sort of
| infallible priesthood then you 've missed the whole point of
| science.
| yks wrote:
| > The essence of science is to distrust authority and
| received wisdom.
|
| This is not "the essence of science" by any means.
| dekhn wrote:
| The motto of the Royal Society:
|
| "The Royal Society's motto 'Nullius in verba' was adopted
| in its First Charter in 1662. is taken to mean 'take
| nobody's word for it'. It is an expression of the
| determination of Fellows to withstand the domination of
| authority and to verify all statements by an appeal to
| facts determined by experiment."
|
| It's highly consistent with the statement above and in many
| ways is consistent with science as it is practiced.
| itishappy wrote:
| ... source?
|
| (sorry, couldn't resist)
|
| https://royalsociety.org/about-us/who-we-are/history
| davorak wrote:
| The motto here does not align with how I read it compared
| to:
|
| > The essence of science is to distrust authority and
| received wisdom
|
| "take nobody's word for it" -> anyone can say anything,
| that is just a claim, things other than that matter like
| data, replication, etc.
|
| That is different and superior than a simple, broad,
| statement to 'distrust'.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| "Science advances one funeral at a time" [0]
|
| The Scientific Principle (hypothesis -> experiment ->
| conclusion and all that) does not pay any heed to authority
| and received wisdom. And it should not; the experiment
| results are all that matter.
|
| Academia, the set of very human organisations that have
| grown to manage our implementation of the Scientfic
| Principle, are a long way from perfect and are heavily
| influenced by authority and received wisdom.
|
| So yeah, I don't think it's the essence of science, but
| distrusting authority and received wisdom definitely
| required to practice good science.
|
| [0] https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/science-really-
| does-adva...
| yks wrote:
| One funeral at a time is true but "standing on the
| shoulders of giants" is also true and there is absolutely
| good science done without redoing all experiments since
| Newton, like there is a bad science standing on the sand
| hill of the other bad science. Having distrust by itself
| will not make one a good scientist and so it can't be
| "the essence of science".
| elevatedastalt wrote:
| The Scientific process does not have any authority except
| observed natural phenomena.
| yks wrote:
| Yes, therefore trusting or distrusting authorities is
| irrelevant. One can distrust authorities and do bad
| science, one can trust authorities and do good science,
| and other combinations.
| cryptonector wrote:
| The scientific method has no authorities, but science
| does.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It literally doesn't. Even Nobel Prize winners do not get
| a free pass to make baseless claims.
|
| There's an entire realm of people who did great science,
| won a Nobel prize, and then went on to make absurd
| unfounded claims about shit they do not know.
| elashri wrote:
| > The essence of science is to distrust authority and
| received wisdom
|
| The essence of science is the use of scientific method which
| have specific meaning and way of doing things. It relies on
| evidence based knowledge not on any distrust. It does not
| have to do with authority but you would question if your
| tools you are using is good (calibrated and not interfering
| with measurements in an unaccounted way ..etc) or if your
| methodology is flawed.
| KK7NIL wrote:
| So when someone says "trust the science!" they mean "define
| your null hypothesis, design an experiment to test it, run
| said experiment, analyze the data for statistical
| significance and submit for peer review"?
|
| Or do they really mean "trust the scientists"?
| elashri wrote:
| I think when someone say something you are confused or
| have doubts about what they mean, then you ask them what
| they mean. This sentence can be used to mean many things
| (including mocking up scientists ot trolling). So please
| next time you see or hear someone says that please ask
| them that.
|
| If I would use it personally I will probably use it to
| mean trust the evidence based knowledge that the
| scientific community is using.
| KK7NIL wrote:
| > If I would use it personally I will probably use it to
| mean trust the evidence based knowledge that the
| scientific community is using.
|
| Where can one find this knowledge? Are you suggesting
| regular folk go out and review the literature themselves
| (most of which is paywalled)? And even if they did and
| were able to understand the contents, they'd still lack
| the required context to weigh contradicting results,
| dismiss old studies now known to be wrong, etc etc.
|
| And that's why "trust the science" ends up being an
| appeal to authority.
|
| I'm not saying I have a better alternative than the
| scientific method, I'm just pointing out that the
| "scientific consensus" isn't some magical spark that is
| immediately obvious when one reads the literature, it's
| something that evolves over many decades of research,
| conferences, etc. And that's assuming there is a
| consensus for a given topic at a given time. And I'm not
| even going to get into why reasonably questioning the
| scientific consensus is a good thing (otherwise it stops
| being science).
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I have never once in my life heard the phrase "Trust the
| science" from anyone other than someone fighting a
| strawman
| cryptonector wrote:
| Unfortunately science is full of academic authorities with
| vested interests (grants, acclaim, stature), conflicts of
| interest, narcissism, and other problems. To do real
| science you need to be able to distrust the authorities of
| the day.
| itishappy wrote:
| Somewhat disagree. Science requires trust. In fact, it's the
| process for building that trust up from nothing. Are you
| friend or foe? I'm going to assume one but watch you closely
| until I have enough evidence to trust you. Hurray, that's
| science!
|
| I totally agree that the phrase is often misused to mean
| "trust my favorite authority figure" or "trust the status
| quo," which is distinctly unscientific. Good news though, if
| we're willing to actually do the work (the hard part) trust
| in science is what allows us to change the status quo!
| atmavatar wrote:
| No, the antithesis of the scientific spirit is to believe
| anything joe nobody posts on facebook or twitter that fits
| your worldview, regardless of (or perhaps especially due to)
| the presence of contradictory facts.
|
| The essence of science, and what is meant by "trust the
| science", is to accept theories that fit the existing data
| until such time as new data contradicts them, while
| encouraging people to ruthlessly search for just such data
| which would falsify them.
|
| Sadly, there are a lot of people whose only standard of proof
| for conspiracy theories is that it contradicts what experts
| claim.
| OCASMv2 wrote:
| Just like there's people whose only standard of proof is
| the word of "experts", regardless of (or perhaps especially
| due to) the presence of contradictory facts.
| refurb wrote:
| Maybe you saw "trust the science" used in different ways,
| but the way I saw it used was:
|
| - to shut down any debate as the science was "settled"
|
| - to argue for censorship as any discussion that went
| outside the approved borders of "settled science" was by
| default false and dangerous to expose people to
|
| - to argue that the "flavor of the month" study was the
| final word no matter how rigorous the research study was
| twixfel wrote:
| Science is built on trust because in reality it's not
| practical to check every single result in a paper. Often it's
| literally impossible (e.g the result from a one of a kind,
| billion dollar machine).
| UncleMeat wrote:
| The process involves collecting data or performing analysis.
| Simply saying "ugh, why should we listen to received wisdom"
| and declaring that the experts are idiots is not the
| scientific spirit.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| If someone hand-waves away the conclusions of scientists
| without doing any science of their own I feel no obligation
| to take them seriously.
| rayiner wrote:
| The second point is critical. Relevant testimony from the
| former head of the NIH during the pandemic, Francis Collins:
| https://www.bladenjournal.com/opinion/72679/confession-of-a-...
|
| > "If you're a public-health person and you're trying to make a
| decision, you have this very narrow view of what the right
| decision is." "So you attach infinite value to stopping the
| disease and saving a life. You attach zero value to whether
| this actually totally disrupts people's lives, ruins the
| economy, and has many kids kept out of school in a way that
| they never quite recover from."
| lmm wrote:
| While I agree with the fundamental point, I find that a kind
| of ironic choice of examples. I wonder what kind of person
| attaches so much value to keeping kids in school whether it's
| good for them or not.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Or masking kids when it's actively harmful to them?
| cpursley wrote:
| I think most reasonable and quite frankly, honest, people
| understood now and then, that taking the kids out of school
| would fuck them up pretty bad.
|
| When the actual science was suggesting we take care of the
| medically vulnerable and elderly. But hey, there's an
| election to win!
| tzs wrote:
| Who do you think closed schools in order to try to get an
| electoral advantage?
| rayiner wrote:
| 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 value keeping those kids
| in school over the negligible health risks (to the kids) of
| COVID exposure.
| lmm wrote:
| Fewer days in school reducing test scores is very much
| expected. Going from that to claiming an adverse effect
| on learning, much less an overall harm, is quite a leap.
| rayiner wrote:
| Test scores accurately measure learning. That's one of
| the most robustly supported facts in all of education,
| and something virtually nobody in Asia or Europe
| disagrees with.
| davorak wrote:
| > Test scores accurately measure learning.
|
| I think you claim to much here. Or are using odd
| definitions, to me at least.
|
| Sure you can extract something about what has been
| learned with properly made tests administered correctly.
| It is the tool that is used because it is the tool we
| have, not because it 'measures learning' in all the ways
| we want to measure.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Which is why reorganizing all school systems around
| teaching the standardized test and judging teachers by
| these results has been such an overwhelming success that
| "virtually nobody [..] disagrees with".
| umanwizard wrote:
| The US has probably the least test-focused education
| system in the developed world (you don't need to take any
| exam to graduate high school except in some cases an
| extremely easy one as a formality). Would you claim the
| US education system is better than the UK, France or
| Germany?
| lmm wrote:
| The fact that we even have year-by-year, grade-by-grade
| test figures for the US implies it's significantly more
| test-focused than the UK, where those tests simply don't
| exist for most grades.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Whether you get any qualification at all in the UK is
| entirely determined by high-stakes standardized tests, at
| least on the main academic track (GCSE and A levels)
| willy_k wrote:
| Are you talking about finals or standardized tests?
| Because from my experience at least, the latter has
| minimal impact on the track that kids follow (could put
| on you advanced math or reading track but there is
| opportunity for mobility regardless) and only the SAT/ACT
| (highest score of however many times on chooses to take
| them) is used to determine where someone can go to
| college. But test scores (even MCAT/LSAT) will never
| determine _what_ someone can study, just where, which is
| not the case in the UK per my understanding.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| There is no "US" education system in reality. There is a
| "Maine" education system, and a "Colorado" education
| system, and a "Florida" education system.
|
| They have wildly different rules, designs, systems, and
| results.
| jhedwards wrote:
| 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.
| nradov wrote:
| 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.
| gamerdonkey wrote:
| > There was never any scientific basis for that belief.
|
| This is an incorrect statement that can be fixed with
| minutes of research.
|
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.0610941104 http
| s://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00916.
| ..
|
| One might argue about the quality of the research or
| point out contradicting studies, but saying there was
| zero basis is flat-out false.
|
| Adding that the idea was "made up" is a great example of
| bending the idea of science to prop up a point.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| COVID is not the Spanish Flu or asthma. Rayiner's point
| was about SARS-CoV-2 and he is correct. You can read
| papers published in 2020 to see.
| willy_k wrote:
| And COVID and the Spanish Flu essentially targeted
| opposite populations, the former being dangerous to those
| with compromised immune function while the latter turned
| strong immune systems against the body in a "cytokine
| storm".
| willy_k wrote:
| That's why you focus resources on protecting those who
| you don't want kids to spread it to, the sick and the
| elderly, a la the suppressed Great Barrington
| Declaration.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It wasn't 'suppressed'; it was announced to wide acclaim,
| others took issue with its premises, and there were
| significantly more of the latter than the former. There
| was considerable skepticism of the sponsorship of the
| libtertarian AEIR, and the fact that hundreds of
| thousands of people had already died in the US by the
| time of its publication probably had a lot to do with its
| lack of popularity.
| Elinvynia wrote:
| I'm sure the brain damage that COVID still causes (there
| are 3x more cases this year than in 2020, fun fact) is
| more of a danger to kids than staying home.
| dekhn wrote:
| I'm pretty happy Collins came to that conclusion and learned
| from it.
|
| I don't expect public health officials to have a utilitarian
| function that maximizes global health considering second
| order effects. This should have been stated more clearly at
| the beginning of the epidemic.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| Some people were saying we should consider second order
| effects from the very beginning. I believe the term used
| for these people was "grandma killers."
| Levitz wrote:
| >I don't expect public health officials to have a
| utilitarian function that maximizes global health
| considering second order effects.
|
| Why not? It sounds to me that is the ideal scenario. If I
| go to the doctor I want them to maximize for health, it's
| up to me to make health concessions
|
| In the same way, we have an entire political class who
| should be able to look at the health of the population and
| gauge which measures are worth taking and which aren't, no?
| dekhn wrote:
| Ideally, i guess, in some mental models, we'd love to
| have some sort of super powerful system that can compute
| a global utility function that considers second (and
| third, etc) order effects accurately enough to plan out
| actions that maximize the global utility (without
| violating ethical norms) until we are immortal and have
| unlimited energy resources and ability to manipulate
| matter.
|
| In practice, we instead have centers that focus on first-
| order effects and who advocate for their position (from
| an authority based on scientific knowledge, and
| preparation for emergencies) which are then evaluated and
| mixed with other centers by political leaders to
| incorporate the best attempt at considering second and
| further effects.
|
| Everybody has a different utilitarian model and we don't
| have enough data or algorithms to predict second or third
| order effects (we usually fall back on "wisdom" from
| prior experience).
| Eextra953 wrote:
| I am taking a graduate level public health course and this
| trade off is literally covered in the first lecture its
| something they call prevention paradox. It's surprising to
| see that the head of the NIH would say something like this
| when it's literally part of the curriculum for public health.
| I'm so tired of political opinions masqueraded as we know
| better than the experts or we know better than the scientist.
| slices wrote:
| how many public health officials acted with awareness of
| the prevention paradox during covid?
| kenjackson wrote:
| I don't think anyone attached zero value to everything else.
| The legit question is how do you weigh all of the factors.
| How do you weigh making things slightly worse for a bunch of
| people and way worse for some, etc...
|
| It reminds me of a comedian snippet I saw recently who was
| asking the crowd... "Has life gotten back to how it was
| before Covid", and one person in the audience yells out,
| "No"... and the comedian says, "OK, tell me one thing you had
| before Covid that you don't have now"? And the person says,
| "My family". The comedian goes -- "Oh yeah, I guess that was
| the point of it all wasn't it..."
| tekla wrote:
| 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'
| davorak wrote:
| > 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.
| exoverito wrote:
| 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.
| davorak wrote:
| I would describe what you said here as a procedure for
| how to gather and apply the science/knowledge you are
| going to use for your treatment. So trusting the science,
| just more details on how to go about doing that.
|
| > Medicine is extremely complex and medical errors are
| the 4th leading cause of death in the US.
|
| Do you have the source for this? I have never seen it on
| the list of leading causes of death. For example:
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db492-tables.pdf
| #4
| nradov wrote:
| Preventable medical errors are one of the leading causes
| of morbidity and mortality. This was well documented in
| the Institute of Medicine report "To Err Is Human" in
| 2000.
|
| https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/9728/to-err-is-
| hum...
|
| Since then there have been positive system changes in
| terms of things like quantitative care quality measures
| and use of checklists. But it's still a huge problem.
| Whether it's the 4th leading cause of death is unclear,
| it depends on how you analyze the data and what
| assumptions you make.
|
| https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2018.0738
| davorak wrote:
| Still reading digging in. In particular one reference in
| the second link[1]
|
| Still not clear to me how they are generating the numbers
| for putting it at 3rd or 4th. I might have to read the
| paper rather than listen the author interview in my link
| above.
|
| That said 98,000 dead from medical error in 2000, from
| the first link, would put it at 9th in the list that I
| linked:
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db492-tables.pdf
| #4
|
| from 2020. So even with that lower estimate it would put
| it in the top ten.
|
| The definition of a death caused by medical error from
| [1] seem too board from the likely simplified explanation
| at least:
|
| "Medical error has been defined as an unintended act
| (either of omission or commission) or one that does not
| achieve its intended outcome,"
|
| That "or does not achieve its intended outcome" seems
| like it would count cases I would not want in a statistic
| like this. For example surgery to remove cancer to save
| the patients life did not achieve the intended outcome of
| saving the patients life so it is counted as death via
| medical error.
|
| Probably have to look at the full paper to see how they
| applied the standard, but the pdf is not free on the site
| I linked. I might come back later and look for a free
| copy or another source.
|
| [1] https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139/
| jbstjohn wrote:
| The point is more that "the science" is too broad and vague
| and uncertain. The science for cancer might be that the
| _currently_ best known treatment acknowledged in country X
| is to follow a particular treatment process. That changes
| across time and countries. And often the studies have
| assumptions baked in. So there isn 't a blind belief in
| "the science"
| thaiaiabdidn wrote:
| > Saying 'Trust the science' might as well be saying 'Trust
| in God'
|
| In the past, many cultures had priests doing most of the
| science as well.
|
| Ultimately it all boils down to trust. The common man doesn't
| have time nor intellect to evaluate "the science". When
| scientists display obvious bias, they lose trust, since they
| claim to be impartial. It'd be better if they didn't claim to
| be impartial.
| nradov wrote:
| It's better that scientists be clear about context when
| communicating. There's nothing wrong with a single person
| being both a scientist and a political advocate. But they
| ought to be clear which hat they're wearing at any given
| time. Science is a process that can never give definitive
| guidance on public policy.
| ryanjshaw wrote:
| The other issue is that science has nothing to say about
| livelihoods and personal freedom - there's no "Lockdown
| Science". Those were political decisions, ie. opinions
| disguised as science to shutdown dissent.
| Symmetry wrote:
| Generally you should trust science on matters of "is". But on
| matters of "ought" science only bears indirectly.
| slices wrote:
| ideally, science would be the best available information on
| "is". When the science is i.e. funded by a tobacco company
| and regarding the safety of tobacco, we should be
| skeptical. How much of current science falls in a similar
| class?
| knowitnone wrote:
| then you should just trust in God and forget about science
| nickpsecurity wrote:
| Scientific facts aren't facts. Empiricism only tells you when
| you are wrong or have enough data to believe something for now.
| At any point, something we believe can be proven wrong.
|
| To even get there requires independent, skeptical, peer review.
| That often doesn't happen. It's questionable how many
| scientific facts are even science. Much less factual.
| cryptonector wrote:
| > while scientific facts are facts
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-life_of_knowledge
| TheBigSalad wrote:
| I don't think people who say "Trust the science" are saying
| that science has it all figured out. It's telling people that
| they should weigh scientific data into their thought process.
| In reality many people make all of their decisions based on
| emotions and "feels".
| lowkeyoptimist wrote:
| "Trust the science" really came into its full form during the
| pandemic and was a veiled line in appealing to authority. The
| CDC, Dr. Fauci, NIH, or any governing body issuing mandates
| during the pandemic would tell you to trust the science, when
| in reality they just didn't want people to question their
| decisions. As it turns out, some of the people questioning
| school closures or masks were correct! Questioning vaccine
| safety for young men was and is correct, as long as there
| were not comorbidities. The people or institutions that were
| yelling "trust the science" the loudest were indeed saying
| that they had it all figured out and that anyone that
| questioned them was wrong.
|
| "Trust the science" became a campaign slogan during the
| pandemic, and fell into the same realm as "defund the police"
| or "trust all women".
|
| So yes, "trust the science" does mean what you said that it
| is a process that should take data new and old into account.
| However, the sad thing is it was co-opted by people who used
| it as a cudgel to silence anyone that didn't toe the line.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| There is a pure form of science which are basically just
| methods and principles. Then there is stuff around that like
| institutions. Some further the core methods and principles. And
| sometimes it's quite literally a religion.
|
| There is also a weird thing where people will attribute simple
| natural phenomena to science. Conflating the subject matter
| with science itself. I recall seeing a post with these colored
| ants and a caption like "Isnt Science Cool?"
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/these-rainbow-...
|
| Thats not science. Those are ants being colored by food
| coloring... that would be true with or without the scientific
| method and you don't even need it to observe the effect. And
| when you do need science to discover some phenomena (say the
| nature of black holes) its not science that is amazing if you
| are simply talking about how amazing black holes are. Its the
| method applied to understand them that can show how amazing
| science is. Black holes arent science.
| chrisbrandow wrote:
| all of the "Trust/Believe X" statements would be profoundly
| improved by substituting "Take X seriously". It makes the same
| point without posing the obvious problems with trust and
| believe
| jbstjohn wrote:
| But that wouldn't capture how it tends to be meant -- an
| instruction to take things on faith without any questioning,
| even if it contradicts other known facts or your direct
| experience.
| bashmelek wrote:
| To be honest, even 18 years ago, long before this editor in
| chief, I found Scientific American rather ideological. Maybe it
| got more obvious over time, but I don't see its recent tone
| categorically different.
| sbuttgereit wrote:
| I agree. This editor may well have been a current-day
| culmination of a trend that started some time ago. I stopped my
| own print subscription to SciAm once the articles started to
| ostensibly push certain sociopolitical viewpoints in the guise
| of science journalism. This was well before the editor being
| discussed was editor enough so I never knew this person
| existed.
|
| While this editor may have crossed some redlines, I am doubtful
| this change in represents a genuine philosophical shift at the
| magazine.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| True. SciAm has been broken for a long time. The same can be
| said for most magazines, but SciAm being broken probably just
| hurts more for our crowd.
| itishappy wrote:
| Any examples? I'm in the same boat as you, and while I agree
| with the premise, I don't recall anything as egregious as the
| examples from the article:
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/denial-of-evoluti...
|
| https://archive.is/H8hJw
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-the-term-jedi...
|
| https://archive.is/oMzz7
| bashmelek wrote:
| From my own impression back then, it was less political but
| more subtly ideological. Truth be told, I have my own
| ideology as well. Some things that I remember were an article
| that used a trolley problem of throwing someone in the way to
| save five as the "obvious rational" choice; and how the
| covers would often try to link entanglement or dark matter to
| consciousness. It was numerous little things like that.
| setgree wrote:
| Bias might emerge as much in choice of topics to cover as in
| the tone of the coverage. On X, someone mentioned that
| Wired's coverage in the past 5-10 years is striking for how
| little it discusses SpaceX, for example.
| kbelder wrote:
| SciAm was transformative to my life, I think. My father brought
| home a stack of them, maybe a couple year's worth, for me when
| I was twelve or so. I read them over and over again during my
| teens, slowly puzzling understanding out of the articles that
| were initially so far beyond me. Learned more from that stack
| of magazines than some years of high school.
|
| But that was in the 80s. For the last couple of decades,
| Scientific American just makes me sad. Crap I wouldn't bother
| reading.
| dtgriscom wrote:
| In the early 70's I loved The Amateur Scientist, "conducted"
| by C. L. Stong. Great articles, with real technical details,
| giving you a real chance to build real equipment. To pick one
| article at random, from February 1972: "A Simple Laser
| Interferometer, an Inexpensive Infrared Viewer and Simulated
| Chromatograms". Very, very cool.
|
| There's nothing like that out there now.
| tristramb wrote:
| Back when I was 11 or 12, in the early '70s, one of my
| father's friends who was training for medical school left a
| box of Scientific Americans in our loft. I discovered them
| and would spent hours and hours poring over them trying to
| understand the articles and soaking up the air of unbounded
| optimism which I now realise was derived from the Moon
| landings. This was a major factor in pulling me towards
| science and maths. Later, at university, I came to realise
| that all SciAm articles are to some extent
| oversimplifications and that you should really go to original
| sources for true understanding. However, at that age they
| were just what I needed.
| bell-cot wrote:
| The problem is >40 years old. I was a subscriber in the early
| 1980's (when SciAm was still quite good), and recall them
| publishing one of Carl Sagan's articles on the dangers of
| nuclear winter.
|
| Whatever the correctness of Carl's science, he was an
| astronomer. Not a subject-matter expert. And the the article
| was very clearly ideological. In an era when the political
| winds in Washington were blowing hard in the other direction.
|
| I was rather younger then, but still recall thinking that
| SciAm's approach had thrown away any chance of appealing to the
| Washington decision-makers, controlling the nuclear weapons,
| for the feel-good (& maybe profit) of appealing to the left.
| Which seemed hard to reconcile with them actually believing the
| results they published, saying that humanity could be wiped
| out.
| pmontra wrote:
| Yup, I don't like the trend of publishing more and more
| articles written by journalists instead of by the very
| researchers working on the subject. There is a huge
| difference in quality between the two type of articles. Ones
| can be quickly skimmed, the others must be read.
| tiahura wrote:
| You're absolutely right. Nuclear was an emotional topic that
| caused many many otherwise grounded scientists to lose it.
| SDI was another.
| pvg wrote:
| _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.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > 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 between
| talking big & tough, and actually starting a war. He
| obviously had a taste for proxy wars, but conflicts with
| direct US involvement were very few and small on his watch.
| pvg wrote:
| _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.
| underseacables wrote:
| I grew up believing that science was the search for truth and
| fact, and that it should be constantly challenged to further
| that. What has happened I think, is that there has been a great
| polarization of science as government and groups have used and
| twisted it to fit a political agenda. Which essentially stops
| that search for truth. Challenging scientific conclusions should
| be encouraged not cancelled.
| tumnus wrote:
| But only to a point, correct? Otherwise we end up in the
| current dialogue where flat earthers, moon landing deniers, and
| a large percentage of religious believers feel more platformed
| than ever. It's far too easy for the uninformed to challenge
| science simply because it challenges their non-scientific
| beliefs.
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| Scientist 1: If we put a sugar cube into water whose
| temperature is exactly 74.7373 degrees centigrade, the water
| will likely turn pink. here is our evidence for this.
|
| Scientist 2: we tried this and found that if the water is
| cooling that it doesn't work, it has to remain at a constant
| temperature.
|
| Scientist 3: we tried it with refined and unrefined sugar.
| unrefined sugar did not work.
|
| scientist 1: we took another look - it seems there was some
| weird additive in the refined sugar, when this additive added
| to water at 74.7373 degrees centigrade the water turns pink.
|
| that's a very silly and stupid example of "challenging" other
| scientist's work. you precisely explain what you tried and
| how it differed, in the hope it leads to a more specific and
| accurate picture down the line.
|
| flat earthers et. al just "say stuff" they think is right,
| where the evidence does not actually challenge any hypothesis
| or existing evidence because the claims are just ... bad.
|
| this is not "challenging" science. it is stubborn ignorance.
| pure and simple.
|
| most of it is so easy to refute any random youtuber with a
| spare hour can do it (read: 6-12 months [0])
|
| - https://youtu.be/2gFsOoKAHZg
|
| however, your point about platforming is important, because
| people who wouldn't have had a soapbox 15 years ago, now have
| a soapbox anyone in the world can find them on.
|
| if you're looking for something to confirm your world view,
| there's something on the internet for you.
|
| rule 1 of the internet should be spammed in front of
| everyone's eyes for seven minutes before anyone is allowed to
| use a web browser -- _don't believe anything you read on the
| internet_.
|
| [0]: there's a running joke about how long this person takes
| to make new videos.
| vundercind wrote:
| I figured your link would be this one:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44
|
| (Folding Ideas, "In Search of a Flat Earth")
|
| He takes a couple of their claims seriously about what one
| will see when attempting particular experiments involving a
| very large lake, attempts them, sees the results one would
| expect if the Earth were curved, and reports this to some
| flat earth community forum, refining the experiment as they
| suggest ways he may have screwed it up, and continuing to
| find curvature (obviously).
|
| The real story is how they react to contrary evidence
| delivered entirely on their terms, and where that community
| was heading four years ago (beware--I guess--that part also
| becomes necessarily "political").
|
| [EDIT] I guess I buried the lede for this site's interest,
| which is that the video devotes a fair bit of time to how
| the Youtube "algorithm" took a little success for Flat
| Earth videos as a cue to aggressively promote them to
| people it identified as maybe liking them (those inclined
| to fall down that particular rabbit hole--which involves a
| _lot_ more than just the specific belief that the earth is
| flat), but now flat earth is in decline, because that and
| other "algorithms" started sending the same folks to...
| Q-anon content instead.
|
| Incidentally, there was a somewhat-big documentary on Flat
| Earth some years ago that included some folks from a flat
| earth convention trying some experiments very similar to
| the ones depicted in this video (involving visibility of
| objects across a large lake), with predictable outcomes.
| foxglacier wrote:
| > don't believe anything you read on the internet
|
| That's many years beyond usefulness now that governments
| and companies communicate official information through the
| internet. You might as well say "don't believe anything
| ever" which makes the advice useless.
|
| It's fine that people believe false things like flat earth.
| Why so much pressure to stop that? False beliefs are the
| default for most people, and they actually serve a purpose.
| We're mostly not emotionless truth-seeking Spocks. We can
| have religion and other beliefs that improve our quality of
| life by providing a sense of belonging or importance, an
| identity, or a community. You wouldn't go around telling
| Jews that no, God didn't give the 10 commandments to Moses,
| stop believing unscientific rubbish just because you read
| about it in some scroll.
| abecedarius wrote:
| I don't think it helps to cancel them, probably hurts. It's
| not as if you have to either censor or send your highest-
| status scientists to debate them, and that exhausts the
| finite menu. In a diverse info ecosystem someone will have
| their comparative advantage on engaging with cranks. The
| important thing about overall ecosystem health is, is it
| reasonable in what it amplifies?
|
| Scientific American hasn't seemed very healthy after the 80s.
| In the decades before, it was an unusual labor of love by one
| or two chief editors (I don't remember specifically).
| cogman10 wrote:
| > I don't think it helps to cancel them, probably hurts.
|
| Who is actually being cancelled and for saying what?
|
| This is what I find a little frustrating. There's very
| little censorship and when it does happen it's usually not
| against those that most loudly cry about censorship.
|
| For example, did you know you can no longer use the
| Futurama Farnsworth quote on Facebook "we did in fact
| evolve from filthy monkey men"? Meanwhile, I've reported
| and had the report rejected nutters I know literally
| calling for the stoning of gay people using Bible quotes.
| (Lev 20;13).
| abecedarius wrote:
| I was answering a comment opposing a comment opposing
| cancelation.
|
| FWIW the moment I started wondering if we were losing
| liberal norms actually was reading Dawkins in the 00s
| calling for scientists to coordinate against debating
| creationists. Like I was with him in being convinced even
| "scientific" creationism is powered by Christianity and
| not any good evidence from nature, and I guess I need to
| say I had absolutely no problem with any scientist
| choosing not to engage with any creationist. But there's
| something anti-science in a campaign to expel a belief
| from public debate, by a means other than better
| arguments. That can conceivably be a good thing in some
| case; but it's the opposite of science.
|
| Relying on Facebook is a bad idea because it's a
| corporation operating under different pressures than
| healthy discourse, further trying to direct your
| attention in its own interest, applying resources it
| gains this way to modeling you. You can try to improve
| its moderation but besides the trouble you bring up,
| probably any success you can get that way will just seed
| a competing platform. I prefer to give my energy to an
| open protocol such as Bluesky's (admittedly I haven't
| looked at its protocol spec) -- unless you can take away
| everyone's personal computers, everyone's not going to
| live under your favorite monitor. An open protocol is
| compatible with choosing among competing moderators. (BTW
| the pre-web Xanadu vision included open-ended moderator
| choice, and how different system designs could have
| different social effects, and the importance of getting
| it right.)
| mempko wrote:
| You do realize the criticism of the Scientific American editor
| is mostly by people who don't read it, and believe the earth is
| 6000 years old.
| FredPret wrote:
| It used to be all the science-y people on one side and Bible
| thumpers on the other... decades ago.
|
| There has been something of a sea change.
| tivert wrote:
| > What has happened I think, is that there has been a great
| polarization of science as government and groups have used and
| twisted it to fit a political agenda.
|
| Exactly. "In this house we believe ... science is real." is
| about the most unscientific sentiment possible. There, the word
| "science" exists to give the air of authority to a set of
| ideological and policy positions.
| Xcelerate wrote:
| I always found that quote kind of funny. So the scientists
| who have views on political issues that are the extreme
| opposite of yours (because there are many such people)...
| what then exactly?
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Your sentence has grammatical issues.
|
| I assume you're implying that people who advocate for
| cultural support of science are hyper liberal and would be
| hostile to any science conducted by a hyper conservative. I
| reject this assertion.
|
| "Trust the science" means that peer reviewed science and
| scientific consensus should carry weight, and too many
| people are anti-intellectual.
| Xcelerate wrote:
| > I assume you're implying that people who [...]
|
| Nope.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Science is a search for truth and fact but it is _performed and
| funded by humans and institutions_.
|
| We could spin up a theorem generator that just starts from
| mathematical axioms and exhaustively recombines them to create
| theorem after theorem. This would create facts, but the process
| would be almost entirely useless. A pure undirected "search for
| truth and fact" does very little for us.
|
| Researchers decide what problems to tackle. Funding
| organizations decide what research to fund. Researchers make
| choices about how to tackle these problems. Research labs are
| staffed depending on things like admission decisions and
| immigration decisions. Journals decide what papers to publish,
| not just on validity but on impact and novelty. Journals then
| charge money to access this research as part of a profit-driven
| business model.
|
| All of these human elements bend the "search for truth" and a
| failure to recognize these institutions and their many
| historical analogues just means that you miss out on some
| rather important understanding when interacting with the
| literature.
| tim333 wrote:
| I still feel the ideal should be a search for truth, even if
| human institutions do the work. I'm a fan of Feynman's stuff:
|
| >...As a matter of fact, I can also define science another
| way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. When
| someone says, "Science teaches such and such," he is using
| the word incorrectly.
|
| >Science doesn't teach anything; experience teaches it. If
| they say to you, "Science has shown such and such," you might
| ask, "How does science show it? How did the scientists find
| out? How? What? Where?"
|
| >It should not be "science has shown" but "this experiment,
| this effect, has shown." And you have as much right as anyone
| else, upon hearing about the experiments--but be patient and
| listen to all the evidence--to judge whether a sensible
| conclusion has been arrived at.
| https://feynman.com/science/what-is-science/
|
| I always took that for granted but seems some don't.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > > It should not be "science has shown" but "this
| experiment, this effect, has shown." And you have as much
| right as anyone else, upon hearing about the experiments--
| but be patient and listen to all the evidence--to judge
| whether a sensible conclusion has been arrived at.
| https://feynman.com/science/what-is-science/
|
| There are so many cases in which the interpretation of the
| data is difficult. There are many cases in which there are
| either experiments with seemingly conflicting data, and two
| different plausible interpretations of existing data. I
| consider myself highly intelligent and reasonably well
| informed and yet, were I the one setting policy, I would
| still need to rely on the opinions of experts in various
| fields to interpret what data we have on various issues.
| consteval wrote:
| Multiple problems here:
|
| 1. Science has always been political, this isn't new. Some of
| the first major experiments were performed in Nazi camps.
| Cancer treatment began with torturing Black Americans. The
| entire idea of ethics is political in nature.
|
| 2. Science is still the search of truth. If it doesn't match
| your truth, then that doesn't mean the science is wrong.
|
| 3. Challenging scientific conclusions IS encouraged, but there
| is also a danger to it. Look at Covid. In the US alone, 500,000
| Americans died from Covid. Challenging social distancing,
| masks, and vaccinations costs lives. I mean literally costs
| lives. The people challenging this were doing it for political
| purposes, i.e. most of them had absolutely no idea what the
| science said or how it might be wrong.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| >I mean literally costs lives
|
| We have overpopulation anyway. And we don't have shortage of
| normies by any measure. In fact some social problems like
| monopolies are due to overabundance of normies.
| consteval wrote:
| okay
| epistasis wrote:
| > that there has been a great polarization of science as
| government and groups have used and twisted it to fit a
| political agenda
|
| This does match any reality I know of. What political agenda
| has government twisted science to?
|
| The government is quite responsive to the science, and
| generates science, but the NCI and other bodies have little
| partisan politics, thigh of course the arguments in science get
| political just like any other group of people. It's just not
| Republican/Democrat politics.
|
| > Challenging scientific conclusions should be encouraged not
| cancelled.
|
| Scientific conclusions are challenged all the time. It is
| highly encouraged. Entire research programs get challenged to
| justify their existence. Should we really be running all these
| SNP chips for GWAS? Turns out that it wasn't a great
| investment, but it seemed promising at the time...
|
| Too often people are doing two things, one good such as
| challenging science conclusions, and one bad such as lying or
| being dishonest or arguing in bad faith. And when they get
| critiqued for the bad one, they retreat to treating it as
| criticism of the good thing they were doing. I see it all the
| time.
| jpmattia wrote:
| > _Challenging scientific conclusions should be encouraged not
| cancelled._
|
| Vaccines are on the docket for cancellation, which to be fair,
| will last only as long as a swath of the population sees their
| kids incapacitated by some completely preventable virus
| infection. But do we really have to go through an epidemic
| (again!) to understand that the _science_ of vaccines is solid?
|
| There is such a thing as settled science.
|
| There is also such a thing as people too uneducated and non-
| expert to understand what science is settled.
|
| There should be such a thing as _not listening_ to non-experts
| about settled science.
| Veen wrote:
| The science on vaccines is solid, but there are potential
| side effects (that's also solid science). So when it comes
| to, for example, giving kids the vaccines, we have to balance
| the likelihood of serious side effects with the necessity of
| preventing the disease. In the case of COVID, the disease's
| risk to kids is extremely low, but they are still vaccinated.
| That is a political decision, and it is perfectly reasonable
| to dispute it.
|
| That's a particularly clear cut example. There are many more
| complex scenarios where "trust the scientific experts" is
| dubious because science has a limited domain of
| applicability. When you pretend that non-scientific decisions
| must be made on a scientific basis, people see through it and
| become sceptical.
| jpmattia wrote:
| > _That is a political decision, and it is perfectly
| reasonable to dispute it._
|
| "Political decision" as a euphemism for allowing non-
| experts to decide how to minimize deaths? The same non-
| experts who couldn't even get the Monty Hall problem right,
| let alone the complexity of medical probability and
| statistics of [false | true] [positives | negatives] in
| Bayesian scenarios?
|
| Good luck with that.
| Veen wrote:
| There's the problem with naive utilitarianism. The
| experts want to minimize deaths across the population. I
| want to minimize the risk to my otherwise healthy
| children (hypothetically. I don't have children and I am
| vaccinated). These legitimate desires can and do
| conflict. Who has precedence is entirely political, not
| scientific.
|
| And plenty of medical experts get the Monty Hall problem
| wrong.
| jpmattia wrote:
| > _And plenty of medical experts get the Monty Hall
| problem wrong._
|
| Then they're not experts on prob and stats in medicine,
| and you shouldn't choose them to guide policy making when
| prob and stats in medicine are relevant. The alternative
| is to choose those who aren't experts in prob and stats
| in medicine, which results in policy bred from ignorance
| of the relevant math and science.
|
| Choosing people who are ignorant of the relevant math and
| science over those who are knowledgeable is certainly one
| way to make policy, and it seems that is what folks want,
| so I guess we'll see how well that it works out.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Not just search for truth and fact, but use these truths and
| facts to develop ways that benefit people. The meaning of
| "benefit" is a philosophical/political consideration.
| brabel wrote:
| > Not just search for truth and fact, but use these truths
| and facts to develop ways that benefit people.
|
| Wait, when did "how to use these truths" become part of
| science?? How you use science to develop things that benefit
| people (or organizations) is normally called engineering!
| Science is normally concerned only with finding useful facts
| about the world. There are some exceptions, like when you're
| using the scientific method exactly to figure out what
| benefits people (or any living organism), for example, using
| pharmacology to develop drugs that help people. But I would
| argue that even then, the main concern of pharmacology is to
| figure out what kinds of drugs have what effects on humans in
| certain conditions - i.e. it fits perfectly into the
| definition of "searching for truth and facts".
|
| How you apply that knowledge science gives you to solve
| problems that affect society is called policy - and policy,
| while can be analysed using the scientific method, is
| normally not itself science. It's hard to use the scientific
| method to study policy, though, because there are far too
| many factors involved in anything to do with large groups of
| people, and far too little room to do experiments on them.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Here you said it: "useful". The meaning of the word
| "useful" is a philosophical/political consideration.
| crackercrews wrote:
| The funniest part was when she claimed the posts "do not reflect
| my beliefs". Her allies seem to know that isn't true. On BS there
| are plenty of congratulations for her willingness to say what so
| many others are thinking, etc.
|
| 1: https://www.npr.org/2024/11/15/nx-s1-5193258/scientific-
| amer...
| devindotcom wrote:
| Every piece called out here is clearly labeled "opinion" - did
| they even read the normal news and analysis sections? Countless
| newspapers and outlets and actual scientific journals have
| opinion/editorial sections that are generally very well
| firewalled from the factual content. You could collect the worst
| hot takes from a few years of nearly any site with a dedicated
| opinion page and pretend that it has gone downhill. But that this
| the whole point of having a separate opinion section -- so
| opinions have a place to go, and are not slipped into factual
| reporting. And many opinion pieces are submitted by others or
| solicited as a way to show a view that the newsroom doesn't or
| can't espouse.
|
| Whether the EIC of SciAm overstepped with her own editorializing
| is probably not something we as outsiders can really say, given
| the complexities of running a newsroom. I would caution people
| against taking this superficial judgment too seriously.
| defrost wrote:
| The linked article itself is an opinion piece.
|
| _Reason_ does interesting stuff, sure, but no mistake it has a
| bias and that is a right centre libertarian view that loads
| factual content toward a predetermined conconclusion that
| individual free thinkers trump all.
|
| As such they take part in a current conservative habit of
| demonising "Science" to undermine results that bear on, say,
| environmental health, climate change, on so on that might
| result in slowing down a libertarian vision of industry.
|
| I still read their copy, I'm a broad ingestor of content, but
| no one should be blind to their lean either.
| leereeves wrote:
| I agree people should be aware of the bias of their sources
| (all of them), but there's no reason for anyone to be
| mistaken about Reason. (Please forgive the wording, I
| couldn't think of better.)
|
| Unlike many other sources, Reason doesn't pretend to be
| neutral. They admit:
|
| "Reason is the nation's leading libertarian magazine."
|
| https://reason.com/about/
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Does libertarianism take a position on transgender issues?
| (This seems to be one focus area of the article.) I can see
| the author has a strong view but I don't know how
| libertarianism informs it.
| watwut wrote:
| Libertarianism theoretically could go either way.
| Theoretically, do what you want with your bodies.
|
| However, libertarianias as they exist tend to be socially
| conservative - somehow they end up agreeing with GOP
| position on social issues. In this case, convervatives
| hate trans people, so libertarians too.
| fingerlocks wrote:
| Libertarians, at least the ones that subscribe to Reason,
| are not socially conservative. Just read a few articles
| and this is very apparent.
|
| The 2024 Libertarian Party Presidential candidate was a
| pro-trans gay man.
| gs17 wrote:
| > The 2024 Libertarian Party Presidential candidate was a
| pro-trans gay man.
|
| And is pro-choice (but anti-government funding for
| abortion). And Reason seems positive about him:
| https://reason.com/2024/11/06/chase-oliver-calls-
| libertarian...
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > exist tend to be socially conservative - somehow they
| end up agreeing with GOP position on social issues. In
| this case, convervatives hate trans people, so
| libertarians too
|
| Maybe I'm in the minority, but I think you're conflating
| a few groups that I see as distinct:
|
| Republicans vs. conservatives, and
|
| (Holding various views about the best public policies
| regarding transgender issues) vs. (hating transgender
| persons)
| watwut wrote:
| The anti-trans outrage was rather major aspect of public
| life in last two years or so. Manufactured from the
| conservative groups that set politicizes for GOP, the
| ones that set the agenda. As far as public political life
| goes, these things are quite related and quite large
| source of votes for republican party. And it is very
| consistent - range goes somewhere between "not talking
| about it at all" to "being vocal in the outrage".
| However, I have yet to see politicians or public
| intellectuals on that side of spectrum to defend trans
| people or defend policies that makes life easier for
| trans people.
|
| And just about last thing that is productive is to play
| again the euphemism game where we pretend that side of
| political spectrum does not mean what they say when it
| sounds ugly. We played it with abortions and it turned
| out, yep, they wanted to make them illegal and actually
| succeeded.
| orwin wrote:
| I hope this view is "people are free to do whatever they
| want", because if libertarianism is only about ownership
| freedom, it would be the less consistent ideology ever.
| wk_end wrote:
| Any serious libertarian would say it (like most things)
| is absolutely none of the government's concern, at least
| with regards to consenting adults. There's probably a
| range of views when it comes to kids, though. Conversely,
| they wouldn't be interested in having the government
| policing the treatment of trans people between private
| parties, so they'd oppose things like legislation that
| protects them (or anyone) from discrimination in hiring,
| as an example.
|
| FWIW, the author - Jesse Singal - is a writer I've
| followed for a while. I like him a lot - I find him
| level-headed and intellectually honest. I don't think
| he'd characterize himself as a libertarian rather than a
| liberal, despite being published by Reason here. He's
| just a science writer who ended up on the "trans kids
| healthcare" beat and has written about it extensively. I
| think he'd characterize his position as just "a lot of
| medical treatments for kids are being pushed on [in his
| opinion] flimsy science for [in his opinion] ideological
| reasons"; and he'd say that this is a scientific position
| rather than a political one. Of course he takes a lot of
| crap for this, and of course he's also attracted a
| fanbase of bozos for this. But his writing, generally,
| deserves better than either.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Libertarians have a "my body my choice" position for
| things like raw milk and vaccines, and a "no you
| shouldn't be allowed that" position for abortion and
| hormones, because they've ended up on the rightwing side
| of the culture war.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Are you saying the linked is meant to demonize science? The
| impression I got was that he was doing the exact opposite:
| saying that SciAm's editorial direction was harming the
| public perception of science, which could have far-reaching
| effects. I don't see that as an anti-science stance.
| gopher_space wrote:
| The author's little trans tirade is a great example, and
| you can start with his "I'm something of a medical expert"
| line. Pure ideology.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| I can't find where the author writes "I'm something of a
| medical expert". But for myself, I'm not up to date on
| the research. Does this article misrepresent the current
| state of scientific understanding?
| gopher_space wrote:
| > 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.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| And unscientific.
|
| To be clear - the accusation isn't SciAm was politicised,
| but that it was politicised in an ideologically
| unacceptable way.
|
| I doubt we'd hear a squeak of complaint if a new editor
| started promoting crackpot opinion pieces about how all
| research should be funded by markets instead of
| governments (because governments shouldn't exist), or
| that libertarianism is the highest form of rationality.
|
| I'll take its deeply-felt concern for science and reason
| seriously when it starts calling out RFK Jr for being
| unscientific. (Prediction: this will never happen.)
| strken wrote:
| Did we read the same article? It literally has a section
| calling out RFK Jr, as follows:
|
| > If experts aren't to be trusted, charlatans and cranks
| will step into the vacuum. To mangle a line from Archer,
| "Do you want a world where RFK Jr. is the head of HHS?
| That's how you get a world where RFK Jr. is appointed
| head of HHS."
|
| What is this, if not an explicit call-out? I don't agree
| with or see a need to defend Reason very often, but what
| more do you want from them, here?
| Nevermark wrote:
| > I doubt we'd hear a squeak [...]
|
| Perhaps, especially in a dialogue specifically about
| scientific, reasoning and factual quality, we should
| avoid arguments based on counterfactual conjectures. A
| type of argument so weak it facilitates any viewpoint.
|
| If you have even weak evidence, better to reference that.
| codocod wrote:
| > 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.
| miltonlost wrote:
| > 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.
| codocod wrote:
| > And you're pushing anti-trans propaganda that surgical
| interventions are happening on children despite paucity
| of evidence that it's happening
|
| It is well documented that it's happening.
|
| See for example
| https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-
| tran..., specifically the section titled "U.S. patients
| ages 13-17 undergoing mastectomy with a prior gender
| dysphoria diagnosis".
|
| That's not propaganda, it's data from medical insurance
| claims. There is other evidence too, including peer-
| reviewed research published in medical journals, and
| recordings of clinicians discussing this.
| jl6 wrote:
| It's become something of a cliche to see this exchange:
| "it never happens", followed by clear evidence of it
| happening. One wonders if it ever leads to the person
| questioning what other misconceptions they've been fed.
| gopher_space wrote:
| It's mainly the parents pushing for medical intervention.
| Keep in mind that the impetus is generally a suicide
| attempt or self-mutilation by their 10 year old.
|
| There's nothing fun or trendy or exciting about this for
| child or family. Deeply embarrassing, far worse than
| getting your first hernia check if your memory goes back
| that far.
|
| The one thing we absolutely did. not. need. through all
| of this were politicians and the peanut gallery weighing
| in on a private medical situation while ignoring the
| point of our effort.
|
| Nothing in this article, and _none of the comments_ here
| mention the life of the child in question. Too busy
| scoring points to think about reality or humanity in any
| way. What do you think that looks like from my
| perspective?
| crote wrote:
| Yes, it absolutely does.
|
| The Cass Review mentioned was composed by a group of
| authors who are well-known to be opposed to trans
| healthcare, its methodology and conclusions are heavily
| criticized by subject experts (basically, "there is no
| evidence if you ignore all the evidence"), and even _Cass
| herself_ has stated after publication that it is flawed.
| It does not represent the current scientific
| understanding of trans healthcare, so criticizing SciAm
| and even calling it "dangerous" for pointing this out is
| rather dubious.
|
| The Cass Review was written primarily for political
| reasons. It isn't a peer-reviewed article written by
| neutral subject experts, and it should not be treated as
| such. The fact that Reason treats it as ground truth and
| ignores all the subject experts opposing it should say
| enough about their view on science.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I don't think what you're saying is true. I'm unaware of
| any indication that Hilary Cass for example is opposed to
| trans healthcare, and indeed she's explicitly stated that
| she agrees some young people benefit from it.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| Video with references talking about Cass.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI57lFn_vWk
| sso_eol wrote:
| Rather than watching a hit piece from some trans
| activist, how about a transcript of a recent interview
| with Dr Hilary Cass herself:
|
| https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5182912-hilary
| -ca...
|
| This is from Women's Hour on BBC Radio 4 and can be
| listened to on the BBC website too. It's actually very
| insightful and provides valuable context that is missing
| from the type of video that you posted.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| Nice ad hominem attack.
|
| If you prefer reading (and again, references), here ya
| go:
|
| https://www.patreon.com/posts/106206585
|
| That provides lots of valuable context that Cass ignores,
| such as from organizations like The American Academy of
| Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, and every
| other major medical organization in the US.
| sso_eol wrote:
| I've skimmed the video previously but thanks for the
| transcript. It just confirms that her message is
| basically that she doesn't understand it, couldn't be
| bothered to read it and think about it herself, so here
| are some people who disagree with it. Plus the usual
| ranting about transphobes, i.e. people who disagree with
| her beliefs.
|
| She even acknowledges that she waited to be told what to
| think about it. Yet she still styles herself as a
| "skeptic". Ridiculous, but quite amusing.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| "so here are some people"?
|
| That's how you describe the American Academy of
| Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, and every
| other major medical organization in the US?
|
| If you're not convinced by the preponderance of peer-
| reviewed evidence, then I don't know how to help you make
| good decisions in life.
|
| Maybe talk to some of your trans friends about their life
| experiences?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| This video correctly states that the Cass Review
| explicitly supported trans healthcare in general. It does
| not seem to describe any particular author of the review
| who is opposed to trans healthcare. The host notes that
| Cass met with people who do oppose trans healthcare - but
| wouldn't it be problematic for a review of a new field of
| medical science to categorically exclude people who think
| it's bunk?
| Interesco wrote:
| Not quite "medical expert" but the author does establish
| (or attempt to) as a leading figure on this topic in
| paragraph 11:
|
| "This is one of the few scientific subjects on which I've
| established a modicum of expertise"
|
| Long way from medical expert but it does imply a higher-
| level understanding of the science here. Whether writing
| a few articles makes someone an expert is up to the
| individual to decide.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| "This is one of the few scientific subjects on which I've
| established a modicum of expertise"
| defrost wrote:
| It doesn't make it clear that the author's issue appears to
| be _solely_ with the editorial opinion pieces and thus
| feeds into trending mythology that "(modern) science is
| bad", has replication, DEI, woke, etc. crisis.
|
| This is the "old science" good, "new science" bad leaning
| that lends itself to ignoring climate costs and anything
| else that libertarians of various shades might object to.
| Jensson wrote:
| What does diversity and trans and such have to do with
| climate science? They seem to be entirely separate
| topics.
| redeux wrote:
| You have to understand the current US culture context to
| understand the answer to that question.
|
| Right wing propaganda outlets will often link topic like
| these with farcical statements similar to "from the
| people that brought you men in women's' bathrooms (trans)
| comes a demand that you get rid of your gas stove
| (climate change, indoor air health)."
| defrost wrote:
| You'd honestly have to ask the people that dislike modern
| science for it's acceptance of diversity, discussion of
| intersex genetics, publishing of climate science papers,
| and so forth.
|
| They're vocal enough in forums about the place, near as I
| can tell these things are all harbingers of the decline
| and death of science as they know it.
| scarab92 wrote:
| The examples given in the article are quite egregious, and the
| authors of those pieces are not notable.
|
| SciAm nonetheless made the decision that those particular
| opinions should be published under their banner, and it's not
| clear on what basis that decision was made other than editorial
| discretion.
| rayiner wrote:
| If an editor of a science magazine chose to publish op-eds
| about how 5G causes cancer and then went on a Twitter rant
| along those lines that impugns her credibility and judgment as
| a whole. Similarly here.
| taeric wrote:
| I'm unsure that helps things? Maybe if some of the excerpts
| were jokes? The criticism of JEDI is particularly laughable. If
| sad. I say that as someone that finds the acronym cringe
| worthy.
|
| So, yeah, I agree that the standards are lower in these
| sections. I question if they are non existent.
| jbstjohn wrote:
| "I'm not questioning your standards; I'm denying their
| existence entirely."
| jgalt212 wrote:
| > Every piece called out here is clearly labeled "opinion"
|
| True if one stopped reading half-way through.
| carabiner wrote:
| Opinion: Astrology should be seriously considered...
|
| That label doesn't give carte blanche to publish non-scientific
| nonsense. Does it?
| psychoslave wrote:
| Well, that sounds like a very interesting theme to study
| scientifically indeed: what makes astrology such a resilient
| and widespread cultural practice in contemporary citizens?
| logicchains wrote:
| Statistically there are absolutely robust correlations
| between month of birth and certain traits, but because of
| stuff like age-at-starting-school not voodoo about the
| stars. So it's not surprising people keep noticing such
| patterns, they're just incorrect at identifying the root
| causes.
| keiferski wrote:
| The opinion pieces in pretty much every major newspaper are
| mixed in with the "factual" content, so for the average person
| reading, there is no difference. See for example "top links"
| sections, which include both.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Not true, this is not labeled anywhere I can see as opinion,
| but does include an editors note to a suicide helpline, and a
| correction...
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-are-puberty-...
| abirch wrote:
| What isn't factual in this article? Is it political because
| it discusses puberty blockers and transgender adolescents?
| leereeves wrote:
| I think GP agrees it is factual. It is also called out in
| the OP ("contained countless errors and
| misinterpretations").
|
| So it's a counterexample to the claim "Every piece called
| out here is clearly labeled 'opinion'"
| jl6 wrote:
| 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 consensus amongst doctors
| and activists, not evidence from scientific enquiry. The
| difference between consensus-based medicine and evidence-
| based medicine eludes most participants in this debate.
| notahacker wrote:
| 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"
| jl6 wrote:
| 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).
| notahacker wrote:
| The differences may well be material, but as I mentioned
| in the post above it's simply false to claim SA conflate
| the two when they link (multiple times) to an article
| looking at trans people specifically and _also_ mention
| that they are healthy and safe when prescribed to other
| young people for other reasons. An article which links to
| an article discussing outcomes of a drug in young people
| that _also_ mentions below that it 's routinely and
| uncontroversially prescribed in old people would not be
| factually inaccurate, even though young people and old
| people are evidently not identical and it is not
| impossible the two have different outcomes.
|
| The Cass Review itself offers no evidence the blockers
| are dangerous or inevitably irreversible (or if one takes
| a less cautious approach, cause patients more problems
| with irreversibility than _not_ using them), merely
| finding that only two papers providing evidence for the
| treatment being safe and optimal were of "high quality"
| with others being of "moderate" quality or "low" quality
| and calling for another trial. It did not find higher
| quality papers drawing opposing conclusions. People more
| knowledgeable and cynical than me have suggested that
| treatments for other, less politically-charged but
| complex conditions may also suffer from the literature
| that supports clinicians preferred approach being of
| "moderate" quality but seldom face shutdown as a result.
| The _side_ that trumpeted this conclusion (because it
| very much is political, even in the UK) delightedly
| concluded that as the favourably-disposed evidence mostly
| fell short of excellence, all gender affirming care must
| be shut down permanently. Perhaps you view things
| differently and would very much like to see the new
| clinics opened and a clinical trial designed to Ms Cass '
| liking devised, but it's safe to say most of the people
| trumpeting it as the last word in the debate would not.
| almatabata wrote:
| When reading the article I do get the impression they try
| to downplay the potential risks.
|
| quote 1: "These puberty-pausing medications are widely
| used in many different populations and safely so,"
| McNamara says.
|
| quote 2: "From an ethical and a legal perspective, this
| is a benign medication," Giordano says. She is puzzled by
| the extra scrutiny these treatments receive, considering
| their benefits and limited risks. "There are no sound
| clinical, ethical or legal reasons for denying them to
| those in need," she says.
|
| quote 3: Like any medication, GnRHas carry the potential
| for adverse effects.
|
| Now if you read one of the studies they link
| (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7497424/).
|
| quote: "Arguments against the use of GnRHa that have been
| raised include possible long-term adverse effects on
| health, psychological, and sexual functioning (Laidlaw,
| Cretella, & Donovan, 2019; Richards, Maxwell, & McCune,
| 2019; Vrouenraets et al., 2015)."
|
| I really feel like they overstate the strength of their
| positions with the articles they cite. All of them show
| clear limitations of the results which clearly show we
| need more data.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| It absolutely does offer that evidence. Blockers are
| indeed irreversible, they can lead to infertility and
| inability to orgasm depending on the length of time
| they're taken. Even shorter periods of puberty blockers
| will change height, muscle, and skeletal development.
|
| Evidence based medicine doesn't mean that we simply give
| people treatments unless they're proven to be harmful. It
| means we don't give treatments unless we _know_ that the
| effects are positive.
|
| The UK is far from alone in pausing medicalization of
| gender dysphoric children. This is the case throughout
| pretty much all of the European continent at this point,
| prescription of puberty blockers and cross sex hormones
| is either banned or exclusively permitted as part of
| clinical trials - which means patients are explicitly
| told that this is experimental treatment, and the
| outcomes of patients needs to be tracked and published.
| relaxing wrote:
| Correctly so, as it is fact and not opinion.
| 46307484 wrote:
| Why do opinions need a place to go? Why can't we just demonize
| professionals who lack the ability to report factual content
| without mixing in their opinions as unfit to be writing?
| resource_waste wrote:
| When I was in my 20s, I believed you.
|
| Now that I'm in my 30s, I think we need a nanny police state
| making sure everyone is rational.
| bsenftner wrote:
| You can't make people rational after their education,
| that's the whole insanity of all this: education is the
| key, critical thought, not creating gullible fools. But
| religion and many political ideologies depend upon gullible
| people or they would not exist, so the powerful members of
| those tribes impel society (for the children!) to denigrate
| education to produce morons. The United States is filled
| with them, they may have graduate degrees but they can't
| logically identify a con man.
| Nevermark wrote:
| Simple advertising too. It is a constant reinforcer of
| subconscious anti-rational thought.
|
| Even if you imagine you never buy anything due to
| exposure to advertising, advertising is still hammering
| away, with its manipulative motivated based impressions
| on our minds.
|
| If some source of information is worth consuming, at
| least for me it is worth paying to consume without
| advertisements if that is an option.
|
| The fact that YouTube video advertising isn't scratching
| the chalkboard level unacceptable to many people is all
| the evidence I need to know they have been deeply
| impacted by ad programming.
| doodaddy wrote:
| I agree that there seems to be, on the whole, a downward
| trend of educated, critically thinking populace. The
| statistics and anecdotes align to make this clear. But I
| struggle to pick the cause. Certainly I don't buy into
| the idea that there are rooms of politicians and school
| board members discussing how to keep the population
| uneducated.
|
| Behind every outcome is an incentive. So what do you
| think is the incentive that's behind the decline?
| bsenftner wrote:
| Realize first that there is no single incentive, there is
| a diversity of incentives to "let others do it", "let
| others worry about it" and various other variations of
| "let others...". A nearly helpless person is good for
| business, a frightened with money person is also good for
| business, and a reasoned careful, informed consumer is
| not good for business. These basic truths end up running
| nearly all of society, which creates the drive to prevent
| consumers from ever becoming discriminating informed and
| critically aware in virtually all things they are not
| paid to be "the expert".
| abirch wrote:
| I love and hate this quote by Carl Sagan in 1995
|
| I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or
| grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service
| and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing
| industries have slipped away to other countries; when
| awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very
| few, and no one representing the public interest can even
| grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to
| set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in
| authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously
| consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in
| decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and
| what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into
| superstition and darkness...
|
| The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow
| decay of substantive content in the enormously influential
| media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or
| less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous
| presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but
| especially a kind of celebration of ignorance"
| Nevermark wrote:
| I don't think "prophet" was to a title he aspired to, but
| like other insightful forward thinkers, he managed to be
| one.
| resource_waste wrote:
| I think this is a universal law of human nature.
|
| Or maybe that cycle of the inferior by circumstance work
| hard to become the superior and displace the complacent
| superior. "history is filled with the sound of silken
| slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up.".
| rayiner wrote:
| Yes, but Laura Helmuth is irrational. In her parting rant
| she decried the "racism" and "sexism" of half the country
| and invoked "the moral arc of the universe." Is she
| speaking from rationality, or is that religion?
| sofixa wrote:
| > Yes, but Laura Helmuth is irrational. In her parting
| rant she decried the "racism" and "sexism" of half the
| country
|
| It's not half, but it's pretty clear that everyone who
| voted for Donald Trump is _at least_ fine with racism and
| sexism, which makes them easy to accuse of sexism and
| racism if nothing else by association. (In case you're
| wondering why, this is a guy convicted for sexual abuse,
| probable pedophile, including against his daughter,
| publicly admitted to multiple instances of sexual abuse;
| regularly demonises whole groups of people based on their
| provenance/ethnicity, such as the Haitians eating cats
| and dogs nonsense. It's impossible anyone voted for him
| without knowing at least one of those).
| forgingahead wrote:
| Did you vote for or do you support the "opposite team"?
| Because if your standard is "easy to accuse of 'ism'
| based on association", you might be in for a rude shock.
| sofixa wrote:
| I'm not American nor do I live in the US. The mere fact
| that there are only two teams, and everything has to be
| the opposite (oh, you don't support X? you must be from
| party Z because they hate X, and if they hate it, I _love
| it_!) even if it 's basic scientific facts is
| infuriating.
|
| And one of the teams is actively racist and sexist, has
| shown a blatant disregard for rules, norms laws and
| ethics, and now has full power over all branches of
| government. There's no scenario this ends well in the
| long term, and it's sad to look at from across the pond.
| rayiner wrote:
| Europeans should do more research on what the political
| debates in the U.S. actually involve. For example, you
| call (presumably Trump) "sexist." But what was the most
| significant women's issue in this most recent election?
| That was abortion. And what was Trump's position on the
| issue? Exactly the same as the one the European court of
| human rights has repeatedly affirmed:
| https://voelkerrechtsblog.org/towards-a-feminist-
| interpretat... ("Since its earliest jurisprudence on
| abortion, the Court has clarified that there is no right
| to abortion under the Convention.")
|
| Not a single EU country recognizes a judicially-imposed
| constitutional right to abortion. The only constitutional
| abortion decision runs the other way: the German
| constitutional court has declared that abortion violates
| the Basic Law's right to life. France is the only country
| with a constitutional right to abortion, and it adopted
| that right by amending the constitution.
|
| Thus, from the European perspective, a decision like
| _Roe_ would have been a gross violation of "rules" and
| "norms."
|
| European democracy is much healthier than the U.S., but
| not for the reasons you think. In Europe, voting tends to
| effectuate outcomes, and unelected bodies don't overrule
| the will of the people. Swedes, for example, soured on
| immigration. So the government cut immigration and
| started deporting people. Germany is escalating
| deportations. If CDU and AfD win the upcoming elections,
| deportations will proceed swiftly. In America, people
| just voted to do the same. But unelected judges, NGOs,
| and mutinous government employees will ensure that the
| will of the people is undermined, just as they have done
| for decades.
| sofixa wrote:
| > For example, you call (presumably Trump) "sexist."
|
| "Grab 'em by the pussy."
|
| Convicted of sexual assault. Friends with famous
| pedophile ringleader.
|
| When asked about what he has in common with his teenage
| daughter, he said sex.
|
| Yeah, I'm calling him sexist.
|
| Trump's position on abortion was obvious from his actions
| in the past, regardless of what he actually blabbed.
|
| > Not a single EU country recognizes a judicially-imposed
| constitutional right to abortion. The only constitutional
| abortion decision runs the other way: the German
| constitutional court has declared that abortion violates
| the Basic Law's right to life. France is the only country
| with a constitutional right to abortion, and it adopted
| that right by amending the constitution.
|
| What is this weird strawman? Most EU countries have laws
| in place that allow abortions up to a certain point. It
| doesn't have to be a constitutional right for it to be a
| right. No EU countries have a constitutional right to get
| emergency medical treatment or to be allowed to be
| vaccinated either, so this is aggressively irrelevant.
| Exact healthcare procedures are between a patient, their
| medical professional(s), and potentially family in some
| cases.
|
| On Roe, the US legal system is weird and broken. Courts
| effectively legislate by trying to pretend to understand
| what vague words from centuries ago mean and how they
| could relate to today and things that sometimes they
| couldn't even imagine back then (not abortion of course,
| there is plenty of written advice from centuries ago
| about them). In normal law countries, legislators
| legislate. And thus abortions are legal because
| legislators decides so, based on popular demand.
|
| Trump getting away with literal treason is also
| symptomatic of the broken American legal system, where
| judges and prosecutors are political entities more
| interested in their careers and ideology than the actual
| law they should be upholding.
| rayiner wrote:
| What do you think _Roe_ actually did? And what do you
| think overturning it did?
| tptacek wrote:
| Her "parting rant" didn't appear in SciAm, a point even
| the article makes clear, but which you obscure here.
| rayiner wrote:
| It's probative of state of mind.
| tptacek wrote:
| It would have been if you'd described it as such, rather
| than misleading about it (deliberately or not).
| strken wrote:
| Because expert opinions are sometimes the only data
| available. "What will computer architecture look like in 20
| years?" Clearly there's no factual content to answer that
| question, but I would argue that it's still an interesting
| question to ask an expert.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Warp Drive is impossible? So never ever write about it or you
| are an evil person spreading false information?
|
| Speculation is also about looking to the future, 'what might
| be possible'. These are opinions.
|
| And. 'A Lot' of people confuse raw data with 'facts'. Every
| single paper or news report is taking 'raw data' and
| 'figuring out what it means'.
|
| So, there is always bias, but also it is impossible to report
| anything without trying to 'infer' information out of the raw
| data. There is no such thing as 'just report the facts'.
| psychoslave wrote:
| We also maybe have to deal with the common misconception that a
| fact proceeds somehow from an absolute objective perspective.
| But as far as humans are concerned, there are only human points
| of views grounded in human cognition and human interests. Some
| human points of views might try to encompass more than the
| direct individual own experience might otherwise limit to,
| sure, but that is still human endeavor.
|
| Fact and factitious have a common Latin root for a reason.
|
| Even the carefully engineered autonomous probe will only gather
| data according to some human conceptions of what matter to be
| recorded or dismissed, what should be considered signal rather
| than noise.
| Nevermark wrote:
| > there are only human points of views grounded in human
| cognition and human interests.
|
| "Only"? No.
|
| The entire point of having a scientific approach, an ever
| longer list of ways to weed out mistakes and misperceptions,
| is that raw human cognition can be improved upon.
|
| Repeatable results, independently reproduced results, peer
| review, control elements, effect isolation, ... the list is
| actually very long.
|
| Not every one of the methods we have collected applies to
| every step in knowledge, but every step we take can be
| validated by as many of them as apply.
|
| And new ways of falsifying false conclusions continue to
| accumulate.
| Nevermark wrote:
| Informed opinion, clearly labeled so, on interesting but non-
| controversial non-ideological topics can be great instigators
| of curiosity.
|
| What might have come before the Big Bang?
|
| Do quantum superpositions really collapse somehow based on some
| as yet uncharacterized law, or does our universe produce a web
| of alternate futures, still connected but where straightforward
| links are quickly statistically and irreversible obscured?
|
| There is a science friendly basis for interesting opinions of
| particular experts, in areas of disagreement or inconclusive
| answers, when clearly labeled as opinion, whose opinion, and
| why that experts opinion is of special interest.
|
| Also, opinion on the state of science education, funding or
| other science relevant non-scientific topics, with all due
| modesty of certainty makes good sense.
|
| But injecting ideological opinions, and poorly or selectively
| reasoned ones, or unestablished conjectures falsely posed as
| scientific truth, into a format that claims to be
| representative of science based information, is a tragedy level
| disservice.
|
| Not to mention, with respect to Scientific American in
| particular, a betrayal of many decades of higher standards,
| work and reputation.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > Not to mention, with respect to Scientific American in
| particular, a betrayal of many decades of higher standards,
| work and reputation.
|
| It's hard to deny science itself is under attack by the same
| people who try to establish alternative facts and truths
| based on what's politically convenient to them, even if
| nothing of that is backed by objective reality. Science will
| always be a force pushing against such agendas.
|
| How is the best way to serve the higher standards of SciAm?
| Would it be ignoring the elephant in the room, this new shiny
| fake reality where vaccines cause autism, the Earth is flat,
| that scientists have been hiding perpetual motion machines
| from the public? Or would it be to risk being labeled
| "biased" or "political" and actively label and fight against
| these anti-science movements?
|
| Science _is_ politics. It is the strong belief that there is
| one single objective reality, that anyone with the proper
| tools can observe and verify, and that going against these
| cornerstones for political expediency is wrong and,
| ultimately, against the interests of our species.
| rayiner wrote:
| Science can touch on politics, but that doesn't mean
| science is coextensive with politics. You selected examples
| where science bears on politics, but Helmuth's fixation
| wasn't on how many people believe vaccines cause autism. As
| demonstrated by her closing screed, it was about non-
| falsifiable moral assertions ("sexism," "racism," and the
| "moral arc of the universe").
|
| Indeed, the point of the Reason article is that if
| scientists want to have credibility on questions where
| their expertise applies, they should avoid opining in their
| official capacity on political questions where their
| expertise doesn't apply.
|
| Science has much to say about politically important issues
| like climate change and vaccines! But people will blow off
| those assertions if scientists lend the imprimatur of their
| authority to advance social causes, for example by opining
| that it's "racist" to vote to deport illegal immigrants.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| >What might have come before the Big Bang?
|
| Singularity.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| 'Singularity' is just a placeholder for 'we have no idea
| what's going on here'.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Huh? AFAIK singularity is a dense object of zero size.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| Infinitely dense, which is a math term for "some other
| realm of existence that makes no sense in our physical
| world".
| gregwebs wrote:
| Should a publication with science in its name publish opinions
| with obviously (to a scientifically skeptical mind) incorrect
| factual statements?
|
| When we see opinions leaning very consistently one way at a
| publication it invariably turns out their non opinion pieces
| have some of that bias.
|
| That bias always includes ignoring scientific accuracy in favor
| of political ideals.
| seydor wrote:
| You re making it sound as if every opinion is valid to go in
| there. For the same reason why they wouldn't publish eugenicist
| opinions, they should shy away from obvious cringebait.
|
| Afaik science has not yet ran out of much more interesting
| opinions than the ones mentioned
| wrp wrote:
| I loved Scientific American as it was in the 1970s-80s, and was
| saddened to see what happened to it after around 2000(?), but I
| can see how having an editor like Helmuth would be a rational
| choice for the owners. The purpose of a commercial magazine is to
| generate income, and as Fox/CNN/NYT/Guardian realized, being
| objectively informative is a sub-optimal approach. I do wonder
| how we can ever again have something like the old Scientific
| American.
| bsenftner wrote:
| Relish the memory, it is gone and the civilization that
| supports such things is gone too. What we have today is a sad,
| sensationalist farce. We're entering a new Dark Age, and it is
| riding in on fascism.
| degrees57 wrote:
| My mom had subscribed to Scientific American for more than
| twenty years (maybe 30), but for this very reason stopped her
| subscription a few years ago. It had turned from informing its
| readers about science to political posturing. She was sad that
| she's lost a previously intellectually valuable resource.
|
| I suspect we'll eventually get something like a Substack for
| Science author (editor) on a subscription model that will do
| long form pieces and invite SMEs to talk about their stuff.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I clicked on the links of the articles linked to by the author as
| "egregious" examples of Helmuth's editorial bias, and they're
| both clearly labeled _OPINION_. (Opinion articles are not
| scientific articles because they are __opinion__.)
|
| May need to choose some better examples if the author wants to
| support his point.
| crackercrews wrote:
| Why does a scientific magazine have an Opinion section in the
| first place? Has it always? I would guess the number of Opinion
| pieces has gone up dramatically in the last decade.
| taeric wrote:
| It provides a valuable path to outside perspective? Generally
| you would expect some credentials and vetting in what opinion
| you post. But the idea seems fine? Good, even.
| davorak wrote:
| Probably because opinions are interesting to most people and
| people who read pop sci magazines want to read opinions that
| have more of a science/evidence bent then what they can get
| out of other magazines and/or newspapers.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > Why does a scientific magazine have an Opinion section in
| the first place?
|
| Nature has an Opinion section. New Scientist does too. Most
| magazines do.
|
| > I would guess the number of Opinion pieces has gone up
| dramatically in the last decade
|
| Did you do any research on this or just throwing out random
| guesses?
| crackercrews wrote:
| > Did you do any research on this or just throwing out
| random guesses?
|
| As I said, I said it was a guess. I tried chatgpt, but no
| help there. I was hoping that people here who are more
| regular SA readers than me would have a sense of this.
|
| It is well-known that people do not discern reporting and
| opinion coverage. IMO this barrier is exacerbated in
| scientific publications, where science-like language is
| used throughout. It gives the sense that "science" is
| behind the opinion.
|
| This may not sway science-savvy readers of the magazine,
| but when it is reported elsewhere ("Scientific American
| magazine says XYZ"), it surely misleads people. I'd rather
| science magazines stick to science, but that's just me.
| leereeves wrote:
| "Editorial bias" and "opinion article" aren't mutually
| exclusive.
|
| Is there bias in what opinions SciAm chooses to print?
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| If that was the point the original article was trying to make
| then they should have provided evidence of that, rather than
| selecting a couple opinion articles to try to build a case
| for their own very clear ideological leanings.
|
| There may or may not be editorial bias at SciAm -- no idea
| since I don't read it, and not really interested either way
| -- but that article was a shoddy piece.
| Clubber wrote:
| >they're both clearly labeled _OPINION_. (Opinion articles are
| not scientific articles because they are __opinion__.)
|
| People who supported Fox News during it's heyday used the same
| argument.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| I really don't care if she went on a political rant on BlueSky.
| What I do care about is that SA has become a click-baity site
| without much depth. I don't know if she's responsible for that,
| though (I doubt that she alone made that happen).
| tptacek wrote:
| 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 vital and basic statistical
| concept--is inherently suspect? No, really: Three days after the
| legendary biologist and author E.O. Wilson died, SciAm published
| a surreal hit piece about him in which the author lamented "his
| dangerous ideas on what factors influence human behavior."_
|
| (a) The (marked!) editorial is in no way a refutation of the
| concept of the normal distribution.
|
| (b) It's written by a currently-publishing tenured life sciences
| professor (though, clearly, not one of the ones Singal would have
| chosen --- or, to be fair, me, though it's not hard for me to get
| over that and confirm that she's familiar with basic statistics).
|
| (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.
|
| It's one thing for Singal to have culturally heterodox+ views on
| unsettled trans science and policy issues++, another for him to
| dip his toes into HBD-ism. Sorry, dude, there's a dark stain on
| Wilson's career. Trying to sneak that past the reader, as if it
| was knee-jerk wokeism, sabotages the credibility of your own
| piece.
|
| Again, the rest of this piece, sure. Maybe he's right. The Jedi
| thing in particular: major ugh. But I don't want to have to check
| all of his references, and it appears that one needs to.
|
| + _term used advisedly_
|
| ++ _this is what Singal is principally known for_
| taeric wrote:
| 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
| distribution?
| blessede wrote:
| > 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.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| 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.
| blessede wrote:
| Many demands, but probably the most egregious is the
| insistence that males be incarcerated in women's prisons
| if they say they are women. Several states now have
| policy that enables this, and female prisoners have been
| sexually assaulted, raped and even impregnated as a
| result of this.
|
| More generally, this graphic has an astute depiction of
| the problem: https://i.ibb.co/ZcMWLvM/no.jpg
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Is sexual assault in prison otherwise a particular
| concern of yours? I understand it's a massive issue
| affecting hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people,
| is activism on that broader issue how you came to be
| aware of this? Do you have a connection to any prisoner
| advocacy groups that have policy recommendations on this?
| I assume the sexual violence outcomes for trans women in
| mens prisons isn't very wonderful either.
|
| I can't relate to the comic. like I said I have not
| really felt personally affected by trans people at all on
| any level ever.
| blessede wrote:
| Yes, it's how I became aware. When I learned about that I
| was shocked at how the authorities could have allowed
| this to happen, and it led me to reassess everything I
| thought on this issue. To my surprise I found it wasn't
| just limited to a mistaken policy on prisons but is the
| result of widespread ideological capture across so many
| institutions and organizations.
|
| That graphic depicts the effects of this. Maybe you don't
| relate to it, but many women do, and empathize with those
| affected by the policies that enable these intrusive
| males.
| sofixa wrote:
| > That graphic depicts the effects of this. Maybe you
| don't relate to it, but many women do, and empathize with
| those affected by the policies that enable these
| intrusive males.
|
| Really? How many instances of trans athletes in female
| sports have there been? There probably have been more
| instances of furore over a _potential_ trans athlete who
| aren't trans, just not necessarily the ideal for what a
| woman should look like so a shitstorm is started with
| hate poured against them. I dont' follow this stuff in
| the slightest, but there was this boxer in the Olympics
| from Algeria who _is not trans_ who a lot of people
| poured hate against because they think she is, and a girl
| from a college basketball or volleyball team in the US...
|
| It's a "problem" _way_ overblown by anti-trans activists.
| All the while they 're ignoring the complexities of human
| bodies, and how someone having more testosterone doesn't
| make them a man, or that you can't force people to be of
| a different gender (all the panic about LGBTQ
| "propaganda" in schools).
|
| It's only a topic taking so much online time because of
| the people incessantly attacking trans people. Look at JK
| Rowling and her Twitter feed, most of it is anti-trans
| shit. If she shut up and kept her hate to herself she'd
| probably feel better, trans folks would probably feel
| less attacked, and we'd hear less of this nonsense.
| jl6 wrote:
| > How many instances of trans athletes in female sports
| have there been?
|
| If it's a small number, then presumably it's not worth
| fighting over and sport can just have Open and Female
| categories?
| foldr wrote:
| That's a potential option, but a lot of anti-trans folks
| wouldn't be happy with that either. It also doesn't solve
| the theoretical problem of fairness, since trans men on
| testosterone (who presumably compete in the 'open'
| category in your model?) might have significant physical
| advantages over cis women in some sports. I don't think
| there are any glib solutions to the issue of gender in
| sport. The current moral panic about trans people
| certainly won't go any way to help with solving it.
| fonfont wrote:
| Female athletes taking testosterone, regardless of if
| they believe themselves to be men or not, would be
| excluded from competition for doping.
| foldr wrote:
| Another layer of complexity to consider. Some of those
| rules may need to change to enable full participation of
| trans athletes. I do not have a fixed view on what the
| rules should be. I'm just saying it's complicated.
| fonfont wrote:
| Or maybe those that take performance-enhancing drugs will
| just have to accept that their body modification choices
| preclude participation in competitive sport.
|
| There are trans-identifying female athletes who don't
| take testosterone and compete in women's sports, recent
| example in the last Olympics being Hergie Bacyadan in
| women's boxing. There's no exclusion on participation as
| long as the same rules as for everyone else are followed.
| foldr wrote:
| Again, you're just highlighting the fact that trans
| people's bodies are very variable and that this is a
| complex issue. There isn't a simple, obvious solution
| that everyone (currently) agrees is fair. The current
| rules around trans athletes receiving testosterone as
| part of gender affirming care are quite complex and
| variable. I don't have a take on exactly what the rules
| should be. I'm just making the point that there are no
| easy solutions.
| sofixa wrote:
| Maybe, yes.
|
| But what is "female"? The Algerian boxer was born female,
| but has high testosterone due to whatever medical
| condition, which ruled her out of some previous
| competitions that had conditions around that. Do you want
| sports governing bodies to inspect genitalia? Do blood
| tests? Especially when it gets into kids' sports
| territory, this gets very iffy very fast.
| jl6 wrote:
| "Female" is well-defined for 99.99%+ of the population
| (and for most non-human species too, in fact). For those
| with DSDs, a judgement call can be made. For example, a
| person with XY chromosomes and the 5-ARD DSD (who was
| raised as a female due to the appearance of their
| external genitalia) has testosterone in the normal male
| range and thus is likely to have an advantage over
| females, and thus should not compete in the female
| category.
|
| Cases of genuinely ambiguous sex are vanishingly rare,
| and are nothing to do with trans identities which are
| differences of social gender that do not change the
| underlying biology.
| fiffled wrote:
| The available evidence indicates that Khelif is actually
| male: two blood tests from two independent labs revealing
| an XY karyotype, a member of Khelif's training team
| describing problems with hormones and chromosomes and
| that Khelif has been on medication to adjust testosterone
| to within the female range, and a leaked medical report
| which describes Khelif as having the male-specific
| disorder of sexual development 5-alpha reductase
| deficiency (5-ARD).
|
| This implies that Khelif is not female but is male, and
| went through male puberty, therefore having the male
| physical advantage in sport caused by male sexual
| development.
| sofixa wrote:
| So what you're saying is that she transitioned from male
| to female _in Algeria_? That sounds unlikely.
| fiffled wrote:
| No, just erroneously assumed to be female and issued with
| identity documents stating this.
|
| Same as has happened previously with other male athletes
| in women's sports, such as Caster Semenya who also has
| 5-ARD and also competed in the Olympics, back in 2016 in
| the women's 800m track event, winning gold. The silver
| and bronze medals were taken by males too.
|
| Khelif does not identify as trans, and described such
| accusations as "a big shame for my family, for the honor
| of my family, for the honor of Algeria, for the women of
| Algeria and especially the Arab world."
| linhns wrote:
| > There probably have been more instances of furore over
| a _potential_ trans athlete who aren't trans
|
| Actually, most of those "potential" trans turn out to be
| actual trans. That college volleyball athlete has even
| been sued by her own teammate.
|
| > It's a "problem" way overblown by anti-trans activists.
|
| I get that there are many loud voices on this topic right
| now. But I rather having this right now then later down
| the road, where the right has become wrong and the wrong
| has become right.
| sofixa wrote:
| > That college volleyball athlete has even been sued by
| her own teammate.
|
| And there has never been a shred of proof of her being
| trans. Exactly my point.
|
| > et that there are many loud voices on this topic right
| now. But I rather having this right now then later down
| the road, where the right has become wrong and the wrong
| has become right.
|
| Yes, better for women with high testosterone to get death
| threats now for winning in the Olympics instead of
| thinking if this is really a problem.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >Yes, better for women with high testosterone to get
| death threats now for winning in the Olympics instead of
| thinking if this is really a problem.
|
| Ah yes, the Olympic boxer with _checks notes_ a Y
| chromosome and testicles?
| foldr wrote:
| Her body has both male and female characteristics. If
| she'd been raised as a man, you could make an equally
| meanspirited comment about her body with reference to one
| of its female characteristics.
|
| The fact that she was raised as a woman in Algeria (a
| notorious hotbed of wokeness) should tell you something.
|
| Also, while it is gross to pick over people's bodies like
| this, I have to point out that you omit to note that her
| testicles are internal.
| fiffled wrote:
| How do you mean? An underdeveloped penis is not a female
| characteristic, nor is the presence of internal testes.
| Going through male puberty isn't a characteristic of the
| female body either.
| foldr wrote:
| You made your account 51 days ago and literally the only
| thing you've commented on since then is the anatomical
| details of this woman's body. What a strange and
| distasteful obsession. She has always been a woman and
| meets the criteria to compete as one under current rules
| (which long predate any changes made in relation to trans
| people).
| nradov wrote:
| You can find a list of trans athletes in women's sports
| here. I can't vouch for the site's accuracy or
| completeness, just providing a source for those who want
| to do further research.
|
| https://www.shewon.org/
| sofixa wrote:
| The inclusion of golf and poker makes me think this
| website isn't really concerned about women.
| fonfont wrote:
| These are still examples of males imposing themselves on
| what are supposed to be women's competitions. Every
| single one of these cases highlights an unwanted male
| intrusion.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Also, given that biological males dominate even for non-
| physical sports and esports like chess (talented women
| like Judit Polgar notwithstanding) or Starcraft, a
| biological male playing in a woman's-only league is a
| probably an unfair advantage even then.
| umanwizard wrote:
| I don't really have a strong opinion one way or the other
| about your overall point, but I just want to point out
| for clarity:
|
| Examples like Judit Polgar (who was around the top 10
| players in the world at her peak) _do_ indeed prove that
| chess is nothing like (physical) sports in this way. In
| physical sports like basketball, soccer, etc. the best
| women in the world can't compete against even moderately
| athletic amateur men. A famous example is the fact that
| the US women's national soccer team practices against
| young teenage boys (and routinely loses). In chess it
| would be like if the best woman was rated 1800 or
| something.
|
| This isn't meant to disparage women in sports -- they
| really do have a categorically different kind of body
| from men, and pushing those bodies to their limits is
| just as impressive as it is for men. But they don't
| appear to have categorically different kinds of brain, at
| least insofar as it matters for chess skill.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| So what do the prisoner advocate orgs you work with have
| as a statement or policy rec? The one I volunteer with
| has decided that it's not effective to have a specific
| policy about such a small group until meaningful measures
| addressing sexual violence in prisons generally (which
| again affects hundreds of thousands or millions per year)
| have been attempted.
|
| There are a lot of other orgs though and especially if
| you're in an area with a lot of trans people and it's a
| more active issue, I'm interested in what other groups
| have had to come up with. Like I said if the goal is
| preventing sexual violence I can't imagine that moving
| trans women into the mens prison is going to be effective
| either.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| "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.
| blessede wrote:
| It's a reference to the homophobic and lesbophobic
| "cotton ceiling" type rhetoric that many of these males
| express.
| tiahura wrote:
| Does your daughter play competitive sports? Has she been
| knocked down by a boy playing on a girl's team?
| dgfitz wrote:
| Nah that isn't the problem. If that happened to my kid
| they would get back up and shove the other kid over.
|
| The problem is maintaining the integrity of sports and
| competition. Only an uneducated person would ever try to
| argue that "the best women's college basketball team
| would beat the best men's college basketball team" even 1
| out of 100 times.
| tiahura wrote:
| _my kid they would get back up and shove the other kid
| over._
|
| Therein lies the rub. Some sure do, but most 13 year old
| girls don't.
| dgfitz wrote:
| My 10 year old daughter would.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Wait until the hormones kick in. Personalities change.
| dgfitz wrote:
| What is your point? Puberty is a thing? No kidding. I
| choose to believe that how I rear my children has a
| larger affect on their psyche than hormones.
| spamizbad wrote:
| as a parent of a child athlete this is always a silly
| argument. Kids in sports get knocked down all the time!
| Sometimes pretty hard! I feel like people who clutch
| their pearls on this stuff either don't have kids, don't
| have kids in sports, or aren't the parent who actually
| shows up to the games.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Has yours? As far as I can tell there are no trans
| student athletes in my state at any age or
| competitiveness level. There are several active anti-
| trans organizations that consider this an issue but no
| specific cases of it locally for me to assess or be
| affected by.
| fireflash38 wrote:
| Amusingly, in my experience, it was the girls in coed
| soccer that were doing the knocking down. For a few
| seasons, they were bigger than the boys, and they could
| more easily use their hips to check people off the ball
| without drawing fouls.
| wtcactus wrote:
| > Personally I've never noticed trans people and their
| push for rights & recognition having any impact on my
| life whatsoever.
|
| Do you have young children? I don't live in the USA, I
| live in Europe, but I have a very small baby and I
| already did. The daycare, just this year announced they
| aren't going to be celebrating Mother and Father's Day
| anymore. Instead we will have to celebrate a Parents day.
|
| This is just a small thing of course, there are many
| other situations where it's clear an agenda is being
| pushed over the general population. The only way I can
| see you never felt it, is if you don't have children.
| gjm11 wrote:
| Do you actually know that switching from "Mother's Day"
| and "Father's Day" to "Parents' Day" has anything to do
| with trans people? Without the context of your comment I
| would have guessed it was more about (1) trying not to
| upset children who have lost a parent, (2) trying not to
| upset or confuse children who've never had two parents
| around, and/or (3) trying not to upset or confuse
| children brought up by same-sex couples.
|
| Of course you might consider any or all of those to be
| Stupid Woke Nonsense, but whether right or wrong,
| sensible or stupid, they're not about trans people.
| hobs wrote:
| And would you say that "everyone else has to change and
| restrict their behavior to accommodate increasingly
| absurd and harmful requests from an overly demanding
| identity group" and that a parents day has harmed you?
|
| As a person entirely out of the "trans debate" it almost
| always seems to me like right wingers or anyone who is
| asked to change anything at all catastrophizes it beyond
| all sane response.
|
| The mild "huh that slightly bothers me" and the "they are
| TRYING TO CHANGE MY CHILDREN!!!" seem to be conflated to
| the point of making no sense.
|
| Going from "I noticed a trans person" to "this must be
| stopped!" makes no sense whatsoever.
| blindriver wrote:
| I think people should be left to do whatever they want.
|
| But my son at age 5 asked me "Daddy do you think I'm a
| boy just because I have a penis?" This is because his
| woke kindergarten teachers started teaching this gender
| nonsense and that's where I had to start teaching my kid
| about how all this was nonsense.
|
| Where I draw the line is when I am told to lie to myself
| and my children that there is more than 2 genders and
| that a man is actually a woman if he thinks he is a
| woman. I refuse to do that and the fact that the
| activists have crossed the line into absurdity is where I
| fight back. I will not let my children grow up in an
| anti-science world like that.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| 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. Nonetheless I've had to come to
| accept it because, as you say, the science.
| kgwgk wrote:
| > 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/10.1080/0022449020955
| 213...
| aspenth wrote:
| > 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.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Yeah it's approximately as hypothetical as all the cases
| of trans athletes we're apparently taking seriously in
| this thread. Eg greater than zero known cases but likely
| no one commenting here has ever encountered either
| phenomenon in the course of life.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Intersex are not 1% of the population. That figure comes
| from a study that included women with Turner Syndrome and
| PCOS, as well as men with Klinefelter Syndrome as
| intersex. Even a layperson would have zero trouble
| classifying the sex of said people if they saw their
| body.
|
| Intersex as defined by genuine ambiguity of someone's sex
| is around 0.02% of the population:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex
|
| > Leonard Sax, in response to Fausto-Sterling, estimated
| that the prevalence of intersex was about 0.018% of the
| world's population,[4] discounting several conditions
| included in Fausto-Sterling's estimate that included
| LOCAH, Klinefelter syndrome (47,XXY), Turner syndrome
| (45,X), the chromosomal variants of 47,XYY and 47,XXX,
| and vaginal agenesis. Sax reasons that in these
| conditions chromosomal sex is consistent with phenotypic
| sex and phenotype is classifiable as either male or
| female.[4]
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| So still like one or two orders of magnitude more common
| than trans athletes?
| ryandv wrote:
| On a personal level, linguistic imperialism. For all the
| rhetoric spewed regarding the impacts of colonialism and
| cultural imperialism and fervent calls to decolonize
| various aspects of society, the whites spewing that very
| same rhetoric have found a way to launder their own
| modern brand of imperialism into gender diversity and
| inclusivity by inventing and then imposing new language
| on that of other ethnic minorities: "Filipinx." This word
| shows a shocking ignorance of basic facts of Tagalog that
| it can't be construed in any way other than racist: there
| is no letter "x" in Tagalog, and _the grammar of the
| language is already genderless._ This point becomes
| readily apparent if you are conversing with a native
| Tagalog speaker who uses English as a second language, as
| they will readily confuse the pronouns "he" and "she" in
| everyday speech, the concept of gendered pronouns being,
| quite literally, _foreign_ to them. Is this transphobic
| bigotry?
|
| The Philippines has already undergone multiple rounds of
| colonization over centuries, leading to the slow-motion
| eradication of their native language as Spanish and
| _especially_ English have overtaken it to the point where
| many Filipinos cannot even speak pure Tagalog any more
| [0]. Hasn 't the western white already colonized the
| Philippines enough? First it was, "your pagan religion is
| immoral and barbaric; here, read this Bible." Now, it's,
| "your transphobic language is bigoted and uninclusive;
| here, take these pronouns." How about obeying Starfleet's
| Prime Directive by leaving other cultures the fuck alone?
|
| If you don't find this top-down imposition and control of
| language disturbing, I suggest you review your Orwell.
|
| On a more abstract level, "the group's" intolerance of
| dissenting opinion and academic inquiry, especially when
| such inquiry shows its positions to be internally
| contradictory. Take for instance Rebecca Tuvel's paper
| _In Defense of Transracialism,_ published in _Hypatia: A
| Journal of Feminist Philosophy,_ which argues that
| "considerations that support transgenderism seem to apply
| equally to transracialism." [1] Rather than judge this
| assertion on its merits and attempt to defeat it
| rationally, the community demanded the paper be
| retracted, the author was pilloried for her hateful
| language and dangerous ideas, and there were multiple
| departures from Hypatia's editorial team.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYLFoUTJuGU
|
| [1] https://sci-hub.se/10.1111/hypa.12327
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I don't see the connection between tagalog and trans
| people sorry.
| aint_that_so wrote:
| I got banned from a leftist Discord that I'd spent years
| on discussing all sorts of topics, just because I dared
| to question some of the standard left-wing stances on
| trans issues.
|
| I'd said something like, I don't think claiming an
| identity is enough, there has to be some sort of
| dysphoria. And then followed up with another comment
| like, if they want to keep the cock intact, then they're
| not actually trans women, as a genuine trans woman would
| want rid of it even if she couldn't afford the surgery.
|
| This was enough to get me called bigoted and transphobic,
| and then permanently banned with no recourse, which
| surprised me because I'd disagreed with people there on
| the details of a few other topics in the past. Yet
| somehow this was too much.
|
| It still baffles me how this is the one of the few issues
| that gets people on the left so riled up that they can't
| even bear to hear any dissent.
| sunshowers wrote:
| What is your expertise in the field?
| sunshowers wrote:
| I believe both "Latinx" and "Filipinx" were introduced by
| queer people of the respective ethnicities, not white
| Anglos. Basically every culture on earth has deep seated
| views on gender that don't match reality, and a strong
| reactionary response when that's interrogated from within
| the community.
|
| Philosophy as a field has very little to contribute to
| basic object-level facts -- this is the whole reason
| science ("natural philosophy") split from traditional
| philosophy back in the early Renaissance. This isn't
| something you can reason out within your brain, this is
| entirely evidence-driven. There is a tremendous amount of
| evidence for transgender people and next to none for
| "transracialism".
| blueflow wrote:
| 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.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| 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.
| blueflow wrote:
| I think you are being sarcastic but i actually agree with
| that.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| I'm being sarcastic but also agree.
| dogleash wrote:
| I'm pulling for you.
|
| However. Cultural attitudes are propagated by people
| who's livelihood is frequent publishing. In that
| scenario, I think teams "what's to talk about?" and "it's
| not that complicated" are always going to lose to team
| "I've got a lot to say about this."
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The operators and customers of this spa noticed:
|
| https://x.com/KatieDaviscourt/status/1858611351901663550
|
| https://x.com/ItsYonder/status/1858673181315506307
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Yeah that judge, a woman, explicitly labels that "notice"
| as discriminatory. Seems pretty clear cut.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Judges are not infallible, and the judge being a woman is
| irrelevant since she does not represent all women.
|
| I think it is reasonable for a woman to want a shared
| nude space to be free of people with penises, regardless
| of what that person identifies as, for simple logistics
| reasons of not being able to be sure if someone is being
| deceptive.
| blindriver wrote:
| The fact that my comment has been flagged is exactly the
| problem with this topic. People can't have a proper
| discussion about it because it is a religion to the woke
| mob. This is exactly what the original article is all
| about.
| rurp wrote:
| Speaking for myself, in terms of policy this issue
| wouldn't even crack my top 100. But in terms of electoral
| politics? I think the evidence is pretty good that it had
| a lot of salience in the last election. Many swing voters
| who broke for Trump have said that gender and/or trans
| issues were a big factor for them. Something like a third
| of Trump's closing ads were about this topic and Kamala's
| campaign checking a box that they were in favor of sex
| change operations for criminals became a huge talking
| point.
|
| As someone who cares deeply about a lot of separate
| issues that Trump will be terrible on, I wish
| progressives would STFU on this topic and stop stabbing
| their party in the back. Treating trans people with
| dignity and respect should go without saying, but some of
| the left wing rhetoric on this issues goes too far like
| when they deny that there is any biological difference
| between men and women. A lot of the efforts on the left
| look more like virtue signaling and fighting for the sake
| of it, rather than trying to achieve better real world
| outcomes.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| " 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.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I find the War on Christmas discourse annoying too. Would
| you be willing to defuse it by instituting a policy of
| always saying "merry Christmas" instead of "happy
| holidays"? I've been guilty of this too, but it's easy for
| me to say a wedge issue isn't important and we should argue
| about things that matter instead when I expect that my side
| of the wedge will happen by default.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| You can't "defuse" a wedge issue, you can only decline to
| be manipulated. That is an individual act. There is no
| "side" to a wedge issue, it is a false dichotomy crafted
| to create maximal division. They are focus group tested
| and refined to do so.
|
| The "War on Christmas" effects a greater sense of
| persecution while framing it as a nonexistent conflict.
| There is no War on Christmas. I can say Merry Christmas
| or not, and it will not effect the wedge issue because it
| is and never was about saying Merry Christmas to others.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I agree with most of what you're saying except for the
| contention that the dichotomy is false. It's a good wedge
| issue precisely because it's a true dichotomy. Even when
| attempting to dismiss the debate as fabricated and
| pointless, you end up taking a side on accident, flatly
| stating that there's no War on Christmas and that it
| doesn't really matter whether you say Merry Christmas to
| others. On the other side of the wedge, people believe
| that Christmas is quite literally the second most
| important day in the world, and fear that we might put
| our immortal souls at risk if we don't properly
| commemorate it.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >Would you be willing to defuse it by instituting a
| policy of always saying "merry Christmas" instead of
| "happy holidays"?
|
| This is nonsensical. This isn't "defusing" it, this is
| authoritarianism and literal capitulation to the absurd
| demands _that are meaningless_
|
| People say "Happy holidays" now because they know some
| people don't celebrate Christmas and they want to be
| nice, friendly, and pleasant to them as well.
|
| If you have a problem with people saying "Happy holidays"
| in place of "Merry Christmas" you are a fucking baby.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Don't get mad about it. That is the definition of victory
| for the groups creating these issues. Just ignore it and
| go about your day as much as possible. Don't comment
| about it online.
|
| They are only industrial strength memes to create anger
| and distrust, thereby placing people in more manipulable
| mental states. You starve them by ignoring them,
| regardless of the merits. Most of all, don't react with
| anger.
| lupusreal wrote:
| > _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.)
| gadders wrote:
| >>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.
| jl6 wrote:
| 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.
| nemomarx wrote:
| Before I started transition I read through the available
| literature (this would be back in 2010-2015 ish, before it
| was quite so hot button) and the general consensus wasn't
| with Singals position then. I don't think skepticism ought
| to be ruled out or anything, but hormone therapy is better
| studied than the use of most antidepressants at this point.
| (although it could still use better study on particular
| dosage and effects - no one seems to have done anything
| comprehensive on progestin treatment, for instance, even
| though it's clearly associated with the rest.)
| gadders wrote:
| The Cass report in the UK was pretty clear that there
| isn't enough evidence to base decisions on
| https://cass.independent-
| review.uk/home/publications/final-r...
|
| >>>
|
| While a considerable amount of research has been
| published in this field, systematic evidence reviews
| demonstrated the poor quality of the published studies,
| meaning there is not a reliable evidence base upon which
| to make clinical decisions, or for children and their
| families to make informed choices.
|
| The strengths and weaknesses of the evidence base on the
| care of children and young people are often
| misrepresented and overstated, both in scientific
| publications and social debate.
|
| The controversy surrounding the use of medical treatments
| has taken focus away from what the individualised care
| and treatment is intended to achieve for individuals
| seeking support from NHS gender services.
|
| The rationale for early puberty suppression remains
| unclear, with weak evidence regarding the impact on
| gender dysphoria, mental or psychosocial health. The
| effect on cognitive and psychosexual development remains
| unknown.
|
| The use of masculinising / feminising hormones in those
| under the age of 18 also presents many unknowns, despite
| their longstanding use in the adult transgender
| population. The lack of long-term follow-up data on those
| commencing treatment at an earlier age means we have
| inadequate information about the range of outcomes for
| this group.
| foldr wrote:
| The report basically said that there wasn't a lot of
| evidence that the treatments in question make people
| happy in the long run, which is an unusual standard to
| apply. Usually we look for evidence that medical
| treatments achieve their medical goals, and leave
| judgments about what will or won't make someone happy to
| doctors or patients. (For example, it's questionable
| whether certain cancer treatments that extend life by
| only a few months will be a net benefit for patients, but
| we generally let patients and doctors decide for
| themselves whether or not to go ahead with them.)
| in_a_hole wrote:
| Given that the treatments are meant to address gender
| dysphoria which is unhappiness caused by a sense of
| misalignment with one's sexual characteristics I struggle
| to think of a better measure of success than long-term
| happiness.
| foldr wrote:
| It's a good measure of success, but if we applied the
| same standard consistently, then all kinds of treatments
| for all kinds of partially psychological conditions would
| have to be thrown out.
|
| Also, it's taking a particular position to characterise
| gender dysphoria as merely a subjective feeling of
| unhappiness. I do not have any fixed position on what
| exactly gender dysphoria is, but I believe many trans
| people see it as far more than just that.
| nemomarx wrote:
| The Cass report is pretty questionable quality wise - it
| was written with political goals pretty directly in mind
| and it rules out a lot of studies for not being double
| blind. (Which is necessarily a hard ask here, medical
| ethics boards aren't going to let you give hormones to
| the control group children or anything.)
|
| And that criticism has come from medical boards in the UK
| and globally, I believe?
|
| Anyway, that's also only for children, which feels
| politically like a wedge issue. The NHS is very slow at
| providing HRT and I rather doubt they're treating more
| than a hundred children for gender dysphoria in any way
| rn.
| in_a_hole wrote:
| This is a common misconception about the review. It is
| true that none of the studies they looked at were double-
| blinded but they were still included if they were
| designed and conducted well enough. In a Q&A shortly
| after the review's release Cass demonstrates that she is
| well aware that exclusion based on this would be silly.
|
| https://thekitetrust.org.uk/our-statement-in-response-to-
| the...
|
| The amount of myths circulating about the review prompted
| the publishing of an FAQ page which deals with some of
| the more egregious examples (e.g. the claim that 98% of
| studies were rejected).
|
| https://cass.independent-
| review.uk/home/publications/final-r...
| Levitz wrote:
| I think it's naive to call a series of "myths" coming
| from the same camp as misconceptions.
|
| There was a (successful) effort to push misinformation
| regarding the report.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| What's the basis for the claim that the Cass Review was
| written with political goals directly in mind? Is this
| just based on the conclusion of the report, or is there
| actual substance for this statement?
|
| Most of the criticism of the Cass Review comes from the
| US. Most of Europe has either stopped prescribing puberty
| blockers and cross sex hormones for minors or never did
| in the first place. The UK is joining the consensus among
| the majority of developed countries regarding treatment
| of gender dysphoric youth, now the US and Canada stand as
| the sole outliers.
| gadders wrote:
| 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.
| lukas099 wrote:
| > You can hate the policies/movement and still have
| sympathy for the individuals.
|
| I think people on the right (outright bigots excepted)
| would say they _do_ have sympathy, and it 's for kids who
| have been influenced by the media or whatever to think
| that they are the opposite gender.
|
| > 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.
|
| And I think the response here is that _not_ taking action
| is also one-way, causing irreversible changes, like to
| the bone structure.
| jl6 wrote:
| Yes, this is the kind of nuanced take that has been
| squeezed out by ideological snap-to-grid from the warring
| tribes.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| I rarely see sympathy from anyone, it's easier to be
| staunch and tapped out unfortunately.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| HN has a large discussion on the E.O. Wilson piece at the
| time...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29990427
| slibhb wrote:
| > (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?
| rzwitserloot wrote:
| Where on the line are we talking?
|
| It's one thing to say: "In my view, EO Wilson's association
| with Rushton is defensible and should not be considered a
| stain on his career".
|
| It's quite another to say: "That, and I believe it so much
| that I cannot take seriously anybody who disagrees with me on
| this, I shall call them and their viewpoints names such as
| 'surreal' and make grandiose claims that their opinion is so
| ridiculous, it requires a cultural change at this magazine".
|
| The latter is what was said.
|
| I see no conflict between holding both of these ideas:
|
| * EO Wilson's association with Rushton isn't a problem, and
| it wasn't about him supporting those ideas themselves, it was
| about supporting the idea of 'let ideas be, do not censor
| them'.
|
| * Singal is wildly inappropriate with this, and the plan as
| stated is cancel culture/crazy politication of a magazine.
|
| In:
|
| > "Rushton was a racist, Wilson defended Rushton so he's a
| racist, Singal defended Wilson so he's a racist"
|
| You've made an evident mistake. It's instead:
|
| > Rushton was a racist, Wilson defended Rushton so he might
| also be and we should look into that, Singal called that very
| thought of questioning Wilson's association with Rushton as
| ridiculous - and THAT means he's a racist'.
|
| Maybe still wrong but not nearly as crazy as you seem to
| think it is.
| slibhb wrote:
| I think your post is very reasonable. Singal may be
| exaggerating how bad SciAm is. Though my view is that the
| Wilson article is part of a pattern.
|
| I responded to this because I read a biography of EO Wilson
| recently. It's strange to say his association with Rushton
| was a stain on his career because his career was massive.
| He published an absurd number of papers, did lots of field
| work, discovered many new species, wrote many popular
| science books, and was influential as an early
| conservationist. He was, by all accounts, an incredibly
| kind person. His link to some racist is a footnote, not a
| stain.
|
| It's worth asking why it's even coming up. Here are a few
| possible reasons:
|
| 1. A number of left-wingers attacked Wilson following
| Sociobiology and it's been open-season on him ever since
|
| 2. It's trendy to call famous white scientists racist
|
| 3. Highly accomplished people cause envy in others which
| leads to tendentious attacks
| umanwizard wrote:
| The Wilson article really does say:
|
| > First, the so-called normal distribution of statistics
| assumes that there are default humans who serve as the standard
| that the rest of us can be accurately measured against.
|
| That's at best sloppily written, regardless of what one thinks
| about Wilson. The normal distribution is a mathematical tool;
| it doesn't "assume" anything about some particular concrete
| topic like measuring humans.
| jtbayly wrote:
| What a minute, this sentence was literally in the SA piece:
| "First, the so-called normal distribution of statistics assumes
| that there are default humans who serve as the standard that
| the rest of us can be accurately measured against."
|
| Is that not a denunciation of the normal distribution?
| andrewla wrote:
| I don't think so -- the comment in context was not about the
| "normal distribution of statistics" per se, because when
| we're talking about Bernoulli trials and the law of large
| numbers, it clearly is not necessary to assume anything about
| "default humans".
|
| Rather the article is critiquing the specific use of the
| normal distribution in assessing population and sub-
| population statistics. I do think that this critique is kind
| of nonsensical because the normal distribution assumes
| nothing of the kind -- a person who is of average height, a
| "default height" human, is a concept utterly distinct from
| the concept of a person who is of average weight, a "default
| weight" human.
| jayd16 wrote:
| It's saying multi-modal data should not be crammed into a
| simple normal distribution.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Science has _always_ been political. On the front page a few days
| ago was the story of a bunch of physicists bitching at each other
| over what happened in WWI
|
| I have a book from Scientific American from the 1960s that has a
| whole section removed for the british audience because it
| contained instructions on how to run experiments on bears. That
| is a political act.
|
| But, seeing as how administrations of various colours have
| differing approaches to funding science, its pretty hard for
| "science" to be a-political. Trump has expressed "policy" for
| completely removing NOAA, which provides massive datasets for
| wider research. His track record isn't great on funding wider
| science either. So its probably legitimate to lobby for more
| funding, no? (did the editor actually lobby effectively, is a
| different question)
|
| Now, should the editor of SA also take on other causes, probably
| not. But "science" has been doing that for year (just look at
| psychology)
| jhbadger wrote:
| >I have a book from Scientific American from the 1960s that has
| a whole section removed for the british audience because it
| contained instructions on how to run experiments on bears. That
| is a political act.
|
| I think you'd need a bit more evidence for that being
| "political". A far more plausible reason for the removal is
| that Britain doesn't have bears to any degree (there have been
| isolated sightings but most think they've been extinct there
| for over 1000 years).
| tomgp wrote:
| It's true! Britain has no bears so we like any refrence to
| them to be removed from our books ensuring we never have to
| think about them.
| partomniscient wrote:
| Strangely enough, I read about a bear that was lurking
| around at Paddington Station.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| But that's a Peruvian bear.
| tim333 wrote:
| There were also rumours of a pooh bear in East Sussex.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Let me guess, he claims he's just a tourist, but had two
| 400lb suitcases.
| shrubble wrote:
| There's a version of a book on birds that doesn't have the
| gannet in it.
|
| (Monty Python reference)
| suzzer99 wrote:
| And a book on trees that doesn't have the larch in it.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| I need to find it again but it said something along the lines
| of:
|
| "this chapter has been removed as it describes
| experimentation on live bears."
|
| it then goes on to apologise and has a lovely passive
| aggressive:
|
| "we would hope that British readers would not like to carry
| out such experiments on live animals"
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| Galileo. Oppenheimer.
|
| I think those two examples are already enough to show that
| science has been political for 400 years.
| jbstjohn wrote:
| In all seriousness, no, it shows that there were at least
| two cases of political science in the last 400 years, not
| that all science is.
|
| I think there have been more, and it plays a role, but I
| don't buy that you can just dismiss the criticism of
| political science with the claim that it always is.
|
| There are matters of degrees, and it's almost universally
| acknowledged to be bad, because it usually means results
| and emphasis have been distorted because of the politics.
| tomgp wrote:
| Yeah, scanning through the recently published articles it seems
| "Reason" has no problem with the politicisation of science if
| it means the slashing of govenment funding.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Reason is an explicitly political magazine that advocates for
| Libertarian ideas of small government.
| standardUser wrote:
| I sympathize with her. There's a big movement in this country
| that defines itself largely by opposing what its perceived
| enemies support. When science (or culture) makes a reasonably
| sound assertion, and it's met with an opposition that wields
| rhetoric like a weapon with no regard for rationality, it's
| tempting to fight fire with fire. And when the victims of that
| opposition are among the most marginalized in society, it's easy
| to feel like you have the moral high ground.
|
| Maybe in culture it's ok to fight dirty and stretch some truths
| in order to force newer perspectives into the zeitgeist. Maybe
| it's even neccesary when the opposition is willing to lie
| outright, and loudly, as a first resort. But that doesn't work
| with science. Even if the motivations are pure, it's destined to
| backfire. It _should_ backfire. Science itself is under assault
| and losing its ability to hold together some semblance of a
| shared reality. If people start to believe that science is just
| as corruptible as journalism because of shitty science
| journalists, we 're fucked.
| rayiner wrote:
| 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 needs of the few."
| everforward wrote:
| 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 Spock when you make sure that you're
| always part of "the many" and never part of "the few".
| pessimizer wrote:
| "Marginalized" groups have not been helped in any way by
| any of this. Lumping everyone together into a group who is
| not a white straight man diminishes everyone's individual
| _material_ problems into a generic "marginalization," and
| unfairly _centralizes_ white straight men. It 's something
| that wealthy powerful people do in order not to have to
| discuss their wealth and power, and the fact that they all
| grew up in sundown towns.
|
| This wave of wealthy white people screaming "bigot" at
| other white people without health care hasn't raised the
| condition of the descendants of slaves at all. Instead it's
| been an expansion of welfare for well-off white women and
| affluent immigrants. Everybody has been oppressed like
| black people except for the descendants of slaves, and
| everybody has been stuck in a caste system except for
| Dalits.
|
| "Marginalized" people want to be addressed as individual
| humans with material problems like other humans. Instead a
| bunch of people so wealthy and comfortable that they are
| almost completely detached from the material world and have
| never missed a meal treat everyone like symbols and try to
| read the world like literary critics.
|
| > It's easy to quote Spock when you make sure that you're
| always part of "the many" and never part of "the few".
|
| Assuming that everyone you're talking to is "the many" is
| not good. Your argument should work no matter who you
| happen to be talking to.
| everforward wrote:
| Refusing to address the shared material hardships
| diffuses responsibility to the point where the hardships
| can be dismissed. There are too many branches on that
| tree to address, which makes it very easy to just do
| nothing. No one but celebrities get their individual
| hardships addressed, it just doesn't scale to this size
| of a country.
|
| > Assuming that everyone you're talking to is "the many"
| is not good. Your argument should work no matter who you
| happen to be talking to.
|
| I don't think it's a wild presumption that most people in
| the few aren't terribly excited about being asked to pay
| the cost for the many again. "Please lock us in another
| generation of poverty" is not a political slogan I hear
| very often. If that's what you want to stand on, go ahead
| I suppose, it's a free country.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Not to mention the fact that heterosexual, cis-gendered,
| christian, male is about a quarter of the US
| population[1], so categorizing it broadly as "many" vs
| "few" is already over-simplifying.
|
| Intersectionality was intended to add nuance to
| discussions of discrimination (e.g. a black woman's
| experience is not reduced to "sexism" plus "racism"), but
| it seems to have popularly had the opposite effect of
| reducing everybody to a demographic venn-diagram.
|
| 1: If you exclude "male" and "christian" from the
| criteria, you do end up with a majority. If you switch
| "christian" to "protestant" then you make the minority
| even more stark, but anti-Catholic sentiment among
| protestants has significantly declined over the past few
| decades, so I don't think that historical division of
| categories makes sense anymore.
| rayiner wrote:
| 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.)
| CleaveIt2Beaver wrote:
| Not to mention that Spock is _consenting_ to his fate in
| taking on the role of "the few... or even the one." He's
| clearly rationalizing, not stating a universal constant.
| ciploid wrote:
| Agreed and also it's rarely the case that the "most
| marginalized" who are elevated in public discourse genuinely
| are the most marginalized. More often it's just invoked to
| make some untrue political point. Kind of like how
| accusations of genocide are thrown around so freely these
| days. Typically it's rhetoric with very little substance.
| llm_trw wrote:
| >"the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."
|
| The brewer, the baker and the candle stick maker need a new
| kidney, liver and heart. Thank you for volunteering to be
| killed so we can harvest your organs and keep the many alive.
|
| Alternatively don't base your world view on a TV show from
| the 1960s.
| vundercind wrote:
| Even in the movie's own terms, that's an ethical aphorism
| spoken by a character to justify his act of _self_
| sacrifice, and to comfort a great friend that he 's coming
| to his unfortunate end on his own terms and for his own
| reasons and, in Spock's way, as an act of _love_ , in a
| sense.
|
| It's not, like, "go shit on minorities if it makes the
| majority's utility-units increase".
| tzs wrote:
| There was a story in _Analog_ a few years ago called
| "Dibs" if I recall the title correctly about a world that
| worked like that.
|
| Whenever someone could be saved by a transplant they would
| find possible donors and send them a notification that one
| of their organs could save someone. Usually after a few
| weeks the potential donor would get notification that the
| person who needed the organ has died. During the time
| between those two notifications the dying person was said
| to have dibs on the organ.
|
| Occasionally someone would get a second notification about
| someone having dibs on another one of the organs while
| someone already had dibs on one of their organs. Again what
| usually is that those people would die soon and the person
| would go back to nobody having dibs on any of their organs.
|
| Sometimes though a person with people having dibs on two of
| their organs would get notified that a third person now had
| dibs on one of their organs. That was enough that the needs
| of the many thing kicked in and they were required to give
| up those organs, which would usually be fatal.
| tzs wrote:
| That Spock quote is from Star Trek II, _Wrath of Khan_.
| Later, in Star Trek IV, _The Voyage Home_ Chekov is in grave
| danger but to rescue him would put their mission at risk
| which would endanger many more people. This conversation
| occurs: UHURA'S VOICE They report
| his condition as critical; he is not expected to
| survive. BONES Jim, you've got to let
| me go in there! Don't leave him in the hands of
| Twentieth Century medicine. KIRK
| (already decided, but:) What do you think, Spock?
| SPOCK Admiral, may I suggest that Dr. McCoy is
| correct. We must help Chekov. KIRK
| (testing) Is that the logical thing to do,
| Spock...? SPOCK No, Admiral... But is
| the human thing to do. KIRK
| (takes a beat) Right.
| miltonlost wrote:
| Spock's entire character was the marriage of purely logical
| Vulcans and emotional humans and the necessity of having
| both. You fundamentally don't understand Star Trek's themes.
| jason-phillips wrote:
| > Maybe in culture it's ok to fight dirty and stretch some
| truths in order to force newer perspectives into the zeitgeist.
| Maybe it's even neccesary when the opposition is willing to lie
| outright, and loudly, as a first resort. But that doesn't work
| with science. Even if the motivations are pure, it's destined
| to backfire. It should backfire. Science itself is under
| assault and losing its ability to hold together some semblance
| of a shared reality.
|
| The number of times one contradicts oneself in just a few words
| here, with such a lack of self-awareness, is amazing.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| The magazine in question is a science-aligned publication.
| Given the current public discourse, it's no surprise that
| science-aligned opinions will be attacked. The current public
| discourse is (gleefully, tribalistically) misinformed,
| misguided, and hell-bent on social fragmentation.
|
| Watch the bonds between citizens and reality dissolve in real
| time.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > Watch the bonds between citizens and reality dissolve in
| real time.
|
| I've never thought our generations would need to fight this
| war again... Big brain and opposable thumbs are overrated.
| derbOac wrote:
| The problem, to me, is that today at least in the US there are
| a lot of areas where there are truths to criticisms, but then
| the response to it is gratuitous and equally problematic.
|
| This article struck me sort of similarly. Reason is an outlet I
| have a certain amount of respect for in general, but this
| article came across to me as more politically over the top in a
| way that the outgoing EIC's writing ever did. They would have
| done more good by simply highlighting the actual state of
| medical gender intervention research and leaving at that (it
| sounds like they have done this in fact, but they would have
| been better off as such). Even then it's complicated -- I have
| friends who work in the field, and when faced with things like
| the Cass report basically point out that evidence of
| intervention effect or absence of an effect isn't the same
| thing as what decision will reduce harm the most in individual
| cases, and there's a lot of misconceptions about what's
| actually involved in gender-focused interventions. What's lost
| in these discussions is that _medical care_ is not the same as
| _science_ per se, it 's about optimizing utility functions or
| something for individuals.
|
| At some level this sort of critique over the Scientific
| American editor covering political topics seems a little
| precious and disingenuous. As others have pointed out, science
| has and always will be political, whether people want to admit
| those leanings or not. Pretending that it's somehow "above"
| politics is disingenuous and narcissistic, and leads to exactly
| the sorts of problems the author claims to care about. These
| more political topics have also become mainstream in science in
| general, and it would be a bit weird for an EIC at someplace
| like Scientific American to just pretend the discussions aren't
| happening. Is she guilty of bad writing? Maybe, but it is meant
| to be a popular science publication, and rants like this hardly
| seem like an appropriate response to bad writing.
| orange_fritter wrote:
| > movement in this country that defines itself largely by
| opposing what its perceived enemies support
|
| I think that some of the more devious politicians realized that
| a "partitioning" of beliefs creates populations of in-groups
| and out-groups which are then manipulated against each other.
| Many "basic" facts are getting challenged just to create the
| controversy. Controversy reinforces tribalism, which in turn
| makes people more controllable.
| bapsfan wrote:
| If anyone is interested, there's some discussion of this piece on
| the subreddit of the Blocked and Reported podcast (which is co-
| hosted by Jesse Singal, the author of this article):
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/BlockedAndReported/comments/1gult0b...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/BlockedAndReported/comments/1gult0b...
| thrance wrote:
| But denial of evolution _is_ linked to white supremacy. A
| rejection of the biological links between white people and
| colored people helps to justify discrimination based on skin
| color. And non-believers in evolution often share other backwards
| views.
|
| As for the the bell curve, I'd encourage you to read her article
| first, befire forming an opinion from disingenuous caricature of
| what was said in it. She doesn't deny the usefulness of the
| concept, just points to some harmful and pseudoscientific ways it
| is/was used. Think phrenology for example.
|
| _Reason_ is a heavily biased right-wing website, as you can see
| on the articles on the front page. This doesn 't necessarily
| invalidate everything coming from them, but take it with a grain
| of salt at least, and go form your own opinion based on her
| articles, instead of the mockery they wrote to make a point about
| "the woke political agenda controlling academia".
| Clubber wrote:
| I've always understood denial of evolution's primary reason is
| that it contradicts scripture. I've never heard it associated
| with white supremacy until today.
|
| >But denial of evolution is linked to white supremacy. A
| rejection of the biological links between white people and
| colored people helps to justify discrimination based on skin
| color. And non-believers in evolution often share other
| backwards views.
|
| How do you know this?
| thrance wrote:
| Here is a link to an international meta-analysis that finds a
| link between disbelief in evolution and general bigotry:
| https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fpspi0000391
|
| White supremacy, at least in the United States, finds many of
| its members (not all, of course) in evangelical circles.
| llm_trw wrote:
| >But denial of evolution is linked to white supremacy.
|
| Acceptance of evolution also leads to white supremacy. One only
| need to read what Victorian Eugenicists had to say about
| colored people.
|
| So if both accepting and rejecting evolution are linked to
| white supremacy it stands to reason that neither is the causal
| factor.
| thrance wrote:
| Of course they are white supremacists that believe in
| evolution...
|
| Here is a big, international meta-analysis that finds a link
| between both views:
| https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fpspi0000391
| llm_trw wrote:
| What an odd study to support the idea of white sumrpemacy
| when 2/3rds of the population sampled isn't Western or
| white according to white supremacists.
| Levitz wrote:
| And the invention of the keyboard is linked to online bullying.
|
| There is a point in which the relation is so far-fetched and
| non-causal that it doesn't make any sense to mention it, and
| the link between evolution denial and white supremacy
| _absolutely_ crosses that line.
|
| White supremacy is also linked to the sun rising up each
| morning, detergent and open borders. None of them relevant.
| thrance wrote:
| I'll give you the link I gave the other:
| https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fpspi0000391
|
| This is a large meta-study finding a link between white
| supremacy and disbelief in evolution.
|
| The link isn't hard to see either, white supremacists are
| primarily found in qanon and other right wing conspiracy
| bubbles. They are more susceptible to believe in bullshit
| than tolerant people, like creationism.
| codocod wrote:
| Laura Helmuth has a history of unscientific advocacy. For
| instance last year she claimed there is a species of sparrow that
| has four sexes, which is complete nonsense.
|
| She was politely corrected on her misreading of the research by
| various scientists via Twitter, and instead of showing gratitude
| and humility to this sharing of knowledge and expertise, ended up
| just doubling down and blocking everyone who pointed out her
| misunderstanding.
|
| Hopefully Scientific American can employ an editor-in-chief with
| more of a commitment to and an interest in understanding and
| communicating scientific research.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| There are 2 sets of male-female pairs of the species which have
| different chromosomes. I am not sure what about her
| characterization is complete nonsense.
|
| https://www.audubon.org/news/the-fascinating-and-complicated...
| kgwgk wrote:
| In white-striped males, tan-striped males, white-striped
| females and tan-striped females a less enlightened person
| would see two sexes (male and female) and two color forms
| (white and tan).
|
| > It's almost as if the White-throated Sparrow has four
| sexes.
|
| Ok, whatever.
| codocod wrote:
| It is nonsense because four sexes would require four
| different gamete types.
|
| This species has two sexes and two different morphs for each
| sex, which also have different behavioral traits. Which the
| article you linked describes:
|
| "To oversimplify, we could call them super-aggressive males,
| more nurturing males, somewhat aggressive females, and super-
| nurturing females."
|
| Male and female. Two sexes.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| 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 species effectively has four
| sexes, wherein any individual can mate with only 1 /4 of
| the individuals in the population._"
|
| The actual sex chromosomes of the birds, and hence they're
| gametes, have significant differences between the two
| colours.
|
| You can quibble over if this technically fits the current
| definition, but the original characterization is pretty far
| from "complete nonsense".
|
| [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960
| 98221...
| kgwgk wrote:
| 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.
| anonfordays wrote:
| Almost made this exact comment! It's likely to be poorly
| received, but this is 100% inline with the aforementioned
| study.
| anonfordays wrote:
| >The actual sex chromosomes of the birds, and hence
| they're gametes, have significant differences between the
| two colours.
|
| This is an incorrect understanding of gametes and
| supergenes [0]. There are still only two gametes (only
| two sexes), but the two morphs (white and tan
| supergenes[0]) can only effectively reproduce with the
| same morph of the opposite sex (again, only two sexes,
| only two gametes between the four morphs). This means
| each morph only effectively breeds with 1/4 of the
| population, which gives the aberration of "four sexes",
| even though there is a small amount (around 1%) of cross-
| morph breeding.
|
| The claim that this species truly has four sexes (four
| gametes) is unscientific nonsense.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supergene
| jmull wrote:
| Popular science has always promulgated culture.
|
| If you're only complaining now, it's just because you don't like
| the culture SA is promulgating today.
|
| I don't disagree that SA has a lot of nonsense in it, but that's
| a long trailing symptom. We've been in a time for a while now
| where easily observable facts are untrue and manufactured
| fictions are true, as long as it follows a self-serving
| narrative.
|
| Helmuth became editor in chief of SA in 2020 -- well after
| reality stopped mattering pretty much anywhere.
|
| No doubt a publisher trying to keep a traditional publication
| afloat in the internet age noticed. (And no doubt the publisher
| has noticed it's now time to flip the politics the other way,
| hence Helmuth is out.)
| rbanffy wrote:
| It's interesting how we see positions we agree with as just
| common sense while the positions we strongly disagree with as
| "overtly political".
| toshredsyousay wrote:
| 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 politicized, but that
| doesn't mean you just don't report on the science in those areas.
| Almost everyone who thinks 'SA used to be good now it is woke'
| are either revealing they don't read it or just don't seem to
| like how the consensus in an area of research might now conflict
| with their worldview.
|
| They do have an opinion section, like many journalism outlets,
| which sort of by definition have to be 'hot takes' (e.g. you
| don't publish opinion pieces that 99% of people will already
| agree with). Out of thousands it is seems hard to avoid having
| some bad ones (all major outlets seem to have opinion pieces that
| are dumb). Most of the flack they get seems to be from these dumb
| pieces, and it is sad that the entire brand gets tarred with it.
| You could argue that SA just shouldn't have opinion pieces at
| all, but ultimately opinion pieces are pretty good at drawing
| readers and SA is not a non-profit. Additionally, while there are
| some that overstep the research and are 'click-baity', some
| opinion pieces are thought-provoking in a valuable way.
| Nonetheless, perhaps it would be better to get rid of the
| opinions just to avoid hurting the reputation of the rest of the
| magazine, but running a journalism magazine is a tough business
| and it is easy for commenters on the internet to pop in and say
| stuff like this who don't actually have to run a magazine. I
| would rather they exist with occasional bad opinion pieces than
| not exist at all, as their coverage in general is still great.
|
| This guy seems to really not like their coverage of science
| around gender non-conforming individuals, though I don't see why
| I should trust his representation of the research over theirs as
| he seems to have an agenda as well. He then cherry-picks a few
| examples of some bad opinion pieces not written by their
| journalists that overstepped the research and then paints the
| entire outlet with it, and that is frustrating because most of
| the science coverage reporting is still excellent.
| spamizbad wrote:
| 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.
| umanwizard wrote:
| 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.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Back in 2016 he wrote an article in The Cut titled "What's
| Missing From the Conversation About Transgender Kids."[1]
| (which, incidentally, has since been silently corrected by
| The Cut's editors). It draws some pretty major conclusions
| from a single study [2] where he seems to overlook some
| pretty glaring issues that contradict his conclusion. [3]
|
| Signal, to his credit, admits the error, although he goes
| on to argue it actually strengthens his argument (It does
| not IMO).
|
| [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20171202080010/https://www.
| thecu...
|
| [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23702447/
|
| [3] https://www.emilygorcenski.com/post/jesse-singal-got-
| more-wr... and https://emilygorcenski.com/post/jesse-
| singal-still-got-more-...
| Manuel_D wrote:
| You can read Singal's response to these criticisms here:
| https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/a-sorta-quick-
| response-to...
|
| The criticisms of Singal's piece are pretty weak, and
| often resort to refuting things he never actually wrote.
| He explicitly notes that data is sparse - this is one of
| the most controversial research subjects - but it does
| indeed suggest a desistance rate of 50-60% absent medical
| intervention. Contrast that with the common claim that
| desistance in gender dysphoric children _is a myth_ which
| is just totally contradicted by the available evidence.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| There's a list of resources critical of Jesse Singal here:
| https://www.patreon.com/posts/20353892
|
| (found via https://bsky.app/profile/quatoria.bsky.social/po
| st/3layjy6zb... )
|
| (Sharing because I've been trying to do my personal
| learning on this topic)
| zzzzi wrote:
| A lot of awful men on that list.
|
| Andrea James the obsessive stalker and harrasser, Julia
| Serrano the abusive misogynist who thinks lesbians should
| be shamed for not wanting dick, Ana Valens the creep who
| openly fantasizes about raping women in breeding farms.
|
| If these horrible males are angry at Singal then I can
| only assume he's doing something right.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > Singal has argued repeatedly that Zucker was fired
| without cause due to a witch hunt by trans activists
| (this will come up again)
|
| And Singal was right in that regard. Zucker was awarded
| over half a million dollars in a defamation suit:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Zucker#Settlement
| LanceH wrote:
| I know that I and many others switched to American Scientist
| years ago. SA has definitely gone downhill since the 80's. I
| would describe it as as bit softer/popular when I made the
| switch. I have no experience in the last few years.
| scarmig wrote:
| Looking at https://www.scientificamerican.com/ I see the
| following front page topics and articles:
|
| - Nutrition: It's Actually Healthier to Enjoy Holiday Foods
| without the Anxiety
|
| - Climate Change: Climate Change Is Altering Animals' Colors
|
| - Climate Change: An Off Day in Brooklyn--And on Uranus
|
| - Cats: Miaou! Curly Tails Give Cats an 'Accent'
|
| - Games: Spellement
|
| - Opinion: We Can Live without Fossil Fuels
|
| - Games: Science Jigsaw
|
| - Arts: Poem: 'The First Bite'
|
| Don't know if it's representative, but it doesn't surprise me
| at all and is exactly why I don't subscribe.
| Calavar wrote:
| The titles are clickbaity, but based on a quick skim of the
| content of those articles it doesn't feel too removed from
| reading the print issue ~15 years ago. Especially if you look
| at the featured articles from the most recent online issue
| [1]
|
| [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/issue/sa/2024/12-01/
| scarmig wrote:
| I grant that the horse one looks pretty solid and
| interesting.
|
| But it's the choice of topics. SciAm has an extremely
| narrow view of what science is worth publicizing, one that
| aligns very closely with online causes du jour. Looking at
| the recent technology topic articles, I see: AI causes
| e-waste; turning a car into a guitar; AI uses too much
| water; misinformation is an epidemic; voting is secure;
| zoetropes; another e-waste story; UN should study effects
| of nuclear war; bird going extinct; another misinformation
| story; AI and fungus; AI and (yet again) misinformation.
|
| I guess there's a market for this stuff, but I'm not in it.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The downhill slide was already underway by the 1990s.
| Readership was in a slow decline and the publishers turned to
| various marketing gimmicks to maintain solvency. More pictorial
| articles, more po-sci articles, cover wrappers suggesting that
| it was worth subscribing even if you didn't read the whole
| magazine etc. I stopped reading around 2000, when I bought an
| issue and noticed I had read the whole thing in under 4 hours
| rather than the usual 5-6. A comparison indicated they had
| changed the font size and line spacing slightly, so as to
| maintain the same page count but with about 15% less content.
| mcswell wrote:
| I distinctly remember an article in the late 1990s (guessing
| 1998) which I read, but which I now can't find. It was about
| Y2K, and the bottom line was, we need more work to prevent
| disaster, but no matter how much is done, it will still be
| pretty awful.
|
| I thought at the time he was exaggerating, and that Y2K was
| unlikely to be a big event. As everyone knows, a lot was done
| to fix the problem, and January 1, 2000 indeed turned out to
| be a non-event.
|
| I cannot find the article now. I know I didn't dream it up,
| and I'm pretty certain it was in SciAm--I remember it had the
| usual sorts of graphs, illustrations, layout etc. as all
| SciAm articles did back then. If anyone can find it, I'd
| appreciate knowing. It was a turning point in my own reading
| of SciAm--I mostly gave it up after that, despite having
| devoured it up until 1980 or so.
| tlogan wrote:
| 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, rather than an evidence-
| based pursuit of truth).
| wolfram74 wrote:
| We have such low standards for republicans, it's amazing. We
| complain that democrats are increasingly acknowleding that
| science is done by humans and humans will tend to ask questions
| based on what phenomena they've encountered and what
| explanations they've been given in their lives up til then, but
| totally give the republicans a pass on catering to groups that
| deny global warming, evolution or even that the world is more
| than 6000 years old.
| Philorandroid wrote:
| 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.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| 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.
| Philorandroid wrote:
| 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...
| pfdietz wrote:
| > biological denialism
|
| What is this? I would have thought that the idea that
| some people who are outwardly one sex have brain wiring
| for the other sex is quite plausible. Development is very
| messy.
| exoverito wrote:
| The significant increase in non-binary gender identity
| and rapid onset gender dysphoria suggests there's a
| cultural factor at work. A 2021 systematic review found
| mixed results for transgender brain structures mirroring
| their self-identified sex, with most neuroanatomical
| measures mapping to their birth sex.
|
| Though I agree with you that development is messy. We
| should be much more concerned about exposing children to
| endocrine disruptors, micro-plastics, and bizarre social
| dogmas.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > a cultural factor at work
|
| For example, recognition of the existence of the syndrome
| and reduction in social stigma. Kind of like how the rate
| of homosexuality increases when you stop subjecting them
| to vivisection.
| the_why_of_y wrote:
| For historical precendent, rate of people in US
| identifying as left-handed went from 4% in 1900 to 12% in
| 1950, and remained constant since then.
|
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FChMzOFVkAAKsgp?format=jpg
| pfdietz wrote:
| Nice example.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| Where is your worldview on ROGD coming from?
|
| It's been a rather contentious topic, and sciam has even
| written about some of the issues:
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evidence-
| undermin... ( https://archive.ph/N1nAR )
|
| "The American Psychological Association and 61 other
| health care providers' organizations signed a letter in
| 2021 denouncing the validity of rapid-onset gender
| dysphoria (ROGD) as a clinical diagnosis" ->
| https://www.caaps.co/rogd-statement
| blueflow wrote:
| I do not believe a being could tell if it has a male or
| female wired brain without relying on some fictitious
| tropes (or call it stereotypes) about manliness or
| femininity. This is a constructivistic/social phenomenon.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| I don't think I've ever seen anyone deny the plausibility
| of the brain being wired differently than the body. What
| I believe the poster is referring to, and which I've seen
| in the media many times, is denial that physiological
| sex-linked characteristics are fully expressed even if
| doesn't match the one the brain is wired for. If brain
| wiring can mismatch physiology, it demonstrably is not
| determinative of the biology the brain is attached to in
| any meaningful way.
|
| I understand the motivation for this denialism: most
| social institutions that segregate by sex are motivated
| by the practical effects of physiological sex-linked
| characteristics, brain wiring isn't a relevant criterion
| for determining "sex" for these purposes. It is currently
| impossible for the physiology to match the brain wiring
| in such case as a matter of science. Since the social
| institutions around sex segregation are widely viewed to
| exist for good reason, it motivates denial that
| physiological sex-linked characteristics actually exist
| for people that want to be segregated according to their
| brain-wiring sex.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| It is very common for left-leaning figures in the US to
| deny that trans women and girls possess any advantage
| over cis females in sports. In reality trans women still
| possess greater bone density, higher average height,
| higher red blood cell concentrations, higher VO2 max,
| more fast-twitch muscle fiber and more.
| BadHumans wrote:
| I think it is fair to say that through the nomination
| process, whoever is voted to run as the Republican nominee
| for president is considered to be the best representative
| for the party. Looking at the president-elect and all of
| the leaders of the party, saying they have "fringe beliefs
| in some cases" is severely downplaying it.
| Philorandroid wrote:
| That's a naive way to see it. People vote _against_ the
| other candidate, against what they fear is worse. And, if
| the theory that the frontrunner is the best
| representation of the party holds true, it speaks quite
| poorly for the Democrats appointing Harris despite Biden
| winning the vote of his party, no?
|
| And, again, tu quoque; even if the GOP was exhaustively
| comprised of reality-evading lunatics, voters and all, it
| wouldn't excuse stooping to their level -- the DNC's
| _explicit_ support of racial identitarianism, benevolent
| racism, and biological denialism run in direct opposition
| to this supposed moral high ground they tacitly hold.
| BadHumans wrote:
| > it speaks quite poorly for the Democrats appointing
| Harris despite Biden winning the vote of his party, no?
|
| Yes it does. I agree fully.
|
| > the DNC's _explicit_ support of racial identitarianism,
| benevolent racism, and biological denialism run in direct
| opposition to this supposed moral high ground they
| tacitly hold.
|
| I don't think benevolent racism means what you think it
| means and no one is denying biology. Trans people aren't
| even denying biology. I would suggest you actually speak
| to a few trans people in real life.
| bongoman42 wrote:
| umm.. Scientific American said that differences in
| athletic ability of men and women are not based in
| Biology.
| BadHumans wrote:
| I am definitely not the person to write a dissertation in
| support of trans people but the logic being used as I
| understand it is that male and female are not the same as
| man and woman. Whether I or anyone else agree with that
| is up in the air.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > I think it is fair to say that through the nomination
| process, whoever is voted to run as the Republican
| nominee for president is considered to be the best
| representative for the party.
|
| It is not fair to say that at all. The primary system is
| highly undemocratic, and what's more, the people who
| participate in it aren't statistically representative of
| Republican voters as a whole.
| BadHumans wrote:
| Even if you are voting against someone, the person who
| you voting for is the person you find the most palatable
| of the options presented. I also don't think you can look
| at the de-facto leader of the party and say "in some
| cases" as if the president isn't a big case.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _Democrats ' mainstream acceptance of beliefs that the
| scientific method doesn't accurately reflect reality_
|
| No such belief exists. Recognizing the existence of bias in
| a science (with biased input data having detrimental
| effects on the reliability of the results) or observing the
| existence of methodological shortcomings is not the same as
| repudiating the method.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Nobody was talking about Republicans in this thread until you
| brought them up.
|
| Criticizing Democrats doesn't necessarily mean one likes
| Republicans. The two poles of the idiosyncratic US political
| system aren't the only ideologies or worldviews that exist.
| felixgallo wrote:
| What in the holy hell are you talking about? Are you really
| saying But it's the Democrats that reject science and reason?
| smaudet wrote:
| Filter bubbles are real. If you spend your time watching (low
| quality) videos with a bent (anti-feminist/transgender, e.g.)
| you begin to believe that is the majority discourse.
|
| Its similar to homophobia - a small (tiny) portion of the
| population expresses "nominal" preference towards
| homosexuality, however, there is an outsized fear among those
| who feel threatened by the concept...
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| Well your argument holds all the same should you replace
| "anti-" with "pro-" etc.
| Philorandroid wrote:
| Unequivocally. Remember that the parties aren't diametric
| opposites, and are capable of evading reality simultaneously.
| tlogan wrote:
| Yes, a portion of Democratic Party leadership has appeared to
| move away from science and reason in some cases.
|
| One example that frustrated me as a taxpayer and parent with
| kids in school: here in California, it was Democratic
| policymakers who removed Algebra from high school curricula,
| arguing that it would help address disparities among minority
| students.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| This is a pedagogy and social policy decision, not a
| scientific one. You can disagree with it, but it isn't like
| we have scientific research that incontrovertibly provides
| education policy recommendations to address social
| disparities.
|
| Changing math curricula isn't denying math and reason
| itself.
| NeutralCrane wrote:
| How about insisting that puberty blockers are an
| effective treatment for gender dysphoria despite
| international reviews that fail to show a benefit? [0]
| And despite virtually every other first world nation no
| longer recommending the treatment? And refusing to
| publish NIH funded studies on puberty blockers when they
| fail to show they effectiveness you thought they would?
| Does that count as denying science and reason?
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/13/health/hilary-
| cass-transg...
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/science/puberty-
| blockers-...
| felixgallo wrote:
| There is definitely a small Faction of left wingers with
| unusual ideas. Generalizing that To a broader conclusion
| about democrats is wild.
| blackguardx wrote:
| I don't think high school math is on the Democratic party
| platform in California. In any case, no one was advocating
| cutting out Algebra. The debate was about moving Algebra I
| from middle school to High School and removing Calculus
| from High School. I think delaying Algebra for all students
| is probably a bad idea. Removing Calculus from high school
| only makes sense if they replace it with something like
| Statistics.
| jellicle wrote:
| The California school curriculum includes and has always
| included algebra.
| thrance wrote:
| Don't worry, you won't have to worry about what they teach
| your children in school anymore - Republicans are going to
| destroy the department of education.
| exoverito wrote:
| Can you tell me what the Department of Education has
| measurably accomplished since its establishment in 1979?
| Inflation adjusted spending per student has increased by
| about 3X since then, and test scores have not improved,
| even falling in recent years. Financial aid for college
| has perversely led to vastly overinflated tuitions, while
| subsidizing many useless degrees.
|
| These problems are not a simple matter of funding. One
| need only at California's High Speed Rail project. Costs
| have soared from early estimates of $15B to now more than
| $130B+, despite almost no track being laid over the last
| 15 years. This is in a one party state with complete
| Democrat control, so you can't blame Republicans.
|
| Bureaucratic mismanagement and inefficiency are the
| overwhelming problems now.
| thrance wrote:
| I'm not even American, but if you think you can simply
| cut a budget to solve your problems, you're delusional.
| Americans are on average much more educated and skilled
| (in the labor market) than in 1979, obviously.
|
| In my country, most colleges are state owned and free, I
| had an engineering degree for EUR600 per year.
| Skyrocketing tuitions in America is purely a result of
| profiteering, largely enabled by the republicans and not
| kept in check by the weak democrats.
|
| But if you still think gutting your public services will
| improve anything, just look at what austerity did to the
| UK.
| kenjackson wrote:
| Can you point me to the high school where Algebra was
| removed? I know they were doing work on when to introduce
| Algebra I, but I've never seen any mention of the class
| being fully removed from a high school.
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| https://freedompact.co.uk/podcast/128-dr-gad-saad-the-war-
| on...
|
| "Professor Saad's latest book The Parasitic Mind: how
| infectious ideas are killing common sense takes a wonderful
| look at some of the ideas which are so prominent in society
| today. We discuss the granddaddy of 'idea pathogens' as Gad
| calls it Postmodernism, we discuss the fear of biology, ...,
| the war on science, truth and reason that we all have a stake
| in and much, much more."
| dekhn wrote:
| A subset of the progressive wing stretches science to meet
| its ideology. One of the opeds in SciAm is a good example of
| that. Centrists (both liberal and conservative) tend to be a
| bit more grounded in direct reality.
| smaudet wrote:
| I agree that postmodernism, or at least your definition of it,
| is so much nonsense (in the realm of hard sciences, at least -
| soft science unfortunately does suffer from human contextual
| bias issues).
|
| I don't read SciAm (maybe that's an issue), but I'm a bit
| suspicious that this could be a political hit piece.
|
| That being said, if any of the claims in the article are true
| (e.g. calling statistic normal distribution curves an affront
| to humanity), that would indeed be a travesty (that such makes
| it through editing).
|
| I think a less impassioned, more objective take would _also_
| present e.g. the number of times a needlessly conservatively
| minded piece made it through editing.
|
| I.e. is it that SciAm is suddenly biased unscientific drivel or
| is it that society representatively has become more extreme?
| kmeisthax wrote:
| >but I'm a bit suspicious that this could be a political hit
| piece.
|
| Reason is right-libertarian and has to occasionally shoot at
| least a few bullets in the direction of the opposing front on
| the culture war lest the conservative barrier troops[0] shoot
| them. Likewise there's a lot of right-wing authoritarians who
| try fishing for new suckers in the right-libertarian pool.
| This weird interplay between libertarians and authoritarians
| on the right side of the political compass has been a thing
| since at least when capital-L libertarian figures were
| talking about "paleoconservatives" and Ron Paul was paying
| ghostwriters to write all those hilariously racist
| newsletters back in the 90s.
|
| [0] Barrier troops are soldiers in an army whose job it is to
| shoot at their own deserters.
| mindslight wrote:
| As a libertarian whose thinking has gone through the whole
| spectrum of left-right and back again, the fundamental
| problem is that [pure] right libertarianism is inherently
| contradictory, despite its simplicity making it extremely
| attractive. A core principle of rightist thinking is an
| assumption that there is some bedrock of moral axioms, and
| as long as we follow them then the resulting situations
| must also be morally right by construction. This directly
| clashes with Godel's famous results in logic, which show
| that complexity itself creates new logical contradictions.
| Rightest libertarians (eg the bulk of the Libertarian
| party, Constitutional fundamentalists, etc) are still
| running off the failed ideas from the 1910's that produced
| efforts like the _Principia Mathematica_.
|
| The way I've come to see it, left and right essentially
| correspond to two modes of reasoning, inductive versus
| deductive - _they are both required_ to get anywhere
| worthwhile. The current highly divisive political
| environment is essentially making everybody think with only
| half their brains. This is both lucrative (it feels good to
| have lazy answers validated rather than criticized), as
| well as disempowering (it keeps individuals from agreeing
| on substantive political opposition to ever-growing
| corporate authoritarianism).
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Postmodernism has a bit of relevance for hard sciences,
| because relativity is known to be counterintuitive, and as a
| consequence theories will have absolutist bias. Consider
| Roger Penrose's Andromeda argument, where he tries to reason
| about synchronism in the context of special theory of
| relativity, but ends up assuming Galilean absolute
| synchronism, because Lorentz synchronism is counterintuitive.
| smaudet wrote:
| 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 biases, aka through the scientific method.
|
| Rejecting the scientific method completely because humans
| are involved at any step, is a form of absurd-ism, yes, we
| are not perfect, but our methods are a lot better than a)
| nothing b) your choice to reject hard science because it
| doesn't match your personal belief (hard bias).
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| 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 president he had all
| the resources in the world to investigate it, had a personal
| reason to identify it, had the duty as president to root it
| out. He formed a commission ... and nothing. Was was because he
| was negligent in his duties, tried but was incompetent, or was
| simply lying?)
| NeutralCrane wrote:
| > 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-...
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Were you to read the comments of that article about the
| unpublished research, You could see that many people who I
| am sure identify as liberals agree that the scientists took
| the wrong action.
|
| Though I admit that I _understand_ why a researcher would
| hesitate, knowing that bigoted politicians and Evangelicals
| would use it as a cudgel against trans rights and trans
| people themselves.
| thefaux wrote:
| The science of puberty blockers is clear to me: they
| prevent the unwanted development of secondary sex
| characteristics in adolescents and have a number of side
| effects that may or may not be tolerable for any particular
| individual.
|
| What would you suggest is the proper treatment for trans
| children suffering gender dysphoria if they are denied
| puberty blockers and/or hormone replacement therapy? Do you
| think that forcing them to develop unwanted secondary sex
| characteristics is going to reduce their dysphoria? Do you
| think that you should be responsible for telling another a
| parent what they should or should not allow their child to
| do? By what criteria should you or the state be able to
| overrule a parent? Should a child be allowed any agency at
| all over their own body? And if not children, should
| adults?
|
| I don't think that science can even begin to answer these
| questions and that it is a red herring to frame this debate
| in utilitarian scientific terms (e.g. science shows that
| puberty blockers don't statistically improve mental health
| and therefore should be banned). With this kind of science,
| we lose the unique individual human being which for me is
| the loss of everything that truly matters.
| aorn wrote:
| Many adults desist and detransition so why wouldn't
| children, if left to develop normally? The problem with
| blocking these dysphoric childrens' puberty, putting them
| on cross-sex hormones and, in some cases, surgically
| removing body parts, is that they're never given a chance
| to explore how they would feel as fully developed adults.
|
| Even referring to them as "trans children" comes with the
| assumption that this is some inherent and unchanging
| quality rather than a temporary state. Why assume this
| without evidence?
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| It's reasonable to criticize people that take the ideas and
| concepts from postmodernism too far into nonsensical corners.
|
| But postmodernism, as a philosophical and larger
| historical/analytical approach, is not some evil boogieman.
| Lots of things have been done based on purported science
| knowledge that was, with historical context and with a proper
| critical eye, complete nonsense at best, and evil at worst. It
| was quite easy to make phrenology _look like_ science.
| Postmodernism studies _how_ it is possible to make something
| _look like_ science. It 's a complicated topic with
| consequences for the framing and development of scientific
| knowledge. There's no reason to discredit scientific endeavor
| in totality because of that though, and, to be honest, those
| people are far more fringe in academia, for instance, than
| people realize. And just as well, properly framed, there is no
| reason to wholesale discredit the critiques made by
| postmodernism of the uses and abuses of scientific knowledge by
| scientific institutions, governments, individuals, and the ways
| that arose out of culture and historical context.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| 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 inherently objective process that produced
| universal truths, then why do we have persistent and ongoing
| replication crisises in multiple scientific disciplines? Our
| answer has to come from postmodernism: the current scientific
| establishment values the production of papers as a way to fill
| magazines, and people with agendas to push (e.g. the American
| sugar lobby) will fund the production of scientific papers that
| produce the answer they want. If that makes sense to you, then
| you're a postmodernist.
| Aunche wrote:
| 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.
| pinecamp wrote:
| 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?
| malwrar wrote:
| 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.
| pinecamp wrote:
| 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 from history and culture.
| malwrar wrote:
| > 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.
| drawkward wrote:
| Now talk about the crowd size at Trump's first inauguration,
| and the birth of the term "alternative facts".
| thrance wrote:
| Let's be real here, if there's one side that has an anti-
| science stance it's the republicans. They are pandering to
| (when they are not themselves) climate change deniers,
| evolution deniers, flat earthers, qanons... Those people don't
| vote democrat.
|
| As for postmodernism, it is far from mainstream in academia,
| and you seem to have a very narrow idea of what it is. I can
| only recommend the following video (by an actual scientist!):
| https://youtu.be/ESEFUaEA7kk
| miltonlost wrote:
| ??? Postmodernism does not deny the Germ Theory of Disease or
| Newtonian physics. You have some very flawed, Jordan Peterson-
| tainted ideas of what Postmodern theory is, especially in
| regard to physical sciences.
|
| Sure, social sciences like anthropology and economics in which
| human actors are in play will have their "objectivity"
| challenged.
| 65 wrote:
| I wouldn't describe it as "pro-Democrat" - that would imply it
| embraces the Democrat governing agenda. For example, embracing
| more federal power compared to the Republican ideology of more
| state power. Which has nothing to do with science.
|
| It's more so caught up in the liberal cultural agenda. Which
| Democrats align with. A square is a rectangle but a rectangle
| is not always a square.
|
| I think _both_ conservatives and liberals have turned to
| postmodernist questioning of science. Just as conservatives
| question climate change science, liberals question biological
| sex science.
|
| Both are detriments to society and show how we're not exactly
| moving forward culturally. But it seems the liberals, who tend
| to embrace a panpolitical ideology (where everything is
| political) are actively hurting established science. Thus
| Scientific American would be a much more useful and enduring
| resource - especially in the social media age - if it kept to
| science and didn't cross into politics.
| kenjackson wrote:
| The modern Democratic party doesn't believe that. Sure, there
| are movements in the party that probably believe that, but it's
| very much a minority view. Lets avoid trying to frame minority
| or fringe views as the mainline belief of either party.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| I read Scientific American from time to time. It's not what the
| Reason author claims it is. It's a popular, non-specialist
| science magazine that reaches out to the public (mostly through
| Dentist's office waiting rooms). It's OK for it to have a
| political point of view.
|
| I see this a lot lately. Someone takes issue with something(s) in
| a magazine or journal and tries to burn them to a crisp because
| of it. Even on here, folks periodically roast Quanta magazine for
| something that's not exactly right from a subject matter expert
| perspective. It's a perfectly good magazine, also for the general
| public (perhaps a little more high-brow than Sci-Am).
|
| The Reason article takes a very rigid and persnickety point of
| view, which is common in libertarian arguments. It's like the
| kind of rhetoric you hear from insufferable debate-club
| enthusiasts in high-school and college.
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| > It's not what the Reason author claims it is.
|
| The article literally describes Scientific American as "the
| leading popular science magazine". What exactly did the author
| mis-claim?
|
| > It's OK for it to have a political point of view.
|
| Not if that political point of view is anti-science, as others
| have elsewhere described in this comment page (post-modernism).
|
| > The Reason article takes a very rigid and persnickety point
| of view, which is common in libertarian arguments.
|
| I'm not a libertarian, But I also have no idea what you're
| talking about with the "rigid" and "persnickety" descriptions.
|
| > It's like the kind of rhetoric you hear from insufferable
| debate-club enthusiasts in high-school and college.
|
| I think it's a real problem when a popular science magazine
| doesn't just get the detailed facts wrong, but takes on a point
| of view that is hostile to objective scientific inquiry in
| general, and also attempts to inject poisonous identity
| politics into subjects as banal as the normal distribution or
| Star Wars.
| nyeah wrote:
| I agree. You're right.
|
| On science reporting, Scientific American has been on par with
| Wired or Technology Review for more than a decade. SciAm wasn't
| mutated/destroyed by a few recent opinion pieces. (Whether
| those pieces were unhinged or not. I can't force myself to go
| and check, because see above.)
| krunck wrote:
| I wish my dentist had Sci-Am in the waiting room.
|
| But seriously, those rants quoted in the article about normal
| distributions and the use of the acronym "JEDI" are really,
| really, pathetic. A science magazine needs to be science first
| and politics second. Anyone who wants to reverse that should
| work for a different rag.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| I mean, the normal distribution point is fairly compelling.
|
| If you actually read the piece, it's pretty clear that
| modeling medicine/health with a normal distribution is
| generally not great. It's not complaining about normal
| distributions, it's complaining about their application in
| health sciences.
|
| And in that context... it's a compelling and reasonable
| argument, and a lot of negative health outcomes result from
| applying "average" results to a specific person.
|
| I mean, the US Air Force figured this out 80 years ago...
|
| https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/when-u-s-air-force-
| disc...
|
| ---
|
| No comment on the "JEDI" thing. I haven't read the article so
| no idea if it's as unreasonable as it sounds.
|
| I would suggest that this piece as written by Reason is
| ultimately garbage, though. Which should surprise very few
| folks.
| andrepd wrote:
| It's not even what's "published in the magazine" as such, they
| take issue with _opinion pieces_ saying stuff like "the
| complicated legacy of E.O. Wilson". It's news to me that
| disagreeing with part of the work of someone in behavioural
| psychology (of all things) is "setting aflame the edifice of
| science", but here we are...
| kgwgk wrote:
| The instructions for _opinion and analysis articles_ used to
| say:
|
| "We look for fact-based arguments. Therefore, if you are
| making scientific claims--aside from those that are
| essentially universally accepted (e.g., evolution by natural
| selection explains the diversity of life on Earth; vaccines
| do not cause autism; the Earth is about 93 million miles from
| the Sun) we ask you to link to original scientific research
| in reputable journals or assertions from reputable science-
| oriented institutions. Using secondary sources such as news
| reports or advocacy organizations that do not do actual
| research is not sufficient."
|
| Now it says just "You should back up claims with evidence."
| but _opinion_ doesn't mean _anything goes_.
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/page/submission-
| instructi...
| alistairSH wrote:
| Does the author not understand the concept of "opinion piece"?
| Every "article" he takes issue with is NOT a scientific article,
| but an opinion piece.
| philipov wrote:
| A lot of people really _don 't_ understand the difference
| between science and opinion, and that's exactly what's gotten
| us into the trouble we're in today.
| trosi wrote:
| If you include enough opinion pieces on highly controversial
| subjects and always from the same perspective your readers will
| start noticing. Just because they are opinions it doesn't mean
| that people can't deem them ridiculous.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Sure, but the author gave us two examples over how many
| issues? He didn't come remotely close to making his point.
| :shrug:
| Cpoll wrote:
| In a different context, HN tends to have the same feelings
| about Scientific American, see:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29741171
|
| I think there's an argument to be made that _Scientific_
| American shouldn 't have opinion pieces that readers will
| misinterpret as scientific fact.
| crackercrews wrote:
| Especially when some other outlet reports "Scientific
| American says XYZ". Readers will absolutely treat this as if
| there are scientific underpinnings. They will give it more
| credence than a regular opinion piece. The vast majority of
| them will never know it was even an opinion piece in the
| first place.
|
| I would guess that if you asked 100 random people who had
| heard of Scientific American, many/most would say that SA
| publishes science and has no Opinion section. Before this
| dustup, I would have been in that camp.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| Do you not understand the opinion pieces are part of the
| problem too ?
| someuser2345 wrote:
| Scientific American isn't a social media platform; by
| publishing these opinion pieces, they implicitly support them.
| Would you be ok if they published an opinion piece bashing
| evolution and defending creationism?
| crackercrews wrote:
| > by publishing these opinion pieces, they implicitly support
| them
|
| This would seem to be true if they tend to run opinion pieces
| that are all from one "side". If they ran pieces that espouse
| conflicting viewpoints, it would not imply that they support
| all of the opinion pieces they publish.
|
| From the look of it, they stick to one team. They wouldn't be
| taking this heat if they had a broader diversity of thought.
| philipov wrote:
| Depends on what you consider diversity of thought. "Bashing
| evolution" is not diversity of thought, it is crackpottery.
| Diversity of thought exists in opinions about, e.g. what
| evolutionary mechanisms are most important, how to
| interpret old evidence, what are the best opportunities for
| new research... A Creationist will look at that and call it
| "all one team" because none of them believe the universe is
| only 5000 years old, but that's nonsense. It's important to
| keep an open mind, _but not so open your brain falls out_.
| alistairSH wrote:
| I expect them to publish op/ed pieces they believe their
| subscribers will find interesting. As long as they're clearer
| labeled as opinion, what's the problem? Op/ed pieces have
| been part of journalism pretty much forever.
| smt88 wrote:
| Major news orgs publish op-eds they disagree with all the
| time. They label them as opinion.
|
| It's actually unfortunate if publications decide only to
| publish things they agree with because that fails to
| acknowledge they could be wrong.
|
| Evolution and creationism are settled wars (as far as science
| is concerned) and wouldn't be interesting to readers. It
| would be interesting to read a serious assessment of, say,
| the Covid lab leak theory.
| lukas099 wrote:
| > by publishing these opinion pieces, they implicitly support
| them.
|
| Not at all. Especially if the articles are from guest writers
| and not the typical editors.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| So?
|
| Should it be impossible to have a rigorous scientific method
| for reporting and peer review in the news section, while
| advocating for certain actions or perspectives in the opinion
| page?
|
| If someone sends me a Wall Street Journal news article that
| reports on facts, I can trust it, even if their opinion page
| is intellectually bankrupt.
| mudil wrote:
| Opinion pieces in scientific magazine should be based on the
| facts, and not just on opinions.
| bithead wrote:
| "In the process, SciAm played a small but important role in the
| self-immolation of scientific authority--a terrible event whose
| fallout we'll be living with for a long time."
|
| Which is it - small or important? All that seems like a bit much.
| vonneumannstan wrote:
| For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the
| horse was lost. For want of a horse the rider was lost. For
| want of a rider the message was lost. For want of a message the
| battle was lost. For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
|
| Was the nail small or important?
| iwontberude wrote:
| Why does a person want a nail and then lose a shoe? Why does
| a person want a shoe and then lose a horse? Why does a person
| want a message but lose the rider? Why does a person want a
| message and lose the battle? Why does a person want a battle
| but lose the kingdom?
|
| I don't understand the point or reference being made.
| throwaway0123_5 wrote:
| They're talking about a horseshoe on a horse which was
| being used to deliver an important message
| iwontberude wrote:
| There are too many leaps of abstraction, which to me,
| proves the missing horseshoe nail is irrelevant in the
| big picture. Too many other things could have transpired
| positively for the kingdom in a space so expansive. It's
| classic scapegoating. "Bro my controller totally didn't
| work that time! We would've won the match otherwise I
| promise."
| throwaway0123_5 wrote:
| Tbh it seems entirely plausible to me that a messenger
| being unable to deliver an important message could have
| an outsized effect on that outcome of a battle. What if
| they're letting their side know about a surprise attack?
| alwa wrote:
| Seems also plausible that risks might apply to the
| messenger that wouldn't apply to the troops in garrison--
| that is, the thousands of other horseshoe nails in
| inventory could have gone unmissed or doomed a less
| important horse.
| vonneumannstan wrote:
| It's an ancient proverb demonstrating early understanding
| of complex systems. Not an in depth philosophical
| argument.
|
| However there are plenty of real life examples of a
| single small detail causing outsize impact. See:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Airlines_Flight_261
|
| It's kind of absurd to think otherwise.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| A more robust treatment of risk factors in both ideas.
|
| You want to ask whether the system needs to be tracking
| nail quality if the kingdom relies on nails that much.
| You _also_ want to be asking why critical information is
| being sent by only one messenger.
| derektank wrote:
| "For want of" is a preposition meaning "because of the
| absence of"
|
| https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/for_want_of#English
| Swizec wrote:
| "for want of" in this context means "because of not having"
| or "for lack of"
|
| It's an older way of writing English. But not like super
| old. Basically the kingdom was lost because of 1 missing
| nail.
| iwontberude wrote:
| It's so contrived and yet needs so many leaps of
| abstraction that I don't think it makes its point well at
| all. "Bro my controller totally didn't work that time! We
| would've won the match otherwise I promise." Do you
| really think it was the controller that lost the match?
| jamessb wrote:
| It is a well-known proverb that is centuries old [1]:
| it's essentially a canonical way of refering to the
| concept of something small having big consequences.
|
| Proverbs are often contrived (e.g., "Those who live in
| glass houses should not throw stones" - who lives in a
| glass house?).
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Want_of_a_Nail
| bee_rider wrote:
| If a tiny problem can cascade like that, it seems that
| there's a systemic logistics issue going on here, the problem
| wasn't the nail it was some high-level problem in the overall
| organization.
|
| One nail is small and unimportant but the general problem of
| getting enough nails is a big important one.
|
| And anyway, the messenger also could have been shot, the
| horse could also have tripped on a rock, the battle could
| have been lost even with the message getting through. If
| their plan hinges on everything going right, the kingdom has
| put themselves in a position where they don't have any small
| problems, just big ones.
| SolarNet wrote:
| I think the argument the poster is making is as root cause
| analysis.
|
| The root cause of the messenger failing was the missing
| nail. Sure it _could_ have been many other things, but in
| this case it was the nail. And if it was a pitched battle
| that was narrowly lost by one message, sure, they could
| have won or lost because of a dozen other factors, but in
| this case it was the missing message. There are likely many
| other important things to worry about, but in the system as
| it is today, it failed for want of a nail.
|
| Plenty of large engineering outages were because of single
| keystroke typos. Should these systems be less prone to
| human error? Of course. Are they? Some of them are, but
| right now some of them aren't.
|
| The point being made is that small things _can_ be
| important if other things go wrong. We should fix the other
| things, but often they are much harder to fix than the
| small thing. And really, we should care about both, since
| humans are capable of that.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| If you look at the problem as a swiss cheese model and
| not just a teleological propagation from one root cause,
| then there are many things that need fixing, not just a
| cobbler being short one nail.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| You can't really blame one magazine going lame on the
| whole culture going bad, yet there is a way that's
| contagious.
|
| Maybe it's like cheese because culture goes bad the way
| cheese goes bad?
| dgfitz wrote:
| This is a very well thought-out comment. I commend you
| for it.
|
| Sometimes the problem really is tiny. Ill look for the
| link, but I read an article about how Valve, the company,
| was saved by an intern.
|
| I think details matter.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| See https://80.lv/articles/valve-steam-the-entire-pc-
| gaming-indu...
| matwood wrote:
| > I think details matter
|
| For me, this is the moral of horseshoe nail story. It's
| something I preach to my team - details matter. I'll add
| that unfortunately we often don't know which details will
| matter ahead of time.
| EasyMark wrote:
| It was a data point not a horse shoe in a critical chain of
| events. I think people will get a taste of promoting
| "alternative facts"when it comes to the current "let's hit
| the reset button" crowd. then they will regret it and maybe
| reassess "alternative facts" like government grand schemes to
| create autism with vaccines and "make America fat" like are
| being touted. Most Americans need to only look in the mirror
| to see the source of their life's problems.
| mrkeen wrote:
| That's "systemic" thinking (a la "systemic" racism). Which
| makes it political. TFA would have us avoid such thinking.
| knowitnone wrote:
| you can be small role yet still provide significant
| contributions. Or are you just upset about the content of the
| article?
| genewitch wrote:
| have you ever heard of a lynchpin? They're small and usually
| extremely important. For example, lynchpins hold the backhoe on
| to the back of my tractor.
|
| In fact, lynchpins are so small and important that the term is
| used when there's something that is small but so important that
| missing it would ruin a project, because the lynchpin ties it
| all together into a cohesive whole.
|
| Also the replies to my sibling have me confused if i am even
| awake... who hasn't heard "for want of a nail"?
| squigz wrote:
| What a strange bit of pedantry. 'Small but powerful' is a very
| common phrase that I don't really see any problem with.
| Bhilai wrote:
| 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.
| FredPret wrote:
| Joe Rogan is a bro that has long conversations with interesting
| people. He doesn't claim to be an arbiter of The Truth.
|
| The media, including Scientific American, claim a certain kind
| of moral authority and tell us that they have a unique ability
| to tell us what The Truth is. The WSJ sits on a tiny atoll of
| centre and centre-right thinking in an ocean of left-wing
| journalism.
| Bhilai wrote:
| SciAm is allowed to be wrong and is allowed to be opinionated
| as well. The Bro however pretends to ignore proven science in
| order to have "interesting conversations." The dissonance
| here is astounding.
| FredPret wrote:
| The Bro owes us nothing because he claims no pedestal. He
| doesn't call himself the Bro Of Record. He just wants an
| entertaining podcast. It's explicitly labeled
| entertainment.
|
| But SciAm, and the news, wear a mask of super-serious
| objectivity and bravely searching for the truth... as long
| as it looks good for their side.
| ben7799 wrote:
| I think most of the Anti-Rogan sentiment is mostly people
| attributing things to him that he does not actually do or
| say.
|
| People from the far left are so opposed to listening to
| him their opinion of him is almost completely formed by
| hearsay and taking small snippets of what he or his
| guests say out of context.
|
| I fell victim to this. After the recent talk about just
| how important his show was in the election I listened to
| the Trump, Vance, and Fetterman interviews. His show is
| nowhere near as bad as the left says it is, and he is
| hardly "far right" just because he decided to endorse
| Trump this time.
| kenjackson wrote:
| I don't think people thought Rogan was far right because
| of his endorsement of Trump. People thought he was far
| right way before this.
| slopeloaf wrote:
| I was an early fan from 2016-2018 (stopped listening as
| regularly after 2018 and dropped off entirely after
| 2020). I agree he is not far right
|
| Rogan definitely shifted right during this time though.
| Enough so that I and many others close to me found it off
| putting to continue. A shame because I've never found a
| replacement show.
|
| Calling him far right is incorrect, but I believe the
| criticism has always been about the people he platforms
| and not his views. Whether or not you agree with that
| critique is up to you
| genewitch wrote:
| See also Limbaugh[0] et al on AM. IF you actually listen
| to their (not rogan) shows they follow the art bell and
| phil hendry style of broadcasting. _Repeat_ something
| inflammatory, maybe add a bit of opinion, go to
| commercial, wait for the calls to come in, then let the
| callers go off. Their mechanism for entertainment is
| common man.
|
| Rogan has uncommon men (afaik), NdgT, etc. I don't like
| long-form content in general so i catch clips and replays
| of sections but i don't care enough about long-form to
| ever listen. i don't have anything against the guy,
| personally.
|
| [0] limbaugh was replaced by other people and i can't
| remember their names because i only listen to AM during
| the day when i am somewhere without cell coverage and i'm
| out of USB stick tunes - the last time was 2018 or so and
| maybe it was hannity or something? Also the word "repeat"
| as i used it was explicit in "repeating what someone
| _else_ said " - not repeating to belabor. I could give
| examples, maybe. Further, Alex Jones isn't this type of
| broadcaster, either. He is outside the diagram i've
| already drawn between our comments.
| Bhilai wrote:
| Scientific American's challenge to certain political
| beliefs doesn't undermine its commitment to scientific
| awareness. I find their articles more informative than
| arbitrary podcasts. No one claims SciAM is the sole
| source of truth, but it's a valuable resource. You're
| free to ignore it, just as I ignore most podcasters. If
| you rely on Joe Rogan for science and claim it be truer
| than SciAm, there's little to discuss here.
| FredPret wrote:
| It's like we're talking past each other.
|
| SciAm and the media are held to a higher standard... by
| themselves. They claim a position of authority. So when
| they are biased or get something wrong, it's a problem
| because their brands have a halo of truth left over from
| olden days.
|
| Joe Rogan doesn't claim a position of authority. So when
| he is biased or gets something wrong, it's just what's to
| be expected from a bro with a podcast.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Your assumption is that there exists an "apolitical
| truth" that science should aspire to. There isn't.
|
| There are many truths that can be discovered through the
| scientific method. Those truths are inherently political
| (see elsewhere on this discussion about the _truthful_
| obesity research funded by Coca-Cola that _focused_ on
| exercise rather than sugar intake)
| almatabata wrote:
| > Your assumption is that there exists an "apolitical
| truth" that science should aspire to. There isn't.
|
| You can definitely try present different theories on a
| given topic, citing different papers that defend
| different viewpoints. You can have a bias for one
| interpretation, I will not fault you for that. But if you
| pretend like you favorite interpretation is the settled
| science and anyone that disagrees is an idiot, then I
| think you failed at your job as a science publication.
| FredPret wrote:
| The notion that there is no objective truth, that
| everything is a social construct, is intellectual poison.
|
| Fundamental truths exist in physics and mathematics and
| other fields, completely orthogonal to politics.
|
| People may have opinions about it, but it is what it is.
|
| Anyway, I'm not talking about science at all. I'm talking
| about Scientific American and the broader media.
|
| They claim impartiality; they wear a facade of
| objectivity; they sell themselves as neutral arbiters.
| But in reality they are apparatchiks.
|
| Joe Rogan is popular not because he claims to be above it
| all or to be objective, but because there's no facade at
| all.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Objective truth =/= _Apolitical_ truth
|
| What research gets funding, grant selection, grant
| applications, getting donations, creating a research
| group, what gets published, who gets award prizes... all
| of it is political. Same goes dor the negative space of
| what _doesn 't_ get researched and what truths don't get
| discovered (see laws blocking government money from gun
| violence research)
|
| > They claim impartiality; they wear a facade of
| objectivity...
|
| If they did claim impartiality, I don't think the editor
| would be continually spouting political hot takes on
| Twitter.
| anon291 wrote:
| SciAm is not really a journal. However, scientific
| publications like Nature and the Lancet have removed
| articles due to political ramifications.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| If SciAm is going to be opinionated like The Bro, then it
| has the same degree of intellectual authority (or lack
| thereof) as The Bro.
| chrisbrandow wrote:
| only a problem when it leads to publishing obviously false
| statements and never correcting them, such as the "The so-
| called normal distribution of statistics assumes that there are
| default humans who serve as the standard that the rest of us
| can be accurately measured".
| nyeah wrote:
| The Reason article blurs the distinction between SciAm's opinion
| pieces and its factual (or putatively factual) reporting. That's
| disconcerting. "Opinion piece" objectively means "free bullshit
| zone". Reason is usually much more responsible than this.
|
| SciAm has of course fallen into terrible disrepair. But that
| happened long ago and the cause wasn't BS in the editorials. Who
| even reads editorials in a science magazine?
|
| I was a Young Libertarian in my day and I recognize the urge to
| blame lunatics who disagree with my politics for everything wrong
| in the world. But this particular case isn't convincing. It died
| and then the loonies moved in, not the other way around.
| 23B1 wrote:
| > The Reason article blurs the distinction between SciAm's
| opinion pieces and its factual (or putatively factual)
| reporting.
|
| How are readers to know the difference?
| nyeah wrote:
| Sorry, I can't tell whether this is sarcasm or not. If it's a
| genuine question, the articles are labelled.
| fireflash38 wrote:
| You can't expect people to read past the title, cmon now.
| 23B1 wrote:
| Labeled by whom, and following what set of rules or
| guidelines? Are those rules agreed upon and enforced in
| some way? What are the consequences for breaking those
| rules?
| Supermancho wrote:
| > Labeled by whom, and following what set of rules or
| guidelines?
|
| Ostensibly, the staff. More specifically, editors and
| leadership.
|
| > Are those rules agreed upon and enforced in some way?
|
| Editorials were labeled to distinguish scientific
| findings, distilled to simple language for a larger
| audience, from opinion pieces and what-ifs. This
| evaporated over time.
|
| > What are the consequences for breaking those rules?
|
| The content wasn't published.
|
| Asking inane questions with simple answers, that are
| readily available, is not productive.
| 23B1 wrote:
| You're not thinking deeply enough about the problem,
| which is annoying because I'm addressing the main thrust
| of the original article.
|
| Staff/editors/leadership cannot be trusted to label
| correctly if they are serving their own agendas. This is
| a real problem when we're looking to science to guide
| sociopolitical decision making, e.g. during a pandemic,
| or in childcare, or with the environment.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > You're not thinking deeply enough about the problem,
|
| > Staff/editors/leadership cannot be trusted to label
| correctly if they are serving their own agendas. This is
| a real problem when we're looking to science to guide
| sociopolitical decision making,
|
| ...or you know, you could have stated what you meant
| instead of asking questions you didn't care about for
| your own reasons.
|
| None of what you say applies to a publication any more
| than other forms of communication. There is a lot of
| philosophical rambling in these threads.
| 23B1 wrote:
| I do care about my questions which are germane to the
| point of the article. I'm not being philosophical or
| obtuse; "who watches the watchers" is a common
| consideration in dealing with accountability and truth,
| and is indeed a core value of the scientific method.
|
| Scientific publications don't get to free themselves from
| that obligation if they want to be regarded as either.
| jjk166 wrote:
| It's weird we're at the point where there are a decent
| number of adults who have likely never read an actual
| magazine.
| knowitnone wrote:
| So the articles themselves have no opinions? They don't
| make conclusions and use carefully chosen words to sway the
| reader?
| Supermancho wrote:
| Other than to simplify the concepts for a subjectively
| "inclined" reader, no. Language is not mathematics. There
| is no perfection in the area of communication. This is
| not an insightful observation.
|
| Scientific America aimed to be informative and useful in
| context of that information, when I was a reader (80s).
| 23B1 wrote:
| > There is no perfection in the area of communication.
|
| Bull puckey. I can be precise in my estimate, and
| contextual in my language.
|
| "We believe x to be generally true because of y chance of
| likelihood" while not precise in conclusion, it is
| precise in its intent, which is to communicate a degree
| of certainty and to convey integrity of thought.
|
| This is commonsense science writing that even the plebs
| can understand.
| mrandish wrote:
| > blurs the distinction between SciAm's opinion pieces and its
| factual (or putatively factual) reporting.
|
| To me, based on the content and context, the main quote written
| by the departing editor the article cited was clearly an
| opinion (or editor's column) piece and not part of SciAm's
| science reporting.
|
| While this article didn't focus on it, the biggest factor when
| the editor-in-charge of a publication is biased isn't what is
| written but rather what never appears at all. An editor's
| curation and broad editorial guidance is subtle day-to-day yet
| has enormous impact over time. I've read accounts of newsroom
| reporters talking about editorial bias and it's remarkable how
| each individual biased decision is almost undetectable and, in
| fact, in some cases the biased editor may not even realize
| their bias is cumulatively shifting coverage.
| jjk166 wrote:
| > the biggest factor when the editor-in-charge of a
| publication is biased
|
| The editor-in-charge, and indeed every human being, is always
| biased. There will always be articles that don't make the cut
| and there is always going to be some criterion by which a
| decision is made. Some biases are more disruptive than
| others. Publicly acknowledged biases can be easily accounted
| for. You don't want an unbiased editor-in-charge, they're
| really just a person whose biases you don't recognize.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > The editor-in-charge, and indeed every human being, is
| always biased
|
| > You don't want an unbiased editor-in-charge, they're
| really just a person whose biases you don't recognize.
|
| These 2 truths are hard for some to digest, and they also
| diffuse the next step they want to implement: thumbing the
| scales to "Fix the political bias in science" by installing
| 'neutral' (to _them_ ) individuals to swing science
| rightwards.
|
| Of course, it's not really about the science itself, it's
| about using science as a new front in the culture wars.
| mrandish wrote:
| > it's about using science as a new front in the culture
| wars.
|
| Indeed. The sad thing is I suspect a large number of
| those contributing to the 'culture war' biases often do
| so unknowingly (which doesn't make it any less wrong).
|
| Mainstream science reporting is somewhat different in
| that poor reporting typically falls into two groups:
| culture war adjacent topics and "everything else." The
| problems on the culture war side are pretty well-
| understood but the "everything else" side, while less
| 'bad' on a per instance basis, still has a big impact
| because it's so pervasive. I include in this the near-
| universal tendency of mainstream media to either bury,
| under-report or ignore nuance, error bars and virtually
| all other kinds of uncertainty in science reporting. I'm
| sure the reporters and their editors feel all that
| uncertainty makes the story less exciting (and less
| newsworthy) while explaining nuance makes it 'boring'.
| Unfortunately, not including those things often makes the
| story misleading.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I've seen some of their science articles veer into political
| assertions.
| nyeah wrote:
| I can't read it at all, so I have no reason to disagree.
| haroldp wrote:
| > I was a Young Libertarian in my day and I recognize the urge
| to blame lunatics who disagree with my politics
|
| Reason is obviously a libertarian magazine, but the author is
| certainly not a libertarian.
| mkopinsky wrote:
| Most of the Reason article's criticism is of its factual
| reporting. The JEDI thing is indeed an opinion piece (and it's
| legitimate to criticize a magazine for its opinion pieces being
| stupid), but the puberty blocker stuff (not linked directly
| from the article, but it's at
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-are-puberty-...
| ) was an article, not an opinion piece.
| gs17 wrote:
| > "Opinion piece" objectively means "free bullshit zone".
|
| I'm not a fan of Michael Shermer, but he claims SciAm demanded
| a complete revision of a column, and then later rejected one of
| his columns, right before getting rid of him entirely. So
| there's at least some rules about what opinions they're willing
| to publish, and that was under the previous editor-in-chief (as
| in the one before the one the article is about). The opinions
| that make it to press are curated, so if there's something off
| about them, the editors should be held responsible, and the op-
| eds don't have a different editor-in-chief than the main
| articles.
|
| > Who even reads editorials in a science magazine?
|
| I see no reason not to consider them as a significant part of
| the magazine's image. If the articles were all the same but the
| editorials were all written by, e.g. young earth creationists
| about their views, wouldn't what they put in that "free
| bullshit zone" shape your perception of the whole?
| nativeit wrote:
| The comment section under the article on Reason's website
| explains a lot of what drives their own editorial choices, this
| article included. It made a few perfectly valid points while
| twisting backwards to arrive at its very preconceived
| conclusions, and gave their readers a much-desired hit of
| satisfaction that they could point to something and claim there
| personal perspectives had been proven out as a systemic
| reality. As per usual, the truth is buried somewhere in the
| lacking nuance.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| To the "everything is political" crowd:
|
| The complaint is not that SciAm writes about politics. It's that
| they write SCIENTIFIC NONSENSE when arguing for political causes.
|
| Exhibit A: "the so-called normal distribution of statistics
| assumes that there are default humans who serve as the standard
| that the rest of us can be accurately measured against."
| jayd16 wrote:
| Is that nonsense? Isn't it just saying that normal
| distributions are misleading when multimodal distributions
| would be more accurate? The indignant tone is unnecessary but
| it's not wrong to say complex systems cannot be modeled with a
| simple normal distribution.
| thatcat wrote:
| It is simply saying the assumption of a normal distribution
| is incorrect for the population, which without context of
| what particular data they were observing would be impossible
| to know if it is in fact nonsense.
| jayd16 wrote:
| So, quite sesnsical indeed but possibly, circumstantially
| incorrect? It seems like a non-controversial stance to
| take.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Perhaps something like that was the intention, but it's not
| what the written text says.
|
| Normal Distribution is a mathematical concept used in
| probability theory and statistics. It has nothing to do with
| any concept of "default humans".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| If you read the whole paragraph, it's obvious what the writer
| intended to convey: that health research often assumes that
| there is one average, representative person, and everybody else
| is clustered around that person in a normal distribution. The
| author asserts that this is wrong, because people are
| dissimilar in more complex ways, and instead often fall into
| different clusters, rather than one bell curve.
|
| In my opinion, the author's assertion is correct; we've seen in
| the past that research failed to find how medication affects
| women in specific ways, because that research was based on the
| premise that people are largely the same, and thus failed to
| specifically test the effects on each gender individually.
|
| The sentence people quote out of context is, by itself,
| confusing and weird, and thus should not have been written that
| way. But in context, it's obvious what the writer intended to
| convey, and the intent is in no way anti-scientific.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I tend to agree, and go even further. The idea of averages
| and normal distribution means are grossly over-used in
| medicine and social discourse. They can _sometimes_ be useful
| for population level discussions, but rarely personal
| healthcare or decision making.
|
| Medicine and public policy is plagued by advice and
| recommendations for the average person, but the average
| person does not exist. 50% will be above average, and 50%
| will be below.
| mrandish wrote:
| > Medicine and public policy is plagued by advice and
| recommendations for the average person
|
| To be fair, this is often the fault of the media, pundits
| and politicians cherry-picking studies and losing
| significant nuance in the process. At the same time, there
| are too many papers which do a poor job of sufficiently
| highlighting uncertainty in their conclusions.
| CrimsonCape wrote:
| You are adding nuance to the underlying concept and failing
| to see how the wielders of the concept don't have that
| nuance.
|
| Take BMI; first, i've seen arguments against BMI using the
| "there is no baseline normal" argument just like the original
| statement you quoted. Second, i've seen arguments that BMI as
| a concept is just invalid and rationales / facts that lend
| credence to the concept of BMI are somehow invalid. Finally,
| there's the inevitable ad hominem: it must be bigots who use
| the phrase BMI.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| I don't think I'm adding any nuance, I'm explaining the
| context in which the quoted sentence was originally
| written. The nuance was already there, I just pointed it
| out, because it got lost when people selectively quoted
| that one sentence.
|
| I agree that there are people who take any idea to its
| absurd extreme. I do not think the author of that article
| is one of those people.
| photonthug wrote:
| > that health research often assumes that there is one
| average, representative person, and everybody else is
| clustered around that person in a normal distribution.
|
| But complex clustering isn't more or less true than the
| normal distribution in general, it just depends what you're
| talking about.
|
| That's why railing against "the so-called normal
| distribution" comes across as inappropriate for a serious
| publication, it is suspiciously lacking nuance. Then one
| wonders how/why the nuance has gone missing. Politics
| masquerading as empiricism is an especially gross bait and
| switch.
| chrisbrandow wrote:
| Her main point was absolutely defensible. Making
| embarrassingly false statements should never have gotten past
| the editors of a scientific publication.
|
| Honestly, just to protect the author who clearly did not have
| the background to be expected to get that statement entirely
| correct, which is truly fine. But not fine for the
| publication.
| bongoman42 wrote:
| If they are science communicators and they are writing things
| that can be explained reasonably easily in such confusing and
| weird ways, shouldn't they be fired?
| jorgeleo wrote:
| Hilarious!
|
| The while message of the article is to trash talk the departing
| editor accusing her of political left bias... which in it self
| (the trash talking) is a political statement from the
| conservative side.
|
| To the author of the article: you are no better than her...
| Levitz wrote:
| 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 should be ordered
| or distorting politically inconvenient findings.
|
| He explicitly states he is ok with bias.
| jorgeleo wrote:
| 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 the editor behavior, not what the
| roots of SA should be.
|
| This article is closer to the son of the president in the
| "Don't look up" movie than anything else. It tries to push
| the previous editor to a square of just do scientific work...
| 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
| Levitz wrote:
| 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.
| jorgeleo wrote:
| And my point is that:
|
| 1. Defending science as objective truth is not
| propaganda, so the editor did not engage un such.
|
| 2. The article it self is not about science, but it is
| weasel propaganda on it self because accusing of
| propaganda to the editor is a form of propaganda that is
| presented as "reasonable" but the intended effect is to
| try to call propaganda what is not.
| Levitz wrote:
| I genuinely have no clue what you are talking about.
|
| >1. Defending science as objective truth is not
| propaganda, so the editor did not engage un such.
|
| A headline like "Why the Term 'JEDI' Is Problematic for
| Describing Programs That Promote Justice, Equity,
| Diversity and Inclusion." has absolutely, completely
| nothing to do with "defending science as objective
| truth". Within the article political views are pushed,
| with science being largely irrelevant to the case.
|
| >2. The article it self is not about science, but it is
| weasel propaganda on it self because accusing of
| propaganda to the editor is a form of propaganda that is
| presented as "reasonable" but the intended effect is to
| try to call propaganda what is not.
|
| The article does not attempt to be seen "about science"
| at any point. It's not weaseling at any point, it's point
| is made very clearly. It even makes the point that
| propaganda isn't necessarily wrong
|
| Have you even read the article?
| weberer wrote:
| Oh boy, after 30 years we're finally getting a resurgence of the
| Science Wars!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_wars
|
| Edit: Also be sure to read the prequel
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
| mrkeen wrote:
| Did you know that [...] the normal distribution--a vital and
| basic statistical concept--is inherently suspect? [...] That
| author also explained that "the so-called normal distribution of
| statistics assumes that there are default humans who serve as the
| standard that the rest of us can be accurately measured against."
| But the normal distribution doesn't make any such value
| judgments, and only someone lacking in basic education about
| stats--someone who definitely shouldn't be writing about the
| subject for a top magazine--could make such a claim.
|
| This is Jesse Singal (Reason) throwing shade at Laura Helmuth
| (SciAm) for publishing a piece in which Monica McLemore allegedly
| claims that scientists shouldn't judge humans against a normal
| distribution. Singal thinks only morons would make that mistake.
|
| This is why SciAm was "really bad" under Helmuth, not just "bad".
| greentxt wrote:
| People double down as part of human psychology. Some grasp their
| own biases much better than others. We should try to train people
| to be more self reflective and less biased politically. It does
| not correlate with education level so something is clearly broken
| in higher ed..
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| I sense this has to do with personality, namely high
| conscientiousness and low neuroticism. That's not something
| that can be taught.
| kenjackson wrote:
| How do you know it doesn't correlate with education level? I'm
| not saying it does, but it certainly could. I was definitely
| exposed to more ideas, even conflicting ideas through formal
| education. That said, I've never been one with strongly held
| opinions.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| You need autism to be more self reflective. Ar you sure it can
| be trained?
| squigz wrote:
| It's difficult for me to believe that higher education levels
| don't correlate to being more rational. Do you have any source
| on that?
| anonfordays wrote:
| Does the following phenomenon have a name?
|
| Open an article about the detrimental politicization of
| something, click to the social media profile of the offender and
| you know with high certainty the exact kind of poster they are
| and posts they make/repost.
| tylersmith wrote:
| Yes, it's called bias.
| anonfordays wrote:
| It's accurate, so by definition it cannot be bias.
| jpollock wrote:
| It's a cognitive bias, since we remember the events that
| match our expectations and don't keep track of experiment
| over time.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| This is a rather large assumption. I have had plenty of
| times when I thought I had noticed a trend of some sort
| and turned out to be mistaken, and so stopped relying on
| the heuristic. Insisting that everyone _is_ biased (as
| opposed to observing that anyone _can be_ ) is a good way
| to filter out unexpected and perhaps unwelcome
| observations.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| You _perceive_ it to be accurate, that doesn 't mean it is
| accurate. Furthermore, these sorts of things are highly
| subject to post-rationalization. Did you write down on a
| piece of paper what you expected before you clicked? Or did
| you just click and think to yourself "yup, that's what I
| expected"?
| 4bpp wrote:
| This sounds like what you would expect to see if everything
| subject to politicisation is politicised in a direction opposed
| by the same "kind of poster". I imagine you could observe the
| same sort of predictability if you looked at the social media
| profiles of anyone writing an article that politicization of
| something is actually unproblematic or good.
|
| When it is this easy to delineate and stereotype those for and
| those against a measure, the appropriate word is polarisation.
| csours wrote:
| I feel like rational communication requires an overlap in
| perspective - not the same point of view, but some amount of
| overlap.
|
| Science relies on rational communication between people who
| disagree, because we can fool ourselves, and we can fool our in-
| group. The narrative fallacy doesn't just affect weak minds; by
| yourself, you won't outsmart your own filters.
|
| To learn about the world, you have to accept the world, and some
| things about the world are hard to accept as bare facts. Donald
| Trump was elected president. Can you accept that as a bare fact?
| Probably not if you've fought with people about it. There's a
| drag show in town. Can you accept that as a bare fact? ... IQ
| tests have a history of racial disparity. ... The earth is round
| and orbits the sun. ...
|
| A lot of rational minded people tend to disparage emotional
| intelligence, but I feel that rational communication across
| strong moral feelings requires a lot of emotional work and trust,
| and it's really hard to trust while you are fighting.
|
| ---
|
| I feel like 'virtue signaling' is poorly named. I think 'Comfort
| Signaling' and 'Loyalty Signaling' are easier to talk and reason
| about.
|
| * I am flying this flag because I want my people to be
| comfortable with me.
|
| * I am flying this flag because I want my people to know that I
| am loyal to them, and I don't care about what other people think.
| (Or, I'm fine with the other people hating me because of this
| flag)
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > I feel like 'virtue signaling' is poorly named. I think
| 'Comfort Signaling' and 'Loyalty Signaling' are easier to talk
| and reason about.
|
| > * I am flying this flag because I want my people to be
| comfortable with me.
|
| > * I am flying this flag because I want my people to know that
| I am loyal to them, and I don't care about what other people
| think. (Or, I'm fine with the other people hating me because of
| this flag)
|
| Why don't you think "virtue" signaling works for that? That's
| the same meaning.
| csours wrote:
| Because I don't feel that the confederate battle flag is
| virtuous.
|
| Virtue signaling is done by people in every in-group; when it
| is done by people my in-group is fighting against Virtue
| Signaling does not feel like a virtue.
| jbstjohn wrote:
| The thing is, it's not _just_ loyalty, it 's also a 'better
| than only mid-level believers in the cause'. There's
| definitely a purity / piety aspect. I do like "piety" as it
| captures the religious aspect.
| csours wrote:
| I think that's a good addition. My main point is that
| it's not just one signal, and that 'virtue' carries too
| much emotional and moral freight. Maybe call them Signals
| of Virtues.
| lowkeyoptimist wrote:
| It is 100% virtue signaling because it is used as a means to
| feel and show moral superiority to others that do not hold
| those views or 'virtues'.
|
| It is also a loyalty and comfort signal, but as we saw with
| Helmuth's reaction - it is impossible that Gen X saw fault with
| Harris' policies. It is only that they are bigoted, narrow
| minded, fascist loving, misogynist. If a 'virtue' is
| questioned, you are excommunicated from the 'liberal/ Democrat'
| party if you want to label it as such.
| csours wrote:
| Yes, this is exactly why I don't like the term; it does not
| do a good job of describing intent as seen from the person in
| question.
| UltraSane wrote:
| This comment started off really well with the need for
| successful communication requiring at least a partial overlap
| of of worldviews but then goes into the weeds with the comment
| about Trump. No one is denying that Trump won the election. But
| a huge percentage of Republicans believe that Trump actually
| won the last election. This is a real example of how worldviews
| on the right and left differ radically. The drag show is also a
| terrible example.
| csours wrote:
| Those are examples of things that are hard for some to accept
| as bare facts.
|
| Person Y won the election
|
| Person Y won the election and that is BAD
|
| Person Y won the election and that is GOOD
|
| It is not a matter of denial, it is a matter of what story is
| made to accept the event.
|
| If you have not had to fight about the topic, you can just
| make the first bare assertion. The event happened.
|
| If you have fought about the topic and your central nervous
| system gets activated when you think about it, then the
| assertion will likely include moral judgement. The event
| didn't just happened, it happened for a good or bad reason.
| UltraSane wrote:
| Sorry but no one is denying that Trump won the 2024
| election in the same way Trump and Republicans have denied
| that Biden won in 2020 and claiming such is very
| disingenuous. And saying person Y winning the election is
| good or bad is a matter of opinion, not fact.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| You are misunderstanding their point. They are not saying
| that anybody is denying the election results.
|
| A "bare fact", as they put it, is a statement exclusively
| of fact. Adding the qualifier to the fact makes it no
| longer a "bare fact". To use their example, "Snoop won
| the election," is a bare fact and, "Snoop won the
| election and that's bad," is not a bare fact.
|
| What they are saying is that some people cannot accept
| "bare fact" statements as such; they tend to add or
| expect some qualifier to the effect of "that's good" or
| "that's bad".
| csours wrote:
| I also am not denying that Trump won.
|
| I am saying that acceptance is complicated.
|
| Yes people have strong opinions.
|
| Denying that strong opinions exist harms communication.
| Crayfish3348 wrote:
| 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...
| grecy wrote:
| And this is exactly the problem we face now in so many aspects
| of life.
|
| If cell phones or microwaves or a hundred other things were
| harmful we would not find out, because of all the lobbying and
| armies of scientists paid to find and publish a very narrow
| version of truth
| mrandish wrote:
| > If cell phones or microwaves or a hundred other things were
| harmful we would not find out
|
| While I agree that there may be things which have subtle but
| cumulatively harmful effects over time, the two specifics
| that you cited (cell phones and microwaves) are very poor
| examples because they've been deployed so broadly for so
| long, the chances there is some significant medical harm
| still undetected is vanishingly small.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Also, trial lawyers would rapidly become the wealthiest
| people on Earth if genuine, reproducible evidence of harm
| from non-ionizing radiation could be found.
|
| If you thought the tobacco and silicone breast implant
| settlements were impressive...
| genewitch wrote:
| just jump on the two examples instead of actually
| considering the point being made, i guess.
|
| Think "leaded gasoline" if you need a concrete example
| creer wrote:
| > trial lawyers would rapidly become the wealthiest
| people on Earth if genuine, reproducible evidence of harm
| from non-ionizing radiation could be found.
|
| Probably not, as electronics manufacturers would quikly
| take that into consideration. Liability comes from both
| knowing and continuing.
| nataliste wrote:
| >cell phones
|
| Well, as far as _direct_ physical harms, yes, but as far as
| _mental_ harms that _translate_ to physical harms, the jury
| 's still out:
|
| '"Given that the increase in mental health issues was
| sharpest after 2011, Twenge believes it's unlikely to be
| due to genetics or economic woes and more likely to be due
| to sudden cultural changes, such as shifts in how teens and
| young adults spend their time outside of work and school.'
|
| https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2019/03/mental-
| healt...
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| > the chances there is some significant medical harm still
| undetected is vanishingly small
|
| I don't think this statement is true.
|
| Long-term effects can only be observed over the, well, long
| term which makes it hard to compare with the baseline. It
| was measured differently and with very different external
| factors. Then even if we do by chance manage to observe the
| harm today it could be very hard to identify the reason --
| we would see the factual result but neither the process nor
| the cause.
|
| Take any unexplained health issue we have today, e.g.
| decline in male fertility estimated at 50% in western
| counties since 1970s, a dramatic change. Could it be
| microwaves? Well possibly, can't be ruled out at this
| point, among many other candidates. Furthermore, with the
| new research saying that 1) microwaving food in "microwave-
| safe" plastic containers releases huge number of
| microplastic particles into the food and 2) microplastic
| accumulates in testicles -- it's not even a fringe science
| anymore but a normal theory to be studied and be proven or
| disproven.
|
| Do we have any other health issues that increased over the
| past 50 years? Yes. What caused them, is it something
| recent that became popular in the past 50 years? Very
| likely, yes. Do we know it? Not yet.
|
| It took us a very long time to figure out cigarettes. Or
| leaded fuel, even though we knew in advance that lead is
| poisonous.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That would be a good time to remind people that absence of
| evidence is not evidence of absence. Being skeptical does not
| mean embrace the conspiracy theory as probably true but not
| proven yet.
| sitkack wrote:
| This is how propaganda works, you don't spread falsities and
| untruths, but change the mix of what signals get amplified.
| staunton wrote:
| 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Enhanced by algos that promote those falsehoods in a way
| that ensures widest possible spread
| lazyeye wrote:
| I wonder how much of this same kind of manipulation/distortion
| is going on when we are told to "trust the science" with regard
| to climate change? The pressure to ignore or minimise
| inconvenient facts would be overwhelming (career at stake
| situation).
| genewitch wrote:
| what's the bellwether for climate change? Rising
| temperatures, rising CO2 concentrations?
|
| There's strong evidence there actually isn't warming going
| on. The "warming trend" may be due to the temperature sensor
| locations. Originally the sensors were put in remote, rural,
| unpopulated and unused locations (ideally!). As communities
| grew... you understand that the sensors now are no longer
| rural, remote, unpopulated areas. What happens to the air in
| a city? If you're unsure, "urban heat island". This is
| extremely localized "weather" - the sort of thing that i've
| been yelled at "IS NOT CLIMATE".
|
| I'm only going to link 1 thing here, because doing this sort
| of thing on my lifelong handle has never done me any favors:
|
| > Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics, 23:105015 (20pp),
| 2023 October
|
| > Challenges in the Detection and Attribution of Northern
| Hemisphere Surface Temperature Trends Since 1850
|
| > https://doi.org/10.1088/1674-4527/acf18
| lazyeye wrote:
| Great example of what I was talking about!
| czzr wrote:
| I looked at the paper you referenced.
|
| Interestingly, it does not say that the warming trend is
| not happening, rather they argue that the evidence is
| insufficient to say _for sure_ if the warming is caused by
| human-driven causes or natural ones (e.g. volcanic activity
| or solar changes). They mention the heat island effect as
| one of the issues that may complicate the attribution of
| the contribution of different factors to the warming trend.
|
| To quote from the paper:
|
| "To summarize, by varying ST and/or TSI choice and/or the
| attribution approach used, it is possible to conclude
| anything from the long-term warming being "mostly natural"
| to "mostly anthropogenic" or anything in between. While
| each of us has our own scientific opinions on which of
| these choices are most realistic, we are concerned by the
| wide range of scientifically plausible, yet mutually
| contradictory, conclusions that can still be drawn from the
| data."
| genewitch wrote:
| okay, and whats your point? The point is "97%" or "99%"
| of "climate scientists agree" that "anthropogenic causes"
| are the reason for climate change. But this study
| questions the foundations (and i mentioned i am only
| linking one, that i downloaded a few weeks ago to save,
| there are of course other papers that each chip away at
| the political and media narrative about the whole field).
| Please refer to the GP:
|
| > I wonder how much of this same kind of
| manipulation/distortion is going on when we are told to
| "trust the science" with regard to climate change?
|
| "climate science" is all models, this paper (among
| others) implies that the data fed in to the models may be
| influencing the output of the models in a way that isn't
| conducive to actually understanding the "climate". How
| can i make this assertion? I read the IPCC reports. both
| the pre-release and the official releases. I don't
| recommend it, unless you feel like being Cassandra.
| tomrod wrote:
| You're not sufficiently parsing causality versus
| predictivity. The global warming hypothesis matches the
| projections. So it's a food enough model. The causal
| attribution does take time, but recall we can estimate
| the global greenhouse emissions with reasonable accuracy
| and can compare to benchmarks in history.
|
| Push all we want against the sun, it continues to shine
| regardless of our efforts.
| ok_computer wrote:
| Ok, arctic sea ice.
|
| Ice exists at temperature below 0C or 32F at 1atm AND at
| system energy levels below the enthalpy of melting for
| liquid water, or latent heat for this first order phase
| change.
|
| Thermodynamics uses temperature and pressure to explain
| system energy of molecules for liquid vapor solid phase
| systems. Latent heat is the esoteric part of this
| phenomenon because it requires a scientific education to
| understand calculus and work. Understandably, everyone can
| grasp temperature.
|
| I think your comment is a perfect example of misdirection
| and people using "data driven methods" to attack a "first
| principles" explanation of physical phenomena.
|
| Here's a link because that gives my idea more weight.
|
| https://earth.gsfc.nasa.gov/cryo/data/current-state-sea-
| ice-...
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_sea_ice_decline
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05686-x
|
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj8469
|
| Computer people talk about scientific methods and their
| "home lab" stuff, ai and inherent structure of data then
| absolutely fall for the facebook-grade-misinformation
| arguments to not trust something that is too mainstream.
| Jfc
| genewitch wrote:
| you mean the sea ice, that had the highest extent in 20
| years this year? Or a different sea ice, perhaps the one
| they always trot out around January? you know, when it's
| summer in the southern hemisphere?
|
| The sea ice data isn't 1:1 with the seasons, so "data
| scientists" and "climate scientists" pick the _cutoff
| date_ that makes the best headline. Even _this year_ they
| were saying the ice was _lower_ than average, but they
| cutoff 3+ weeks early, the ice was above average a few
| weeks later.
|
| https://usicecenter.gov/PressRelease/ArcticMaximum2024
|
| Besides all this, i am unsure if you're supportive or not
| of what i said.
| ok_computer wrote:
| I admit data collection is imperfect, especially looking
| back 200 years. But to attack a fairly sound hypothesis
| that is multi factorially demonstrated in physical
| geological behavior, I wholeheartedly disagree with.
|
| Just because US weather stations in the 70's were more
| rural than urban does not in itself gives credence to the
| idea that climate change/warming/ greenhouse gases is a
| nonissue or somehow a totally misunderstood non-warming
| phenomenon. Even a climate that tended to one mean value
| zero standard deviation throughout the year would be
| devastating coming from our current temporal and
| geographical distribution.
|
| Your point about weather stations is a technical detail
| in data collection while there are several other
| corroborating methods indicating a warming ocean and
| atmosphere, albeit not geographically uniformly
| distributed. But you have this gotcha fact about weather
| stations ambient baseline temp vs some platonic ideal
| temp that reflects what's going on in the abstract notion
| of a climate.
|
| The sea ice has satellite photo analysis (area) dating to
| 70's or 80's with daily or weekly granularity.
|
| I cannot convince a climate change denier or skeptic but
| am leaving that comment and this one hoping that
| observers don't just take your initial counter-fact to be
| a valid falsifying argument.
|
| As everyone says weather is not the climate, spurious
| yearly data do not nullify long form trends, and I'd just
| look at low pass filtered or line fit or yearly average
| of granular image data to argue that there is a time
| localize trend since the 80's consistent with a warming
| ocean.
|
| I disagree with you I think you used logical fallacies to
| misdirect and cause skepticism about something that is
| fairly corroborated and the debate needs to focus on
| mitigation or investment or policy changes.
| ok_computer wrote:
| Edit I shouldn't have used word geological bit meant
| 'worldwide'
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| > you mean the sea ice, that had the highest extent in 20
| years this year?
|
| Your link says it's "the seventh highest recorded since
| 2006 when this metric from IMS was first tracked
| consistently". Where are you getting "highest extent in
| 20 years"?
| jmward01 wrote:
| This is cherry-picking. There is a raft of solid science
| from a large number of independent researchers looking at
| many different indicators that corroborate well with each
| other. The evidence is overwhelming, global warming is
| happening. Picking one thing that says we haven't always
| gotten it 100% right doesn't mean it isn't happening.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| I have yet to see a convincing motivation for doing something
| like that. There's more money to be made in denying climate
| change it seems, so what's the driving factor then?
| eezurr wrote:
| Since climate change is a very popular topic, so popular
| that a person's belief or non belief in it will cause
| people on the other side to strike them down without
| hesitation... There's power, community, and social
| acceptance to drive people.
|
| The downvotes to the above comment's parent comment prove
| my point.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| That's completely correct and valid but _also_ in order
| to see this as a problem one has to presume that that the
| belief in it, or anything else you might care to put in
| it 's place, is itself flawed. I don't believe in climate
| change because it's beneficial or not beneficial: I have
| read numerous things on the subject, all of which paint a
| consistent, reproducible, and relatable-to-my-life
| situation which happens to be about a decades-long
| propaganda campaign on the part of the fossil fuel
| industry to downplay the harms their products were doing
| to our atmosphere since the goddamn 1950's, one that, as
| the parent says, happens to make them shitloads of money.
| Just like leaded gasoline did. Just like cigarettes did,
| which led the tobacco industry to do similar things
| previously until they were outlawed in the developed
| world, which has caused them to simply shift focus to
| developing countries where they're now poisoning a whole
| new generation of people.
|
| I'm highly skeptical of folks who take issue with
| something like "trust the science" because, while I fully
| cosign that as a slogan it's lacking and one doesn't
| "trust" science so much as learn about it and see if it
| holds up, the sort of people who say things like that
| invariably follow up with something like questioning
| climate change, or questioning the handling of the COVID
| pandemic. And that's not to say that there weren't
| mistakes made, we made a _shitload_ of them, but too many
| bad actors in that space will take legitimate problems
| with the response to COVID and use that to launch into
| things like saying vaccines cause autism or are a plot on
| the part of China to kill all the white people, or other
| such ridiculous fuckin nonsense.
|
| And maybe that's wrong of me to assume, but also if you
| consistently find yourself on the same side of a debate
| as the worst people imaginable, maybe that's something
| you should sit with and figure out how you feel about it,
| and if it points to you possibly being skeptical about
| the wrong things.
|
| I would also put forward that something I've observed as
| we've gotten further and further into the social media
| age is the conflation between skepticism and ignorance,
| which are different things, and people who are doing the
| second thing will reliably say they are doing the former.
| To be skeptical is not a bad thing, even an uninformed
| skeptic like a member of the general public is fully
| capable of being at least somewhat informed, vetting
| sources, and coming to reasonably accurate conclusions
| without a formal education, _however,_ it is also
| extremely, trivially easy for a layman to find stuff that
| corroborates whatever they think is already the truth,
| stated in professional-looking formats, that _looks like
| science_ but just isn 't credible or worthy of being
| taken seriously, and then go "look, see, I found this
| thing. I'm right!" If you find one, single academic, who
| has an entire rest-of-their-discipline shouting at them
| about how wrong they are, which is more likely: that you
| found one truth teller in a sea of liars, or that you
| found one liar?
| eezurr wrote:
| To the downvoters (and ToucanLoucan), I never claimed
| what I believed in, and you don't have enough information
| to know anything about it. I'll continue to neither
| confirm nor deny my stance, for the point Im making is
| IMO an important one. Can you walk away from this
| conversation with your eye opened to how your belief is
| driving you to strike? [0]
|
| Here's a near-equivalent real world example: Alzheimer's
| research has been led in the wrong direction for decades,
| due to people chasing after power. [1]
|
| [0] >And maybe that's wrong of me to assume, but also if
| you consistently find yourself on the same side of a
| debate as the worst people imaginable, maybe that's
| something you should sit with and figure out how you feel
| about it, and if it points to you possibly being
| skeptical about the wrong things.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliezer_Masliah
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > To the downvoters (and ToucanLoucan), I never claimed
| what I believed in, and you don't have enough information
| to know anything about it.
|
| I didn't say anything about your beliefs. I said other
| people who say similar things believe these things, and
| when people say things like them, I tend to assume
| they're about to drop anti-vax nonsense. That's not an
| accusation, it's the statement of an observed
| correlation.
|
| > I'll continue to neither confirm nor deny my stance,
| for the point Im making is IMO an important one.
|
| I mean, again, I wasn't referencing your specific beliefs
| so I don't really care if you confirm them or not. But I
| would also say, again as a statement of a correlation not
| an accusation against you, that the people who espouse
| the anti-science sentiments I've been discussing _also_
| will refuse to lay down specific confirmations of their
| beliefs, as part of a larger "just asking questions"
| fallacious argument, in which they take the position of
| an unconvinced centrist but consistently espouse
| "questions" that favor one side of it.
|
| Again, to be clear, not accusing, merely observing. You
| may indeed be someone who is genuinely just asking
| questions, the problem is a whole lot of shitty people
| out there corroborate that position to advance bunk. And
| assuming you're being truthful, which I have no reason to
| assume you aren't, for that you have my sympathies.
|
| > ere's a near-equivalent real world example: Alzheimer's
| research has been led in the wrong direction for decades,
| due to people chasing after power. [1]
|
| Well sure. Science isn't perfect, it's only as good as
| the people who are doing it. It's the same way that
| basically every anti-vax sentiment, measure, study, etc.
| that you can find leads in one way or another back to
| former-doctor Andrew Wakefield and his junk study about
| vaccines and autism from back in the 90's. There are
| still medical practitioners who believe he was correct,
| there are multiple organizations that are built off of
| his research who oppose vaccines, we've had numerous
| outbreaks of various preventable diseases because of
| vaccine hesitancy. This shit has real consequences.
|
| However, it's worth noting that both that story and the
| one you're referencing are notable because on the whole,
| most of the time, science does get it right, and more
| importantly, if it gets it wrong but it is being done
| honestly, it is also self correcting.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| If you publish new evidence in favour of a popular theory,
| your paper gets published - sometimes in a prestigious
| journal. Whereas if you demonstrate compelling evidence
| overturning a high-profile scientific dogma of
| international import, you... _*checks notes*_ win the Nobel
| Prize in Physics. Hm.
|
| Maybe the Nobel Committee is in on... no, that'd only
| affect whether they _awarded_ the prize, not whether people
| _expect_ them to. They _must_ be suppressing the evidence
| at the source: the instruments themselves. ... No, they 'd
| have to alter _everything_ , and there's no way they got to
| _my_ weather station. Maybe there 's some way to remotely
| manipulate all the weather station reading at once? Think,
| what do all the weather stations have in common?
|
| I've got it! They're doing something to the _atmosphere_ ,
| to make it _seem_ like there 's anthropogenic climate
| change, and _trick_ all the scientists into publishing
| studies showing that it 's real and happening, but
| _actually_ it 's just people altering the chemical
| composition of the atmosphere en-masse for unspecified
| nefarious reasons, likely personal profit. _Or_ , maybe
| it's a byproduct of some industrial process, that they
| don't want us to know about. I bet that's what chemtrails
| are.
| nataliste wrote:
| >If you publish new evidence in favour of a popular
| theory, your paper gets published - sometimes in a
| prestigious journal. Whereas if you demonstrate
| compelling evidence overturning a high-profile scientific
| dogma of international import, you... _checks notes_ win
| the Nobel Prize in Physics. Hm.
|
| The last time a Nobel Prize was awarded to someone
| overturning a long-held charged dogma was in 2005 when
| Barry J. Marshall and J. Robin Warren won the Nobel Prize
| in Physiology or Medicine. They demonstrated that
| Helicobacter pylori bacteria, not stress or excess
| stomach acid, were the primary cause of peptic ulcers.
|
| Whereas the inverse--suppression of findings that
| invalidated long-held scientific dogmas--are numerous
| throughout the last 150 years. Stegener faced ridicule
| and suppression for continental drift. So did Semmelweiss
| for germ theory. And Mendelian inheritance. And
| Lemaitre's expanding universe. And Prusiner's prion
| theory. And Margulis's endosymbiotic theory. And
| horizontal gene transfer.
|
| Beyond Marshall and Warren, Prusiner was the only one to
| receive a Nobel for their findings and that was fifteen
| years after consensus had emerged from below.
|
| And in the case of Marshall and Warren, the findings of a
| bacterial origin of ulcers had been published in 1906,
| 1913, 1919, 1925, 1939, 1951, 1955, 1958, 1964, 1971,
| 1982, and 1983. With this 1983 paper being authored by...
| Marshall and Warren. They will not receive a Nobel Prize
| for _their_ findings for another 22 years.
|
| Science is moved forward in spite of dogmatic consensus,
| not because of it.
| jkhdigital wrote:
| Here, let me drop this mic for you
| nataliste wrote:
| And a fun addendum: In the mid-1990s the patents expired
| on the vast majority of acid-reducing drugs which were,
| as you can probably guess, the first line "treatment" for
| PUD over antibiotics.
| jmward01 wrote:
| I have grown grumpier as the last decade has gone on and it
| is probably me just getting older but there is a point where
| you say enough is enough. You are starting with the premise
| that researchers are manipulating things and ignoring things
| so you have already 'won' by bringing doubt where there isn't
| any. 'I wonder how much of horrible terrible evil
| conspiratorial thing x is happening...' isn't a discussion
| opener, it is a statement that a thing is happening and now
| we just need to find out how much of that thing is happening.
| This is a terrible 'discussion' point and it needs to be
| called out, and stopped.
| trinsic2 wrote:
| That's a good point. I tend to stay away from negative
| thinking about hot topics like this for that very reason.
| Even though I have my doubts about something, I tend to
| keep it to myself because I don't want to bring people down
| and anyway someone might come up with a way to look at, or
| take action in a positive light.
|
| But I still feel its important for people to act from their
| own values, right or wrong, and not from a "hey trust the
| science" mentality which reminds me of majority thinking.
| Just because a lot of people have come to the conclusion
| that the science is sound, it doesn't make them right.
| There are plenty of situations where decided by majority
| viewpoints have been wrong.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| There are few slogans I hate more than "trust the science",
| primarily because it aligns scientific results with faith,
| which is exactly what science is _not_ about. Science is
| fundamentally about _skepticism_ , not trust.
|
| Now, obviously that skepticism can be misused by some rando
| with no qualifications or even time spent researching telling
| you to be "skeptical" of people who have spent decades trying
| to figure shit out. What I really believe we should be teaching
| people is "what are the incentives?". That is, it's become very
| clear that many people are susceptible to provably false
| information, so we should train people to try to examine what
| incentives someone has for speaking out in the first place (and
| that includes scientists, too).
|
| This is why I hate most conspiracy theories - even if you take
| everything the conspiracy supposes at face value, conspiracists
| don't explain how their conspiracy is somehow kept so secret
| when _tons_ of people involved would have extremely strong
| incentives to expose it.
| tokinonagare wrote:
| > their conspiracy is somehow kept so secret when tons of
| people involved would have extremely strong incentives to
| expose it
|
| Sometimes the conspiracy is big enough that there is tons of
| incentives _not to_ expose it.
|
| Take for instance the lab leak hypothesis for the origin of
| covid. Anyone with two brain cell have had figured out that
| the hypothesis "city with virus lab + researchers on corona
| virus + accident" was a few magnitudes more probable than the
| racist "Chinese eat everything + bat/pangolin". Yet, that
| hypothesis was totally suppressed from mainstream media for
| about two years, a feat that requires the cooperation of
| thousands of journalists and software developers (for the
| algorithmic censorship like deployed on youtube). Any of the
| individual involved could have denounced the system, yet
| nobody did it, because they were more worry about their
| paycheck than the truth.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Lots of individuals denounced the system, but you didn't
| hear from them because they didn't meet the demands of the
| entirely-manufactured scientific "consensus" on the wet
| market theory. As it turns out, that "consensus" was almost
| entirely driven by Anthony Fauci's camp of virologists
| (it's not just him, but a relatively small group of people
| who have a monetary/career interest in continuing the type
| of research that happens at the Wuhan Institute) who saw
| the "lab leak" theory as a fundamental threat to their
| ability to continue doing research that many saw as
| unethical and bordering on bio-weapon development. In
| response, they essentially took control of the COVID
| response and the official COVID narrative.
|
| That is why the director of the NIAID, which is a research
| organization and not a public health agency at all, took
| charge of the century's biggest public health situation
| over the head of the (sadly impotent) CDC, which should
| have been in charge of coordinating the US's response.
|
| The scientific consensus that you were sold was never
| really a consensus. It was a power play.
|
| By contrast, there's a strong consensus on climate change,
| for example, that involves a very large number of
| scientists who should know and who are not incentivized to
| believe it.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I completely disagree with your characterization of this
| example, and on the contrary I think your example perfectly
| shows how "follow the incentives" gives you truer, clearer
| understanding of what happened:
|
| 1. If you dug in to the authors of the now infamous Lancet
| letter (
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_letter_(COVID-19) ),
| you could see how they had huge conflicts of interests.
|
| 2. Early on in the pandemic, you could see how some people
| went to a lab leak (intentional or not) theory very quickly
| with no evidence (e.g. "The China Virus"). On the flip
| side, though, I think you had a lot of people pushing
| against this who felt that any acknowledgement of a
| potential lab leak was playing into "conspiracy theories".
| So my point is that you have to trace incentives on both
| sides, and both sides had incentives that were actually
| _against_ finding the actual truth.
|
| 3. I think the other thing that is extremely important is
| to realize that nearly all humans prefer some explanation
| to "I don't know". Even today you see people on both sides
| of the Covid origins debate who are adamant their position
| is right, when I think the real situation is more "Some lab
| leak or escaped zoonotic virus being studied by a lab is
| more likely than not". So early on in the pandemic, you had
| people confidently proclaiming their personal theories as
| facts that weren't backed up by evidence. And importantly,
| the truth nearly always eventually comes out. You say "that
| hypothesis was totally suppressed for the mainstream media
| for about 2 years". That timeline is wrong, there were lots
| of things being reported in early 2021 about a potential
| lab leak - this article that summarizes the state of
| reporting is from June 2021:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/the-media-
| cal...
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| I agree with #1 and #3, but in trying to be overly fair,
| you're leaving out some important details in #2.
|
| _people went to a lab leak (intentional or not) theory
| very quickly with no evidence_
|
| It was known at the time that the Wuhan lab was studying
| coronavirus, and known they had both safety and security
| lapses. That is far from proof, but it is evidence.
|
| Also, the incentive was to blame China was mixed. At the
| time, Xi had recently the US, and both sides were
| advancing a trade deal. It was a moment the US govt was
| trying to improve relations, and particularly get US
| agricultural sales to China boosted. The lab leak talk
| was tamped down for months. It wasn't until March that
| you had US officials really start to talk about it.
| jkhdigital wrote:
| The lab wasn't just _studying_ coronaviruses. The
| director had intimate knowledge of gain-of-function
| techniques, with publications and grant proposals to
| document this. Some of the research was published during
| her tenure at the lab, so it can be assumed that the
| research was performed there.
| jounker wrote:
| From what I know you're mischaracterizing the research.
|
| To the extent that they were looking at gain of function,
| they were also looking at loss of function. My
| understanding is that the research was looking at how
| random point mutation affect infectivity, both positively
| and negatively.
|
| They were using also using virus evolutionary pretty
| distant from covid 19.
|
| There are corona viruses present in species in the wet
| market that were much closer to covid 19. (eg pangolin
| caron's viruses)
|
| Blaming the wuhan lab is like finding that your child has
| been eaten by a tiger and the blaming a house cat breeder
| on the other side of town.
| svara wrote:
| Your treating the lab leak hypothesis as near fact is
| exactly the kind of bullshit we need less of.
|
| There are not "a few (orders of) magnitude" in probability
| between these hypotheses.
|
| That would at least need to be 1% vs. 99% and that's being
| charitable.
|
| What we need is an education system that teaches people to
| simultaneously entertain conflicting hypotheses and update
| the belief in them as information becomes available.
|
| Your post is the perfect example of what that doesn't look
| like.
|
| (Footnote: There are a number of examples in history for
| pathogens leaking from labs, and for zoonotic origins, so
| having such strongly biased priors under poor evidence in
| either direction really just shows that you _want_ to
| believe something.)
| stanford_labrat wrote:
| the irony for me at least, is that even at hyper liberal
| institutions all my colleagues (students, post doc, faculty
| even) entertained the idea that a lab leak was possible.
| just when it came to the media this hypothesis was labeled
| as a conspiracy theory.
| drewrv wrote:
| There is a virus lab in Wuhan because a lot of
| coronaviruses originate in that region. Its
| existence/location is not evidence of a lab leak.
|
| If anything, the lab leak "theory" has received too much
| media attention when the primary evidence (location of a
| lab) is easily explained by other factors.
|
| Imagine a virus was spread from penguins to humans. It
| would not be surprising if research on the virus were
| conducted in Antarctica!
| jkhdigital wrote:
| Go take your straw man elsewhere, shill. The "primary
| evidence" is that the lab was intimately involved in
| coronavirus gain-of-function research that could (and
| apparently did) produce novel pathogens. There are plenty
| of receipts in the form of published research and grants
| to document this.
| jounker wrote:
| Coronaviruses are a big family of viruses.
|
| The particular viruses they were working with were only
| distantly related to covid. Related in the same way that
| house cats are related to tigers.
|
| In addition they were not doing "gain of function
| research", unless you want to say that they were also
| doing "loss of function research". What they were doing
| was seeing how point mutation affected infectivity both
| positively and negatively.
|
| We know what they were working with, and it wasn't the
| virus that gave rise to covid. There are much closer
| matches than in other species.
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| At the very least it was such an obvious connection that
| ruling it out should have been an early step; when the PRC
| clammed up, and stopped letting any data out that should
| have been seen as the attempt at a cover-up that it likely
| was.
|
| Maybe it didn't come from the lab. Maybe it didn't come
| from China at all. But maybe we should have checked that?
| Maybe we should know if some senior coronavirus researchers
| at that lab got sick with weird illnesses in the later part
| of 2019? Maybe we should have confirmed their virus
| handling procedures were up to snuff, and that a lab leak
| was unlikely because they were such upstanding and
| responsible scientists?
| jounker wrote:
| The initial cases of covid 19 cluster around the wet
| market. The lab is in another part of the city.
|
| If it were a lab leak then we'd expect the initial cases
| to cluster around the lab, and to show up in those who
| had contact with lab workers.
|
| Nobody considered the lab as a source because the basic
| epidemiological evidence doesn't support it.
| trinsic2 wrote:
| > This is why I hate most conspiracy theories - even if you
| take everything the conspiracy supposes at face value,
| conspiracists don't explain how their conspiracy is somehow
| kept so secret when tons of people involved would have
| extremely strong incentives to expose it.
|
| I think the problem with this idea is that thinking can be
| corrupted by emotional bias. Ideologies and power
| differentials(People with powerful incentives to control
| narratives) can have a lasting effect on perception, when you
| pair this with modern media, it can create a cascade effect
| that can drown out the truth. The psychology of group-think
| also plays a part in this as well. Its a very complicated
| topic and your conclusion is one small part of the puzzle.
|
| There is this great YouTube [0] video that describes this
| problem perfectly in my book. They interviewed people with
| some data that was math based and what they found is people
| would skew there own thinking to support there own political
| ideologies. This can be used against the population to create
| perceptions that don't line up with facts.
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB_OApdxcno
| treflop wrote:
| 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 incorrect.
|
| You can explain critical thinking in many ways but none of it
| will teach someone critical thinking.
| UltraSane wrote:
| I think of Critical Thinking as a closed loop process that
| aligns a person's mental model of the world with reality. It
| is just using the scientific method to analyze information in
| daily life. When done correctly and consistently it is like a
| really good spam filter against lies and bullshit.
| narag wrote:
| 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.
| tombert wrote:
| 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" is broadly true and not really disputed
| by anyone as far as I'm aware, but the interpretation of
| "exercise _alone_ can be a solution to obesity " or "how much
| exercise vs how much diet restriction is a solution to obesity"
| is subject to interpretation and biases.
| teekert wrote:
| Perhaps not disputed, but exercise's effect is probably
| overestimated, and thus, damage was done.
| https://youtu.be/vSSkDos2hzo?si=3U2UxQOa_ZgdmT37
| complianceowl wrote:
| 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 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. You can try and
| broaden that statement all you want to pull in other topics,
| but that slogan says nothing about having a disregard for how
| facts are interpreted OR presented.
|
| It goes without saying that facts can be subject to multiple
| interpretations. I think people need to be more honest about
| what you're really saying: you don't like conservatives and
| you distorted a basic phrase as you gaslit a group of people
| and accused that group of doing what you yourself just did.
| jenkstom wrote:
| I'm sorry, but reason magazine has personally made my life
| difficult by participating in medical gaslighting. There may be
| something to some of this, but I'm not inclined to trust them at
| face value.
| Empact wrote:
| Is there any particular basis for this statement, or do you
| prefer to leave it unsubstantiated?
| devmor wrote:
| For an article in a publication under the moniker "reason" this
| ironically contains very little of it.
|
| I felt like I was reading an op-ed rant by an upset boomer that's
| convinced their political outlook is prescriptive fact.
| gandalfgeek wrote:
| There was one slogan that was repeated during COVID that
| perfectly encapsulates the degeneration and capture of science:
| "Follow the science".
|
| That's not how science works. Religions are "followed". Science
| is based on questioning and skepticism and falsifiability.
| some_furry wrote:
| Vaccine denial's conclusions are so woefully unscientific that
| one can excuse the lack of technical precision in the synthesis
| of a pro-vaccination slogan.
| anon291 wrote:
| There are legitimate reasons to be concerned over the COVID
| vaccines that have nothing to do with 'vaccine denial' [1].
| What does 'vaccine denial' even mean? I've never met anyone
| who denies the existence of vaccines.
|
| [1] Such as the elevated cardio vascular risk for young men
| that exceeded their risk from COVID.
| lukas099 wrote:
| If we know that [1] is true, then we know it because of
| science. So believing it is not against trusting the
| science.
| anon291 wrote:
| What does this have to do with 'trusting the science'.
| I'm wondering what the phrase 'vaccine denial' means.
| some_furry wrote:
| > What does 'vaccine denial' even mean?
|
| It's a shorthand for "science denial" about vaccines.
|
| See also: The belief that vaccines cause autism.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| True, but practically speaking: on the flip-side, basically
| nobody affected by the pandemic had the resources to execute on
| hypothesis-testing during the pandemic. There wasn't anything
| else they _could_ do but decide what sources they trusted and
| follow them.
| smt88 wrote:
| People saying that didn't mean it as "obey the science," they
| meant, "follow the science to the conclusions it leads you to."
|
| For example, people would ask public health officials what they
| thought about things, and the data wouldn't be sufficient to
| say with certainty. So they said they'd follow the science,
| meaning "we'll make a decision based on data."
|
| You can criticize a lot of unscientific decisions that people
| made after saying that, but you've misinterpreted the phrase.
| wtcactus wrote:
| > People saying that didn't mean it as "obey the science,"
| they meant, "follow the science to the conclusions it leads
| you to."
|
| People saying that absolutely meant "obey the science" to the
| point that a substantial number of them [4] wanted to
| incarcerate and deprive of their livelihood anyone that
| didn't obey their idea of science.
|
| - https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/31/us/violating-
| coronavirus-...
|
| - https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandrasternlicht/2020/04/06
| /...
|
| - https://oaklandpostonline.com/31966/features/my-familys-
| smal...
|
| [4] https://www.statista.com/chart/23458/support-for-future-
| lock...
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I grew up in the 1980s reading SciAm and still getting old issues
| out of the library so I remember the legendary monthly columnists
| such Martin Gardener and C.L. Strong and his illustrator Roger
| Haywood. They tried the likes of Jearl Walker and Richard
| Hofstader but they never found anyone who could fill those shoes.
|
| They went from a beautiful spot color printing to the same
| process color everybody else used. Got bought by a German
| publishing conglomerate. Looking back I can already see the signs
| of physics "jumping the shark" because of the articles that came
| out in the early 1980s that conflated inflation and the Higgs
| field because... I guess you could in the early 1980s.
|
| I did my PhD and then got settled in the software business and
| did not pay a lot of attention to SciAm, especially because they
| never had a particularly porous paywall. I did notice the stupid
| "woke" editorials a few years before the right-wing trolls
| noticed them. I had lost interest long before then.
|
| Susa Faludi wrote a book about the "backlash" to the feminist
| movement which had actually accomplished something. Unfortunately
| there are a lot of people today who believe in struggle for the
| sake of struggle and will fall behind a standard that will
| maximize their experience of backlash without doing anything to
| help their situation (e.g. bloomberg businessweek runs gushing
| articles about Bernard Arnault and $3000 a night hotel rooms and
| $600 bottles of wine but you know they're on the right side of
| the barricades because they always write "black" with a capital
| b)
|
| It is a selfish meme though and very much likes the backlash
| because the existence of the backlash confirms their world view.
| GMoromisato wrote:
| 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 scientists (and science writers) are
| political.
|
| The root failure, IMHO, is that several professions, including
| scientists, journalists, and teachers have become overwhelmingly
| left-wing. It was not always that way. In the 80s, 35% of
| university employees (administrators+faculty) donated to
| Republicans. In recent years it has been under 5%.[1]
|
| I don't know the cause of this. Perhaps conservatives began
| rejecting science and driving scientists away; or perhaps
| universities became more liberal and conservative scientists left
| to join industry. Maybe both.
|
| Personally, I think it is important that this change. Science is
| the foundation of all our accomplishments, as a country and as a
| species. My hot take is that trust in science will not be
| restored until there are more conservative scientists.
|
| Sadly, I think restoring trust will take a long time. Maybe this
| change at Scientific American will be the beginning of that
| process. I certainly hope so.
|
| ---------
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01382-3.pdf
| disentanglement wrote:
| Or perhaps the republican party has developed such an
| astonishing anti-science attitude that hardly any reasonable
| scientist can support them? Imagine doing research on vaccines
| and hearing the soon to be secretary of health speak on that
| topic. As long as these kind of people count as "conservatives"
| in the US, how could you be a conservative scientist?
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| > Imagine doing research on vaccines and hearing the soon to
| be secretary of health speak on that topic.
|
| I hope I'm not entering a minefield here... but from what
| I've heard, it sounds like he's _not_ against vaccines in
| principle, just ones that haven 't undergone clinical trials
| equivalent to what the FDA requires for pharmaceuticals.
|
| (A sound byte I heard sums it up, where he said something
| like "no one called me anti-fish for working to get mercury
| removed from the fish sold in supermarkets, so I don't see
| why I should be labeled 'anti-vaccine' either.")
| cromwellian wrote:
| No, he's pretty much against them and makes a new excuse
| each time. He would claim that no vaccine ever has gone
| through enough testing.
|
| He also denied HIV causes AIDS, days it's Poppers or
| lifestyle.
|
| He also pushed ivermectin which studies show has no
| statistically significant effect on COVID.
|
| He also pushed raw milk when prior to pasteurization, milk
| was the cause of 25% of all communicable diseases (it's a
| great medium for bacteria, it has avian flu viruses,
| parasites, etc). We invented pasteurization for a reason.
|
| The guy latches on to whatever statistical outlier study he
| can find like an ambulance chasing lawyer and is a threat
| to public health that has been massively improved over the
| last century.
|
| All of his attacks on dyes and seed oils won't move the
| needle when the real reason for US health decline is too
| much sugars/carbs, too little exercise, and addiction to
| opioids and nicotine.
| bitcurious wrote:
| > He also pushed raw milk when prior to pasteurization,
| milk was the cause of 25% of all communicable diseases
| (it's a great medium for bacteria, it has avian flu
| viruses, parasites, etc). We invented pasteurization for
| a reason.
|
| Raw milk is legal to sell in most of Europe and they
| still have overall better health outcomes, so at the very
| least it's a triviality.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Europe also has higher standards for animal husbandry and
| food products.
|
| In most of Europe you can sell unrefrigerated chicken
| eggs. Why? Because chickens in the EU are vaccinated
| against salmonella, so the eggs don't need to be washed
| (and consequently it's also safer to eat poultry in the
| EU).
|
| I'd be happy to sell raw milk on the market if there's a
| requirement that raw milk be tested for common pathogens
| to milk (Like listeria, for example).
| cogman10 wrote:
| I'll also say that this is not unique to him, it's how
| conspiracy minded people operate.
|
| You'll see exactly this playbook playout with flat
| earthers. "We can't know the earth is round because it's
| not been tested." or "It's actually industry captured" or
| "The US government prevents people from doing real tests
| to see if the earth is flat".
|
| You see, if you asked them "what would it take for you to
| abandon this theory" their honest answer is "nothing"
| because any counter evidence to the theory will just get
| wrapped up in more conspiracy.
|
| What would it take for me to abandon my belief in
| evolution? Evidence that explains why things appear to
| evolve and shows what actually happens instead.
|
| What will make me abandon my support of vaccination?
| Evidence that shows vaccines are more dangerous than the
| diseases they protect against.
| function_seven wrote:
| I have avoided so many pointless arguments (or "debates")
| by leading with this question! I ask, "is there something
| I could say that would make you change your mind?" If the
| answer is no--if they can't tell me what will move them
| off their position--then I can say, "well let's not waste
| our time here, yeah?" and change the subject.
|
| It's not perfect. But with otherwise-reasonable people,
| it's a nifty trick.
| roenxi wrote:
| > He also pushed ivermectin which studies show has no
| statistically significant effect on COVID.
|
| Studies showed that it had a statistically significant
| effect on COVID. The problem is that with hindsight it is
| obvious _any_ sufficiently powerful study will show it
| has a statistically significant effect so the existence
| of that effect isn 't particularly interesting evidence.
|
| There will be people who have both COVID and parasites.
| If you give them Ivermectin around the time they catch
| COVID, they will get better outcomes. Statistics will
| pick that up, it is a real effect. AND it has real world
| policy implications, there are a lot of people in the
| world who should immediately be given Ivermectin if they
| catch COVID (or, indeed, any disease). The more important
| political issue was when people noticed that (very real)
| effect without understanding the cause they were attacked
| rather than someone explaining what was happening.
|
| It is a good case study of evidence being misleading, but
| the statistical significance of that evidence is
| indisputable. Any study that doesn't find that effect is
| just underpowered - it is there. In fact as a baseline it
| turns out we would expect any effective drug will have a
| statistically significant positive effect on COVID
| outcomes.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > Studies showed that it had a statistically significant
| effect on COVID. The problem is that with hindsight it is
| obvious any sufficiently powerful study will show it has
| a statistically significant effect so the existence of
| that effect isn't particularly interesting evidence.
|
| Preliminary studies with small n showed a statistically
| significant effect. Follow up studies with larger n
| showed no such effect. Meta studies also concluded no
| effect.
|
| > Any study that doesn't find that effect is just
| underpowered
|
| I'm sorry, but no, in fact the opposite is true. The
| underpowered studies are the only ones showing an effect.
| [1].
|
| What has happened with Ivermectin is the "anchoring
| effect". [2] Early studies showed promise which has
| caused people to think there is promise there. After
| that, grifters and conspiracy peddlers started out
| publishing the actual research on the benefits.
|
| [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9308124/
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_effect
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| > the real reason for US health decline is too much
| sugars/carbs, too little exercise, and addiction to
| opioids and nicotine.
|
| I think a more fundamental root cause is that US
| regulation has failed to adequately keep up with the
| playbooks of large companies that stand to profit from
| various products that result in compromised health.
|
| Take a look at what's being heavily advertised/marketed.
| If it contains ingredients people haven't been consuming
| for thousands of years, I think it's suspect and should
| be subject to intense scrutiny. (Same goes for widely
| used B2B products that affect what people consume.)
|
| Unfortunately, there's too much "we only test in prod"
| going on, so it's hard to isolate widespread problems to
| a single source. That's why (in my opinion) the FDA
| should require clinical trials and use an allowlist-based
| approach to food additives. Currently it's a denylist,
| which amounts to testing in prod.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > If it contains ingredients people haven't been
| consuming for thousands of years, I think it's suspect
| and should be subject to intense scrutiny.
|
| There are plenty of carcinogenic ingredients that have
| been consumed for thousands of years. There are plenty of
| additives that are effectively just refined versions of
| chemicals commonly/naturally consumed.
|
| A prime example of a commonly consumed cancerous
| ingredient is alcohol.
|
| My point being that prod is already littered with bugs
| and the most responsible thing to do is continuing
| research on what is being consumed to figure out if it is
| or is not problematic.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| I mean within reason. Of course the FDA can't and
| shouldn't ban alcohol.
|
| I mean things like BHT, FD&C colors, and anything else
| artificial that hasn't passed clinical trials.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| If you look at political identification by academic
| discipline [1] you can see that the harder sciences tend to
| have smaller Democrat to Republican ratios relative to things
| like English Literature, Psychology, or Fine Arts.
|
| To me, this implies there is an explanation other than
| partisan dislike for science that explains the large
| discrepancies in academic faculty. Whatever this reason is,
| perhaps it extends to other academic/scientific institutions.
|
| 1 - DOI:10.2202/1540-8884.1067 (this paper also discusses how
| Republican faculty tend to have better credentials
| controlling for the quality/rank of institutions they teach
| at)
| 5040 wrote:
| Plenty of reasonable scientists support a political party
| which explicitly denies the existence of biological
| differences between groups of humans. In the final analysis,
| it seems scientists will align with organizations that hold
| unscientific tenets. It's probably not really a big deal.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| Until 2020 the anti-vax movement was dominated by the left
| wing, so maybe you should take a step down from your high
| horse.
| anglosaxony wrote:
| Can you define "vaccine" for us? Is that the pre-2020
| definition, or the newspeak version?
| archagon wrote:
| "Newspeak"? Is there any point in engaging with this
| comment?
| anglosaxony wrote:
| Merriam-Webster changed their definition of "vaccine" in
| 2021. They did this so the COVID shots could still be
| called "vaccines" despite not preventing infection, not
| preventing transmission, and providing only a moderate
| therapeutic benefit. In doing so they cannibalized and
| damaged public trust in "vaccines" which the medical
| community had built for so many years, and at such great
| expense.
|
| As is often the case, the problem was not a dumb public
| "losing trust in [thing]" but managers playing sleight-
| of-hand with the meanings of words. See also: racism.
| archagon wrote:
| Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. And
| nobody treats them as an authority on labeling. This
| makes absolutely no sense.
| anglosaxony wrote:
| Sorry, but "nuh-uh" doesn't work as an argument anymore.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| I haven't verified if it's true yet, but thanks for this.
| I think it deserves to be a whole HN post. It's a shame
| this place is such an echo chamber.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Not needed. The definition is in every dictionary.
| jahewson wrote:
| Back in 2008 RFK Jr was a Democrat and Obama was considering
| appointing him to a cabinet post. Anti-vaxers have
| historically been crunchy-granola hippie folks.
|
| https://www.politico.com/story/2008/11/obama-considers-
| stars...
| wyager wrote:
| Thinking this is about science _per se_ betrays a very naive
| understanding of the political dynamics involved. It 's quite
| easy to come up with examples where the official progressive
| position is nonscientific; Lysenkoism, for example, is as
| popular in left-leaning politics as ever (in the context of
| human biology). I can come up with plenty of other examples,
| although stating them here is guaranteed to draw some
| administrative ire.
|
| In reality, institutional political alignment is just a
| natural equilibrium outcome of a political process with pork-
| barrelling as a feature (which is almost all of them).
| squigz wrote:
| It might be because what being a "conservative" in America
| means has been grotesquely distorted into what it is today.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > being a "conservative" in America means has been
| grotesquely distorted into what it is today.
|
| I am a recovering conservative and agree with this. Today's
| right wing occupies a space that I find to be distressing and
| deeply concerning. From my perspective, conservatism has
| become thin-skinned, extremely malleable and hair-trigger
| reactive - the same complaints we lobbed at the left, 20y
| ago. From my perspective, the right is dominated by the same
| boogeymen we once visualized and railed against.
| anglosaxony wrote:
| >I am a recovering conservative and agree with this
|
| Glad you left us. It's clear that your interests and ours
| don't align. We'll be conquering space, taking the White
| House, and engineering our way out of climate change while
| the HN comments gang pats itself on the back for censoring
| uncomortable truths, denying links between race and IQ, and
| sexually mutilating adolescent children.
| squigz wrote:
| The fact that you think we can just engineer our way out
| of climate change is half of the problem - to say nothing
| of the fact that, as far as I'm aware, the Republican
| party does not really accept the threat of climate
| change.
| quasse wrote:
| > 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 process, censor research and constantly try to shift
| schooling away from being a public right to a private good?
| sangnoir wrote:
| > In the 80s, 35% of university employees
| (administrators+faculty) donated to Republicans
|
| The Republican party used to be the leftwing party, right up
| until the 1960s - which is the right timeframe for the staff to
| have grown up in a "Republican family" without being conserve
| themselves.
|
| AFAICT academia, in any country, since the 18th century, has
| leaned more towards being progressive than conservative, which
| is why academia has been consistently near the top of (s)hit-
| lists by dictators or strong-man "revolutionaries"
| downrightmike wrote:
| Barry Goldwater's Presidential campaign ran on "I'm the only
| one that matters. Me me me." Party. I'm not wrong, he was a
| piece of shit
| cdot2 wrote:
| You think FDR was the right wing candidate?
| lazyeye wrote:
| "Perhaps conservatives began rejecting science..."
|
| Naah...I think left-leaning/collectivists tend to be much less
| tolerant of people they disagree with, and when the pendulum
| swing of the wider culture allows it, this is manifested in
| hiring outcomes over time.
|
| This may swing back in the years to come...
| rurp wrote:
| It's one thing to have liberal beliefs that influence your work
| in subtle ways, and a whole other thing to actively manipulate
| research to promote those social causes. Research on gender
| affirming care for minors should not be published or buried
| simply based on which side it supports, but that is exactly
| what has happened in that field.
|
| Given how anti-science and anti-education the republican party
| has become I doubt we'll see a swing in political beliefs among
| researchers any time soon, but they absolutely can and should
| be as diligent as possible about maintaining their intellectual
| honesty.
| wyager wrote:
| > I don't know the cause of this.
|
| I think it's pretty clear when you analyze it from the
| perspective of Selectorate Theory (c.f. Bueno De Mesquita's
| _Logic of Political Survival_ ).
|
| Basically, there's a natural tendency for political parties to
| bring entire classes of institutions into their patronage
| network, leading to extremely high polarization within given
| industries. The _choice_ of which party an institution class
| gets aligned with may be entirely arbitrary, but you expect it
| to happen. It 's an efficient way to pork-barrel buy votes.
|
| E.g. the education sector is part of the D patronage network
| and the ag sector is part of the R patronage network. There's
| no inherent reason this particular selection needs to be the
| case, but you do expect _some_ kind of polarization to emerge.
| henearkr wrote:
| This whole debate is surrealist.
|
| Bigotry and intolerance are fundamentally irrational and
| illogical, so the so-called "left-bias" of science is just
| science being itself.
|
| Now the comments in this HN page and the reason.com article are
| completely ignoring that, and only considering everything through
| a political filter.
| TheBlight wrote:
| Is "intolerance" objectively defined?
| henearkr wrote:
| Easy enough: make matter things that have no reason to
| matter.
|
| Like what the skin color has to do with how good your
| physician is? Nothing.
|
| Science is smart enough to propose the adequate metrics, in
| this case it does absolutely not include melanin.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > Like what the skin color has to do with how good your
| physician is? Nothing.
|
| Unfortunately, this is not the case. Malpractice and
| disciplinary rates among Black and Latin physicians are
| higher: https://www.library.ca.gov/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/08/Medica...
|
| > After controlling for a number of other variables,
| Latino/a and Black physicians were both more likely to
| receive complaints and more likely to see those complaints
| escalate to investigations. Latino/a physicians were also
| more likely to see those investigations result in
| disciplinary outcomes. On the other hand, some other
| minority physicians -- in particular Asian physicians --
| actually saw reduced likelihoods of receiving complaints,
| or of those complaints escalating to investigations. These
| observations remained even after controlling for age,
| gender, board certification, and number of hours spent on
| patient care.
| tomrod wrote:
| Now do it outside the country, and I anticipate the
| results don't replicate, meaning your cited study
| probably fails replication.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean by this. Let's imagine MCAT
| scores directly determine malpractice rates. If one
| country practices race based affirmative action in
| medical school applications, and another country does not
| the we should expect the former to see a disparity but
| not the latter.
|
| Why would we expect this trend to replicate across
| countries which have different medical training systems?
| bitcurious wrote:
| Until a few years ago, if my physician was educated in the
| United States and were Asian American they had to have a
| measurably better academic track record to overcome anti-
| Asian bias in university admissions. Does that mean they
| are a better physician? Probably not - in my experience the
| difference between good and bad in a medical context is
| patience and care, not knowledge. However it's not absurd
| to make the opposite claim.
|
| Similarly, there is a body of scholarship that suggests
| that black physicians trust black patients more than white
| physicians trust black patients. If I am black, does the
| color of _my_ physician matter when I talk about something
| hurting? The evidence suggests that it might.
|
| The fundamental flaw in basing your moral philosophy in
| measurable metrics is that metrics are noisy and that noise
| will often undermine your point. Instead, you should be
| making a purely moral point: my doctor's skin color
| _shouldn 't_ matter and I will act to make the world I live
| in more similar to this ideal. That moral point is the
| driving force behind the civil rights progress that has
| been made.
| someuser2345 wrote:
| It's left leaning universities that push for affirmative
| action policies, which _do_ judge people based on their
| melanin.
| anglosaxony wrote:
| Deciding "what matters" isn't a question of science, it is
| a question of dominance and self-interest. You seem intent
| on dominating others and denying their legitimate self-
| interests.
| Sniffnoy wrote:
| I don't think this applies to the particular problems being
| discussed. Certainly it's irrational to discriminate (as you
| say in a related comment), but the examples discussed in the
| article are not cases of Scientific American simply declaring
| that principle, but rather making other errors, or proclaiming
| a rather different political point of view.
|
| (If you think the "social justice" movement is simply about --
| or even supports -- the nondiscrimination principle you mention
| in a related comment, you are mistaken! And if you support it
| because you support that principle, I recommend looking more
| into what the SJers actually believe, because you may find that
| you're not in as close agreement with them as you assumed you
| were...)
| anglosaxony wrote:
| >Bigotry and intolerance are fundamentally irrational and
| illogical, so the so-called "left-bias" of science is just
| science being itself.
|
| TIL science ignores sex differences in body strength and
| endurance, racial differences in average IQ, the Putnam study
| on diversity and social capital, racial differences in
| aggression and their link to violent crime, and studies on the
| effects (irreversible) puberty blockers have on kids, among
| other things.
|
| You can dislike these results, you can tell me I'm a bigot for
| even bringing them up, but you cannot correctly dispute them on
| the grounds of scientific inquiry. The fact that Scientific
| American would even try, as they have now for years, tells you
| all you need to know about their attachment to reality.
| chrisbrandow wrote:
| I remember when that article wildly mis-describing the normal
| distribution came out and I was so sad. It was just so
| embarrassing. The author was in no way qualified, yet the burden
| rests on the editors of a publication with the reputation to
| catch this incredible incorrect statement to come out.
|
| I usually think woke/antiwoke complaints go too far, but that was
| such a failure.
| mtlynch wrote:
| Reference for the curious: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6202
| charlescearl wrote:
| Here is a list of Soviet nobel prize laureates, courtesy of
| Wikipedia
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_Nobel_laurea....
| There are several in the sciences up to the year 1978.
|
| I'm sure that many were committed Communists, Bolsheviks, perhaps
| Marxist-Leninists until their last breath. Perhaps there were
| "Tankies" and Trotskyists among the bunch. Perhaps there were
| many who recited the right thing, or longed for the restoration
| of Tsarist rule, perhaps some who ended up ended by colleagues
| who thought they'd subverted revolution. I haven't read all the
| biographies.
|
| Perhaps science can be conducted by people across a political
| spectrum, and perhaps that might be a good thing.
| jahewson wrote:
| After Stalin had all the scientists he didn't like executed, he
| allowed the ones who were useful for developing weapons to
| live. Truly inspiring.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repression_of_science_in_the...
| kgwgk wrote:
| "Leave them in peace. We can always shoot them later."
|
| https://cerncourier.com/a/reviews-2/
| agentultra wrote:
| I can't really speak to the author's credentials but they link to
| two of their own articles and seem to be sour that SciAm didn't
| publish their work under this out-going editor's direction.
|
| In general though, it seems like publications such as SciAm are
| under a lot of pressure in this political environment. Maybe more
| than ever. I'm sure they've no doubt faced criticism from
| scientists that wanted to publish climate-denialist "science,"
| over the last 40-some-odd years.
|
| It seems like the folks clamouring for "neutrality," in science
| are those that were most often marginalized for their
| unscientific writing and claims. This whole environment of "both
| sides," and pseudo-scientific conspiracy theories, and
| alternative-facts must be absolutely exhausting for editors.
|
| I hope SciAm manages to stay progressive and continue to publish
| good stuff.
| rurp wrote:
| 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 example of this. It is wild to me
| how many organizations have twisted themselves around to
| promote various trendy progressive social causes that have no
| connection to their actual mission over the past decade or so.
| Mozilla is the poster child for this in tech.
|
| I used to shake my head at this stuff, finding it mildly
| annoying but not all that consequential. After seeing the
| results of the last election and what voters have been telling
| pollsters for years, it's clear that this sort of activism is a
| massive albatross weighing on every single liberal politician
| and cause.
| agentultra wrote:
| 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
| fjh wrote:
| I'm a bit baffled by this comment, so much so that I find it
| difficult to believe we've read the same article. I don't see
| any indication in the article that the author ever submitted
| any work to SciAm, let alone that he's sore about not being
| published. None of the examples he cites have anything to do
| with climate denialism, nor is he defending any pseudo-
| scientific conspiracy theories. How is any of this responding
| to the article you're commenting on?
| agentultra wrote:
| No, you're right. I was referring to the pandering of
| credentials the author mentioned by citing the articles they
| published in other magazines and the book they're writing. No
| mention of their PhD in Medicine and specialization in the
| field though. Was that omitted?
|
| > I've written articles about it for major outlets like The
| Atlantic and The Economist, and am working on a book. I found
| SciAm's coverage to not just be stupid (JEDI) or insulting or
| uncharitable (the Wilson story), but actually a little bit
| dangerous.
|
| You're right, it doesn't sound like they're sour about not
| being published in SciAm. They're unhappy with the topics
| SciAm report on and the content of them.
|
| Looking a bit deeper, the author is a co-host of the _Blocked
| and Reported_ podcast and has been criticized for having an
| anti-trans bias in his writing [0].
|
| It doesn't seem that he's a doctor of any sort, a scientist
| of any kind.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Singal
| throwaway657656 wrote:
| By chance I just started reading Sci Am after a lapse 10 years.
| This month, there is an article that mentions that empathy is
| mentally taxing, which is obvious but worth stating. Shortly
| afterwards it is followed by a series of articles on sickle cell
| disease.
|
| I suspect the order of these two articles was a deliberate choice
| by the editor. Subconsciously I never cared much about sickle
| cell since I am not black and I am more interested in diseases
| that would affect me and my family. But then I realized that I am
| choosing to be dismissive, which has zero cognitive cost, as
| opposed to empathy which comes at a cost. I read the report and
| immediately reflected on how I should give more blood since
| transfusions can ease the unbearable pain of this disease. I
| learned a lot of science too.
|
| The examples in the parent article make it clear the editor needs
| be replaced. But like all over-corrections I hope some of the
| changes made during her tenure remain.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| 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.
| squigz wrote:
| 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.
| hamolton wrote:
| The author's critiques seem nit-picky to me. I'd like to hear
| from somebody that follows this, scrolling through SciAm articles
| published in the past few years, it seems like the bulk of
| content is still normal popular science. While it does publish a
| large chunk of partisan opinions now, a lot of them are pretty
| normal party-line defenses of democrats and their causes with
| respect to science, health, and whatnot. While I see they
| published a half-dozen or so articles defending gender-affirming
| care in youth, it's not like this is so central to the rag that
| this was mentioned on the covers. Is the author trying to
| rationalize an aversion to partisan politics in a magazine coming
| from a nation with a climate change denialist party?
| agentultra wrote:
| Make of it what you will, but the author's wikipedia page seems
| to put this article in perspective:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Singal
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