
Scientists must rise above politics and restate their value to society - Elof
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02379-w
======
hackeraccount
Science and politics are different. Politics doesn't prove things. Politics is
about making choices. Should abortion be legal, if so, when? That's a moral
choice. Or less elegantly it's an answer to the question - who's going to be
punished and who's going to be rewarded. Science might be able to to inform
that decision but it can't and shouldn't make it.

Science is about discovering information. It could answer the question, "Is
climate change happening?" It can't answer the question "What should we do
about it?" It can inform people about the consequences of one response or
another but at root the answer to that question is - "Who do I want to see
hurt and who do I want to see helped?"

Clearly there's a lot of overlap there - it's not hard to see how and why
that's the case - but I still think when Science starts to lay claim to
political decisions people become resentful and no one is fooled.

The analogy I'd make is politicians invoking religion as a trump card in
making policy. No one is fooled by it - and it makes everyone suspicious of
religion.

~~~
whatshisface
It's not that clear cut. I'll use the environment as an example. Nobody wants
to drive mass extinctions or ruin America's agricultural climate. There is no
party in favor of doing those things. The _only way_ to have absolutely no
push-back against industries that do that stuff is to deny that it's
happening. You could accept that it's happening and then try to bargain based
on future discounting and economic growth, but then the answer would be some
kind of restraint greater in magnitude than zero. If you want to have
absolutely no restraints you are forced to convince everybody that there is no
problem. The moral obviousness of the choice turns a political issue into a
scientific one, and brings the politicians along with it.

~~~
squirrelicus
Let me annotate this as somebody accused of climate denial.

We who are not trolling do not deny the data. The data are clear, there is a
general warming trend so far. And it's most likely primarily caused by human
action. But there's a problem.

You see, when we noticed Uranus had perturbations in its orbit, we looked at
the theoretical model, did the math the theory demanded, predicted that a
planet should be in a location, looked there, and saw Neptune. In that order.
That's how rigorous scientific theory works.

Climate theory is very far from that rigor. Each University has a different
model. Most of them have many models. They're software, written by programmers
that embed their assumptions into their code. They all disagree. And we never
know which model is correct _except in hindsight_. Even more problematic, the
model that best predicted climate change in 2015 is not the model that best
predicted climate change in 2019. Of the thousand models, we see every year in
the news "this one was right!". But we didnt know it was right _before_ we
looked in hindsight, and we don't know in the least which one will be right
tomorrow. Climate theory is still in flux.

Moreover, the supposed solutions do not address the fact that the biggest
problem is not the West, which has been declining in emissions simce the 70s
[0]. It's the exponentially growing developing world. None of the solutions
I've heard except "global nuclear fission or war, now" have a chance at
stopping climate change as generally predicted by the entertainment media like
CNN et al. Solar and wind is a mere fairy tale unless we're talking about
comoletely carpetting AZ, NV, and half of TX in solar paneling. And then
braindead things like the Green New Deal pop up, that even my Democrat friends
make fun of. I'm left with a sense that the evangelists of climate change
either don't take what they believe seriously, or they're ignorant of the
gravity of their predictions.

So yeah. I'm withholding judgement because for the foreseeable future, the
absolute worst case is my grandparents can outwallk climate change coastal
changes and we get more net arable land in Canada and Siberia.

[0] [https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-
emis...](https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions)

~~~
euroPoor
That’s the point of competitive academia, no? To have people try different
stuff and to converge to a pratical solution when there’s no provably exact
one. So of course climate scientists will try a universe of models to get
better at predicting.

You put your comment as long, well thought out description of what is
happening, but it’s frankly embarrassing. Climate scientists don’t disagree
fundamentally at all, and we can all be grateful if their models get better
and better.

So please, if you dismiss policy proposals as braindead when they’re trying to
accomodate for our collective failures and the learnings we had during the
last 30+ years, be better than that.

~~~
squirrelicus
The science question is fun because I'm not sure who you're arguing against.
Scientists are doing good work fighting an intractable problem. And their
results are contradictory and disappointing so far.

But more interestingly, where did we fail exactly? And how is giving
totalitarian control of the economy to a 20-something, easily manipulated
bartender with a 400s credit score going to make anything better?

~~~
euroPoor
> And their results are contradictory and disappointing so far.

Absolutely not.

Where did we fail? Listening to scientists 50 years ago that had the data
already. Changing our infrastructure while we had the time. Signing treaties
for 30 years instead of incentivizing sustainable business.

I'm not going to comment on your ad hominem. Like yeah, people from all walks
of life being able to participate in politics is called DEMOCRACY, I think you
heard of it. It's also entirely offtopic for you to keep going on that.

------
traverseda
It's hard to have respect for scientists these days. Things like the
psychology replication crisis have really undermined my confidence in academia
as an institution.

I remember getting into a debate with a (facebook) acquaintance of mine,
ultimately it boiled down to me asking them for an example of what they'd
consider a good sociology paper. The paper was trying to test whether sexual
harassment training actually worked. After reading through it, it was almost
laughable how bad it was. Their system for measuring if the training worked
was waiting two weeks and testing if people retained the knowledge. It was
also done using a small group of college students.

Of course that's just one paper, but the event stuck in my mind. He was a
relatively well-respected grad student in my peer group, and that was what he
considered to be good science?

There are a lot of examples of really dubious stuff coming out of the academic
community. Things like the sokal affair, or the infamous "feminist glaciology"
incident. Like it or not those are getting lumped in with legitimate
scientists in the public conscious, and if academia want to get taken more
seriously it needs to get these ridiculous excesses under control or at least
de-emphasize/disavow them as much as possible.

I think there's a lot to be done to gain back that trust, but most of it has
to do with cutting out the garbage. Publish or perish seems like one of the
bigger problems that need addressing, but the lack of open-access journals
certainly doesn't help. The academic writing style probably needs an overhaul
as well.

I don't know, it's sad but for me at least there needs to be some big changes
before I start regaining respect of academia as a institution.

~~~
peteradio
Yikes, talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water. I've been through
the grinder and have my grudges with academia but what does that have to do
with scientists in general?

~~~
traverseda
Well it means that I can't presume that any given research paper I read is
reasonable, or that the abstract has anything to do with the actual results
they found. Which is a problem, because while I've found it relatively easy to
tell if a paper is complete bullshit the academic writing style makes it
really hard to skim a paper for those warning signs.

On the whole this means I need to use heuristics in order to try and
understand research on the whole, and while I believe those heuristics are
better than just taking the research as gospel, they're definitely worse than
a properly functioning scientific community that does good research in the
first place.

~~~
peteradio
You must only be interested in Sociology I take it?

~~~
traverseda
I'm not denying climate science. The material science papers I've read seem
pretty unambiguous. Some seem intentionally hard to replicate, but when they
have a video of the material exhibiting the behavior they're describing it's
pretty hard to debate :p

Sociology does seem like a pretty big problem, and I do think these issues are
bringing down the reputation of science as a whole.

But I haven't found nearly as many issues in STEM fields, although I'm seeing
some very worrying trends in AI research and reproducibility.

------
codingslave
The issue is modern education actively filters out eccentric scientists and
rewards submissive diligent people (ivy league graduates). Creative geniuses
dont thrive in modern school systems and thus dont end up with 4.0s. Higher
level education (PhDs) is also seen as a great way to migrate to the USA by
the Chinese and Indians (not saying they arent contributing to the fields), so
you get people who arent passionately trying to push the field forwards but
instead are just jumping through hoops and view it as a career.

Other issues in science include people turning it in a competition for
prestige. Its often the case that top programs prioritize the prestige of an
undergraduate school instead of research ability. The same is true of academic
journals and getting tenure. In some fields, more than half of the tenured
professors at the top 100 schools in the USA completed their PhD from a top 5
PhD program in their field.

~~~
Balgair
> In some fields, more than half of the tenured professors at the top 100
> schools in the USA completed their PhD from a top 5 PhD program in their
> field.

In a lot of Humanities fields, it's worse. Though I can't seem to find _The
Atlantic_ article right now, I can remember one from a few years ago that
stated that in fields like French Literature, there has _never_ been a tenured
professor in the US that came form anything other than one of ten schools,
going back many decades. That said, these professors still taught at a place
other than those ten schools and had PhD students themselves. These students
stood exactly zero chance at tenure achievement. These new PhDs could, of
course, go on to live lives outside of the ivory tower. However, in the
Humanities, it does smell strongly of disingeniousness on the part of the
tenured faculty to take on students, charge them, and train them in fields
that they know they cannot possibly be employed in to any 'real' effect.

I cannot imagine the metal gymnastics that must go on in the Ethics fields
these days.

------
lordnacho
The thing is in the 1950s you still had a lot of respect for scientists, who
after all had only recently built an impossibly powerful bomb. And the most
famous one of them all was still alive, too.

Go and ask someone who a famous living physicist is nowadays.

I'm afraid the way modern media works is the opposite of what we need for
scientists to have authority.

~~~
Beldin
Alan Turing was a scientist, played a part in helping end WWII and ... wasn't
treated kindly (I'll leave it at that).

Perhaps in the 50s there was more respect for authority figures than there is
nowadays. I strongly doubt there was more than that though.

~~~
jl2718
Neither was Issac Newton. But the public listened to them most intently when
they said something that they knew would get them in trouble. Every other
‘scientist’ of the day that spent their lives on elaborate self-serving proofs
of their institution’s dogma, is long gone and completely forgotten. We are
right to be suspicious of these people.

------
viburnum
There is no rising above politics. Conflict is unavoidable. People disagree
about things. If you have political goals you have to do politics.

------
bluetwo
Scientists observe, try to disprove their theories, and come to conclusions
about theories they could not discredit.

Politicians start with their conclusions, find alternative theories and then
seek to discredit them.

We need to vote for politicians that think more like scientists and less like
politicians.

~~~
metalchianti
> Politicians start with their conclusions, find alternative theories and then
> seek to discredit them.

Seems like politicians start with the conclusions and find ways to pay off
ethically reprehensible scientists to manipulate data to credit a politically
acceptable theory (or discredit a politically competitive theory).

------
jstewartmobile
The problem with science isn't politics. The problem with science is whoredom.

So many "foundations" that are either reputation-launderers for moneyed
interests, or so tied to a foredrawn conclusion that every result must be
carefully post-filtered to avoid career suicide.

With their livelihoods (and independence) assured, this task was typically
handled by the upper classes in old Europe. Once the dust settles, the same
pattern will probably be revealed for the present day.

------
cantankerous
Let's be realistic, while you can see denialism of science across the
spectrum, there's only one side of it that denies it in the face of
extinction-level events. Scientists can't hope to transcend politics (an
unrealistic and meaningless goal anyway) when the Right is so given to
removing them from the discourse. They need to enter politics and lean in with
everybody else.

~~~
nostromo
The right's skepticism is a response to academia becoming two things: 1.
monolithically leftist and 2. activist in nature.

Nobody is arguing with basic research. But when a peer reviewed gender studies
journal publishes a rewriting of Mein Kampf, I think it's fair to suspect that
a lot of non-science masquerading as real science is indeed pouring out of
Universities.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affilia#Grievance_Studies_affa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affilia#Grievance_Studies_affair)

~~~
AlexandrB
This analysis confuses cause and effect. Science became "leftist" because the
right rejected the findings of science in areas like climatology in favour of
its own pseudoscientific nonsense. Consider how the Evangelical right decided
to even reject bedrock ideas like evolution because it conflicted with
ideology.

Complaints about "gender studies" are mostly a red herring. Social sciences
are not the same as geology, climatology, or biology and don't inhabit the
same departments in most universities.

~~~
fromthestart
>This analysis confuses cause and effect. Science became "leftist" because the
right rejected the findings of science in areas like climatology in favour of
its own pseudoscientific nonsense.

Academic institutions have leaned left since at least the 60s, back when
leftism was an actual counterculture movement. This has nothing to do with
climate science.

>Complaints about "gender studies" are mostly a red herring. Social sciences
are not the same as geology, climatology, or biology and don't inhabit the
same departments in most universities.

Gender studies is fully related to the discussion, because it is an
exclusively leftist pursuit, intrinsically linked to modern "liberal"
policymaking, and respected institutions tacitly enforce their
pseudoscientific, sexist, racist, and classist drivel by allowing them space
and funding, while making no such allowances to _anything_ related to right
wing politics. Right leaning ideas are effectively forbidden at the majority
of so called elite universities in the U.S.

How can you expect scientific departments to be unbiased when their
administration and sources of funding are openly and strongly politically
leaning and active?

Further, and most importantly, do you really believe that climate science is
immune to dogma and the statistical abuses that are responsible for the
replication crisis evident in other empirical disciplines? Even asking such a
question is career suicide - which unfortunately justifies some degree of
right wing scepticism of modern academia due to politicization.

~~~
scarmig
The majority of academic scientists identified as Republicans, up through the
80s.

The conspiracy you imagine of academic administrators shutting down research
that undermines climate change because of gender studies is inane.

~~~
fromthestart
>The conspiracy you imagine of academic administrators shutting down research
that undermines climate change because of gender studies is inane.

You've misrepresented my point. The point is that the existence and condoning
of politically slanted departments like those of gender studies is further
evidence of a strong liberal bias in academic administration, which will
inevitability bleed into management of climate science because of how
politicized it has become.

~~~
scarmig
You've failed to establish how the existence of gender studies departments
means we can dismiss the findings of the physical sciences, including climate
change. It is still an inane point.

~~~
fromthestart
>You've failed to establish how the existence of gender studies departments
means we can dismiss the findings of the physical sciences

I am not advocating for dismissal, I am merely suggesting that social and
political pressure for certain results from the hiring and financial
appropriation practices of a politically biased administration can introduce
aggregate bias in published results. And on the subject:

>The majority of academic scientists identified as Republicans, up through the
80s

You've failed to establish how even a republican leaning scientific
establishment is immune from the whims of administration resulting in, say,
only publishing results that support the politically correct positions. It is
a fact that the overwhelming majority University administration's lean
strongly left - and when science is politicized, there's a strong chance that,
again, such administrative bias will affect results in seemingly innocuous
ways. Not to mention that most environmental scientists have personal left
leaning biases and experience social and professional pressures which also may
be reflected in results.

Significance testing, publication of only positive results, and model design
are three methods by a which slant may be unintentionally introduced and,
again, we _know_ that these problems have lead to the replication crisis
explicitly identified in other empirical sciences - why do you think no one is
willing to ask the same, legitimate question about climate science,
particularly when climatology by nature is not a reproducible discipline?

~~~
scarmig
> we know that these problems have lead to the replication crisis explicitly
> identified in other empirical sciences - why do you think no one is willing
> to ask the same, legitimate question about climate science

Oh, for Christ's sake. If anything, climate scientists talk about this more
than most other specialties:

"Perspectives on Reproducibility and Replication of Results in Climate
Science"

[https://www.nap.edu/resource/25303/Reproducibility%20and%20R...](https://www.nap.edu/resource/25303/Reproducibility%20and%20Replication%20in%20Climate%20Science.pdf)
(No, the National Academies of Sciences aren't comprised of crypto-socialist
ideologues.)

It took literally 10 seconds of Googling to find that. Writing this comment is
taking several times as long.

Perhaps the fever swamp that's constantly wondering if climate scientists
understand basic science should perform basic due diligence on their own
mental models of how the world works.

~~~
fromthestart
The source you linked discussed reproducibility of modeling and analysis of
historic data. It makes no mention of the problems responsible for the
_experimental_ replication crisis that I'm describing in other fields - it
wouldn't make sense to because climate science is not and cannot be
experimental. Which makes the science more vulnerable to bias because there is
fundamentally no way to prove beyond statistical estimated whether it is right
or wrong.

Why do you refuse to admit the possibility that political and social pressures
in such a strongly politicized field can bias climate science? All of the
ingredients are there, and the only reason such an assertion is contentious is
because of these very same political norms. It begins to resemble dogma, when
any criticism is treated with such disdain.

------
zetalabs
Some scientists are already doing exactly that, closing the gap between
research-driven science focused on understanding, and the role of scientists
integrating it in society via politics.

(Disclaimer: Not my book, but a friend's) You can learn more on the topic in
"Impact Science: The science of getting to radical social and environmental
breakthroughs" which comes with a wonderful list of real-world stories.

[https://www.amazon.com/Impact-Science-environmental-
breakthr...](https://www.amazon.com/Impact-Science-environmental-
breakthroughs-stunningly-ebook/dp/B07SN1L4L2)

~~~
brunosan
Thanks for the shoutout @zetalabs. FWIW, the whole book is also available for
free here [https://impactscience.dev/](https://impactscience.dev/)

------
RickJWagner
Yes! We really, really need scientists to be elevated above politics.

Scientists who can talk freely (and be respected for their views) about
climate change. And unborn babies. And all sorts of other topics where their
honest and well-researched opinions can be useful.

As it is today, scientists are often used as a political force ('March for
Science', eh?) All this does is render them mute to half the audience. It also
leads to embarassing over-reaches and over-statements, which again diminish
respect for their work.

We really, really need for politics to be removed from science.

------
sehugg
Pugwash wasn't just a bunch of lofty idealists, they participated in direct
negotiations that kicked off the peace process in Vietnam:
[http://pugwashhistory.blogspot.com/2009/07/mcnamara-and-
pugw...](http://pugwashhistory.blogspot.com/2009/07/mcnamara-and-pugwash-from-
pennsylvania.html)

Despite the headline, the article seems to be arguing that scientists reclaim
their seat at the table, and get their hands dirty. A tall order in this era.

------
x0hm
I'd like to see a separation of Science and State, much like we have with
religion except maybe actual separate.

~~~
nostromo
People are unfairly downvoting you.

I like what the FAA does: they separate fact-finding from policy-making after
an aviation accident.

The fact-finding folks make no recommendations on policy. All they do is find
the cause of the incident.

Only after they are done do a completely separate group of people address how
the problem could be fixed.

In your proposal, scientists would be the fact-finders, and politicians would
be the policy-makers.

~~~
ip26
Is the policy-making group subject matter experts, e.g. aviation engineers, or
are they suits?

------
cryoshon
in the US, science has become a political act because science is inextricably
linked to improving human welfare.

frequently, the prescription to improve human welfare is for other humans to
take certain actions, or to refrain from certain actions. and so, by
performing its fundamental mission, science makes enemies by constantly
proposing alternatives to the status quo. these alternatives are frequently
unwelcome by certain types of people to say the least.

speaking from experience, the anti-scientists aren't going to be convinced by
anything a scientist says because science is alien, frightening, and, from
their perspective, deeply tainted by corruption and abuse of authority to
promote political agendas. for now, the right wing has the biggest and most
deserved anti-science reputation. however, i can very easily imagine a future
in which the left wing reacts in an identically ignorant way to some growing
body of evidence.

so, how can scientists restate their value to a society which ignores,
rejects, condemns, or doesn't understand their message? as terrible as it
sounds, making a real and easily understandable major breakthrough that
positively impacts human life would sure help -- but of course, science
doesn't work like that, and most of the low-hanging fruit has been exploited
already.

aside from that, i think one part of the answer is to keep a close oversight
on science journalism such that it represents scientific progress with less
hyperbole and with more context and more third-party/peer review input.

------
korbonits
Science is political! This headline is :thumbs-down:

------
notathing
Wrong. Science must absolutely be activist, they are in the best position to
improve society and combat fascist movements.

Nature itself said it:

> _As if full-time research weren 't time-consuming and challenging enough,
> nanophysicist Michael Stopa embraced a second occupation while at the bench:
> politics._

[https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v539/n7630/full/nj7630...](https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v539/n7630/full/nj7630-599a.html)

