
A Science Journal Funded by Peter Thiel Dismisses Climate Change and Evolution - aaronbrethorst
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/01/a-science-journal-funded-by-peter-thiel-is-running-articles-dismissing-climate-change-and-evolution/
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charliesharding
As someone who has studied science extensively (geology, geochemistry,
microbiology) there is nothing wrong with this and I find it refreshing.

There is no such thing as "settled science" and whenever you see that phrase
you should become immediately skeptical. It's a dangerous term that is an
imminent threat to scientific progress. Think about all of the "settled
science" that has been upended across human history.

~~~
kuhhk
And if you click on the article about evolution that is being claimed as
"dismissive", it does not seem dismissive. It posed a challenge from the 80's
that apparently was popular at the time. This seems like a hit piece that
people are upvoting because of the title.

~~~
dragonwriter
> And if you click on the article about evolution that is being claimed as
> "dismissive", it does not seem dismissive. It posed a challenge from the
> 80's that apparently was popular at the time.

The absence of transitional fossils argument it makes is a standard—and long
rebutted—anti-evolution argument that's older than the 1980s (it was actually
noted as a problem _by Darwin_ , and dishonest anti-evolution folks like to
pretend there has been no progress; _honest_ creationists are a different
story [0].)

[0] [https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2009/01/honest-
creation.htm...](https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2009/01/honest-
creation.html)

~~~
DougN7
You sound like you know more about this than I do. Are there any theories (not
even with evidence) about how sex evolved? I can’t find a way two unrelated
species (that did not have a “mother and father” of some sort) came together
to produce the first ever offspring with two progenitors. In otherwords some
creature was conceived (using the term lossely) and born in a way vastly
different from it’s parent. All the “plumbing” (organs) needed for that first
combination, which would have been an evolutionary anchor up to that point, is
something I can’t see my way around.

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gomijacogeo
[https://sci-hub.se/10.1126/science.324_1254](https://sci-
hub.se/10.1126/science.324_1254)

In short, sexual reproduction is very old (> 1 billion years ago) and first
appeared in an ancestor of all eukaryotic cells and long predates
multicellular life. So, all of multicellular life evolved with the
haploid/diploid molecular machinery already available and different branches
of life have built vastly different strategies to use it. You'd be better
served IMHO to start at DNA replication and build up rather than starting at
sex organs and working backward.

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whatshisface
This sounds like a no-win situation. If Thiel doesn't influence the papers
published in the journal you get headlines like this ("journal publishes
insane article"), and if he does influence the articles then you would have
the even worse headline, "billionaire censors academic publications in journal
he funds." The apparent solution would be to appoint a board of censors that
aren't you but agree with all of your beliefs, but let's be honest that's not
any better.

~~~
staticautomatic
The win would be a scientific publication that takes science seriously.

You can't just go around making assertions of truth and then deny any attempt
to discuss their merits by claiming that it's just a belief or an opinion
whose truth value is irrelevant. That's basically how we ended up in this
godawful post-truth world we now live in, and there certainly shouldn't be any
room for it in a scientific publication.

~~~
sonnyblarney
"The win would be a scientific publication that takes science seriously."

The articles in question are editorials, there are quite a number of them on
Inference.

So this is not a situation of Journal passing of pseudoscientific research as
science i.e. publishing crazy papers. It's really a fuss about some lengthy
and interesting bits of logical diatribes that possibly only a few have read
in the first place.

Thanks to the commenter below, here is the offending article: [1]

Have a quick gander.

And now you might wonder what all the fuss is about and that the 'real story'
seems this might be some tawdry logic by motherjones trying to take a piece
out of Thiel?

The author of the article seems to be making a genuinely thoughtful case, for
god's sake man if this kind of discussion cannot be had the world will end.
Most science comes from meandering and most of our meandering is wrong.

It doesn't seem to me there is any 'anti science' here really (I don't have
enough background in this area to be fully certain), this whole thing could be
ridiculous. Nobody is claiming 'flat earth' or pushing crazy propaganda.
Frankly, it's enjoyable to read left-field ideas, so long as they are not
passed of as 'truth', and I don't think they are in this case, it'll be fine.

[1] [https://inference-review.com/article/evolution-a-theory-
in-c...](https://inference-review.com/article/evolution-a-theory-in-crisis-
revisited-part-one)

~~~
staticautomatic
Actually I don't wonder what all the fuss is about, and for a reason you seem
not to have considered. The history of science with a non-scientific agenda is
by no means limited to questionable methods and questionable inferences drawn
improperly from otherwise "good science." At least as often (if not most of
the time), the goal of junk and pseudo science is not actually to assert a
truth but to act as if there some reasonable question regarding a thing about
which there actually isn't. For example, tobacco companies benefitted from and
were primarily interested in perpetuating the idea that there was some genuine
debate about whether cigarettes cause lung cancer, in the same way that
certain capitalists benefit from the idea that there's a real question about
whether burning fossil fuels causes the earth to warm and creationists benefit
from a "debate" about whether evolution is real. To say that they're merely
asking a question or asserting a point would be disingenuous in light of the
historical record.

In any event I read the article. It's an interesting history lesson but a
number of the author's points suggest to me that he either doesn't totally
understand what he's arguing against or is deliberately misrepresenting it. I
say that as someone who's done hard science research in the field.

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DATACOMMANDER
Lumping climate change skeptics in with creationists is a bit much. I know
that the evidence for human-caused climate change is strong enough that the
skeptics are very likely wrong, but people who refuse to accept the theory of
evolution are on another level of willful ignorance.

~~~
waynecochran
Yes, the Theory of Evolution is a scientific theory. There is no scientific
theory for climate change that I am aware of -- just many/most scientists who
think the evidence for climate change is significant.

~~~
dragonwriter
> There is no scientific theory for climate change that I am aware of

The relevant analog of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection would be
the Greenhouse Theory of Climate Change.

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natechols
Some healthy skepticism is definitely required here, but I think the title of
the MJ article was a little misleading. This publication looks more like NYRB
or a similar high-brow literary magazine - far from what I think of when I see
the phrase "science journal". Could still be nonsense and propaganda, but at
least it's not pretending to be peer-reviewed original research.

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aaron695
>A Science Journal Funded by Peter Thiel Dismisses Climate Change and
Evolution

Look out the window, this planet is intelligent design.

So is mars and the rest of the solar system with signs of life, the rest is
possibly empty.

Sure the actual article on evolution[1] is just plain wrong, but so are the
idiots who worship evolution unquestionably.

Can we instead start talking about why specific alternatives to evolution are
wrong, rather than the religious fundamentalism of believing evolution this
title implies.

[1] [https://inference-review.com/article/evolution-a-theory-
in-c...](https://inference-review.com/article/evolution-a-theory-in-crisis-
revisited-part-one)

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mieses
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallibilism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallibilism)

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bitL
Maybe if one wants to exploit a certain type of people, one has to build a
corresponding infrastructure/outlet to be in control?

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effnorwood
He’s right.

