
Is Science Political? - XzetaU8
http://bostonreview.net/science-nature/michael-d-gordin-science-political
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praestigiare
Everything humans do is political. Thinking something is not political is like
thinking you don't have an accent: it just means you think of the politics as
normal, not that they don't exist.

The practice of science involves choices about where to allocate resources,
what lines of research are considered prestigious, what fields of study are
encouraged or discouraged, debates over the ethics of technologies that arise
from research, who gets to do the science... All of these considerations and
more are political.

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mLuby
No. Stop it. Funding is, science isn't.

There's an effective debate tactic where attackers DDoS the other side with
innocent questions about their premises. As defenders drown under these
reasonable-seeming queries, onlookers wonder if the deluge might indicate a
hidden fundamental flaw in the defenders' argument.

~~~
nikofeyn
how exact do you separate the two? without funding, science doesn’t happen?
and this article is covering a specific viewpoint, but how people do science
can certainly be political (and is).

~~~
atoav
I think discussing a tangential discussion is enlighting: _Is there such a
thing as unpolitical art?_

You will find the intuition to consider art with political statements as
political and art without as unpolitical. But art operates in an status quo,
so _can_ it even be unpolitical? Are the shiny baloon-like sculptures produced
by questionably paid interns of Jeff Koons unpolitical? Is a painter who
depicts the most idyllic sceneries in a starving country apolitical?

You quickly realize, that trying not to taking part in political things is
itself political in a way.

But what about science? Is it political to speak the truth? Yeah, quite much.
People have been killed for telling the truth. It takes a very nasty social
climate for the truth to become political, but it can become political and
when it does, speaking truth becomes as political as denying it.

We have this reflex to say: “but if it is political it is less legitimate”,
but forget that _any_ action that shapes society in a meaningful way _is
political_ — be it intentional or not.

You can do the most neutral climate science in the world and base everything
on proof and facts and your words will still be political in a world where
some fractions deny it.

Your goal just isn’t power then, but to speak truth.

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brownbat
The article is about the Cold War and the history of scientific funding, not
so much about recent politics.

It's interesting! But the title could be misleading. Judging from the last
para, maybe that's intentional.

Just warning that this could be RTFA bait. Step lightly brave commenters!

~~~
bigtrakzapzap
;)

Speaking of history and the Cold War, a worthy docuseries to face some
uncomfortable facts of the US' post-WW2 behavior: _Oliver Stone 's Untold
History of the United States._ Even Gorbachev wrote an opinion on the
subsequently-released book.

[https://www.netflix.com/title/80127995](https://www.netflix.com/title/80127995)

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clairity
the title is a bit misleading in that this is actually a book review of
"Freedom’s Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science" by Audra
J. Wolfe, which describes the role of global politics on the direction of
american science in the 20th century.

in college, i read what i assume is a precursor to this book, entitled "The
Cold War and American Science" by Stuart W. Leslie[0] which covers much of the
same material, particularly the rise of MIT and stanford as top-tier schools.

but to answer the question in the title, yes, science is political, because
people are political and science is a process devised and employed by humans.

[0][https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/212074.The_Cold_War_and_...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/212074.The_Cold_War_and_American_Science)

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aeturnum
Science is very political! Though as others point out this is about the
history of the cold war more than colloquial forces. Scientists are people
first and people live in the world, hold views and their views influenced what
makes sense to them. All research is aligned with politics in some way, though
not all topics are equally engaged.

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Pfhreak
Isn't science, by the nature of funding, necessarily political?

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james_s_tayler
Politics arises when 3 or more people decide on who gets what and how much of
it.

Life is political all the the way down.

~~~
pharke
By that definition of governance you could argue an individual must engage in
politics when dealing with only his own choices. Surely there is a line
between direct negotiation and political governance. I'd argue that line is
drawn when representation comes into play.

~~~
james_s_tayler
The line is drawn at the point it's possible to form coalitions to overpower
another party. Hence at minimum 3 people have to be involved otherwise it is
just direct negotiation.

Most of life is deeply political in this sense.

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ilaksh
Interesting article. I have a slightly related idea to mention.

The application of empiricism is suspect by the nature of perception,
cognition, and the complexity of reality. This is not to say that empirical
activity is not critical to science. It's just that scientific theories by
necessity exceed the scope of local observation and are biased by worldview,
especially as predictions become grander in scale.

~~~
dr_dshiv
I don't understand. Empiricism is based on shared perceptions, and scientific
theories exceed these?

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SideburnsOfDoom
Is science apolitical?

It's the same question, only opposite spin.

I don't think that science could be apolitical. Not as long at it uncovers
facts, and facts have political consequences.

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wtdata
From various other discussions and clear examples in HN, in my opinion: hard
sciences aren't political, soft sciences are clearly political.

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sametmax
There is not a single thing you can't interpret as political. The question is
more about intent, both from the emitter, and the receiver.

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aluren
_Of course_ science is political. What isn't?

I have a feeling that non-scientists see science as an invisible ethereal,
platonic construct that's slowly being unveiled by hardy explorers, uh I mean
scientists, until at last the whole of the Truth and nothing but the Truth
fully shines in its enlightening splendor.

Except that's not how it works. In practice, science works by scientific
consensus. What is true is what the community decides is true. The community
_can_ be convinced otherwise by contradicting evidence (or not) but the
process of convincing is then subject to all the biases affecting our feeble
human minds: it can be contradictory with other evidence, misinterpreted,
misunderstood, deemed insufficient, coming from the wrong person, etc. It
takes a lot of time for the consensus to evolve, and it's a rather a messy
_and political_ affair. There's often a running joke that a theory's
acceptance depends on the old guard dying out and being replaced by the
younger, more open-minded generation (relevant smbc: [https://www.smbc-
comics.com/comic/how-math-works](https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/how-math-
works))

Btw, just in case you're wondering, math is absolutely not immune from this
either. Cathy O'Neil wrote an excellent post detailing how mathematical proofs
work _in real life_ (and not in some platonic imaginary world invented by
laymen): [https://mathbabe.org/2012/08/06/what-is-a-
proof/](https://mathbabe.org/2012/08/06/what-is-a-proof/) also with a
relatively recent example: [https://mathbabe.org/2012/11/14/the-abc-
conjecture-has-not-b...](https://mathbabe.org/2012/11/14/the-abc-conjecture-
has-not-been-proved/)

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iconjack
Does the Pope shit in the woods?

