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.)
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.
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 over other views. You invoke “rationality” but as Spock would say, “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”
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 by various scientists via Twitter, and instead of showing gratitude and humility to this sharing of knowledge and expertise, ended up just 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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'.
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?
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”
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).”
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?
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.)
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?
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
A really serious libertarian would say it is none of the governments business if their wife takes puberty blockers so she always stays the way they fell in love with her.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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):
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).
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)
>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).
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.
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.
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?
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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])
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> “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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
"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.
> 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.
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"?
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.
> 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).
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.
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!
"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.
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.
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”.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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
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.
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".
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?
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?
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
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%)"
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.
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")
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.
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.
Please explain to me the Marxism angle. Seriously, show me. Demonstrate for me. Apparently the prime minister of my country is a Marxist but as far as I can tell we're living in a neoliberal paradise where capital gets to freely influence government policy. Nobody has had their property confiscated by the government, nobody had been sent to a gulag, free enterprise is still a thing, where is the Marxism? Where is it? Under your pillow?
Marxism started spreading in universities decades ago. It was rooted in conflict theory. It put the class (group) before the individual. It divided them up into oppressors and the oppressed. Its notion of “justice” was taking power from the “oppressors” to redistribute to the “oppressed.”
Over time, people developed identity politics which put your group first but with race, gender, etc. That got merged with Marxist concepts into a new form of it with a new name: intersectionality, or critical race theory.
Those people build on conflict theory. They make decisions about your group before you as an individual. They divide them up as oppressors vs oppressed with a goal to redistribute power/wealth from one to the other. They play games with words like saying “privileged” instead of power or oppressor to get more support.
As implemented in the Soviet Union and China, the Marxists were mostly atheist, dogmatists, and no dissent was allowed. They wanted their ideology forced on everyone in every institution. You’d get canceled with no job or rations, often starving, if disagreeing. They’d go after peaceful dissenters. They also used labels to dehumanize their opponents which, combined with their rhetoric, justified harsh treatment in their minds.
Those pushing intersectionality, critical race theory, etc. are just like that. Cancel culture with mobs hounding dissenters. Labels like Nazi’s, TERF’s, extortionists, etc. They use these claims to frame it like war is justified. People are just disagreeing with them peacefully, though.
So, their ideology is similar to Marxism, started in hotbeds of Marxism, has goals similar to Marxism, and works like it as implemented. So, conservatives noticing this call them modern Marxist’s. They’re also using it to say it’s too close to Marxism, not exact equivalence.
They also note that the philosophy that wrecked many countries, even killing millions, will likewise devastate our country. It already is driving division up so much. That’s why non-Progressives are pushing back so hard.
Well, also since the Marxist/DEI/woke folks are forcing it on everyone from business to criteria for movie awards. We can’t even enjoy movies anymore since they prioritize indoctrination over film quality!
The nice thing about the TERF label is that it ended up being taken as a badge of honour by feminists fighting to reclaim their sex-based rights, and backronymed into bold quips like "Tired of Explaining Reality to Fuckwits".
It backfired so hard on the genderists that they've taken to using insults like "FARTs" instead, which just makes them look childish and unserious.
It's similar to how if you think heterosexuality or homosexuality are choices due to your own experience, that's not everyone's experience, and you're probably bisexual...congratulations.
Even though there are only two sex chromosomes, issues with them can cause people who are physically intersex.
Then there's all the complexity of the sense of self. Some people could feel they have the 'wrong' body and be fine with that. Some can't.
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.)
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