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As a former scientist who is very sad about the way politics are going right now, I was extremely excited to see this group forming. Then I saw that they've ine
by mgberlin 10y ago
As a former scientist who is very sad about the way politics are going right now, I was extremely excited to see this group forming. Then I saw that they've inexplicably co-mingled gun control and science. By all means we need to take every measure possible on climate change, energy production, and science education (the other issues listed on their site), but scientists are no better suited to have an opinion on gun control than any other citizen (except some of them might have a slightly better understanding of statistics, but those can lie in either direction).
- burkaman 10y agoYou can't run for office and only have an opinion on three issues. If you want to be a leader, you need a clearly stated position on every issue.
- wfo 10y agoDoesn't the very fact that statistics lie in either direction mean that someone with knowledge of statistics (any scientist would be more knowledgeable than nearly every politician i.e. lawyer that we have today) would be crucial to ferreting out the consequences of gun control legislation, and therefore better able to make an informed decision? I do agree that a group promoting science shouldn't pre-suppose an answer to a question the jury isn't out on yet like gun control. And even if the question were answered (suppose legal guns cause enormous increases in death) there's still a moral question to be answered there, weighing the freedom to own them vs. the destruction they cause. Just like no scientist will disagree that climate change is real and caused by humans; plenty of reasonable scientists disagree on what we should do about it.