4 ms·

Anti-vax lunacy trickles through both parties, and gets little mainstream traction (although that may change with Trump injecting oxygen into the movement). But

by redler 10y ago

Anti-vax lunacy trickles through both parties, and gets little mainstream traction (although that may change with Trump injecting oxygen into the movement). But if you're running as a pro-science Democrat who is not an anti-GMO bandwagoneer, you will generally not find yourself blackballed by the party or opposed on your flank by billionaire string-pullers obsessed with purity tests on this issue. The Democratic party does not have the same ideology enforcement infrastructure that so tightly binds the Republicans; that's a strength if you think monocultures are pathological, but a weakness if you're looking for lockstep execution of some received ideology. Accordingly, if a Democrat is in power and the findings of a science-based agency contradict some policy desire, they would sigh and fret and perhaps try to initiate other studies to see if there's any other way to align their policy goals with reality. But you would not see scientists and entire agencies of thousands of workers gagged, studies removed, data destroyed, conclusions banned. You would not see them scrambling to align reality with their goals and literally banning facts. It's little exaggeration to say the Trump administration is now engaged in book-burning. Whatever the flaws of the Democratic party, what's "in vogue" with the party is an epiphenomenon, not the driver. If you want to run as a pro-science non-religious Republican, you are desperately needed for the health of the US political system -- but you will almost certainly be structurally unable to do so.

nonbel 10y ago
>"Accordingly, if a Democrat is in power and the findings of a science-based agency contradict some policy desire, they would sigh and fret and perhaps try to initiate other studies to see if there's any other way to align their policy goals with reality. But you would not see scientists and entire agencies of thousands of workers gagged, studies removed, data destroyed, conclusions banned. You would not see them scrambling to align reality with their goals and literally banning facts. It's little exaggeration to say the Trump administration is now engaged in book-burning." So if one political party is in power they will ensure BS results are generated to support whatever they wanted to do anyway, if the other is in power they get rid of any results they don't like? Both strategies act to lower the signal/noise ratio, just by different means. One adds to the noise, the other removes the signal. Sounds like a great place to do research, the people funding it are actively creating obstacles for the scientist at every turn.
- redler 10y ago
  No. Who said anything about BS results? One party is now actively erasing information they don't like -- information that is accepted by virtually every scientific body in the world. The Democrats as a whole will accept the results of science. Like anyone with a belief system, those results may disappoint them. They may not like them, and they may see if the conclusions are controvertible with respect to other studies. But they won't pretend they simply do not exist, and try to make them not exist for anyone else as well. They may grumble, as you might if you see the value of your stocks decline. But if your stocks decline, you don't declare them not to have declined, then outlaw historical stock charts, call downward movement of stock prices to be a conspiracy theory, and move to destroy stock markets around the world. The EPA, for example, is not some partisan claque of Democrats looking to vengefully squeeze cash flows and lower the value of Republicans' businesses. These are career staffers in their subject areas, scientists, policy makers and implementers -- people doing their jobs and coming to conclusions based on supporting data. But to the current GOP, the existence of an EPA itself is a partisan threat. It's worse than just removing studies they don't like. They want to remove the ability to do the science at all. And of course it's more than just the EPA in the crosshairs. They are presenting themselves as unwilling to accept scientific conclusions that do not align with their ideology. That's starting to look like a lot of banned science. With the current GOP, there is no "lessons learned" phase where policy is adjusted to meet scientific reality.
  - nonbel 10y ago
    >"perhaps try to initiate other studies to see if there's any other way to align their policy goals with reality" I may have misunderstood. What did you mean by the above line then? If you keep initiating studies you will eventually get the results you want. It will generate tons of noise along the way as well.
    - redler 10y ago
      Let's say you think stress causes ulcers. The NIH runs some studies that seem to correlate the two. So you put out a new health policy advising people to take steps to lower stress to combat ulcers. Doctors begin following the policy. Maybe they even prescribe anti-anxiety meds for ulcers. Suddenly there's a new study result at the NIH that shows a link between ulcers and H. pylori. Maybe doctors and drug companies don't like this. Maybe there's even a Department of Ulcer Stress Management that doesn't like it. But the scientist is going on all the shows; this thing has traction. (1) You're skeptical about these results because you're hearing griping from Big Ulcer. In this situation, the reasonable thing would be to run more studies. You're human: your bias may be that this H. pylori link is wrong; it seems crazy. You may hope new studies confirm your beliefs. But they don't. Your new reality becomes: H. pylori causes ulcers. The Department of Ulcer Stress Management will have to be dissolved or changed to be the Department of Bacterial Ulcer Management. - or - (2) You're skeptical about these results because you're hearing griping from Big Ulcer. You're human: your bias may be that this H. pylori link is wrong; it seems crazy. So you discredit the H. pylori study, and call it a conspiracy theory. You defund the department that ran it, preventing scientists there from further investigating the suggestive result. You ban the scientist from public speaking. You delete web pages that talk about the study, and delete the data that went into it. You place a gag order on the entire NIH, slash its budget, and install as its director the CEO of the company that makes the $10B StressAway ulcer medication. So the "extra studies" in option one could be seen as noise, but that's not a problem if it's within the framework of science: part of science is teasing results from noise. An extraordinary claim like "bacteria cause ulcers" would need extraordinary evidence, which comes in the form of more noisy studies aimed at the null hypothesis. But the claim is ultimately validated and accepted. It's even worse, though, because many of the GOP ideas about policy are not science-based to begin with.

by redler 10y ago

nonbel 10y ago

>"Accordingly, if a Democrat is in power and the findings of a science-based agency contradict some policy desire, they would sigh and fret and perhaps try to initiate other studies to see if there's any other way to align their policy goals with reality. But you would not see scientists and entire agencies of thousands of workers gagged, studies removed, data destroyed, conclusions banned. You would not see them scrambling to align reality with their goals and literally banning facts. It's little exaggeration to say the Trump administration is now engaged in book-burning." So if one political party is in power they will ensure BS results are generated to support whatever they wanted to do anyway, if the other is in power they get rid of any results they don't like? Both strategies act to lower the signal/noise ratio, just by different means. One adds to the noise, the other removes the signal. Sounds like a great place to do research, the people funding it are actively creating obstacles for the scientist at every turn.

redler 10y ago
No. Who said anything about BS results? One party is now actively erasing information they don't like -- information that is accepted by virtually every scientific body in the world. The Democrats as a whole will accept the results of science. Like anyone with a belief system, those results may disappoint them. They may not like them, and they may see if the conclusions are controvertible with respect to other studies. But they won't pretend they simply do not exist, and try to make them not exist for anyone else as well. They may grumble, as you might if you see the value of your stocks decline. But if your stocks decline, you don't declare them not to have declined, then outlaw historical stock charts, call downward movement of stock prices to be a conspiracy theory, and move to destroy stock markets around the world. The EPA, for example, is not some partisan claque of Democrats looking to vengefully squeeze cash flows and lower the value of Republicans' businesses. These are career staffers in their subject areas, scientists, policy makers and implementers -- people doing their jobs and coming to conclusions based on supporting data. But to the current GOP, the existence of an EPA itself is a partisan threat. It's worse than just removing studies they don't like. They want to remove the ability to do the science at all. And of course it's more than just the EPA in the crosshairs. They are presenting themselves as unwilling to accept scientific conclusions that do not align with their ideology. That's starting to look like a lot of banned science. With the current GOP, there is no "lessons learned" phase where policy is adjusted to meet scientific reality.
- nonbel 10y ago
  >"perhaps try to initiate other studies to see if there's any other way to align their policy goals with reality" I may have misunderstood. What did you mean by the above line then? If you keep initiating studies you will eventually get the results you want. It will generate tons of noise along the way as well.
  - redler 10y ago
    Let's say you think stress causes ulcers. The NIH runs some studies that seem to correlate the two. So you put out a new health policy advising people to take steps to lower stress to combat ulcers. Doctors begin following the policy. Maybe they even prescribe anti-anxiety meds for ulcers. Suddenly there's a new study result at the NIH that shows a link between ulcers and H. pylori. Maybe doctors and drug companies don't like this. Maybe there's even a Department of Ulcer Stress Management that doesn't like it. But the scientist is going on all the shows; this thing has traction. (1) You're skeptical about these results because you're hearing griping from Big Ulcer. In this situation, the reasonable thing would be to run more studies. You're human: your bias may be that this H. pylori link is wrong; it seems crazy. You may hope new studies confirm your beliefs. But they don't. Your new reality becomes: H. pylori causes ulcers. The Department of Ulcer Stress Management will have to be dissolved or changed to be the Department of Bacterial Ulcer Management. - or - (2) You're skeptical about these results because you're hearing griping from Big Ulcer. You're human: your bias may be that this H. pylori link is wrong; it seems crazy. So you discredit the H. pylori study, and call it a conspiracy theory. You defund the department that ran it, preventing scientists there from further investigating the suggestive result. You ban the scientist from public speaking. You delete web pages that talk about the study, and delete the data that went into it. You place a gag order on the entire NIH, slash its budget, and install as its director the CEO of the company that makes the $10B StressAway ulcer medication. So the "extra studies" in option one could be seen as noise, but that's not a problem if it's within the framework of science: part of science is teasing results from noise. An extraordinary claim like "bacteria cause ulcers" would need extraordinary evidence, which comes in the form of more noisy studies aimed at the null hypothesis. But the claim is ultimately validated and accepted. It's even worse, though, because many of the GOP ideas about policy are not science-based to begin with.