What does any of this have to do with politics? Wansink doesn't appear to be troubled by his prodigious contributions of unreliable results to the literature,

What does any of this have to do with politics? Wansink doesn't appear to be troubled by his prodigious contributions of unreliable results to the literature, nor does he appear inclined to correct them. All of science and discovery is a joke to him. Left or right, the troubled extremes of politics start where respect for evidence and truth ends. Scientists are, nominally, people who search for truths about our universe with some degree of rigor, some respect for evidence, some appetite for truth (and usually an insanely competitive nature, but I digress). Absent that, what's the point? This isn't about society, in my opinion. It's about having some respect for evidence and truth. Without these, science isn't science. And what wansink is doing isn't science. Cold fusion had more rigor. Yet he will probably be rewarded with grants of taxpayer money, taken from fellow citizens as taxes, under threat of force. Meanwhile pediatric bone marrow transplanters will shut down their labs for "lack of funding". Or, more accurately, lack of standards in science. Yes, it affects people when dishonesty is accepted.