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This comment is probably being downvoted for good reason. It has a valid core idea. Politicians often cherrypick science that agrees with their ideology to furt
by DubiousPusher 9y ago
This comment is probably being downvoted for good reason. It has a valid core idea. Politicians often cherrypick science that agrees with their ideology to further their agenda. But this statement smacks of conspiracy, crankery and sloppy thinking.
"It's not science gone wrong. It's an example of politics co-opting and exploiting science because science has the credibility that politics doesn't. The elites wanted to scale back nuclear spending and needed a cover to convince the masses and the soviets to support "denuclearization"."
Who are 'the elites.' The Illuminati? Carl Sagan and company? Ronald Reagan who began the START treaty process? So Carl Sagan and other scientists entered into a conspiracy with Ronald Reagan to defraud the public with a poorly crafted scientific paper to boilster nuclear disarmament.
- quotemstr 9y agoI don't think the OP was talking about the kind of conspiracy you describe. Or maybe he was: it doesn't matter, because there's a subtler point. Scientists are not somehow exempt from confirmation bias and motivated reasoning, and political biases can creep into research without anyone cackling in a smoke-filled room. Look, for example, at the current sorry state of social science research, much of which does not reproduce. Ego depletion, stereotype threat, the IAT: all "scientific" ideas that are politically convenient but fiction, and which went unquestioned for a long time because, deep down, most researchers didn't want these ideas to be wrong. That doesn't make these researchers conspirators.
- DubiousPusher 9y agoAnd I completely agree. That's why I said the post"...has a valid core idea. Politicians often cherrypick science that agrees with their ideology to further their agenda." But I'm sorry the sentence I quoted isn't blatant crankery but it is loaded with conspiracy innuendo.