7 ms·

A Science Journal Funded by Peter Thiel Dismisses Climate Change and Evolution

DATACOMMANDER 8y ago
Lumping climate change skeptics in with creationists is a bit much. I know that the evidence for human-caused climate change is strong enough that the skeptics are very likely wrong, but people who refuse to accept the theory of evolution are on another level of willful ignorance.
- natechols 8y ago
  These groups frequently overlap, however, and their attacks on the mainstream scientific community sound awfully similar.
- waynecochran 8y ago
  Yes, the Theory of Evolution is a scientific theory. There is no scientific theory for climate change that I am aware of -- just many/most scientists who think the evidence for climate change is significant.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > There is no scientific theory for climate change that I am aware of The relevant analog of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection would be the Greenhouse Theory of Climate Change.
- CamperBob2 8y ago
  Agreed. I was a regular contributor to NCSE until they started doing this. We may still wake up one day and realize that all our climate models are hopelessly wrong, in one direction or the other. We are not going to wake up one day and realize that the core tenets of evolutionary biology are wrong. It does no favor to either of these sciences to place them on the same footing of certainty.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago
  I seem to remember a community much like this one, ca 15 years ago (slashdot) where threads regularly devolved into flame wars between creationists and scientists. Each sides’ side hustles (“mens’ rights“, income inequality) has remained the same, so I’m confident to say we’re seeing the same old war on a new green field. (But at least creationism seems mostly dead these days, this article nonewithstanding)
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Lumping climate change skeptics in with creationists is a bit much. They are serving the same political interests with their advocacy, using similar dishonest techniques, and are often even literally the same people. They effectively have lumped themselves together.
whatshisface 8y ago
This sounds like a no-win situation. If Thiel doesn't influence the papers published in the journal you get headlines like this ("journal publishes insane article"), and if he does influence the articles then you would have the even worse headline, "billionaire censors academic publications in journal he funds." The apparent solution would be to appoint a board of censors that aren't you but agree with all of your beliefs, but let's be honest that's not any better.
- wyldfire 8y ago
  "Censorship"? Que? Deciding what to include in your journal makes up the character of the journal. It's not censorship, it's the editors' jobs to include some things and exclude others. > board of censors that aren't you but agree with all of your beliefs Beliefs shouldn't really play a role. Pseudoscience is not science because it doesn't adhere to scientific methods. The editors' beliefs are orthogonal to the topics included.
- staticautomatic 8y ago
  The win would be a scientific publication that takes science seriously. You can't just go around making assertions of truth and then deny any attempt to discuss their merits by claiming that it's just a belief or an opinion whose truth value is irrelevant. That's basically how we ended up in this godawful post-truth world we now live in, and there certainly shouldn't be any room for it in a scientific publication.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    >The win would be a scientific publication that takes science seriously. I agree that there is a winning option for the editors (to do a good job), there just isn't one for Thiel after the editors have done a bad job. I think Thiel purposely set out to fund a "maverick" journal that published things that other people weren't. If you're doing that you can't just pick whoever is the most successful today to edit it - so, you will probably have a few nutters in the system. The no-win situation arises once the nutters get together and make a bad decision. Do you let them make a bad decision, or break the veil of independence? If the financial backers were allowed to decide what is serious science and what isn't, I'm willing to bet that their version of "tobacco cures heart disease" will be the serious science while "leaded gasoline is a public health crisis" will be pushed aside.
charliesharding 8y ago
As someone who has studied science extensively (geology, geochemistry, microbiology) there is nothing wrong with this and I find it refreshing. There is no such thing as "settled science" and whenever you see that phrase you should become immediately skeptical. It's a dangerous term that is an imminent threat to scientific progress. Think about all of the "settled science" that has been upended across human history.
- nabla9 8y ago
  There is a difference between an open mind and a hole in the head.
  - charliesharding 8y ago
    What is there to be afraid of? Put it out there so it is open to criticism. Why suppress it? Think of it through the lens of emergence, or the shotgun effect.. The more competing, different theories that are out there, the more likely that we will get closer to the truth. This allows future researchers to draw from a larger pool of diverse thought. "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."
    - munk-a 8y ago
      I mean, with climate change the thing to be afraid of is that the populace remains complacent and human beings fail to address and properly respond to an existential threat.
      - charliesharding 8y ago
        If their assertions fall apart under scrutiny then that is a misplaced fear because nobody will take it seriously. If not, and other researchers can back it up - then you don't have to be afraid of an existential threat! win-win Being a scientist means you have to adopt a mentality of passive observation and openness to being wrong, otherwise you'll just fall into the trap of confirmation bias which necessarily results in bad science.
bitL 8y ago
Maybe if one wants to exploit a certain type of people, one has to build a corresponding infrastructure/outlet to be in control?
aaron695 8y ago
>A Science Journal Funded by Peter Thiel Dismisses Climate Change and Evolution Look out the window, this planet is intelligent design. So is mars and the rest of the solar system with signs of life, the rest is possibly empty. Sure the actual article on evolution[1] is just plain wrong, but so are the idiots who worship evolution unquestionably. Can we instead start talking about why specific alternatives to evolution are wrong, rather than the religious fundamentalism of believing evolution this title implies. [1] https://inference-review.com/article/evolution-a-theory-in-crisis-revisited-part-one https://inference-review.com/article/evolution-a-theory-in-c...
effnorwood 8y ago
He’s right.
natechols 8y ago
Some healthy skepticism is definitely required here, but I think the title of the MJ article was a little misleading. This publication looks more like NYRB or a similar high-brow literary magazine - far from what I think of when I see the phrase "science journal". Could still be nonsense and propaganda, but at least it's not pretending to be peer-reviewed original research.
mieses 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallibilism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallibilism

Lumping climate change skeptics in with creationists is a bit much. I know that the evidence for human-caused climate change is strong enough that the skeptics are very likely wrong, but people who refuse to accept the theory of evolution are on another level of willful ignorance.

natechols 8y ago
These groups frequently overlap, however, and their attacks on the mainstream scientific community sound awfully similar.
waynecochran 8y ago
Yes, the Theory of Evolution is a scientific theory. There is no scientific theory for climate change that I am aware of -- just many/most scientists who think the evidence for climate change is significant.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > There is no scientific theory for climate change that I am aware of The relevant analog of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection would be the Greenhouse Theory of Climate Change.
CamperBob2 8y ago
Agreed. I was a regular contributor to NCSE until they started doing this. We may still wake up one day and realize that all our climate models are hopelessly wrong, in one direction or the other. We are not going to wake up one day and realize that the core tenets of evolutionary biology are wrong. It does no favor to either of these sciences to place them on the same footing of certainty.
IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago
I seem to remember a community much like this one, ca 15 years ago (slashdot) where threads regularly devolved into flame wars between creationists and scientists. Each sides’ side hustles (“mens’ rights“, income inequality) has remained the same, so I’m confident to say we’re seeing the same old war on a new green field. (But at least creationism seems mostly dead these days, this article nonewithstanding)
dragonwriter 8y ago
> Lumping climate change skeptics in with creationists is a bit much. They are serving the same political interests with their advocacy, using similar dishonest techniques, and are often even literally the same people. They effectively have lumped themselves together.

whatshisface 8y ago

This sounds like a no-win situation. If Thiel doesn't influence the papers published in the journal you get headlines like this ("journal publishes insane article"), and if he does influence the articles then you would have the even worse headline, "billionaire censors academic publications in journal he funds." The apparent solution would be to appoint a board of censors that aren't you but agree with all of your beliefs, but let's be honest that's not any better.

wyldfire 8y ago
"Censorship"? Que? Deciding what to include in your journal makes up the character of the journal. It's not censorship, it's the editors' jobs to include some things and exclude others. > board of censors that aren't you but agree with all of your beliefs Beliefs shouldn't really play a role. Pseudoscience is not science because it doesn't adhere to scientific methods. The editors' beliefs are orthogonal to the topics included.
staticautomatic 8y ago
The win would be a scientific publication that takes science seriously. You can't just go around making assertions of truth and then deny any attempt to discuss their merits by claiming that it's just a belief or an opinion whose truth value is irrelevant. That's basically how we ended up in this godawful post-truth world we now live in, and there certainly shouldn't be any room for it in a scientific publication.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  >The win would be a scientific publication that takes science seriously. I agree that there is a winning option for the editors (to do a good job), there just isn't one for Thiel after the editors have done a bad job. I think Thiel purposely set out to fund a "maverick" journal that published things that other people weren't. If you're doing that you can't just pick whoever is the most successful today to edit it - so, you will probably have a few nutters in the system. The no-win situation arises once the nutters get together and make a bad decision. Do you let them make a bad decision, or break the veil of independence? If the financial backers were allowed to decide what is serious science and what isn't, I'm willing to bet that their version of "tobacco cures heart disease" will be the serious science while "leaded gasoline is a public health crisis" will be pushed aside.

charliesharding 8y ago

As someone who has studied science extensively (geology, geochemistry, microbiology) there is nothing wrong with this and I find it refreshing. There is no such thing as "settled science" and whenever you see that phrase you should become immediately skeptical. It's a dangerous term that is an imminent threat to scientific progress. Think about all of the "settled science" that has been upended across human history.

nabla9 8y ago
There is a difference between an open mind and a hole in the head.
- charliesharding 8y ago
  What is there to be afraid of? Put it out there so it is open to criticism. Why suppress it? Think of it through the lens of emergence, or the shotgun effect.. The more competing, different theories that are out there, the more likely that we will get closer to the truth. This allows future researchers to draw from a larger pool of diverse thought. "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."
  - munk-a 8y ago
    I mean, with climate change the thing to be afraid of is that the populace remains complacent and human beings fail to address and properly respond to an existential threat.
    - charliesharding 8y ago
      If their assertions fall apart under scrutiny then that is a misplaced fear because nobody will take it seriously. If not, and other researchers can back it up - then you don't have to be afraid of an existential threat! win-win Being a scientist means you have to adopt a mentality of passive observation and openness to being wrong, otherwise you'll just fall into the trap of confirmation bias which necessarily results in bad science.

bitL 8y ago

Maybe if one wants to exploit a certain type of people, one has to build a corresponding infrastructure/outlet to be in control?

aaron695 8y ago

>A Science Journal Funded by Peter Thiel Dismisses Climate Change and Evolution Look out the window, this planet is intelligent design. So is mars and the rest of the solar system with signs of life, the rest is possibly empty. Sure the actual article on evolution[1] is just plain wrong, but so are the idiots who worship evolution unquestionably. Can we instead start talking about why specific alternatives to evolution are wrong, rather than the religious fundamentalism of believing evolution this title implies. [1] https://inference-review.com/article/evolution-a-theory-in-crisis-revisited-part-one https://inference-review.com/article/evolution-a-theory-in-c...

effnorwood 8y ago

He’s right.

natechols 8y ago

Some healthy skepticism is definitely required here, but I think the title of the MJ article was a little misleading. This publication looks more like NYRB or a similar high-brow literary magazine - far from what I think of when I see the phrase "science journal". Could still be nonsense and propaganda, but at least it's not pretending to be peer-reviewed original research.

mieses 8y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallibilism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallibilism