12 ms·

Scientists must rise above politics and restate their value to society

79 points by Elof 7y ago

x0hm 7y ago
I'd like to see a separation of Science and State, much like we have with religion except maybe actual separate.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  This is impossible.
- neuronexmachina 7y ago
  Do you have any historical examples of that model working successfully on a large scale?
  - lordnacho 7y ago
    What examples of state/church separation were there before people decided it was a good idea?
- noobiemcfoob 7y ago
  I like the concept, but the separation of church and state is only nominal in the first place. Barriers that obstruct one aspect of culture from influencing other aspects are good, but these aspects are ultimately part of the same whole.
- ip26 7y ago
  So the idea would be it's illegal for anyone working for the Fed to employ the scientific method?
- dhairya 7y ago
  I'm not sure I understand what this means. Most policy prescriptions rely on empirical research and hypothesis testing. Government is applied social science.
  - hackeraccount 7y ago
    What does science say about how much of the budget should be devoted to Social Security? Does Science favor a progressive income tax or a VAT as a way of raising revenue?
    - sachdevap 7y ago
      Actually science does have something to add to discussions like that. In the case of social security, a quick Google scholar search led me to this: https://www.nber.org/papers/w9183.pdf https://www.nber.org/papers/w9183.pdf Science can help us figure out how our decisions will affect society. What society optimizes for is up for political discourse.
      - hackeraccount 7y ago
        I only read the abstract but that paper seemed to be answering the questions about the age people retire at and what benefits the accrue. That's informative about the trade offs - should we take money from X and give it to Y - but it says nothing about if we want to give it to Y. Maybe we all like X and if it's a penny for Y to have a holiday we'd still say "Screw Y." Maybe we despise X and will take the last penny of X to give to Y for no obvious benefit. That paper can in some way help people make an informed decision but we live in a finite world and it doesn't, shouldn't and can't tell them how to make the trade offs.
        sachdevap 7y ago
        > That paper can in some way help people make an informed decision but we live in a finite world and it doesn't, shouldn't and can't tell them how to make the trade offs. ^ Your comment sounds very much like my own (below), so I don't know what the disagreement is. > Science can help us figure out how our decisions will affect society. What society optimizes for is up for political discourse.
- lidHanteyk 7y ago
  Why? I'd like to see a more scientifically-minded State. It's useful to remember that science is a social construction, and thus that there is no definitive science, but rather a collage of emotions and opinions about scientific endeavors. Thus, we cannot actually marry science to the State; the closest we can come is to choose representatives who are scientific.
- tlb 7y ago
  That's ... an idea I'd never considered. How would such a State make practical decisions? For example, rules for food safety? Could it still regulate the money supply without economics?
- nostromo 7y ago
  People are unfairly downvoting you. I like what the FAA does: they separate fact-finding from policy-making after an aviation accident. The fact-finding folks make no recommendations on policy. All they do is find the cause of the incident. Only after they are done do a completely separate group of people address how the problem could be fixed. In your proposal, scientists would be the fact-finders, and politicians would be the policy-makers.
  - ip26 7y ago
    Is the policy-making group subject matter experts, e.g. aviation engineers, or are they suits?
cryoshon 7y ago
in the US, science has become a political act because science is inextricably linked to improving human welfare. frequently, the prescription to improve human welfare is for other humans to take certain actions, or to refrain from certain actions. and so, by performing its fundamental mission, science makes enemies by constantly proposing alternatives to the status quo. these alternatives are frequently unwelcome by certain types of people to say the least. speaking from experience, the anti-scientists aren't going to be convinced by anything a scientist says because science is alien, frightening, and, from their perspective, deeply tainted by corruption and abuse of authority to promote political agendas. for now, the right wing has the biggest and most deserved anti-science reputation. however, i can very easily imagine a future in which the left wing reacts in an identically ignorant way to some growing body of evidence. so, how can scientists restate their value to a society which ignores, rejects, condemns, or doesn't understand their message? as terrible as it sounds, making a real and easily understandable major breakthrough that positively impacts human life would sure help -- but of course, science doesn't work like that, and most of the low-hanging fruit has been exploited already. aside from that, i think one part of the answer is to keep a close oversight on science journalism such that it represents scientific progress with less hyperbole and with more context and more third-party/peer review input.
cantankerous 7y ago
Let's be realistic, while you can see denialism of science across the spectrum, there's only one side of it that denies it in the face of extinction-level events. Scientists can't hope to transcend politics (an unrealistic and meaningless goal anyway) when the Right is so given to removing them from the discourse. They need to enter politics and lean in with everybody else.
- hkon 7y ago
  China right?
- dgzl 7y ago
  I think the American political right is in general more accepting of science than you might believe. Many of them are scientists themselves. I think the older generations, the poor uneducated families, and the bitter religious folks have more disbeliefs in science than 'the right' in general.
  - jeromegv 7y ago
    Let's rephrase: the political right that is in power. If this political right is accepting of science, they clearly not have chosen or voted for leaders in their party that promote this.
  - scarmig 7y ago
    The public position of the Republican Party is that climate change is a myth, and that if it is happening humans have nothing to do with it. If the Right wants to drop its anti-science reputation, it needs to start there.
    - Kerrick 7y ago
      I decided to delve into their public policy (https://www.gop.com/platform/americas-natural-resources/ https://www.gop.com/platform/americas-natural-resources/), and I found this: > Climate change is far from this nation’s most pressing national security issue. That is an admission by the Republican Party, in its public policy, that climate change is not a myth. It just means they've decided not to care about it in regards to national security. I also found this: > Information concerning a changing climate, especially projections into the long-range future, must be based on dispassionate analysis of hard data. Again, that is an admission that the climate is changing and that scientific research and data can give us information about it. So as said elsewhere in this thread, we're back to politics determining decisions about what to do about climate change; the Republican Party's official platform doesn't seem to deny that the climate is changing.
korbonits 7y ago
Science is political! This headline is :thumbs-down:
lordnacho 7y ago
The thing is in the 1950s you still had a lot of respect for scientists, who after all had only recently built an impossibly powerful bomb. And the most famous one of them all was still alive, too. Go and ask someone who a famous living physicist is nowadays. I'm afraid the way modern media works is the opposite of what we need for scientists to have authority.
- kebman 7y ago
  Tim Berners-Lee, Noam Chomsky, Stephen Pinker and Richard Dawkins are all well-respected, although you might not agree with everything they have to say. And scientiests _are_ raising the alarm, except politicians are ignoring them, especially on the Right, which I find particularly depressing since I consider myself Right Wing.
  - turk73 7y ago
    Well, I'm not stupid enough to give up all my rights no matter what argument is posed about it. Deal with me individually, based on a set of laws that don't put me in the position of a slave. Whether or not you are right wing, you must basically understand that governments that don't interact with people individually are totalitarian and thus inhumane. And what radical environmentalists want is an excuse to lord over people and dictate their lives to them and sorry, not going to happen.
- Beldin 7y ago
  Alan Turing was a scientist, played a part in helping end WWII and ... wasn't treated kindly (I'll leave it at that). Perhaps in the 50s there was more respect for authority figures than there is nowadays. I strongly doubt there was more than that though.
  - jl2718 7y ago
    Neither was Issac Newton. But the public listened to them most intently when they said something that they knew would get them in trouble. Every other ‘scientist’ of the day that spent their lives on elaborate self-serving proofs of their institution’s dogma, is long gone and completely forgotten. We are right to be suspicious of these people.
codingslave 7y ago
The issue is modern education actively filters out eccentric scientists and rewards submissive diligent people (ivy league graduates). Creative geniuses dont thrive in modern school systems and thus dont end up with 4.0s. Higher level education (PhDs) is also seen as a great way to migrate to the USA by the Chinese and Indians (not saying they arent contributing to the fields), so you get people who arent passionately trying to push the field forwards but instead are just jumping through hoops and view it as a career. Other issues in science include people turning it in a competition for prestige. Its often the case that top programs prioritize the prestige of an undergraduate school instead of research ability. The same is true of academic journals and getting tenure. In some fields, more than half of the tenured professors at the top 100 schools in the USA completed their PhD from a top 5 PhD program in their field.
- Balgair 7y ago
  > In some fields, more than half of the tenured professors at the top 100 schools in the USA completed their PhD from a top 5 PhD program in their field. In a lot of Humanities fields, it's worse. Though I can't seem to find The Atlantic article right now, I can remember one from a few years ago that stated that in fields like French Literature, there has never been a tenured professor in the US that came form anything other than one of ten schools, going back many decades. That said, these professors still taught at a place other than those ten schools and had PhD students themselves. These students stood exactly zero chance at tenure achievement. These new PhDs could, of course, go on to live lives outside of the ivory tower. However, in the Humanities, it does smell strongly of disingeniousness on the part of the tenured faculty to take on students, charge them, and train them in fields that they know they cannot possibly be employed in to any 'real' effect. I cannot imagine the metal gymnastics that must go on in the Ethics fields these days.
  - donaldknuth123 7y ago
    To be fair its quite bad in STEM as well e.g http://cs.brown.edu/people/apapouts/faculty_dataset.html http://cs.brown.edu/people/apapouts/faculty_dataset.html Not a real surprise that MIT, Berkeley, Stanford and CMU dominate CS faculty output.
hackeraccount 7y ago
Science and politics are different. Politics doesn't prove things. Politics is about making choices. Should abortion be legal, if so, when? That's a moral choice. Or less elegantly it's an answer to the question - who's going to be punished and who's going to be rewarded. Science might be able to to inform that decision but it can't and shouldn't make it. Science is about discovering information. It could answer the question, "Is climate change happening?" It can't answer the question "What should we do about it?" It can inform people about the consequences of one response or another but at root the answer to that question is - "Who do I want to see hurt and who do I want to see helped?" Clearly there's a lot of overlap there - it's not hard to see how and why that's the case - but I still think when Science starts to lay claim to political decisions people become resentful and no one is fooled. The analogy I'd make is politicians invoking religion as a trump card in making policy. No one is fooled by it - and it makes everyone suspicious of religion.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  It's not that clear cut. I'll use the environment as an example. Nobody wants to drive mass extinctions or ruin America's agricultural climate. There is no party in favor of doing those things. The only way to have absolutely no push-back against industries that do that stuff is to deny that it's happening. You could accept that it's happening and then try to bargain based on future discounting and economic growth, but then the answer would be some kind of restraint greater in magnitude than zero. If you want to have absolutely no restraints you are forced to convince everybody that there is no problem. The moral obviousness of the choice turns a political issue into a scientific one, and brings the politicians along with it.
  - paggle 7y ago
    There are a lot of people who don't care about mass extinctions. For example, you will not get a uniform question to "A 6-year-old kid has a rare cancer, never seen before, that is defying all medical knowledge, but seems to be controlled by an extract of the pituitary gland of a panda bear. Researchers in the field have determined that a one-shot dose from 1,000 pandas has a 90% of permanently curing her, but that's half of the pandas in the world today. Should 1,000 pandas be killed to try to save her?"
notathing 7y ago
Wrong. Science must absolutely be activist, they are in the best position to improve society and combat fascist movements. Nature itself said it: > As if full-time research weren't time-consuming and challenging enough, nanophysicist Michael Stopa embraced a second occupation while at the bench: politics. https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v539/n7630/full/nj7630-599a.html https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v539/n7630/full/nj7630...
bluetwo 7y ago
Scientists observe, try to disprove their theories, and come to conclusions about theories they could not discredit. Politicians start with their conclusions, find alternative theories and then seek to discredit them. We need to vote for politicians that think more like scientists and less like politicians.
- metalchianti 7y ago
  > Politicians start with their conclusions, find alternative theories and then seek to discredit them. Seems like politicians start with the conclusions and find ways to pay off ethically reprehensible scientists to manipulate data to credit a politically acceptable theory (or discredit a politically competitive theory).
zetalabs 7y ago
Some scientists are already doing exactly that, closing the gap between research-driven science focused on understanding, and the role of scientists integrating it in society via politics. (Disclaimer: Not my book, but a friend's) You can learn more on the topic in "Impact Science: The science of getting to radical social and environmental breakthroughs" which comes with a wonderful list of real-world stories. https://www.amazon.com/Impact-Science-environmental-breakthroughs-stunningly-ebook/dp/B07SN1L4L2 https://www.amazon.com/Impact-Science-environmental-breakthr...
- brunosan 7y ago
  Thanks for the shoutout @zetalabs. FWIW, the whole book is also available for free here https://impactscience.dev/ https://impactscience.dev/
sehugg 7y ago
Pugwash wasn't just a bunch of lofty idealists, they participated in direct negotiations that kicked off the peace process in Vietnam: http://pugwashhistory.blogspot.com/2009/07/mcnamara-and-pugwash-from-pennsylvania.html http://pugwashhistory.blogspot.com/2009/07/mcnamara-and-pugw... Despite the headline, the article seems to be arguing that scientists reclaim their seat at the table, and get their hands dirty. A tall order in this era.
traverseda 7y ago
It's hard to have respect for scientists these days. Things like the psychology replication crisis have really undermined my confidence in academia as an institution. I remember getting into a debate with a (facebook) acquaintance of mine, ultimately it boiled down to me asking them for an example of what they'd consider a good sociology paper. The paper was trying to test whether sexual harassment training actually worked. After reading through it, it was almost laughable how bad it was. Their system for measuring if the training worked was waiting two weeks and testing if people retained the knowledge. It was also done using a small group of college students. Of course that's just one paper, but the event stuck in my mind. He was a relatively well-respected grad student in my peer group, and that was what he considered to be good science? There are a lot of examples of really dubious stuff coming out of the academic community. Things like the sokal affair, or the infamous "feminist glaciology" incident. Like it or not those are getting lumped in with legitimate scientists in the public conscious, and if academia want to get taken more seriously it needs to get these ridiculous excesses under control or at least de-emphasize/disavow them as much as possible. I think there's a lot to be done to gain back that trust, but most of it has to do with cutting out the garbage. Publish or perish seems like one of the bigger problems that need addressing, but the lack of open-access journals certainly doesn't help. The academic writing style probably needs an overhaul as well. I don't know, it's sad but for me at least there needs to be some big changes before I start regaining respect of academia as a institution.
- whiteopinions 7y ago
  >Things like the psychology replication crisis Have you actually read up on this, or are you just repeating something you read online to make it sound like you're academically in the know and are well versed in academic research processes? Allow me to give you some reading to help give you a more reasonable view about this: https://slate.com/technology/2014/07/replication-controversy-in-psychology-bullying-file-drawer-effect-blog-posts-repligate.html https://slate.com/technology/2014/07/replication-controversy... >Things like the sokal affair, or the infamous "feminist glaciology" incident. This is only a sticking point for crazy conservative people because they purposefully or accidentally completely misunderstood what the paper was about. Conservative people already don't trust science as a whole since they have an extreme ideological motivation to not do so, so let's not pretend like it's really some defining moment for science as a whole. And again, then narrative around this is just generally very dishonest, so it's pretty funny to see you make reference to it while waxing on about academic integrity: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/qa-author-feminist-glaciology-study-reflects-sudden-appearance-culture-wars https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/qa-author-feminist-g...
jstewartmobile 7y ago
The problem with science isn't politics. The problem with science is whoredom. So many "foundations" that are either reputation-launderers for moneyed interests, or so tied to a foredrawn conclusion that every result must be carefully post-filtered to avoid career suicide. With their livelihoods (and independence) assured, this task was typically handled by the upper classes in old Europe. Once the dust settles, the same pattern will probably be revealed for the present day.
viburnum 7y ago
There is no rising above politics. Conflict is unavoidable. People disagree about things. If you have political goals you have to do politics.
RickJWagner 7y ago
Yes! We really, really need scientists to be elevated above politics. Scientists who can talk freely (and be respected for their views) about climate change. And unborn babies. And all sorts of other topics where their honest and well-researched opinions can be useful. As it is today, scientists are often used as a political force ('March for Science', eh?) All this does is render them mute to half the audience. It also leads to embarassing over-reaches and over-statements, which again diminish respect for their work. We really, really need for politics to be removed from science.

79 points by Elof 7y ago

x0hm 7y ago

I'd like to see a separation of Science and State, much like we have with religion except maybe actual separate.

cameronbrown 7y ago
This is impossible.
neuronexmachina 7y ago
Do you have any historical examples of that model working successfully on a large scale?
- lordnacho 7y ago
  What examples of state/church separation were there before people decided it was a good idea?
noobiemcfoob 7y ago
I like the concept, but the separation of church and state is only nominal in the first place. Barriers that obstruct one aspect of culture from influencing other aspects are good, but these aspects are ultimately part of the same whole.
ip26 7y ago
So the idea would be it's illegal for anyone working for the Fed to employ the scientific method?
dhairya 7y ago
I'm not sure I understand what this means. Most policy prescriptions rely on empirical research and hypothesis testing. Government is applied social science.
- hackeraccount 7y ago
  What does science say about how much of the budget should be devoted to Social Security? Does Science favor a progressive income tax or a VAT as a way of raising revenue?
  - sachdevap 7y ago
    Actually science does have something to add to discussions like that. In the case of social security, a quick Google scholar search led me to this: https://www.nber.org/papers/w9183.pdf https://www.nber.org/papers/w9183.pdf Science can help us figure out how our decisions will affect society. What society optimizes for is up for political discourse.
    - hackeraccount 7y ago
      I only read the abstract but that paper seemed to be answering the questions about the age people retire at and what benefits the accrue. That's informative about the trade offs - should we take money from X and give it to Y - but it says nothing about if we want to give it to Y. Maybe we all like X and if it's a penny for Y to have a holiday we'd still say "Screw Y." Maybe we despise X and will take the last penny of X to give to Y for no obvious benefit. That paper can in some way help people make an informed decision but we live in a finite world and it doesn't, shouldn't and can't tell them how to make the trade offs.
      - sachdevap 7y ago
        > That paper can in some way help people make an informed decision but we live in a finite world and it doesn't, shouldn't and can't tell them how to make the trade offs. ^ Your comment sounds very much like my own (below), so I don't know what the disagreement is. > Science can help us figure out how our decisions will affect society. What society optimizes for is up for political discourse.
lidHanteyk 7y ago
Why? I'd like to see a more scientifically-minded State. It's useful to remember that science is a social construction, and thus that there is no definitive science, but rather a collage of emotions and opinions about scientific endeavors. Thus, we cannot actually marry science to the State; the closest we can come is to choose representatives who are scientific.
tlb 7y ago
That's ... an idea I'd never considered. How would such a State make practical decisions? For example, rules for food safety? Could it still regulate the money supply without economics?
nostromo 7y ago
People are unfairly downvoting you. I like what the FAA does: they separate fact-finding from policy-making after an aviation accident. The fact-finding folks make no recommendations on policy. All they do is find the cause of the incident. Only after they are done do a completely separate group of people address how the problem could be fixed. In your proposal, scientists would be the fact-finders, and politicians would be the policy-makers.
- ip26 7y ago
  Is the policy-making group subject matter experts, e.g. aviation engineers, or are they suits?

cryoshon 7y ago

in the US, science has become a political act because science is inextricably linked to improving human welfare. frequently, the prescription to improve human welfare is for other humans to take certain actions, or to refrain from certain actions. and so, by performing its fundamental mission, science makes enemies by constantly proposing alternatives to the status quo. these alternatives are frequently unwelcome by certain types of people to say the least. speaking from experience, the anti-scientists aren't going to be convinced by anything a scientist says because science is alien, frightening, and, from their perspective, deeply tainted by corruption and abuse of authority to promote political agendas. for now, the right wing has the biggest and most deserved anti-science reputation. however, i can very easily imagine a future in which the left wing reacts in an identically ignorant way to some growing body of evidence. so, how can scientists restate their value to a society which ignores, rejects, condemns, or doesn't understand their message? as terrible as it sounds, making a real and easily understandable major breakthrough that positively impacts human life would sure help -- but of course, science doesn't work like that, and most of the low-hanging fruit has been exploited already. aside from that, i think one part of the answer is to keep a close oversight on science journalism such that it represents scientific progress with less hyperbole and with more context and more third-party/peer review input.

cantankerous 7y ago

Let's be realistic, while you can see denialism of science across the spectrum, there's only one side of it that denies it in the face of extinction-level events. Scientists can't hope to transcend politics (an unrealistic and meaningless goal anyway) when the Right is so given to removing them from the discourse. They need to enter politics and lean in with everybody else.

hkon 7y ago
China right?
dgzl 7y ago
I think the American political right is in general more accepting of science than you might believe. Many of them are scientists themselves. I think the older generations, the poor uneducated families, and the bitter religious folks have more disbeliefs in science than 'the right' in general.
- jeromegv 7y ago
  Let's rephrase: the political right that is in power. If this political right is accepting of science, they clearly not have chosen or voted for leaders in their party that promote this.
- scarmig 7y ago
  The public position of the Republican Party is that climate change is a myth, and that if it is happening humans have nothing to do with it. If the Right wants to drop its anti-science reputation, it needs to start there.
  - Kerrick 7y ago
    I decided to delve into their public policy (https://www.gop.com/platform/americas-natural-resources/ https://www.gop.com/platform/americas-natural-resources/), and I found this: > Climate change is far from this nation’s most pressing national security issue. That is an admission by the Republican Party, in its public policy, that climate change is not a myth. It just means they've decided not to care about it in regards to national security. I also found this: > Information concerning a changing climate, especially projections into the long-range future, must be based on dispassionate analysis of hard data. Again, that is an admission that the climate is changing and that scientific research and data can give us information about it. So as said elsewhere in this thread, we're back to politics determining decisions about what to do about climate change; the Republican Party's official platform doesn't seem to deny that the climate is changing.

korbonits 7y ago

Science is political! This headline is :thumbs-down:

lordnacho 7y ago

The thing is in the 1950s you still had a lot of respect for scientists, who after all had only recently built an impossibly powerful bomb. And the most famous one of them all was still alive, too. Go and ask someone who a famous living physicist is nowadays. I'm afraid the way modern media works is the opposite of what we need for scientists to have authority.

kebman 7y ago
Tim Berners-Lee, Noam Chomsky, Stephen Pinker and Richard Dawkins are all well-respected, although you might not agree with everything they have to say. And scientiests _are_ raising the alarm, except politicians are ignoring them, especially on the Right, which I find particularly depressing since I consider myself Right Wing.
- turk73 7y ago
  Well, I'm not stupid enough to give up all my rights no matter what argument is posed about it. Deal with me individually, based on a set of laws that don't put me in the position of a slave. Whether or not you are right wing, you must basically understand that governments that don't interact with people individually are totalitarian and thus inhumane. And what radical environmentalists want is an excuse to lord over people and dictate their lives to them and sorry, not going to happen.
Beldin 7y ago
Alan Turing was a scientist, played a part in helping end WWII and ... wasn't treated kindly (I'll leave it at that). Perhaps in the 50s there was more respect for authority figures than there is nowadays. I strongly doubt there was more than that though.
- jl2718 7y ago
  Neither was Issac Newton. But the public listened to them most intently when they said something that they knew would get them in trouble. Every other ‘scientist’ of the day that spent their lives on elaborate self-serving proofs of their institution’s dogma, is long gone and completely forgotten. We are right to be suspicious of these people.

codingslave 7y ago

The issue is modern education actively filters out eccentric scientists and rewards submissive diligent people (ivy league graduates). Creative geniuses dont thrive in modern school systems and thus dont end up with 4.0s. Higher level education (PhDs) is also seen as a great way to migrate to the USA by the Chinese and Indians (not saying they arent contributing to the fields), so you get people who arent passionately trying to push the field forwards but instead are just jumping through hoops and view it as a career. Other issues in science include people turning it in a competition for prestige. Its often the case that top programs prioritize the prestige of an undergraduate school instead of research ability. The same is true of academic journals and getting tenure. In some fields, more than half of the tenured professors at the top 100 schools in the USA completed their PhD from a top 5 PhD program in their field.

Balgair 7y ago
> In some fields, more than half of the tenured professors at the top 100 schools in the USA completed their PhD from a top 5 PhD program in their field. In a lot of Humanities fields, it's worse. Though I can't seem to find The Atlantic article right now, I can remember one from a few years ago that stated that in fields like French Literature, there has never been a tenured professor in the US that came form anything other than one of ten schools, going back many decades. That said, these professors still taught at a place other than those ten schools and had PhD students themselves. These students stood exactly zero chance at tenure achievement. These new PhDs could, of course, go on to live lives outside of the ivory tower. However, in the Humanities, it does smell strongly of disingeniousness on the part of the tenured faculty to take on students, charge them, and train them in fields that they know they cannot possibly be employed in to any 'real' effect. I cannot imagine the metal gymnastics that must go on in the Ethics fields these days.
- donaldknuth123 7y ago
  To be fair its quite bad in STEM as well e.g http://cs.brown.edu/people/apapouts/faculty_dataset.html http://cs.brown.edu/people/apapouts/faculty_dataset.html Not a real surprise that MIT, Berkeley, Stanford and CMU dominate CS faculty output.

hackeraccount 7y ago

Science and politics are different. Politics doesn't prove things. Politics is about making choices. Should abortion be legal, if so, when? That's a moral choice. Or less elegantly it's an answer to the question - who's going to be punished and who's going to be rewarded. Science might be able to to inform that decision but it can't and shouldn't make it. Science is about discovering information. It could answer the question, "Is climate change happening?" It can't answer the question "What should we do about it?" It can inform people about the consequences of one response or another but at root the answer to that question is - "Who do I want to see hurt and who do I want to see helped?" Clearly there's a lot of overlap there - it's not hard to see how and why that's the case - but I still think when Science starts to lay claim to political decisions people become resentful and no one is fooled. The analogy I'd make is politicians invoking religion as a trump card in making policy. No one is fooled by it - and it makes everyone suspicious of religion.

whatshisface 7y ago
It's not that clear cut. I'll use the environment as an example. Nobody wants to drive mass extinctions or ruin America's agricultural climate. There is no party in favor of doing those things. The only way to have absolutely no push-back against industries that do that stuff is to deny that it's happening. You could accept that it's happening and then try to bargain based on future discounting and economic growth, but then the answer would be some kind of restraint greater in magnitude than zero. If you want to have absolutely no restraints you are forced to convince everybody that there is no problem. The moral obviousness of the choice turns a political issue into a scientific one, and brings the politicians along with it.
- paggle 7y ago
  There are a lot of people who don't care about mass extinctions. For example, you will not get a uniform question to "A 6-year-old kid has a rare cancer, never seen before, that is defying all medical knowledge, but seems to be controlled by an extract of the pituitary gland of a panda bear. Researchers in the field have determined that a one-shot dose from 1,000 pandas has a 90% of permanently curing her, but that's half of the pandas in the world today. Should 1,000 pandas be killed to try to save her?"

notathing 7y ago

Wrong. Science must absolutely be activist, they are in the best position to improve society and combat fascist movements. Nature itself said it: > As if full-time research weren't time-consuming and challenging enough, nanophysicist Michael Stopa embraced a second occupation while at the bench: politics. https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v539/n7630/full/nj7630-599a.html https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v539/n7630/full/nj7630...

bluetwo 7y ago

Scientists observe, try to disprove their theories, and come to conclusions about theories they could not discredit. Politicians start with their conclusions, find alternative theories and then seek to discredit them. We need to vote for politicians that think more like scientists and less like politicians.

metalchianti 7y ago
> Politicians start with their conclusions, find alternative theories and then seek to discredit them. Seems like politicians start with the conclusions and find ways to pay off ethically reprehensible scientists to manipulate data to credit a politically acceptable theory (or discredit a politically competitive theory).

zetalabs 7y ago

Some scientists are already doing exactly that, closing the gap between research-driven science focused on understanding, and the role of scientists integrating it in society via politics. (Disclaimer: Not my book, but a friend's) You can learn more on the topic in "Impact Science: The science of getting to radical social and environmental breakthroughs" which comes with a wonderful list of real-world stories. https://www.amazon.com/Impact-Science-environmental-breakthroughs-stunningly-ebook/dp/B07SN1L4L2 https://www.amazon.com/Impact-Science-environmental-breakthr...

brunosan 7y ago
Thanks for the shoutout @zetalabs. FWIW, the whole book is also available for free here https://impactscience.dev/ https://impactscience.dev/

sehugg 7y ago

Pugwash wasn't just a bunch of lofty idealists, they participated in direct negotiations that kicked off the peace process in Vietnam: http://pugwashhistory.blogspot.com/2009/07/mcnamara-and-pugwash-from-pennsylvania.html http://pugwashhistory.blogspot.com/2009/07/mcnamara-and-pugw... Despite the headline, the article seems to be arguing that scientists reclaim their seat at the table, and get their hands dirty. A tall order in this era.

traverseda 7y ago

It's hard to have respect for scientists these days. Things like the psychology replication crisis have really undermined my confidence in academia as an institution. I remember getting into a debate with a (facebook) acquaintance of mine, ultimately it boiled down to me asking them for an example of what they'd consider a good sociology paper. The paper was trying to test whether sexual harassment training actually worked. After reading through it, it was almost laughable how bad it was. Their system for measuring if the training worked was waiting two weeks and testing if people retained the knowledge. It was also done using a small group of college students. Of course that's just one paper, but the event stuck in my mind. He was a relatively well-respected grad student in my peer group, and that was what he considered to be good science? There are a lot of examples of really dubious stuff coming out of the academic community. Things like the sokal affair, or the infamous "feminist glaciology" incident. Like it or not those are getting lumped in with legitimate scientists in the public conscious, and if academia want to get taken more seriously it needs to get these ridiculous excesses under control or at least de-emphasize/disavow them as much as possible. I think there's a lot to be done to gain back that trust, but most of it has to do with cutting out the garbage. Publish or perish seems like one of the bigger problems that need addressing, but the lack of open-access journals certainly doesn't help. The academic writing style probably needs an overhaul as well. I don't know, it's sad but for me at least there needs to be some big changes before I start regaining respect of academia as a institution.

whiteopinions 7y ago
>Things like the psychology replication crisis Have you actually read up on this, or are you just repeating something you read online to make it sound like you're academically in the know and are well versed in academic research processes? Allow me to give you some reading to help give you a more reasonable view about this: https://slate.com/technology/2014/07/replication-controversy-in-psychology-bullying-file-drawer-effect-blog-posts-repligate.html https://slate.com/technology/2014/07/replication-controversy... >Things like the sokal affair, or the infamous "feminist glaciology" incident. This is only a sticking point for crazy conservative people because they purposefully or accidentally completely misunderstood what the paper was about. Conservative people already don't trust science as a whole since they have an extreme ideological motivation to not do so, so let's not pretend like it's really some defining moment for science as a whole. And again, then narrative around this is just generally very dishonest, so it's pretty funny to see you make reference to it while waxing on about academic integrity: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/qa-author-feminist-glaciology-study-reflects-sudden-appearance-culture-wars https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/qa-author-feminist-g...

jstewartmobile 7y ago

The problem with science isn't politics. The problem with science is whoredom. So many "foundations" that are either reputation-launderers for moneyed interests, or so tied to a foredrawn conclusion that every result must be carefully post-filtered to avoid career suicide. With their livelihoods (and independence) assured, this task was typically handled by the upper classes in old Europe. Once the dust settles, the same pattern will probably be revealed for the present day.

viburnum 7y ago

There is no rising above politics. Conflict is unavoidable. People disagree about things. If you have political goals you have to do politics.

RickJWagner 7y ago

Yes! We really, really need scientists to be elevated above politics. Scientists who can talk freely (and be respected for their views) about climate change. And unborn babies. And all sorts of other topics where their honest and well-researched opinions can be useful. As it is today, scientists are often used as a political force ('March for Science', eh?) All this does is render them mute to half the audience. It also leads to embarassing over-reaches and over-statements, which again diminish respect for their work. We really, really need for politics to be removed from science.