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Nature supports Joe Biden for US president
- LifeIsThermal 6y agoThis is tragic. Science must always be free of politics.
- senectus1 6y agoI get why you think so. but I think you're wrong. Silence is admirable for a while, but the extremity of anti-science policy's from the Trump administration requires defense of science. Like a theory needs to be criticized and reviewed and attempted to be proven false or incorrect, so must Policy. Who better than to argue this than the experts in the given field.
- FranzFerdiNaN 6y agoThis is a hilariously naive way of seeing things. Science is never neutral and never can be, and pretending it is neutral is just saying you're fine with the current status quo. Trump actively harms science and scientists and universities, so why should the scientific community system quiet?
- Flankk 6y agoBecause it is incredibly divisive and cheapens the journal. I'm not interested in what my doctor thinks of Biden, I just want to get rid of the damn foot fungus.
- threatofrain 6y agoWhat if you wanted your doctor to assist you in abortion? That's an American political matter.
- 082349872349872 6y agoNature doesn't deal with getting rid of foot fungi either. You're thinking of New England Journal of Medicine. (FWIW, I think it would be amusing if Biden reached out to https://www.heavenmagazine.nl https://www.heavenmagazine.nl in order to get a Confucian mandate of heaven.)
- Flankk 6y agoanalogy: a comparison between two things, typically for the purpose of explanation or clarification.
- 082349872349872 6y agoloose analogy: clarifies like a fish without a bicycle I did find https://www.nature.com/articles/ja201468 https://www.nature.com/articles/ja201468 but note that although it shows up on the web under nature.com, it's been published in The Journal of Antibiotics, not the flagship. Nature itself carries articles more on the lines of https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-42065-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-42065-5 .
- yokaze 6y ago> I'm not interested in what my doctor thinks of Biden, I just want to get rid of the damn foot fungus. You are free to ignore what your doctor thinks of Biden, but if the other partly has or plans to enact laws which will impede your treatment, it is not outside of the responsibility of your doctor to inform you about that. I would expect my doctor to at least to be informed about it. Certainly, it only is an aspect of policies, and of course, you are free to decide differently, as your decision may weigh things differently. But I think, the main point is, you don't want to be bothered. That is understandable, but the solution is to ignore it.
- mcphage 6y ago> Because it is incredibly divisive and cheapens the journal. Pretending this is a normal election, or that Trump is normal candidate, cheapens everyone who has a platform and does not use it.
- guardian5x 6y agoEven if those politics are anti-science?
- evgen 6y agoIf only certain (Republican) politicians would learn to keep their ignorant opinions out of science then maybe that would happen. When one party goes to war against facts and science then every scientist has a moral duty to push back.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- insickness 6y agoOnly one party goes to war with facts? Take a look at the left's adoption critical theory, which denies that the cause of human behavior can be anything other than social construct.
- akvadrako 6y agoDemocrats are also anti-science. It’s just due to scientists used to understanding they should stay out of politics.
- raxxorrax 6y agoWhatever shit they do, you don't want to step to that level. It is not true that you will loose otherwise, on the contrary, you will become a republican otherwise.
- Agustus 6y agoGreen new deal is absent of nuclear energy and does not include anything about base load mitigation. Instead there will be magical battery storage. The affordable care act included chiropractor and acupuncture. California is under a strict lockdown that has been admitted in their documents that it will never return to green and the WHO is returning to their previously held statement that lockdowns hurt the poor disproportionately and do not provide ultimate success. Masks do not work, then work, then only special types of cloth (two layer gaiters no, two layer cloths, yes). HCQ with zinc does work in early treatments until endorsed by a party leader, opposition locks out doctors (trained medical professionals) from using the drug in certain states with no scientific backing. Science in the political realm is non existent if it interferes with the scoring of political points. It is not Republicans / Democrats are anti science, it is the political positions each side is beholden to that drives these narratives and then are used to make the opposing side look dumb.
- abraae 6y agoThe thinking behind their stance is well laid out in a previous editorial: > The principle that the state will respect scholarly independence is one of the foundations underpinning modern research, and its erosion carries grave risks for standards of quality and integrity in research and policymaking. When politicians break that covenant, they endanger the health of people, the environment and societies. This is why Nature’s news correspondents will redouble their efforts to watch and report on what is happening in politics and research worldwide. It is why authors of our expert commentaries will continue to assess and critique developments; and why the journal is looking to publish more primary research in political science.
- belorn 6y agoWill they assess and critique developments if they are beneficial to Joe Biden political message and campaign? Will the public trust it? The purpose of their stance is clear, but from this point on anything nature publish will have to be taken in the context of a political objective to get Joe Biden votes, with the side effect of benefiting scholarly independence once he is elected. That carries grave risks that people trust in the science decrease because the motives behind publications will be questioned based on political alignment rather than scientific evidence.
- thu2111 6y agoAh, "political science". Doesn't get more natural than that. That's not a very clever stance. The overwhelming leftism of academia is a matter that academics have themselves studied. It's not a secret. What this position boils down to is: "Having successfully got rid of most conservative academics, we're going to push left wing narratives. The priorities of the people paying for it shouldn't matter. Anyone who isn't as leftist as us is from now on 'anti-science'." I've been reading more papers from Nature, Science and The Lancet this year, due to COVID. They are politicised trash. The editor of the Lancet routinely goes on major anti-Trump rants on Twitter, so it was no surprise when he published the Surgisphere paper which took about 24 hours before an actual journalist (at the Guardian no less) noticed it was completely fake. Other papers push ideological positions using all the tricks of bad science. The fact that academics consider these outlets respectable is very telling. They publish soo many bad papers. Science magazine published a blog post where they pondered suppressing papers that had anti-lockdown conclusions or data because it might encourage people to be less afraid. Other scientists have reported their papers indeed being rejected for that given reason - not the quality of the science but the fact that it wouldn't support social policies popular on the left. Social science is famously poor quality. https://fantasticanachronism.com/2020/09/11/whats-wrong-with-social-science-and-how-to-fix-it/#There-Are-No-Journals-With-Strict-Quality-Standards https://fantasticanachronism.com/2020/09/11/whats-wrong-with... It's very sad that the natural sciences are so publicly hitching their reputation to it.
- kasperni 6y agoYes, just like religion...
- baby 6y agoGreat scientists clearly disagree with you https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%E2%80%93Einstein_Manifesto?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%E2%80%93Einstein_Manif... https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/papers/moral-fn.pdf https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/papers/moral-fn.pdf
- OneGuy123 6y agoRemember this Nature? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Most_Published_Research_Findings_Are_False https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Most_Published_Research_Fi... So much about "truth". People don't have a problem with science. They have a problem with scientists. They also say how Trump is bad because of the Paris agreement for environment. Did you know that the Paris agreement has no legal bindings? It's just a PR move by politicians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement#Lack_of_binding_enforcement_mechanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement#Lack_of_bindin...
- 082349872349872 6y agoOpEds != Articles. (even true of news, where unlike scientific journals, the difference between editorial and article isn't as blatant. This editorial has neither Abstract up front nor References in closing.)
- aokiji 6y agoThe industrial academic complex is at it again. Stop generating noise and get back to doing Science, or at least pretending you do. Why do we see no comments about China sending out videos of people falling down with simulated convulsions in January and February? Is China's money from Thousand Talents Plan so hard to live without? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand_Talents_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand_Talents_Plan
- templain 6y agooy vey!
- mikelothar 6y agoReading that article left me worried. It's not very factual, it has many errorneous statements, and, honestly, it looks like propaganda. Seems to me like Nature is not worried about losing credability.
- rich_sasha 6y ago+1. Had they limited themselves to the critique of Trump, it would be fine. But they actually take the step forward and bathe Biden in glory. He may be a good guy, all I know is he isn't Trump, and says some of the right things, ahead of an election. This could translate to absolutely anything.
- dekhn 6y agoBiden has been a politician for decades. It's not hard to figure out what Biden is.
- rich_sasha 6y agoIt's very different once you get the top job. And Nature, as a scientific publication, shouldn't be in the business of predicting that.
- dekhn 6y agoPoliticians don't suddenly change when they're elected president (it's not like the powers of the president would really permit that, either). Nature, as a scientific publication, is probably one of the best at predicting that, given it's run by scientists, who have deep history in analyzing how policy decisions affect science.
- stefantalpalaru 6y ago> It's not hard to figure out what Biden is. You're right. Biden is the warmonger who pushed an approval for the invasion of Iraq through the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, back in 2002: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhcuei8_UJM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhcuei8_UJM Meanwhile, Trump is the war-shy buffoon who failed to deliver a single new war to the military-industrial complex. No wonder he has to go. War is good for business (and research grants).
- stefantalpalaru 6y ago> "Joe Biden must be given an opportunity to restore trust in truth, in evidence, in science and in other institutions of democracy, heal a divided nation, and begin the urgent task of rebuilding the United States’ reputation in the world." Straight political propaganda in a top scientific journal? Isn't that a tad over the top? On the other hand, Iran won't bomb itself, so it's all-hands-on-deck to get that "seven countries in five years" plan back on track. On the gripping hand, such blatant propaganda might have the opposite effect on the silent majority. We'll see soon enough.