6 ms·

This is tragic. Science must always be free of politics.

senectus1 6y ago
I 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 ago
This 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 ago
  Because 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 ago
    What if you wanted your doctor to assist you in abortion? That's an American political matter.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    Nature 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 ago
      analogy: a comparison between two things, typically for the purpose of explanation or clarification.
      - 082349872349872 6y ago
        loose 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 ago
Even if those politics are anti-science?
- mantap 6y ago
  Especially so. Don't drop down to their level.
  - syspec 6y ago
    Unfortunately that does not work. When one group plays by the rules, and the other doesn't - the one that doesn't will constantly win. See current election year Supreme Court nomination.
evgen 6y ago
If 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 ago
  Only 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 ago
  Democrats are also anti-science. It’s just due to scientists used to understanding they should stay out of politics.
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  Whatever 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 ago
  Green 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 ago
The 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 ago
  Will 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 ago
  Ah, "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 ago
Yes, just like religion...
baby 6y ago
Great 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

I 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 ago

This 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 ago
Because 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 ago
  What if you wanted your doctor to assist you in abortion? That's an American political matter.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Nature 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 ago
    analogy: a comparison between two things, typically for the purpose of explanation or clarification.
    - 082349872349872 6y ago
      loose 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 ago

Even if those politics are anti-science?

mantap 6y ago
Especially so. Don't drop down to their level.
- syspec 6y ago
  Unfortunately that does not work. When one group plays by the rules, and the other doesn't - the one that doesn't will constantly win. See current election year Supreme Court nomination.

evgen 6y ago

If 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 ago
Only 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 ago
Democrats are also anti-science. It’s just due to scientists used to understanding they should stay out of politics.
raxxorrax 6y ago
Whatever 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 ago
Green 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 ago

The 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 ago
Will 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 ago
Ah, "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 ago

Yes, just like religion...

baby 6y ago

Great 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