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> even peer review or the publishing of scientific information, is a power struggle between ideologies That is so wrong that I'm having a hard time finding whe

> even peer review or the publishing of scientific information, is a power struggle between ideologies That is so wrong that I'm having a hard time finding where to begin. First off, you are literally spouting off an existing political narrative which is intended to discredit decided science that opposes certain political viewpoints. IE, you shouldn't trust science because it's biased against your politics and conducted by people who are more concerned with not liking your political ideology than they are with propagating fact. Have you ever gone through peer review or are you just spouting off something that appeals to your political sensibilities? I have published and peer review is the most formal and clinical procedure in the whole scientific process. It is usually conducted by three anonymous scientific rivals who have literally no incentive get your article through. Because of that, there are strict rules and norms about what is acceptable to say in these sorts of things (moderated by apolitical (I shouldn't even have to say that since this is science not politics) editors, plural for contentious topics). Any hint of political bias would get picked out immediately and the reviewer would get the boot. If you aren't satisfied then there is even a process to appealing to the editor's boss and so on. You're talking about like six strangers with competing interests that would all need to collude to force a political viewpoint into an article. The peer review process is also just that: a process. The reviewers don't have ultimate power over you and if they make a bad faith claim for political reasons, then you get to call them out on it in your response. I actually know someone that was told he was too inexperienced to write an article (a pretty BS criticism). When he just wrote a terse reply telling the reviewer to not appeal to authority the editor accepted the paper and ignored the criticism. Imagine what would happen if you told the editor that they shouldn't accept the paper because it disagrees with politician so and so or something? Even if your article gets rejected, there's typically like a dozen different journals that could equally well accept the article (but with less prestige possibly). It's not uncommon for articles that aren't about a politically contentious topic like masks to bounce from journal to journal until it's accepted on like the fifth submission. It isn't because of some sort of spooky political censorship, it's because sometimes there's legitimate criticism to be had with a manuscript. If your article is so bad that you can't even get it included in lower ranked journal then nobody is stopping you from just releasing it. You can always dump it on a preprint server or even just host it from your own website and scientists can use it if they consider it acceptable. Nobody is censoring this information. There is no such thing as an elite cabal of scientists who are suppressing political ideologies in peer review. This idea and the narrative that facts and science are something that are optional and have a political bias is IMO one of the most toxic ideas in today's politics.

throwawaysea 6y ago
> It is usually conducted by three anonymous scientific rivals who have literally no incentive get your article through. Because of that, there are strict rules and norms about what is acceptable to say in these sorts of things (moderated by apolitical (I shouldn't even have to say that since this is science not politics) editors, plural for contentious topics). Any hint of political bias would get picked out immediately and the reviewer would get the boot. If you aren't satisfied then there is even a process to appealing to the editor's boss and so on. You're talking about like six strangers with competing interests that would all need to collude to force a political viewpoint into an article. Apologies if I’m being overly direct, but this claim seems to assume that groups of people who are part of the same institutions or ecosystems can’t share the same cultures or biases. It’s not a question of incentives or explicit coordination - it’s a matter of a lack of diversity of thought leading to individuals making similarly biased decisions or judgment calls even without coordination. These biases can also turn up in an insidious manner - for example scrutiny being applied in a discriminatory fashion (less for studies that are agreeable and more for ones that aren’t). > This idea and the narrative that facts and science are something that are optional and have a political bias is IMO one of the most toxic ideas in today's politics. I’m not saying that facts or science (in the purest sense) are optional, but I certainty think they are subject to political bias. Calling something a “fact” or labeling it as “scientific” doesn’t make it so. It isn’t a toxic idea to note that the practice of science can be biased even if the broader philosophy of science isn’t supposed to be. I think of this as more of a human reality we have to confront if pursuing the truth matters. For example take a politically sensitive topic like whether there are gender pay gaps or not. Many researchers claim there is a gap based on univariate analysis and will affix their conclusions with labels like “facts” and “science” and “data”. Multivariate studies on the same topic often say there isn’t a gender pay gap or that sufficient data doesn’t exist to clearly make a case for it. These studies, however, are often not accepted by the broader public, not amplified by news media, and aren’t socially acceptable to even quote. We don’t have to think very hard to search much to find examples of taboo topics that are off limits in academia/research, and we don’t have to work hard to find people who are the victim of cancel culture due to their scientific pursuits or statements either (example: https://www.thecollegefix.com/far-left-scholar-activists-attempt-to-cancel-famed-harvard-professor-steven-pinker/ https://www.thecollegefix.com/far-left-scholar-activists-att...). Likewise we don’t have to work hard to find gibberish accepted by the governing processes either (example: https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studies-and-the-corruption-of-scholarship/ https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studi...). It is simply a plainly observable reality that human qualities corrupt scientific or scholarly processes that we want to have blind faith in. But the reality is we can’t afford to have blind faith in anything, not even scientific processes, and should apply scrutiny to what comes out of those processes just as we would to anything else.

throwawaysea 6y ago

> It is usually conducted by three anonymous scientific rivals who have literally no incentive get your article through. Because of that, there are strict rules and norms about what is acceptable to say in these sorts of things (moderated by apolitical (I shouldn't even have to say that since this is science not politics) editors, plural for contentious topics). Any hint of political bias would get picked out immediately and the reviewer would get the boot. If you aren't satisfied then there is even a process to appealing to the editor's boss and so on. You're talking about like six strangers with competing interests that would all need to collude to force a political viewpoint into an article. Apologies if I’m being overly direct, but this claim seems to assume that groups of people who are part of the same institutions or ecosystems can’t share the same cultures or biases. It’s not a question of incentives or explicit coordination - it’s a matter of a lack of diversity of thought leading to individuals making similarly biased decisions or judgment calls even without coordination. These biases can also turn up in an insidious manner - for example scrutiny being applied in a discriminatory fashion (less for studies that are agreeable and more for ones that aren’t). > This idea and the narrative that facts and science are something that are optional and have a political bias is IMO one of the most toxic ideas in today's politics. I’m not saying that facts or science (in the purest sense) are optional, but I certainty think they are subject to political bias. Calling something a “fact” or labeling it as “scientific” doesn’t make it so. It isn’t a toxic idea to note that the practice of science can be biased even if the broader philosophy of science isn’t supposed to be. I think of this as more of a human reality we have to confront if pursuing the truth matters. For example take a politically sensitive topic like whether there are gender pay gaps or not. Many researchers claim there is a gap based on univariate analysis and will affix their conclusions with labels like “facts” and “science” and “data”. Multivariate studies on the same topic often say there isn’t a gender pay gap or that sufficient data doesn’t exist to clearly make a case for it. These studies, however, are often not accepted by the broader public, not amplified by news media, and aren’t socially acceptable to even quote. We don’t have to think very hard to search much to find examples of taboo topics that are off limits in academia/research, and we don’t have to work hard to find people who are the victim of cancel culture due to their scientific pursuits or statements either (example: https://www.thecollegefix.com/far-left-scholar-activists-attempt-to-cancel-famed-harvard-professor-steven-pinker/ https://www.thecollegefix.com/far-left-scholar-activists-att...). Likewise we don’t have to work hard to find gibberish accepted by the governing processes either (example: https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studies-and-the-corruption-of-scholarship/ https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studi...). It is simply a plainly observable reality that human qualities corrupt scientific or scholarly processes that we want to have blind faith in. But the reality is we can’t afford to have blind faith in anything, not even scientific processes, and should apply scrutiny to what comes out of those processes just as we would to anything else.