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Since I joined this website almost 1 and 1/2 decades ago, I have never seen science so politicized. In 2021, if you ask a perfectly reasonable scientific questi

Since I joined this website almost 1 and 1/2 decades ago, I have never seen science so politicized. In 2021, if you ask a perfectly reasonable scientific question, there's a good chance that it's somehow gotten associated with political party X or political party Y, and this question is treated with the same semantics as an armband, a bumper sticker, or a flag. This is madness! This is not how it's supposed to work, if we are supposed to be reasoning, thinking beings. Ideas are supposed to be ideas not tokens of affiliation! I brought up Lysenkoism here a few years back. One notable reaction, upon hearing of this for the first time, was for that commenter to declare that "Lysenkoism" was then to be pattern matched as a talking point of political party W. No intellectual curiosity. No discussion on the philosophical or practical implications. Just knee-jerk us versus them. I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. In 2021, we're taught to fear each other. We're taught to fear the "wrong" questions. We're taught to fear the "wrong" affiliation, the "wrong" ideas. Fear is the mind-killer. That is what certain manipulators want -- for people to react, instead of listening and then truly thinking.

phreeza 6y ago
The saddest phase of the pandemic for me was watch the descent of the debate from initial phase in which people seemed genuinely interested in understanding what was going on to sad polarized tribal squabbling.
- stcredzero 6y ago
  As an exercise, go and look up the mainstream news coverage of Hydroxychloroquine, then go and look up many dozens of research papers. Here's what you'll find: - Mainstream news on the topic is inaccurate, *highly sensationalized*, and is often pointedly emotionally manipulative - The evidence is not one sided, and there is considerable signal in the politically unpopular direction. - Mainstream news dotes on just a few studies which support their narrative and often don't talk about the problems with those studies, or even when those studies are retracted This is straight out of the western version of the "propaganda model" in Manufacturing Consent -- as a playbook. It turns out that Hydroxychloroquine isn't that great. However, Ivermectin seems to hold a lot of promise, last I checked in on research. What's more, ask yourself this: Many people expected governments and organizations to react to the pandemic by combing through huge amounts of data, to see if existing drugs might have some effect. This is what a lot of medical professionals expected would happen. This isn't what happened. Instead, independent parties and agencies in 3rd world countries had to push things like that through, seemingly despite opposition. Go and look up the underwhelming numbers from studies for Remdesivir, and then ask yourself why that drug was so pushed for awhile, when others with far better study numbers were seemingly ignored or talked down. (Could it be the price?) My conclusion, is that even the intellectualism of our society and its science has been corrupted. The liberal values of the philosophe have been replaced with "us versus them" jingoism, dressed up in flowery language. This flowery language turns out to be all surface. It has no historical and practical substantive support, but instead has its basis on emotional appeal.
thaumaturgy 6y ago
There's a certain irony to this comment. It contains exactly zero science and it's currently at the top of the thread.
- daenz 6y ago
  >contains exactly zero science The way I read OP's comment was as a personal experience about what they've seen since joining HN 15 years ago. Are you suggesting that only "science based" comments should be top comments, and not personal experiences?
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  An appeal to listen to the data rather than the politics may not be science, but it is certainly the scientific mindset. It's not amiss to remind ourselves to turn our science brain on before starting this conversation.
  - azinman2 6y ago
    What makes this (and science generally) difficult is at least the following: 1. The general public are not scientists, yet they distrust institutions so now they want to interpret data themselves but have no training. 2. Data can be sliced and diced to tell all kinds of stories. 3. Few can look at data and know what it doesn’t answer, or what questions should be asked but aren’t being. 4. Correlation is not causation, but that escapes almost all of us. 5. The people who generally know the field the best are poor communicators generally or at least to the general public. The people who can (or do) communicate with the public are subject to a game of telephone and don’t understand the science, and don’t know how to properly communicate uncertainty or the boundaries of knowledge. 6. Ordinary people will get ordinary answers, but due to cognitive biases will few exceptional in their ability to go against the grain.
    - Rule35 6y ago
      > The general public are not scientists, yet they distrust institutions Of course. They'll lose trust the soonest when they see political statements coming out of the WHO, etc. And they should. An organization that can't stay neutral can't do good work in a politicized climate. > Few can look at data and know what it doesn’t answer, or what questions should be asked but aren’t being No, this is actually one of the easiest things to teach. "If you were paid to sneak in and ruin this team's research, what simple bias could you add? If it was the other way around, how would you protect against this?" Teaching people to recognize a poorly controlled study is not difficult. But it's not PC these days because people are supposed to shut up when told that all scientists agree! We did this to ourselves a decade ago by tolerating the climate change debacle attacking dissent, now everything is fought through fake consensus. > Correlation is not causation, but that escapes almost all of us When it's not it almost always means there's an unseen factor though, so that wonderfully dismissive statement is usually just a red herring. > The people who can (or do) communicate with the public are ... Lying. They're lying. They're saying things they can't know as if they're fact. The WHO isn't saying that a lab leak seems less likely than other things, they're saying it didn't happen. Unless they can point to what did happen then logically they're not able to make that claim. People might be scientifically illiterate, but luckily spotting lies is much easier and gets you mostly halfway there, able to spot when you're being manipulated even if you can't tell what the truth is. The real problem the media is having is that people aren't quite as dumb as expected.
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throwawayfire 6y ago
> if you ask a perfectly reasonable scientific question, there's a good chance that it's somehow gotten associated with political party X or political party I don't think this is a surprise, when conservative leaders started out by viewing the pandemic as a commercial opportunity. Bolsonaro and Trump both promoted hydroxycholoroquine as if they were advertising it. (cite: https://www.foxnews.com/world/bolsonaro-posts-hydroxychloroquine-video https://www.foxnews.com/world/bolsonaro-posts-hydroxychloroq...)
- TMWNN 6y ago
  >I don't think this is a surprise, when conservative leaders started out by viewing the pandemic as a commercial opportunity. >Bolsonaro and Trump both promoted hydroxycholoroquine as if they were advertising it. (cite: https://www.foxnews.com/world/bolsonaro-posts-hydroxychloroq https://www.foxnews.com/world/bolsonaro-posts-hydroxychloroq...) How would Trump or anyone else commercially benefit by promoting a generic drug, which anyone can manufacture?
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > How would Trump or anyone else commercially benefit by promoting a generic drug, which anyone can manufacture? An rapid upswing in immediate demand, when it takes time for other firms to gear up, radically benefits existing manufactures, which are typically fairly limited for any given generic.
    - TMWNN 6y ago
      >which are typically fairly limited for any given generic Nonsense. Aspirin is a generic drug. Generic drugs are widely produced because a) again, anyone can make them so b) profit margins are very thin. Thus, c) the only way to profit is through volume. HCQ is a very common generic drug; it is given prophylactically to those traveling to malaria areas, for example. Any COVID19-driven short-term shortages are going to affect the manufacturers' bottom lines in relatively small ways. Again, I ask: What evidence is there that Trump or anyone else had a financial incentive to untowardly push HCQ?
matwood 6y ago
Science has been politicized for a long time, and fear is nothing new. What 2020 brought (really before) is that people became ok expressing their fears.
matsemann 6y ago
While it's sad that legitimate questions can label one, it's because "just asking questions" is a rhetoric now often used by trolls or conspiracy nuts. So most of these questions aren't really "reasonable", they are done in bad faith. See: "JAQing off" or https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions
- throw0101a 6y ago
  > […] is a rhetoric now often used by trolls or conspiracy nuts. Can be used a DoS to eat up someone's time in responding to things: > Sealioning (also spelled sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with persistent requests for evidence or repeated questions, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity.[1][2][3][4] It may take the form of "incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate".[5] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
- stcredzero 6y ago
  So most of these questions aren't really "reasonable", they are done in bad faith. Ask yourself this: Would a policy automatically labelling any question as conspiracy nut rhetoric, be acting in good faith? Such a policy could easily be exploited by a bad faith actor to silence actual substantive questions. IMO, and from what I have seen, rationalwiki has a poor record, when it comes to intellectual integrity.
throw0101a 6y ago
> This is not how it's supposed to work, if we are supposed to be reasoning, thinking beings. Ideas are supposed to be ideas not tokens of affiliation! We are humans not Vulcans. There is a spectrum of ability in various skills and abilities, including reasoning. Reminder: there are people who honestly believe the world is flat.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- stcredzero 6y ago
  We can't be free, unless we're all free to be wrong. The only logical alternative to that, is where "right" is dictated to us all.

phreeza 6y ago

The saddest phase of the pandemic for me was watch the descent of the debate from initial phase in which people seemed genuinely interested in understanding what was going on to sad polarized tribal squabbling.

stcredzero 6y ago
As an exercise, go and look up the mainstream news coverage of Hydroxychloroquine, then go and look up many dozens of research papers. Here's what you'll find: - Mainstream news on the topic is inaccurate, *highly sensationalized*, and is often pointedly emotionally manipulative - The evidence is not one sided, and there is considerable signal in the politically unpopular direction. - Mainstream news dotes on just a few studies which support their narrative and often don't talk about the problems with those studies, or even when those studies are retracted This is straight out of the western version of the "propaganda model" in Manufacturing Consent -- as a playbook. It turns out that Hydroxychloroquine isn't that great. However, Ivermectin seems to hold a lot of promise, last I checked in on research. What's more, ask yourself this: Many people expected governments and organizations to react to the pandemic by combing through huge amounts of data, to see if existing drugs might have some effect. This is what a lot of medical professionals expected would happen. This isn't what happened. Instead, independent parties and agencies in 3rd world countries had to push things like that through, seemingly despite opposition. Go and look up the underwhelming numbers from studies for Remdesivir, and then ask yourself why that drug was so pushed for awhile, when others with far better study numbers were seemingly ignored or talked down. (Could it be the price?) My conclusion, is that even the intellectualism of our society and its science has been corrupted. The liberal values of the philosophe have been replaced with "us versus them" jingoism, dressed up in flowery language. This flowery language turns out to be all surface. It has no historical and practical substantive support, but instead has its basis on emotional appeal.

thaumaturgy 6y ago

There's a certain irony to this comment. It contains exactly zero science and it's currently at the top of the thread.

daenz 6y ago
>contains exactly zero science The way I read OP's comment was as a personal experience about what they've seen since joining HN 15 years ago. Are you suggesting that only "science based" comments should be top comments, and not personal experiences?
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
An appeal to listen to the data rather than the politics may not be science, but it is certainly the scientific mindset. It's not amiss to remind ourselves to turn our science brain on before starting this conversation.
- azinman2 6y ago
  What makes this (and science generally) difficult is at least the following: 1. The general public are not scientists, yet they distrust institutions so now they want to interpret data themselves but have no training. 2. Data can be sliced and diced to tell all kinds of stories. 3. Few can look at data and know what it doesn’t answer, or what questions should be asked but aren’t being. 4. Correlation is not causation, but that escapes almost all of us. 5. The people who generally know the field the best are poor communicators generally or at least to the general public. The people who can (or do) communicate with the public are subject to a game of telephone and don’t understand the science, and don’t know how to properly communicate uncertainty or the boundaries of knowledge. 6. Ordinary people will get ordinary answers, but due to cognitive biases will few exceptional in their ability to go against the grain.
  - Rule35 6y ago
    > The general public are not scientists, yet they distrust institutions Of course. They'll lose trust the soonest when they see political statements coming out of the WHO, etc. And they should. An organization that can't stay neutral can't do good work in a politicized climate. > Few can look at data and know what it doesn’t answer, or what questions should be asked but aren’t being No, this is actually one of the easiest things to teach. "If you were paid to sneak in and ruin this team's research, what simple bias could you add? If it was the other way around, how would you protect against this?" Teaching people to recognize a poorly controlled study is not difficult. But it's not PC these days because people are supposed to shut up when told that all scientists agree! We did this to ourselves a decade ago by tolerating the climate change debacle attacking dissent, now everything is fought through fake consensus. > Correlation is not causation, but that escapes almost all of us When it's not it almost always means there's an unseen factor though, so that wonderfully dismissive statement is usually just a red herring. > The people who can (or do) communicate with the public are ... Lying. They're lying. They're saying things they can't know as if they're fact. The WHO isn't saying that a lab leak seems less likely than other things, they're saying it didn't happen. Unless they can point to what did happen then logically they're not able to make that claim. People might be scientifically illiterate, but luckily spotting lies is much easier and gets you mostly halfway there, able to spot when you're being manipulated even if you can't tell what the truth is. The real problem the media is having is that people aren't quite as dumb as expected.

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throwawayfire 6y ago

> if you ask a perfectly reasonable scientific question, there's a good chance that it's somehow gotten associated with political party X or political party I don't think this is a surprise, when conservative leaders started out by viewing the pandemic as a commercial opportunity. Bolsonaro and Trump both promoted hydroxycholoroquine as if they were advertising it. (cite: https://www.foxnews.com/world/bolsonaro-posts-hydroxychloroquine-video https://www.foxnews.com/world/bolsonaro-posts-hydroxychloroq...)

TMWNN 6y ago
>I don't think this is a surprise, when conservative leaders started out by viewing the pandemic as a commercial opportunity. >Bolsonaro and Trump both promoted hydroxycholoroquine as if they were advertising it. (cite: https://www.foxnews.com/world/bolsonaro-posts-hydroxychloroq https://www.foxnews.com/world/bolsonaro-posts-hydroxychloroq...) How would Trump or anyone else commercially benefit by promoting a generic drug, which anyone can manufacture?
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > How would Trump or anyone else commercially benefit by promoting a generic drug, which anyone can manufacture? An rapid upswing in immediate demand, when it takes time for other firms to gear up, radically benefits existing manufactures, which are typically fairly limited for any given generic.
  - TMWNN 6y ago
    >which are typically fairly limited for any given generic Nonsense. Aspirin is a generic drug. Generic drugs are widely produced because a) again, anyone can make them so b) profit margins are very thin. Thus, c) the only way to profit is through volume. HCQ is a very common generic drug; it is given prophylactically to those traveling to malaria areas, for example. Any COVID19-driven short-term shortages are going to affect the manufacturers' bottom lines in relatively small ways. Again, I ask: What evidence is there that Trump or anyone else had a financial incentive to untowardly push HCQ?

matwood 6y ago

Science has been politicized for a long time, and fear is nothing new. What 2020 brought (really before) is that people became ok expressing their fears.

matsemann 6y ago

While it's sad that legitimate questions can label one, it's because "just asking questions" is a rhetoric now often used by trolls or conspiracy nuts. So most of these questions aren't really "reasonable", they are done in bad faith. See: "JAQing off" or https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions

throw0101a 6y ago
> […] is a rhetoric now often used by trolls or conspiracy nuts. Can be used a DoS to eat up someone's time in responding to things: > Sealioning (also spelled sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with persistent requests for evidence or repeated questions, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity.[1][2][3][4] It may take the form of "incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate".[5] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
stcredzero 6y ago
So most of these questions aren't really "reasonable", they are done in bad faith. Ask yourself this: Would a policy automatically labelling any question as conspiracy nut rhetoric, be acting in good faith? Such a policy could easily be exploited by a bad faith actor to silence actual substantive questions. IMO, and from what I have seen, rationalwiki has a poor record, when it comes to intellectual integrity.

throw0101a 6y ago

> This is not how it's supposed to work, if we are supposed to be reasoning, thinking beings. Ideas are supposed to be ideas not tokens of affiliation! We are humans not Vulcans. There is a spectrum of ability in various skills and abilities, including reasoning. Reminder: there are people who honestly believe the world is flat.

deleted 6y ago
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stcredzero 6y ago
We can't be free, unless we're all free to be wrong. The only logical alternative to that, is where "right" is dictated to us all.