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I wasn't social media that eroded the trust in research and science, it was the introduction of politics. We need to separate research from politics. It needs

I wasn't social media that eroded the trust in research and science, it was the introduction of politics. We need to separate research from politics. It needs to be a separate pillar of the state. You don't want reseachers chasing funds continously and doing short-term research for local sponsors. You want sizeable investments in long-term research projects, high autonomy and following of the scientific method. This way people would trust the results.

urthor 5y ago
I strongly protest the concept that the recent introduction of politics is making things worse than they used to be. If you ask anyone who was senior working in these institutions in the 1970s, things were far more dodgy back then. Corruption and bigotry were rampant. But it was far easier to cover up back in the day. Politicization is mostly driven by transparency. Politicization is not a new thing, it's a fact that there's a lot of extremely conservative individuals in each country. And technology has bought them closer to their institutions. Society is being brought very closely together, and we're working through the teething issues.
- slg 5y ago
  >I strongly protest the concept that the recent introduction of politics is making things worse than they used to be... Corruption and bigotry were rampant. It is wild how people think things like institutional bigotry aren't politics. How is a scientific organization that excludes large swaths of the population due purely to the circumstances of their birth apolitical? Science has always been political because politics is how people interact with each other. That is true whether we are discussing how governments behave on the world stage or how that big project is being managed at your job. Wherever people exist, politics exists.
- skissane 5y ago
  Most people accept that science in past generations was, to a certain degree, corrupted by the prevailing prejudices and societal/cultural/political/ideological beliefs of the time. But, if we acknowledge that was true then – why shouldn't we expect the same to be true now? The prevailing prejudices and ideologies may have changed, but has anything changed about the actual practice of science to make it more immune to those forces? I think a lot of people can't see it, because it is far easier to see when science is being influenced by beliefs you reject than when it is being influenced by beliefs you yourself share. I think the politicisation of science is inevitable, and science is never going to be entirely politically neutral. Scientists are human beings, and as Aristotle famously said, "man is a political animal". I think science is going to achieve the maximum possible political neutrality when it is either (a) things so clearly established no one can sensibly debate them (which especially happens when scientific theories get translated into widely adopted working technologies–the very fact that the technology works is proof the theories behind it must be mostly correct); (b) things that avoid political entanglements because they have little relevance to everyday human life (e.g. string theory vs loop quantum gravity isn't influenced by broader societal politics because it has no relevance to issues of social/cultural/economic/political power, although even it is surely influenced by the micro-politics of the theoretical physics community, its funding models, etc.) Take something like human-induced climate change – personally, I accept the mainstream account of that topic as most likely to be correct, but I can't be completely sure that it is right, surely there is some non-zero probability (even if a small one) that it is wrong. But, I expect people in a couple of centuries from now will be able to reach a much firmer consensus – they'll know whose predictions turned out to be right, plus technological and economic developments will likely greatly reduce the number of people with a vested economic interest in the non-mainstream answer. I think the most likely outcome will be that the mainstream account will be vindicated, and almost everyone will acknowledge that the minority were wrong; but it isn't absolutely impossible that it could turn out the other way around. And whichever way it turns out, I think people will see politics as having played a major role – if the mainstream account is confirmed, people will see much of the opposing minority as being led astray by politics; but, conversely, if the sceptical minority turn out to have been right all along, people will reach the same conclusion with respect to today's mainstream.
  - urthor 5y ago
    I think the vast rate at which things are improving every decade is really dramatic. Compare now to ten years ago, before me too. Things are hugely different. I fully expect that if you give it a long time, things will be markedly better. In a hundred years for example.
    - skissane 5y ago
      Are things "improving every decade" at a "vast rate"? What exactly is improving? Doesn't that depend on one's values as to what counts as "better"? Do you mean technological progress, economic progress, social progress? Perceptions of progress seem to depend a lot on (a) where in the world you are, (b) what things you value, (c) whether you choose to optimistically focus on the positive developments (from the viewpoint of your own values) or pessimistically focus on the negative. Even if we agree that certain forms of progress are occurring, do those various forms of progress necessarily entail scientific progress? I think, the only form of progress which necessarily entails scientific progress is technological progress – but even for that, some scientific fields have much greater technological relevance than others, continuing technological progress requires continuing scientific progress in technologically-relevant fields, yet is compatible with going backwards in areas of science which lack direct technological application.
      - amcoastal 5y ago
        You can be philosophical about "improving", but in the context of the thread and the post, I think we are talking about technological improvement over the last few years as an example of tangible scientific improvement, even if a lot of papers that are published suck.
        skissane 5y ago
        Okay, but that comes back to the point that some scientific fields are more relevant to technological progress than others. Getting physics and chemistry right is really essential to technological progress. How can technology advance if your physics and chemistry are wrong? But, what about "softer" sciences, such as psychology or the social sciences? It seems you could be moving in the complete wrong direction with them, and yet still be advancing technologically – because technology largely doesn't depend on them. And even for the "hard sciences", technology generally only depends on certain areas of them. How much of the Standard Model of physics is actually technologically relevant? Technological progress is strong evidence you've got the technologically-relevant parts of physics right, but is compatible with serious error in low technological-relevance areas. What is the technological relevance of electroweak unification, for example? We also don't know what we are missing out on. Neuroscience is an area of biological research in which many promises of clinical translation have thus far failed to deliver. Is that because this the brain is very complicated, and we just have to wait longer and invest more before we see more results? Or could it be that we are doing the science wrong, and we'd clinically be in a much better situation now if we were doing it right? How can one tell which of those two possible situations we are actually in?
- _brnu 5y ago
  > Politicization is not a new thing, it's a fact that there's a lot of extremely conservative individuals in each country. How are you using “conservative” here? The right certainly has no monopoly politicizing science.
Alex3917 5y ago
> I wasn't social media that eroded the trust in research and science, it was the introduction of politics. It's not like the medical system was a highly trusted and respected institution that politicians somehow undermined in the last few months. The lost of trust in the medical system has been literally over 150 years in the making. If you read some books on the history of the rise of homeopathy in the United States in the mid 1800s, the parallels with today aren't exactly subtle.
- gilleain 5y ago
  I'm curious - what is the story of homeopathy in the United States? I know it is oddly popular in Germany.
  - Alex3917 5y ago
    https://www.amazon.com/History-American-Homeopathy-Academic-1820-1935/dp/1535436115 https://www.amazon.com/History-American-Homeopathy-Academic-...
spion 5y ago
It really was social media. Tell an algorithm to optimize for engagement and it will promote the content causing the most engagement: novelty, conspiracy theory, outrage, surprising "revelations" and all sorts of clickbait. If we removed Twitter, Facebook and Tik Tok and reverted YouTube to the pre-algorithmic (subscription based) era, we'd still have free speech on the internet but probably a lot less bullshit. Note: Twitter would still promote bullshit even without a ML algorithm. The rules of engagement: - short content - individual popularity means content popularity - retweeting is instant, requires no critical thought create an environment where clickbaity emotion-viruses spread at exponential rate, and things that require engaging the brain are ignored. Its essentially a crowdsourced rating system for tabloid headlines by design.
- megaman821 5y ago
  It really is just people. Look at all the information about HIV in the 80's, long before social media. People believed some truly crazy, racist, and misinformed things about HIV and its spread.
  - spion 5y ago
    People are multifaceted beings. Social media AI automatically exploits any and all of our failings in the name of engagement. Traditional media used to do that before to some extent but the current situation is unprecedented in its reach and efficiency - custom tailored to individuals. Technology is supposed to compensate for our failings, not exaggerate them to the extreme.
  - nradov 5y ago
    It really was crazy. Back in 1985 Neil Young apparently thought that he could catch HIV if a homosexual clerk handled his groceries (obviously nonsense and highly offensive). https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/michelle-shocked-not-the-first-artist-to-betray-her-fanbase-87622/ https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/michelle-shock...
    - Nemrod67 5y ago
WalterBright 5y ago
> We need to separate research from politics. That absolutely will never happen as long as the funding comes from the government.
- strictfp 5y ago
  Only true to a certain extent. Is the judicial power not separate from politics? Maybe not completely, but it has measures in place to secure some type of autonomy. What I'm talking about is removing micromanagement and ensuring that the institution is trusted.
- vimacs2 5y ago
  I'd add that even if it received funding through private enterprise, it would still be infused with the politics of said backers - whether intentionally or not. The best you could possibly achieve is funding purely through small time (non business) donations from the public - and I'm still a little skeptical as to the scope of research that could realistically fund.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    > it would still be infused with the politics of said backers Of course it would. Whoever pays the piper always calls the tune. It's no surprise that NPR and PBS advocate for the government point of view.
nine_k 5y ago
The amount of resources available to spend on research is finite. Distribution of limited resources is politics. Historically, scientists either were well-off and independent (e.g. Ulug beg, Newton, Cavendish), or worked at the expense of very rich personal patrons (e.g. Tycho). This limited the number of potential scientists, and the amount of science done, quite drastically. In 18th-20th centuries it was somehow overcome, when partly states, partly industries gave more scientists more resources. By mid-20th century, the system started to develop cracks, as science became increasingly driven by formal metrics, such as impactful publications. The metrics are actively gamed, but worse, since science is unpredictable, honestly checking everything and building a picture of reality became a worse strategy than going for a flashy if more weakly researched result. I don't know a good way out of the current trap.
- strictfp 5y ago
  How about giving the institutions very top-level goals, on say 20 or 50-year basis, and then just give them a bag of money? Research is a high stakes, high rewards type of game. You need to pursue many potential ways forward, and most likely only one will win. Rewarding short term wins makes academia no different from industry, and prevents finding anything but the local maxima.
A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
I would argue that it wasn't just social media. Before the internet, it was relatively easy for a politician to 'pivot', to say something to one group, but quite a different thing to another. Now it is carefully catalogued and these days carefully tracked by anyone with any interest to care. Social media just put some gas on a fire with engagement optimization. The rest was just human nature.

urthor 5y ago

I strongly protest the concept that the recent introduction of politics is making things worse than they used to be. If you ask anyone who was senior working in these institutions in the 1970s, things were far more dodgy back then. Corruption and bigotry were rampant. But it was far easier to cover up back in the day. Politicization is mostly driven by transparency. Politicization is not a new thing, it's a fact that there's a lot of extremely conservative individuals in each country. And technology has bought them closer to their institutions. Society is being brought very closely together, and we're working through the teething issues.

slg 5y ago
>I strongly protest the concept that the recent introduction of politics is making things worse than they used to be... Corruption and bigotry were rampant. It is wild how people think things like institutional bigotry aren't politics. How is a scientific organization that excludes large swaths of the population due purely to the circumstances of their birth apolitical? Science has always been political because politics is how people interact with each other. That is true whether we are discussing how governments behave on the world stage or how that big project is being managed at your job. Wherever people exist, politics exists.
skissane 5y ago
Most people accept that science in past generations was, to a certain degree, corrupted by the prevailing prejudices and societal/cultural/political/ideological beliefs of the time. But, if we acknowledge that was true then – why shouldn't we expect the same to be true now? The prevailing prejudices and ideologies may have changed, but has anything changed about the actual practice of science to make it more immune to those forces? I think a lot of people can't see it, because it is far easier to see when science is being influenced by beliefs you reject than when it is being influenced by beliefs you yourself share. I think the politicisation of science is inevitable, and science is never going to be entirely politically neutral. Scientists are human beings, and as Aristotle famously said, "man is a political animal". I think science is going to achieve the maximum possible political neutrality when it is either (a) things so clearly established no one can sensibly debate them (which especially happens when scientific theories get translated into widely adopted working technologies–the very fact that the technology works is proof the theories behind it must be mostly correct); (b) things that avoid political entanglements because they have little relevance to everyday human life (e.g. string theory vs loop quantum gravity isn't influenced by broader societal politics because it has no relevance to issues of social/cultural/economic/political power, although even it is surely influenced by the micro-politics of the theoretical physics community, its funding models, etc.) Take something like human-induced climate change – personally, I accept the mainstream account of that topic as most likely to be correct, but I can't be completely sure that it is right, surely there is some non-zero probability (even if a small one) that it is wrong. But, I expect people in a couple of centuries from now will be able to reach a much firmer consensus – they'll know whose predictions turned out to be right, plus technological and economic developments will likely greatly reduce the number of people with a vested economic interest in the non-mainstream answer. I think the most likely outcome will be that the mainstream account will be vindicated, and almost everyone will acknowledge that the minority were wrong; but it isn't absolutely impossible that it could turn out the other way around. And whichever way it turns out, I think people will see politics as having played a major role – if the mainstream account is confirmed, people will see much of the opposing minority as being led astray by politics; but, conversely, if the sceptical minority turn out to have been right all along, people will reach the same conclusion with respect to today's mainstream.
- urthor 5y ago
  I think the vast rate at which things are improving every decade is really dramatic. Compare now to ten years ago, before me too. Things are hugely different. I fully expect that if you give it a long time, things will be markedly better. In a hundred years for example.
  - skissane 5y ago
    Are things "improving every decade" at a "vast rate"? What exactly is improving? Doesn't that depend on one's values as to what counts as "better"? Do you mean technological progress, economic progress, social progress? Perceptions of progress seem to depend a lot on (a) where in the world you are, (b) what things you value, (c) whether you choose to optimistically focus on the positive developments (from the viewpoint of your own values) or pessimistically focus on the negative. Even if we agree that certain forms of progress are occurring, do those various forms of progress necessarily entail scientific progress? I think, the only form of progress which necessarily entails scientific progress is technological progress – but even for that, some scientific fields have much greater technological relevance than others, continuing technological progress requires continuing scientific progress in technologically-relevant fields, yet is compatible with going backwards in areas of science which lack direct technological application.
    - amcoastal 5y ago
      You can be philosophical about "improving", but in the context of the thread and the post, I think we are talking about technological improvement over the last few years as an example of tangible scientific improvement, even if a lot of papers that are published suck.
      - skissane 5y ago
        Okay, but that comes back to the point that some scientific fields are more relevant to technological progress than others. Getting physics and chemistry right is really essential to technological progress. How can technology advance if your physics and chemistry are wrong? But, what about "softer" sciences, such as psychology or the social sciences? It seems you could be moving in the complete wrong direction with them, and yet still be advancing technologically – because technology largely doesn't depend on them. And even for the "hard sciences", technology generally only depends on certain areas of them. How much of the Standard Model of physics is actually technologically relevant? Technological progress is strong evidence you've got the technologically-relevant parts of physics right, but is compatible with serious error in low technological-relevance areas. What is the technological relevance of electroweak unification, for example? We also don't know what we are missing out on. Neuroscience is an area of biological research in which many promises of clinical translation have thus far failed to deliver. Is that because this the brain is very complicated, and we just have to wait longer and invest more before we see more results? Or could it be that we are doing the science wrong, and we'd clinically be in a much better situation now if we were doing it right? How can one tell which of those two possible situations we are actually in?
_brnu 5y ago
> Politicization is not a new thing, it's a fact that there's a lot of extremely conservative individuals in each country. How are you using “conservative” here? The right certainly has no monopoly politicizing science.

Alex3917 5y ago

> I wasn't social media that eroded the trust in research and science, it was the introduction of politics. It's not like the medical system was a highly trusted and respected institution that politicians somehow undermined in the last few months. The lost of trust in the medical system has been literally over 150 years in the making. If you read some books on the history of the rise of homeopathy in the United States in the mid 1800s, the parallels with today aren't exactly subtle.

gilleain 5y ago
I'm curious - what is the story of homeopathy in the United States? I know it is oddly popular in Germany.
- Alex3917 5y ago
  https://www.amazon.com/History-American-Homeopathy-Academic-1820-1935/dp/1535436115 https://www.amazon.com/History-American-Homeopathy-Academic-...

spion 5y ago

It really was social media. Tell an algorithm to optimize for engagement and it will promote the content causing the most engagement: novelty, conspiracy theory, outrage, surprising "revelations" and all sorts of clickbait. If we removed Twitter, Facebook and Tik Tok and reverted YouTube to the pre-algorithmic (subscription based) era, we'd still have free speech on the internet but probably a lot less bullshit. Note: Twitter would still promote bullshit even without a ML algorithm. The rules of engagement: - short content - individual popularity means content popularity - retweeting is instant, requires no critical thought create an environment where clickbaity emotion-viruses spread at exponential rate, and things that require engaging the brain are ignored. Its essentially a crowdsourced rating system for tabloid headlines by design.

megaman821 5y ago
It really is just people. Look at all the information about HIV in the 80's, long before social media. People believed some truly crazy, racist, and misinformed things about HIV and its spread.
- spion 5y ago
  People are multifaceted beings. Social media AI automatically exploits any and all of our failings in the name of engagement. Traditional media used to do that before to some extent but the current situation is unprecedented in its reach and efficiency - custom tailored to individuals. Technology is supposed to compensate for our failings, not exaggerate them to the extreme.
- nradov 5y ago
  It really was crazy. Back in 1985 Neil Young apparently thought that he could catch HIV if a homosexual clerk handled his groceries (obviously nonsense and highly offensive). https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/michelle-shocked-not-the-first-artist-to-betray-her-fanbase-87622/ https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/michelle-shock...
  - Nemrod67 5y ago

WalterBright 5y ago

> We need to separate research from politics. That absolutely will never happen as long as the funding comes from the government.

strictfp 5y ago
Only true to a certain extent. Is the judicial power not separate from politics? Maybe not completely, but it has measures in place to secure some type of autonomy. What I'm talking about is removing micromanagement and ensuring that the institution is trusted.
vimacs2 5y ago
I'd add that even if it received funding through private enterprise, it would still be infused with the politics of said backers - whether intentionally or not. The best you could possibly achieve is funding purely through small time (non business) donations from the public - and I'm still a little skeptical as to the scope of research that could realistically fund.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  > it would still be infused with the politics of said backers Of course it would. Whoever pays the piper always calls the tune. It's no surprise that NPR and PBS advocate for the government point of view.

nine_k 5y ago

The amount of resources available to spend on research is finite. Distribution of limited resources is politics. Historically, scientists either were well-off and independent (e.g. Ulug beg, Newton, Cavendish), or worked at the expense of very rich personal patrons (e.g. Tycho). This limited the number of potential scientists, and the amount of science done, quite drastically. In 18th-20th centuries it was somehow overcome, when partly states, partly industries gave more scientists more resources. By mid-20th century, the system started to develop cracks, as science became increasingly driven by formal metrics, such as impactful publications. The metrics are actively gamed, but worse, since science is unpredictable, honestly checking everything and building a picture of reality became a worse strategy than going for a flashy if more weakly researched result. I don't know a good way out of the current trap.

strictfp 5y ago
How about giving the institutions very top-level goals, on say 20 or 50-year basis, and then just give them a bag of money? Research is a high stakes, high rewards type of game. You need to pursue many potential ways forward, and most likely only one will win. Rewarding short term wins makes academia no different from industry, and prevents finding anything but the local maxima.

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago

I would argue that it wasn't just social media. Before the internet, it was relatively easy for a politician to 'pivot', to say something to one group, but quite a different thing to another. Now it is carefully catalogued and these days carefully tracked by anyone with any interest to care. Social media just put some gas on a fire with engagement optimization. The rest was just human nature.