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Nature endorsed Joe Biden for president [1]. What if Bob and Steve see Nature as a political organization? Are they incorrect? Should they be silenced? [1]: ht

Nature endorsed Joe Biden for president [1]. What if Bob and Steve see Nature as a political organization? Are they incorrect? Should they be silenced? [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02852-x https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02852-x

epgui 4y ago
If bob and steve are going around saying Nature is very political, they're wrong, but who cares? If bob and steve are going around telling people masks are harmful (and that's causing the mistaken belief to spread), then bob and steve are causing direct harm, and their voice amplifier should be taken away. Nobody is going to put duct tape on their mouth.
- junofan 4y ago
  I see you’re coming from a good place. I just think taking away voice amplifiers (smashing the printing press, so to speak) hasn’t turned out well in the past, and I don’t see a strong enough reason to start doing that now.
  - epgui 4y ago
    I think there's a very clear line we can draw between different categories of smashing the printing press: - "banning books because they criticize the government" - "banning books because they have immoral content" And on the other hand: - "shutting down a viral video with advice dangerous to individuals, where protecting the public from direct physical harm is the goal" I don't know of any instances in History where we looked back at the latter in disapproval.
    - junofan 4y ago
      What we look back in disapproval upon is empowering a group to do the silencing. I think because those who do the silencing usually end up silencing their own critics.
      - epgui 4y ago
        I don't think this is always the case, and that's exactly my point. > "those who do the silencing usually end up silencing their own critics" I'm not even sure that this usually happens. It is certainly the case that when that happens, it is very memorable. But that's probably just a "selective attention bias" applied to History, that is, because the other cases are unremarkable.
        junofan 4y ago
        I see your point, and still I don’t think it’s a good idea. We don’t give power like that to expertise for the same reason the commander-in-chief of the armed forces is a civilian.
        epgui 4y ago
        We do give this power very narrowly and very successfully to many individuals in their official capacity, in different contexts. Judges, professors, administrative committees, employers in certain situations, heck, at the moment, any company with a platform can apply this power essentially arbitrarily and at will (which I'd argue is not great).
    - astrobe_ 4y ago
      To protect is always the initial goal, and directly dangerous videos are the low hanging fruits. I'd say "viral videos" are too recent to be part of History yet, but shutting down a dangerous viral video is not very far from "banning immoral content", which is not very far itself from "banning hate speech". It's not that easy to draw a line because it is a continuum. Consensus and censorship is what many countries do: People vote for MPs, MPs vote laws against hate speech, pornography, etc. Or at least how it's supposed to work on the paper. The same way, we could decide for laws against media that propagates misinformation - and a judge would decide. We could do that. The tools are on the workbench, why we can't use them is another problem.
    - raxxorraxor 4y ago
      If you take the ability to see the content away from me I trust you to evaluate the content exactly as much as you trust me to do so. How do you solve that conundrum?
  - kastagg 4y ago
    In this metaphor, are the printing presses private property?
  - yongjik 4y ago
    On the other hand, judging from the past 5-6 years, freely giving out voice amplifiers (Facebook and targeted ads, anyone?) clearly didn't turn out well either, so the optimum is probably somewhere in the middle.
    - junofan 4y ago
      I think a workable solution can be found. I don’t know if that’s necessarily a middle ground between amplification and censorship; feels like that could be the “middle ground” fallacy. We’ve solved problems like this in the past.
      - epgui 4y ago
        The middle ground fallacy does not apply here. It only applies when one of the two things being considered is incorrect.
        junofan 4y ago
        You already said amplification was incorrect. I think you’re not willing to budge on censoring things you know to be incorrect and dangerous, so ironically we won’t be able to find middle ground. That’s okay.
        epgui 4y ago
        No, "amplification" is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon. What I said is that there should be limits to amplification. Ruling out an extreme does not rule out the middle ground. The way this works is that there are some questions that have clear answers. For example, anthropogenic climate change (or to be more precise, the idea that "Most of the warming of Earth’s average global temperature over the second half of the 20th century has been caused by human activities."). The middle ground fallacy is what you call it when you put up two people on TV, one who is an expert on climate change, and another who is just a contrarian, and where you don't frame it exactly as it is: one is wrong and the other is right. That's not the same thing as this conversation we're having.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  It's interesting that you go for masks, because the advice around them completely changed during the pandemic. (Of course, any media that gave the details wasn't wrong at any time. But the simplified advice still was.)
pjscott 4y ago
I went to check on this a bit further. Here's a list of editorials, in reverse-chronological order: https://www.nature.com/nature/articles?type=editorial https://www.nature.com/nature/articles?type=editorial Many of the editorials seem approximately apolitical, e.g. "Get childhood immunizations back on track after COVID" or "Protecting the ocean requires better progress metrics". People of most any political stripe could have written them. If the editorials were all like this, Nature would look impressively unbiased. Then there are a bunch of editorials that are obviously political, but in a science-adjacent sort of way. "Equity must be baked into randomized controlled trials" has a very pious vibe to it, though thankfully it also has some obvious points about RCT design thrown in. "Europe must not backslide on climate action despite war in Ukraine" contains some legitimate information, but its message would not play well for most of the ideological spectrum. At one point there's an article titled "Science must overcome its racist legacy" and subtitled "We are leading Nature on a journey to help decolonize research and forge a path towards restorative justice and reconciliation." Finally, there's a category of editorial that's just taking a stand on [insert current hot-button topic here] and sprinkling in enough science mentions to lend it an air of authority. The endorsement of Joe Biden falls squarely in this category (I read the whole thing to make sure), as does the condemnation of the overturn of Roe v. Wade. So, yes: Nature's editorial section is a completely one-sided ideological monoculture. You can tell that it's mostly one-sided just by scanning the article titles, but the true magnitude becomes apparent when you read the articles themselves: there's no serious attempt made to persuade, nor to rebut the usual counterarguments. It's unmistakably preaching to the choir, and I can't help but think that this reflects a lack of people at Nature willing or able to play devil's advocate. Not sure how much this affects the non-editorial part of Nature, but man, it makes me suspicious. Which is very bad for Nature's credibility. If I were in charge, I think I would either get rid of the editorials entirely or move them to a semi-adversarial back-and-forth format like the monthly discussions at Cato Unbound (which has a strong ideological bent but has a format that prevents it from being one-sided.)
- epgui 4y ago
  Nature is one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals, and it is read almost exclusively by scientists. It is not exactly a secret that science itself supports more left-leaning ideas than right-leaning ideas (depending on what exactly we're talking about and where the Overton window is at a point in time or at a specific place on earth). I think this has less to do with whether left or right is fundamentally right or best. Unfortunately, a lot of what passes as "the right" these days is just... a bit crazy. Of course they had to take a stand for Biden, the only other choice was a lunatic. Love him or hate him, one thing Trump is, objectively, is a bullshitter (in the academic sense of the word). And scientists really just don't like bullshit. If you get the feeling that Nature is politically biased (and I mean this in the usual everyday person sense, because of course any politics that affects science will be met with strong views), I think that should serve as a signal to check what your biases are. Remember that the people reading this are all the top experts in their own fields, so you can bet they'd love to write back and argue if some editor wrote something stupid. It simply is the case that the publication is of exceptional quality, and that for the most part, people who read Nature are not people who care about political nonsense.

epgui 4y ago

If bob and steve are going around saying Nature is very political, they're wrong, but who cares? If bob and steve are going around telling people masks are harmful (and that's causing the mistaken belief to spread), then bob and steve are causing direct harm, and their voice amplifier should be taken away. Nobody is going to put duct tape on their mouth.

junofan 4y ago
I see you’re coming from a good place. I just think taking away voice amplifiers (smashing the printing press, so to speak) hasn’t turned out well in the past, and I don’t see a strong enough reason to start doing that now.
- epgui 4y ago
  I think there's a very clear line we can draw between different categories of smashing the printing press: - "banning books because they criticize the government" - "banning books because they have immoral content" And on the other hand: - "shutting down a viral video with advice dangerous to individuals, where protecting the public from direct physical harm is the goal" I don't know of any instances in History where we looked back at the latter in disapproval.
  - junofan 4y ago
    What we look back in disapproval upon is empowering a group to do the silencing. I think because those who do the silencing usually end up silencing their own critics.
    - epgui 4y ago
      I don't think this is always the case, and that's exactly my point. > "those who do the silencing usually end up silencing their own critics" I'm not even sure that this usually happens. It is certainly the case that when that happens, it is very memorable. But that's probably just a "selective attention bias" applied to History, that is, because the other cases are unremarkable.
      - junofan 4y ago
        I see your point, and still I don’t think it’s a good idea. We don’t give power like that to expertise for the same reason the commander-in-chief of the armed forces is a civilian.
        epgui 4y ago
        We do give this power very narrowly and very successfully to many individuals in their official capacity, in different contexts. Judges, professors, administrative committees, employers in certain situations, heck, at the moment, any company with a platform can apply this power essentially arbitrarily and at will (which I'd argue is not great).
  - astrobe_ 4y ago
    To protect is always the initial goal, and directly dangerous videos are the low hanging fruits. I'd say "viral videos" are too recent to be part of History yet, but shutting down a dangerous viral video is not very far from "banning immoral content", which is not very far itself from "banning hate speech". It's not that easy to draw a line because it is a continuum. Consensus and censorship is what many countries do: People vote for MPs, MPs vote laws against hate speech, pornography, etc. Or at least how it's supposed to work on the paper. The same way, we could decide for laws against media that propagates misinformation - and a judge would decide. We could do that. The tools are on the workbench, why we can't use them is another problem.
  - raxxorraxor 4y ago
    If you take the ability to see the content away from me I trust you to evaluate the content exactly as much as you trust me to do so. How do you solve that conundrum?
- kastagg 4y ago
  In this metaphor, are the printing presses private property?
- yongjik 4y ago
  On the other hand, judging from the past 5-6 years, freely giving out voice amplifiers (Facebook and targeted ads, anyone?) clearly didn't turn out well either, so the optimum is probably somewhere in the middle.
  - junofan 4y ago
    I think a workable solution can be found. I don’t know if that’s necessarily a middle ground between amplification and censorship; feels like that could be the “middle ground” fallacy. We’ve solved problems like this in the past.
    - epgui 4y ago
      The middle ground fallacy does not apply here. It only applies when one of the two things being considered is incorrect.
      - junofan 4y ago
        You already said amplification was incorrect. I think you’re not willing to budge on censoring things you know to be incorrect and dangerous, so ironically we won’t be able to find middle ground. That’s okay.
        epgui 4y ago
        No, "amplification" is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon. What I said is that there should be limits to amplification. Ruling out an extreme does not rule out the middle ground. The way this works is that there are some questions that have clear answers. For example, anthropogenic climate change (or to be more precise, the idea that "Most of the warming of Earth’s average global temperature over the second half of the 20th century has been caused by human activities."). The middle ground fallacy is what you call it when you put up two people on TV, one who is an expert on climate change, and another who is just a contrarian, and where you don't frame it exactly as it is: one is wrong and the other is right. That's not the same thing as this conversation we're having.
marcosdumay 4y ago
It's interesting that you go for masks, because the advice around them completely changed during the pandemic. (Of course, any media that gave the details wasn't wrong at any time. But the simplified advice still was.)

pjscott 4y ago

I went to check on this a bit further. Here's a list of editorials, in reverse-chronological order: https://www.nature.com/nature/articles?type=editorial https://www.nature.com/nature/articles?type=editorial Many of the editorials seem approximately apolitical, e.g. "Get childhood immunizations back on track after COVID" or "Protecting the ocean requires better progress metrics". People of most any political stripe could have written them. If the editorials were all like this, Nature would look impressively unbiased. Then there are a bunch of editorials that are obviously political, but in a science-adjacent sort of way. "Equity must be baked into randomized controlled trials" has a very pious vibe to it, though thankfully it also has some obvious points about RCT design thrown in. "Europe must not backslide on climate action despite war in Ukraine" contains some legitimate information, but its message would not play well for most of the ideological spectrum. At one point there's an article titled "Science must overcome its racist legacy" and subtitled "We are leading Nature on a journey to help decolonize research and forge a path towards restorative justice and reconciliation." Finally, there's a category of editorial that's just taking a stand on [insert current hot-button topic here] and sprinkling in enough science mentions to lend it an air of authority. The endorsement of Joe Biden falls squarely in this category (I read the whole thing to make sure), as does the condemnation of the overturn of Roe v. Wade. So, yes: Nature's editorial section is a completely one-sided ideological monoculture. You can tell that it's mostly one-sided just by scanning the article titles, but the true magnitude becomes apparent when you read the articles themselves: there's no serious attempt made to persuade, nor to rebut the usual counterarguments. It's unmistakably preaching to the choir, and I can't help but think that this reflects a lack of people at Nature willing or able to play devil's advocate. Not sure how much this affects the non-editorial part of Nature, but man, it makes me suspicious. Which is very bad for Nature's credibility. If I were in charge, I think I would either get rid of the editorials entirely or move them to a semi-adversarial back-and-forth format like the monthly discussions at Cato Unbound (which has a strong ideological bent but has a format that prevents it from being one-sided.)

epgui 4y ago
Nature is one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals, and it is read almost exclusively by scientists. It is not exactly a secret that science itself supports more left-leaning ideas than right-leaning ideas (depending on what exactly we're talking about and where the Overton window is at a point in time or at a specific place on earth). I think this has less to do with whether left or right is fundamentally right or best. Unfortunately, a lot of what passes as "the right" these days is just... a bit crazy. Of course they had to take a stand for Biden, the only other choice was a lunatic. Love him or hate him, one thing Trump is, objectively, is a bullshitter (in the academic sense of the word). And scientists really just don't like bullshit. If you get the feeling that Nature is politically biased (and I mean this in the usual everyday person sense, because of course any politics that affects science will be met with strong views), I think that should serve as a signal to check what your biases are. Remember that the people reading this are all the top experts in their own fields, so you can bet they'd love to write back and argue if some editor wrote something stupid. It simply is the case that the publication is of exceptional quality, and that for the most part, people who read Nature are not people who care about political nonsense.