4 ms·

> you might have a romantic impression about what science is and how it works. Not really. But something which is already bad can still get worse.

kgarten 4y ago
Again, politics is part of science. Your politics and beliefs will shape the research questions and hypothesis you are asking. Please define worse. I think it was worse in the past (and can give you examples if you really want to read them), there was a lot of sexist and racist work done under the term "Science." I don't see that much work like that anymore ... Yes, maybe some fringe gender science folks are overstressing sth. but come on, I don't see a problem in that (compared to how people misunderstood Darwin in the past ...).
- phantom_of_cato 4y ago
  > Again, politics is part of science. But the question is: Should it be like that? Should we encourage or discourage that? > (and can give you examples if you really want to read them) Sure, I'd appreciate it. Especially if the articles/books covering them were not published in the recent years. I've read "Betrayers of the Truth" [1], so I know about the Piltdown Man [2] (which was apparently used to "prove" that earliest men were British), or that Cyril Burt [3] had most probably falsified data in his studies on heritability of IQ. Sometimes these exposés are themselves a tad biased though. > some fringe gender science It's not just social sciences, although they are much more affected. See the charts in the article linked in my original comment, for example. And, IMO, it's not just a fringe part of gender studies. Its departments are essentially ideological think-tanks of the worst kind, with very little objective research being done by them. > I don't see that much work like that anymore But I'm sure you also know that there are certain things which are probably true, but almost no one would ever dare (or could) publish any kind of new evidence supporting them in the current climate. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betrayers_of_the_Truth https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betrayers_of_the_Truth [2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man [3]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_Burt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_Burt
  - kgarten 4y ago
    As it is inevitable that there is an influence, should we discourage or encourage misogynist, sexist, racist views? (or should we be very careful when we make claims about such views, in the past authors weren't careful and it led to a lot of misery ... kind of WW2 type of misery ...) You didn't define worse ... For me the most obvious examples where science went wrong is probably eugenics and other Supremacist beliefs. People completely misrepresented Darwin. A lot of people died based on these misrepresentations. What cannot be published today? I mean Journals like Mankind Quaterly still exist ... you find still a lot of horrendous, bad science and racist work out there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mankind_Quarterly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mankind_Quarterly It's harder to publish papers like that in Nature or Science (as the Scientific Consensus moved away from a flawed view), yet I would argue that's a good thing. edit: typos
    - phantom_of_cato 4y ago
      > As it is inevitable that there is an influence The current homogeneous politicization of science certainly isn't inevitable, as there are periods of rapid scientific progress in the past when this situation did not exist. > People completely misrepresented Darwin. I think that's overly intellectualizing things. Ethnic conflict and genocide probably don't have much to do with people's understanding of science, as there are still ethnic strifes around word, even though discussion of many genetic differences among populations is now generally frowned upon in academia. [1] And there has been ethnic conflicts everywhere since the dawn of time, since way before modern science, Darwin, or the contemporary history of eugenics. > What cannot be published today? Things like arguments made in "The Bell Curve" [2], or even "The Blank Slate" [3]? You can't really make those kinds of arguments without getting in trouble. > I mean Journals like Mankind Quaterly still exist I'd never heard of that journal before, but with an impact factor of 0.194 [4], it's probably safe to say that it has no influence whatsoever on science in general. (perhaps appropriately, as you say, I have no idea about the quality of papers it publishes) I'm sure many personal blogs are more influential. But do you think you could conceivably publish a paper in Nature which cites something from that journal in a noncritical way? The barrier isn't due to low quality or the authors being ideologues, as there are papers cited in Nature with both of those defects. [1]: E.g. https://noahcarl.substack.com/p/theyre-coming-for-behaviour-genetics https://noahcarl.substack.com/p/theyre-coming-for-behaviour-... [2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve [3]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate [4] https://academic-accelerator.com/Impact-of-Journal/Mankind-Quarterly https://academic-accelerator.com/Impact-of-Journal/Mankind-Q...

kgarten 4y ago

Again, politics is part of science. Your politics and beliefs will shape the research questions and hypothesis you are asking. Please define worse. I think it was worse in the past (and can give you examples if you really want to read them), there was a lot of sexist and racist work done under the term "Science." I don't see that much work like that anymore ... Yes, maybe some fringe gender science folks are overstressing sth. but come on, I don't see a problem in that (compared to how people misunderstood Darwin in the past ...).

phantom_of_cato 4y ago
> Again, politics is part of science. But the question is: Should it be like that? Should we encourage or discourage that? > (and can give you examples if you really want to read them) Sure, I'd appreciate it. Especially if the articles/books covering them were not published in the recent years. I've read "Betrayers of the Truth" [1], so I know about the Piltdown Man [2] (which was apparently used to "prove" that earliest men were British), or that Cyril Burt [3] had most probably falsified data in his studies on heritability of IQ. Sometimes these exposés are themselves a tad biased though. > some fringe gender science It's not just social sciences, although they are much more affected. See the charts in the article linked in my original comment, for example. And, IMO, it's not just a fringe part of gender studies. Its departments are essentially ideological think-tanks of the worst kind, with very little objective research being done by them. > I don't see that much work like that anymore But I'm sure you also know that there are certain things which are probably true, but almost no one would ever dare (or could) publish any kind of new evidence supporting them in the current climate. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betrayers_of_the_Truth https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betrayers_of_the_Truth [2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man [3]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_Burt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_Burt
- kgarten 4y ago
  As it is inevitable that there is an influence, should we discourage or encourage misogynist, sexist, racist views? (or should we be very careful when we make claims about such views, in the past authors weren't careful and it led to a lot of misery ... kind of WW2 type of misery ...) You didn't define worse ... For me the most obvious examples where science went wrong is probably eugenics and other Supremacist beliefs. People completely misrepresented Darwin. A lot of people died based on these misrepresentations. What cannot be published today? I mean Journals like Mankind Quaterly still exist ... you find still a lot of horrendous, bad science and racist work out there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mankind_Quarterly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mankind_Quarterly It's harder to publish papers like that in Nature or Science (as the Scientific Consensus moved away from a flawed view), yet I would argue that's a good thing. edit: typos
  - phantom_of_cato 4y ago
    > As it is inevitable that there is an influence The current homogeneous politicization of science certainly isn't inevitable, as there are periods of rapid scientific progress in the past when this situation did not exist. > People completely misrepresented Darwin. I think that's overly intellectualizing things. Ethnic conflict and genocide probably don't have much to do with people's understanding of science, as there are still ethnic strifes around word, even though discussion of many genetic differences among populations is now generally frowned upon in academia. [1] And there has been ethnic conflicts everywhere since the dawn of time, since way before modern science, Darwin, or the contemporary history of eugenics. > What cannot be published today? Things like arguments made in "The Bell Curve" [2], or even "The Blank Slate" [3]? You can't really make those kinds of arguments without getting in trouble. > I mean Journals like Mankind Quaterly still exist I'd never heard of that journal before, but with an impact factor of 0.194 [4], it's probably safe to say that it has no influence whatsoever on science in general. (perhaps appropriately, as you say, I have no idea about the quality of papers it publishes) I'm sure many personal blogs are more influential. But do you think you could conceivably publish a paper in Nature which cites something from that journal in a noncritical way? The barrier isn't due to low quality or the authors being ideologues, as there are papers cited in Nature with both of those defects. [1]: E.g. https://noahcarl.substack.com/p/theyre-coming-for-behaviour-genetics https://noahcarl.substack.com/p/theyre-coming-for-behaviour-... [2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve [3]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate [4] https://academic-accelerator.com/Impact-of-Journal/Mankind-Quarterly https://academic-accelerator.com/Impact-of-Journal/Mankind-Q...