7 ms·

99% of science being published today has no political motivations. The public perception of science, though, is not dictated by scholarly journals. It's what's

by muglug 4y ago

99% of science being published today has no political motivations. The public perception of science, though, is not dictated by scholarly journals. It's what's discussed on the nightly news or seen in the Facebook news feed, and that often comes with a helping of politics. We're also seeing a recent uptick in criticism (and also suspicion) of "elites", and academics are generally lumped into that bucket. And then COVID happened, making everybody an armchair epidemilogist overnight. You could see this play out on Twitter, where accounts with large followings with no previous professed statistical experience started sharing non-peer-reviewed study after study, often drawing inaccurate conclusions. Scientists continue on, but there's absolutely no putting the genie back in the bottle. Science is political, and we need (a hopefully small number of) scientists to get some decent media training and start explaining their work to the general public.

rufus_foreman 4y ago
- reikonomusha 4y ago
  Do you have examples of reputable journals publishing politically motivated results? Or even just some significant examples from the arxiv?
  - futuretaint 4y ago
    Here's the Nature article from last week which was surprising to many inc Hacker News https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01443-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01443-2 re: hard sciences, the scientific community's refusal to accept the covid lab leak hypothesis stands out IMHO. School shutdowns/mask mandates for pre-k and public schools is another politicalized issue.
  - futuretaint 4y ago
    here's the HN comment chain from last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32595083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32595083
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
  Here's 20 articles from the September edition of Geology, zero seem to be political. https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/geology/issue https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/geology/issue August also seems politics free, though I'm too lazy to check five issues to see if it's 99%
  - harry8 4y ago
    Geology is the only science you're aware of? Try psychology, sociology, medicine, climatology and the things in this direction. I probably agree with the broad thrust if the politics in those fields and that isn't the point!
  - klipt 4y ago
    Geology is more of a hard science so harder to make political. Softer science like social science or psychology seems easy to politicize though. "Studies show that people need <my favorite policy> to truly be mentally healthy"
    - babypuncher 4y ago
      Climatology is a hard science yet it is also one of the most politically debated in popular media. I think the real factor here is whether or not a large cohort of people find inconvenience in what the scientists of a given field are saying
    - muglug 4y ago
      There are a lot of hard sciences! Mechanics / Electromagnetics / Thermodynamics / Kinetics / Inorganic Chemistry / Electrochemistry / Analytical Chemistry / Earth Sciences / Anatomy / Botany / Biology / Zoology / Neurobiology / Marine Biology / Embryology / Ecology / Palaeontology / Genetics / Cell Biology / Ethology / Astronomy / Meteorology / Geology / Atmospheric Sciences / Glaciology / Climatology / Structural Geology Most psychology papers are also fairly difficult to politicise. Like, try to politicise this: https://www.pnas.org/eprint/WREBM4QSJCM8MUAMJXEH/full https://www.pnas.org/eprint/WREBM4QSJCM8MUAMJXEH/full
      - 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
faeriechangling 4y ago
I recall being am amateur epidemiologists suspicious of "elites" and I bet on masks being efficacious while health authorities were pooh-poohing them and came out ahead. I felt the "Elites" were being bias by the ongoing shortage of medical masks into downplaying the efficacy of masks for the general public, which in hindsight, actually seems pretty spot on. I saw lots of people sharing studies, including before peer review, I mostly didn't see anybody come to a substantively different conclusion from the authors after like the first few months of pandemic confusion had cleared up. I found scepticism and DIY science very helpful this pandemic especially when things were more chaotic.
- mjevans 4y ago
  I'm not sure who to blame for that; but agree it was a mistake. Stress a lack of evidence (at that time)? Sure. Stress that N-95 and KN-95 masks must be reserved for hospital workers, and possibly even pre-press banning their sale under emergency commandeering measures? I think we can all guess why that didn't fly politically (it would require admitting there was a serious pandemic). The public should never be 'lied to' nor 'ticked' (which the people I've spoken with mostly assume was happening with that initial mask stance) and should be treated as adults, possibly ones without a full set of information from expert matters on a subject.
- muglug 4y ago
  There were many people posting links about hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin and discussing efficacy in the presence of scant information. Also lots of discussions around R0 etc.
  - AbrahamParangi 4y ago
    The story of hydroxychloroquine is much misunderstood. People remember it as “Trump’s horse dewormer” but it was one of the first potential treatments to emerge in the Chinese standard of care in the early stages of the pandemic. That fact, combined with the “fog of war” and that we know hcq is well tolerated in humans makes it a fairly reasonable bet. The bet being wrong is a separate matter to whether or not it was reasonable. Conversely, I would argue the early anti-mask messaging was unreasonable based on similar logic (well bounded and low costs, potentially high benefits). The conclusion that I know some people took away from it is that critical thinking is not an evolutionarily favored trait in certain administrative roles.
rayiner 4y ago
It’s a cop out to blame “nightly news” or “Facebook news.” They just republish and mock stuff like this: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/modern-mathematics-confronts-its-white-patriarchal-past/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/modern-mathematic... I don’t disagree that most science is pretty non political. But it’s also true that the contact surface that a large swath of America has with “science” is through publications like Scientific American, scientists who go on TV, social “scientists,” etc.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jakelazaroff 4y ago
  The article you linked is not what the discussion is about, though. Yours is referring to the impacts of discrimination on the people within the scientific community. The original article is about the effect of bias on the results of the research.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    People rely on crude indications of trustworthiness. When you run an article titled “Modern Mathematics Confronts Its White, Patriarchal Past”—in reference to a field that’s chock full of brown people and Asians—it’s a signal. (Isn’t it funny how you never see article headlines talking about how post-modern philosophy was invented by white people?)
    - jakelazaroff 4y ago
      Are we really about to pretend there’s no basis in reality, though? I literally have older relatives who were told — very explicitly! — that they should stay out of what we would now call STEM fields because it “wasn’t for Jews.” So what’s not sitting right with articles like this?
      - rayiner 4y ago
        We can talk about it without adopting the rhetoric of critical theory (“math confronts it’s white, patriarchal past”) as the Scientific American article does. Critical theory is designed to meld analysis and political advocacy and it’s distinctive terminology is part of that advocacy. I’m not making a gratuitous reference to critical theory by the way. Your example illustrates the problem. According to critical theory, “Jews are white.” So where does your example fit in? Also, math as a field is full of Indian and Chinese people. How does it make sense to label it “white?” Under critical theory, it’s “white” because Black people are underrepresented. Critical theory compels a mode of analysis that groups people a certain way, focuses on certain kinds of discrimination or power relationships to the exclusion of others, and all for distinctly political reasons.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
seydor 4y ago
You remind me of this EU project officer who wanted us to tweet more for our project. And set up a Linkedin account. And maybe an instagram account too (we could also crosspost in our lab's facebook). We had to fight her to stop using google analytics to track the website visitors. Unfortunately we can't train 100% of people to understand all the science that gets published. That's why scientists need to learn to trust each other and communicate to the public as a single body, not as individual scientists. How they are going to do that, that's internal to the body of scientists. Politics has broken scientific unity, fix it.
- UIUC_06 4y ago
  > communicate to the public as a single body, not as individual scientists That's a laudable goal. You will never, never get any body of scientists, or any other class of people, to agree on their overall goals for society, so if science IS indeed political, you've lost already. On the other hand, if they only have to agree on what the data and logic tell us, that's still hard, but it's much closer to being achievable. It requires everyone to take a deep breath and say "I might be wrong but this is what I think, and here's why." And then listen.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - UIUC_06 4y ago
    Since it's too late to edit that, I'll add this as a reply: If you ("you" being a scientist) are explicit that your "science" is in service of your political agenda, then you've accomplished this: Anyone who disagrees with your agenda will reject your "science" As we saw with vaccines & lockdowns. On the other hand, if they trust you to just report what the data says, even when you don't like it, then you have a chance of not being vilified. So there you have it: if you want to stand above the Twitter mob and be believed, you have to earn back the public's trust.
- pksebben 4y ago
  I found that missive (regarding politics and it's influence on the scientific community as a whole) conspicuously.. missing.. from this article. It's not so much about how politics affects the outcomes of science, imo, but how politics shapes what science is capable of in the first place. I'm immediately reminded of how deeply skewed towards treatment (rather than curing) pharmaceutical research is, because of our economic structure.
phantom_of_cato 4y ago
> 99% of science being published today has no political motivations. That's probably not true. Based on the charts here [1], it is safe to say that at least 20-30% of successful NSF grant applications have political/ideological terms used in the abstract. Maybe more importantly, it's really hard to know how much research isn't being done or published because of the current political climate. > And then COVID happened, making everybody an armchair epidemilogist overnight. Well, I don't see that as a bad thing. Blind trust in authority isn't an admirable quality in my books. Also, the other option really was to become an armchair epistemologist. You had to somehow make decisions. > Science is political But it shouldn't be. At least not this much. We have choice to encourage or discourage that. [1]: https://www.cspicenter.com/p/increasing-politicization-and-homogeneity-in-scientific-funding-an-analysis-of-nsf-grants-1990-2020 https://www.cspicenter.com/p/increasing-politicization-and-h...

by muglug 4y ago

rufus_foreman 4y ago

reikonomusha 4y ago
Do you have examples of reputable journals publishing politically motivated results? Or even just some significant examples from the arxiv?
- futuretaint 4y ago
  Here's the Nature article from last week which was surprising to many inc Hacker News https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01443-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01443-2 re: hard sciences, the scientific community's refusal to accept the covid lab leak hypothesis stands out IMHO. School shutdowns/mask mandates for pre-k and public schools is another politicalized issue.
- futuretaint 4y ago
  here's the HN comment chain from last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32595083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32595083
boomboomsubban 4y ago
Here's 20 articles from the September edition of Geology, zero seem to be political. https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/geology/issue https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/geology/issue August also seems politics free, though I'm too lazy to check five issues to see if it's 99%
- harry8 4y ago
  Geology is the only science you're aware of? Try psychology, sociology, medicine, climatology and the things in this direction. I probably agree with the broad thrust if the politics in those fields and that isn't the point!
- klipt 4y ago
  Geology is more of a hard science so harder to make political. Softer science like social science or psychology seems easy to politicize though. "Studies show that people need <my favorite policy> to truly be mentally healthy"
  - babypuncher 4y ago
    Climatology is a hard science yet it is also one of the most politically debated in popular media. I think the real factor here is whether or not a large cohort of people find inconvenience in what the scientists of a given field are saying
  - muglug 4y ago
    There are a lot of hard sciences! Mechanics / Electromagnetics / Thermodynamics / Kinetics / Inorganic Chemistry / Electrochemistry / Analytical Chemistry / Earth Sciences / Anatomy / Botany / Biology / Zoology / Neurobiology / Marine Biology / Embryology / Ecology / Palaeontology / Genetics / Cell Biology / Ethology / Astronomy / Meteorology / Geology / Atmospheric Sciences / Glaciology / Climatology / Structural Geology Most psychology papers are also fairly difficult to politicise. Like, try to politicise this: https://www.pnas.org/eprint/WREBM4QSJCM8MUAMJXEH/full https://www.pnas.org/eprint/WREBM4QSJCM8MUAMJXEH/full
    - 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

faeriechangling 4y ago

I recall being am amateur epidemiologists suspicious of "elites" and I bet on masks being efficacious while health authorities were pooh-poohing them and came out ahead. I felt the "Elites" were being bias by the ongoing shortage of medical masks into downplaying the efficacy of masks for the general public, which in hindsight, actually seems pretty spot on. I saw lots of people sharing studies, including before peer review, I mostly didn't see anybody come to a substantively different conclusion from the authors after like the first few months of pandemic confusion had cleared up. I found scepticism and DIY science very helpful this pandemic especially when things were more chaotic.

mjevans 4y ago
I'm not sure who to blame for that; but agree it was a mistake. Stress a lack of evidence (at that time)? Sure. Stress that N-95 and KN-95 masks must be reserved for hospital workers, and possibly even pre-press banning their sale under emergency commandeering measures? I think we can all guess why that didn't fly politically (it would require admitting there was a serious pandemic). The public should never be 'lied to' nor 'ticked' (which the people I've spoken with mostly assume was happening with that initial mask stance) and should be treated as adults, possibly ones without a full set of information from expert matters on a subject.
muglug 4y ago
There were many people posting links about hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin and discussing efficacy in the presence of scant information. Also lots of discussions around R0 etc.
- AbrahamParangi 4y ago
  The story of hydroxychloroquine is much misunderstood. People remember it as “Trump’s horse dewormer” but it was one of the first potential treatments to emerge in the Chinese standard of care in the early stages of the pandemic. That fact, combined with the “fog of war” and that we know hcq is well tolerated in humans makes it a fairly reasonable bet. The bet being wrong is a separate matter to whether or not it was reasonable. Conversely, I would argue the early anti-mask messaging was unreasonable based on similar logic (well bounded and low costs, potentially high benefits). The conclusion that I know some people took away from it is that critical thinking is not an evolutionarily favored trait in certain administrative roles.

rayiner 4y ago

It’s a cop out to blame “nightly news” or “Facebook news.” They just republish and mock stuff like this: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/modern-mathematics-confronts-its-white-patriarchal-past/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/modern-mathematic... I don’t disagree that most science is pretty non political. But it’s also true that the contact surface that a large swath of America has with “science” is through publications like Scientific American, scientists who go on TV, social “scientists,” etc.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jakelazaroff 4y ago
The article you linked is not what the discussion is about, though. Yours is referring to the impacts of discrimination on the people within the scientific community. The original article is about the effect of bias on the results of the research.
- rayiner 4y ago
  People rely on crude indications of trustworthiness. When you run an article titled “Modern Mathematics Confronts Its White, Patriarchal Past”—in reference to a field that’s chock full of brown people and Asians—it’s a signal. (Isn’t it funny how you never see article headlines talking about how post-modern philosophy was invented by white people?)
  - jakelazaroff 4y ago
    Are we really about to pretend there’s no basis in reality, though? I literally have older relatives who were told — very explicitly! — that they should stay out of what we would now call STEM fields because it “wasn’t for Jews.” So what’s not sitting right with articles like this?
    - rayiner 4y ago
      We can talk about it without adopting the rhetoric of critical theory (“math confronts it’s white, patriarchal past”) as the Scientific American article does. Critical theory is designed to meld analysis and political advocacy and it’s distinctive terminology is part of that advocacy. I’m not making a gratuitous reference to critical theory by the way. Your example illustrates the problem. According to critical theory, “Jews are white.” So where does your example fit in? Also, math as a field is full of Indian and Chinese people. How does it make sense to label it “white?” Under critical theory, it’s “white” because Black people are underrepresented. Critical theory compels a mode of analysis that groups people a certain way, focuses on certain kinds of discrimination or power relationships to the exclusion of others, and all for distinctly political reasons.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

seydor 4y ago

You remind me of this EU project officer who wanted us to tweet more for our project. And set up a Linkedin account. And maybe an instagram account too (we could also crosspost in our lab's facebook). We had to fight her to stop using google analytics to track the website visitors. Unfortunately we can't train 100% of people to understand all the science that gets published. That's why scientists need to learn to trust each other and communicate to the public as a single body, not as individual scientists. How they are going to do that, that's internal to the body of scientists. Politics has broken scientific unity, fix it.

UIUC_06 4y ago
> communicate to the public as a single body, not as individual scientists That's a laudable goal. You will never, never get any body of scientists, or any other class of people, to agree on their overall goals for society, so if science IS indeed political, you've lost already. On the other hand, if they only have to agree on what the data and logic tell us, that's still hard, but it's much closer to being achievable. It requires everyone to take a deep breath and say "I might be wrong but this is what I think, and here's why." And then listen.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- UIUC_06 4y ago
  Since it's too late to edit that, I'll add this as a reply: If you ("you" being a scientist) are explicit that your "science" is in service of your political agenda, then you've accomplished this: Anyone who disagrees with your agenda will reject your "science" As we saw with vaccines & lockdowns. On the other hand, if they trust you to just report what the data says, even when you don't like it, then you have a chance of not being vilified. So there you have it: if you want to stand above the Twitter mob and be believed, you have to earn back the public's trust.
pksebben 4y ago
I found that missive (regarding politics and it's influence on the scientific community as a whole) conspicuously.. missing.. from this article. It's not so much about how politics affects the outcomes of science, imo, but how politics shapes what science is capable of in the first place. I'm immediately reminded of how deeply skewed towards treatment (rather than curing) pharmaceutical research is, because of our economic structure.

phantom_of_cato 4y ago

> 99% of science being published today has no political motivations. That's probably not true. Based on the charts here [1], it is safe to say that at least 20-30% of successful NSF grant applications have political/ideological terms used in the abstract. Maybe more importantly, it's really hard to know how much research isn't being done or published because of the current political climate. > And then COVID happened, making everybody an armchair epidemilogist overnight. Well, I don't see that as a bad thing. Blind trust in authority isn't an admirable quality in my books. Also, the other option really was to become an armchair epistemologist. You had to somehow make decisions. > Science is political But it shouldn't be. At least not this much. We have choice to encourage or discourage that. [1]: https://www.cspicenter.com/p/increasing-politicization-and-homogeneity-in-scientific-funding-an-analysis-of-nsf-grants-1990-2020 https://www.cspicenter.com/p/increasing-politicization-and-h...