7 ms·

Harrassment of scientists is surging – institutions aren't sure how to help

36 points by anigbrowl 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
causality0 2y ago
Lumping attempted murder and people saying mean things on the internet into the same bucket is a mistake with far-reaching consequences.
- HarryHirsch 2y ago
  You know, if someone attacks your livelihood they are attacking your life, you won't last long, especially in a country with no social safety net, like the US. I am stringent here, having dealt with an awful boss.
- bsder 2y ago
  Internet threats should be considered as assault, harassment, libel, and defamation just like if the same threat was said in person. It's time that we quit thinking that just because something is "online" it isn't harmful. If anything, threats over the internet should be considered more dangerous as the reach is larger and you are more likely to attract people who are genuinely deranged along with the attendant increased risk of violence.
  - petermcneeley 2y ago
    Im guessing you are not a fan of this work https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence#main-content https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence#main-content
    - jcranmer 2y ago
      The cypherpunk ideal of "you can't stop us in the digital world, so don't even bother trying" which runs up hard against the hard problem of yanks power cable.
    - bsder 2y ago
      The current crop of Bitcoin prosecutions shows that our legal laws and processes are quite capable of prosecuting violations of law in cyberspace if enough money is involved. The fact that we don't prosecute these kinds of online threats is simply because nobody cares about the plebians who don't have enough money to opt out of the problem.
    - causality0 2y ago
      What a lovely vision that was. Back when we imagined the potential of the internet would make people more like us, instead of peoples' checkbooks making the internet more like them. Rest in peace, digital frontier. You were too beautiful to last.
  - oceanplexian 2y ago
    That's not how the law works. The threat needs to be imminent or a call to action, it needs to not be a parody, the person making it needs to reasonably be able to carry it out. The USA isn't like countries that have strict controls on speech, such as Germany or China. We have a very high bar to infringing on the right to free expression.
    - HarryHirsch 2y ago
      You clearly never had a stalker. Someone sending a stalker or ten to your doorstep is worse.
      - nomel 2y ago
        That is, clearly, not online harassment.
      - Turing_Machine 2y ago
        Whether or not the OP ever had a "stalker" is irrelevant to the accuracy of the statement of how the law works.
  - causality0 2y ago
    That's exactly the issue I'm talking about: the practice of equating criminal behavior such as death threats or persistent targeted harassment with protected speech such as questioning, dissent, and heckling. When you put forth that someone's employer is responsible for stopping randos from calling them an asshole, a liar, a tool of the Illuminati, etc and say it's the same problem as someone having a threatening stalker or having someone camping at their front door, you make people think you might be lying or exaggerating about the latter.
- denkmoon 2y ago
  This view is straight up outdated. Online harassment is no longer just contained to nerds sending each other death threats on forums. It's _just_ harassment, and ought to be treated exactly the same as harassing someone in person with attached legal consequences.
  - o11c 2y ago
    Not all "harassment" is death threats though - much of it is not a crime (just emotionally draining) even if taken at face value. In fact, it is very common for "I disagree" to be treated as harassment these days. I do think that actual death threats should always be treated as legitimate threats, though.
  - _carbyau_ 2y ago
    I always thought it was weird that new laws had to be made regarding cyber-[activity] IE cyber-bullying. It's just bullying. We have laws already. Those consequences should apply.
    - o11c 2y ago
      Specific "bullying" (as opposed to harassment) laws AFAICT only exist for children, and historically were largely limited to events that take place on school grounds, so an extension definitely was needed there. For adults, I guess there's "hostile work environment"?
- o11c 2y ago
  Also, while not explicit in the article (which is mostly focused on hard biology), lumping all hardnesses of "scientist" together is a problem in general. Additionally, many claims that appear "hard" are actually pretty weak (sample size, etc.), even without outright fraud. To pick a uncontroversial example: scientists have made all sorts of false claims about food/diet in the last 50 years, and their retracted imperatives have taught people to reject listening to them. Since "scientist" (and "doctor", "professor") are the major terms that people think of, that distrust then spreads across to other fields.
roenxi 2y ago
There is an easy path the institutions can take to depoliticise science - spend more time talking about the importance of liberty and letting people make their own choices. I can see how scientists would be getting a lot of abuse at the moment, because they failed to get the message out that they didn't support the upswing of authoritarianism during COVID. I can appreciate the difficulties they faced, the authoritarians were organised and had one of their favourite opportunities - mass fear - in play. It is still bad to harass scientists. It shows a lack of thoughtfulness about where the problem is coming form.
- beej71 2y ago
  I haven't measured it, but I see crossover between people who perceive COVID science and policies to be authoritarian and political, and people who don't seem to care when a popular politician calls literally for the termination of articles of the Constitution.
petermcneeley 2y ago
Is this related to those recently released emails?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
Nasrudith 2y ago
Fluid dynamics were mentioned as one of the fields without further elaboration. What is political or inflammatory about that, even from the standards of deranged loons? Or maybe that is a case of a call coming from inside the house, toxic academic politics.
- defrost 2y ago
  Heat is a fluid, the atmosphere is a gas, which is fluid. Might sound odd but from the PoV of the primary equations it checks out. Can you think of any reasons there might be parties intent on discrediting or harrassing scientists that work in numeric fluid dynamic models of heat in the atmosphere?
  - Nasrudith 2y ago
    Thank you, that makes far more sense.
- bun_terminator 2y ago
  "Fluid dynamics" is code for climate science
oceanplexian 2y ago
“This is a very powerful adversarial force that is seeking to undermine science, and now it’s not only going after the science. It’s going after the scientists,” he says. It's not appropriate to use the word "science" here. People aren't attacking Geologists nor is there is an uprising against Quantum Physicists. It's the ones who lied to the public and pushed for mandates and heavy-handed lockdowns that negatively impacted the economy and caused a great deal of harm. Those scientists will need to work a bit harder if they expect to regain the public trust.
- defrost 2y ago
  People are attacking the CSIRO, Australia's public science body, over their recent report stating nuclear power in Australia made no economic or evironmental sense .. nothing could come online prior to 2040 and in the meantime there were better things to do with that money in the near term to mitigate costs of energy and climate effects, etc. Further to the point, attacking all sciences and suggesting research papers are no better than toilet paper churned out from an AI factory serves the ends of all those that have a grievance wrt vaccines, climate, energy, etc.
  - orwin 2y ago
    I'm pro-nuclear (in the sense that i would rather live near a nuclear than coal plant, and i don't really care if you build wind/solar or nuclear as long as you fade out the rest) and this report seems quite correct to me? If you have no prior knowledge, commercial power plant will be too late? Why are people mad?
    - gonzo41 2y ago
      Australia digs A LOT of stuff out of the ground. People (mining lobbyists pretending to be politicians) are mad because the Sun shines on Australia for free and the wind blows for free. Nuclear policy in Australia is more about maintaining coal mining contracts for as long as possible and less about actually building nuclear plants. Because if you were going to do the second, you'd need to radically fund and create nuclear engineering positions and industry to support the power companies and the oppositions hasn't mentioned much about any of this.
briantakita 2y ago
The general public was harrassed by law enforcement due to the policies based on pseudoscience. Playing my nano violin.
timr 2y ago
It's a shame that this article decided to focus so heavily on Peter Hotez. While I would never advocate for, or defend the people who are threatening the man, Hotez' actions both before and during the pandemic were questionable, at best. For those who do not know, Peter Hotez has been a staunch defender the EcoHealth Alliance, which recently had its funding pulled by congress in a bi-partisan response to ongoing revelations about mismanagement and lack of oversight of grants related to the Wuhan Institute of Virology [1]. Hotez has been on many threads (for example [2]) in recent releases of emails related to EcoHealth, where government officials were caught attempting to dodge FOIA [3, 4]. Again, I don't support threats or violence, but Hotez is not above the fray. He is not merely an innocent, naïve scientist, targeted unfairly for his research. He was intimately involved in an emerging scientific / political scandal related to the Covid-19 pandemic at the highest levels of the US government. [1] https://www.science.org/content/article/federal-officials-suspend-funding-ecohealth-alliance-nonprofit-entangled-covid-19 https://www.science.org/content/article/federal-officials-su... [2] https://x.com/emilyakopp/status/1788283704432844926 https://x.com/emilyakopp/status/1788283704432844926 [3] https://x.com/COVIDSelect/status/1794811284652753280 https://x.com/COVIDSelect/status/1794811284652753280 [4] https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/nih-foia-covid-origins-morens-hearing/ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/nih-foia-covid-ori...
- graphe 2y ago
  So you don't support people who for good reasons don't like peter hotez for covering up the lab leak but you understand that he was responsible for it? People died from it and the size of the pandemic could have been prevented, what is suitable punishment for him?
  - timr 2y ago
    I don't support vigilantism, and also I don't know if anything you have said is true. All I know right now is what I wrote, which is bad enough.
- addicted 2y ago
  From the article [1] (quote at the end of the comment) you’ve linked, all the experts quoted from a variety of unaffiliated institutions and from both the U.S. and the UK call the pulling of funding political and baseless. Even the expert who supports the move only does so purely because of the optics. But even setting aside all of that, it’s ridiculous that you think that there is any sort of equivalence between supporting a research institution that even if we grant for the sake of argument fucked up here, at worst the fuckup is defensible as seen by all the credible people defending it, and actually threatening and attacking people. This is worse than saying “oh yeah, I’m against threats but you know, that guy got a parking ticket once” because a parking ticket isn’t least breaking some rules. Defending what at worst is an extremely reputable organization that made a filing mistake is not even close to getting a parking ticket. —————- From [1] > Lawrence Gostin, an expert on global health law at Georgetown University, says that although EcoHealth has 30 days to contest the suspension, he expects any such effort will fail. “All in all, this has an unpleasant political smell behind it,” Gostin says, adding that he believes the move reflects “a political campaign to dissuade scientific cooperation with China.” Virologist Stuart Neil of King’s College London says the alleged grant offenses are not “crimes, nor are they evidence of misuse of public money.” He calls the HHS action “performative political nonsense carried through by the cowardice of the ranking Democrat members [on] the select committee.” Peter Hotez, a vaccine researcher at Baylor College of Medicine, adds that “EcoHealth Alliance is one of the few organizations we have to track the emergence of new and dangerous virus pathogens. If they disappear, our national security suffers.” But critics of EcoHealth applauded the decision. Filippa Lentzos, a biosecurity expert at King’s College London, says that although “there are a range of views” among virologists and other experts about EcoHealth’s alleged transgressions, “for me, an overriding concern is to have, and to be seen to have, a robust oversight system,” particularly for potentially risky research.
PheonixPharts 2y ago
What has happened to people that even on HN a good number of the comments here are sympathetic towards harassing academics because they say something you don't agree with? Even in cases where scientists might be making a controversial (to some) statement with a bit too much assuredness (scientists are not beyond the occasional hubris now and then), my experience, having worked with many of them, is that the are rarely if ever acting in bad faith. There's comments here actively accusing these people of non-nonchalantly and intentionally lying to the public. I'm sorry but this is simply paranoid thinking no matter your view point. There are plenty of academics and scientists whose beliefs I loath, but I have never seriously entertained the thought that these opinions originating from a position of malice. I only comment about this because it's a bit concerning to me how wide spread this type of irrational paranoia has become. And, to be clear, I'm not attacking people's beliefs to be too "far out there". History has shown enough that strange beliefs can often turn out more correct then not. It's the rage towards people who have dedicated their lives to studying a subject holding a different view that I find concerning.
- matthewdgreen 2y ago
  We live on a planet with eight billion people who won’t be able to feed, clothe, or provide energy for themselves without continual investment in scientific progress. And our society is absolutely thrilled to toss away that capability. I guess this must be what the citizens of Rome felt like when their civilization was collapsing.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    Or the Cultural Revolution.
  - briantakita 2y ago
    Rome polluted the water in Roman cities with lead. Modern civilization pollutes the water all over the world with lead then PFaS. Good job!
    - Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
Joel_Mckay 2y ago
No job title should absolve someone from being accountable for their conduct, and uttering threats is a crime in most places. People like Didier Raoult simply perform a political role rather than a scientific one. The mistake people often make is assuming intelligence and ethics are universally correlated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0ZRQuNbkMw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0ZRQuNbkMw If someone is getting harassment, than take it to court like the above gentlemen does with his critics. These days, all too often self-proclaimed victim-hood is used to mask despotic political agendas. Smart people can also just be better liars, and sometimes they fool themselves first. Have a wonderful day, =3
- graphe 2y ago
  I was thinking of him too. It was a "scientist" who was attacking other scientists that criticized his tropical disease credentials and his "science". I'm out of replies, have a wonderful day to you too. :)
  - Joel_Mckay 2y ago
    He is unfortunately hardly an exception, as electioneers have helped create entire fake journals to manipulate public opinion. Have a gloriously wonderful day =)
Ancapistani 2y ago
This article is terrible - it conflates “attacks”, “harassment”, and “confrontation” without defining any of those terms. While I admittedly read through it quickly, I saw exactly two people who are claimed to have experienced anything resembling violence: Anthony Fauci and Marc Van Ranst. It seems clear that Fauci wasn’t targeted because he was “a scientist”, but because he was a federal official who set political policy. Similarly, while Van Ranst is listed in the article as “Virologist Marc Van Ranst at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium”, he was both an important figure in the Belgian government during Covid and regularly shares controversial political views on X: https://x.com/vanranstmarc https://x.com/vanranstmarc Those two issues aside - the vast majority of these aren’t “attacks”; they’re people disagreeing with the same vehemence and (in some cases) vitriol offered by these very people. None of them seem to be motivated by their being “scientists”, but by their being outspoken advocates - if not decision-makers - of specific public policies.
- faeriechangling 2y ago
  >It seems clear that Fauci wasn’t targeted because he was “a scientist”, but because he was a federal official who set political policy. I don’t see that as clear at all given the open contempt for “experts” and scientists being a prominent example of an expert.
  - Ancapistani 2y ago
    “Contempt” != “credible attempt on their life” This is exactly my point. Reputation damage, even to an entire field, isn’t equivalent to violence. Speech is not violence, and contempt is not incitement to violence.
throwaway22032 2y ago
The article opens with the line - "As a vocal advocate of vaccinations for public health..." That's a political manifesto. Science is W = mg, F = ma, etc. Politics is whether you mandate that every bridge has a 500% safety margin against gravity, wind, etc. In my experience almost no-one has an issue with scientific research into things like climate change, effective pandemic damage control, nuclear power, etc. But a lot of people get very upset when you tell them what to do, or spend their money on things without asking them.
- addicted 2y ago
  Vaccinations for public health is as science as you can get. Middle school science is F=ma. That stuff is barely interesting once you enter the 20th century.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwaway22032 2y ago
    I think you're missing my point, sorry if I didn't explain it well enough. Science tells you that, unless you wish for it to fail, a bridge needs to be strong enough to withstand gravity, wind etc, what the stresses are, how likely it is to fail given XYZ conditions, etc. Politics has you advocating for bridges to meet minimum standards under threat of legal sanctions, deciding what those minimum standards should be (one failure per 500 years? 5000? etc). They are different things. You cannot decide scientifically how many resources are worth spending on safety, value judgements are required. To put it another way - science can tell you how to build a stable bridge. It can't tell you whether you need to build the bridge in the first place, or whether one stable bridge is a better use of resources than three mostly-stable bridges.
transcriptase 2y ago
I’ve been disparaged and insulted on social media for years over peer-reviewed papers I’ve published that go against widespread layman beliefs of the topic at hand. Luckily I have the type of personality that finds it amusing, knowing that if anyone actually had an issue with my work they would contact me via my institutional email present in the papers themselves where I would be happy to engage in dialogue and answer any questions. If someone could present a compelling case for errors in my analyses I would be thrilled to either amend or retract my work rather than have it cited further. So far the Venn diagram of people “harassing” me and those wanting clarification on my studies or requesting additional data or details amounts to two circles you could drive a car between, and the latter has generally used the info to validate my findings.
musicale 2y ago
*harassment
benterix 2y ago
But this isn't just limited to scientists. The general rule is that you will be harassed if you tell the public something that a vocal minority doesn't like.
tmaly 2y ago
This recent article on WSJ https://www.wsj.com/science/academic-studies-research-paper-mills-journals-publishing-f5a3d4bc https://www.wsj.com/science/academic-studies-research-paper-... people put a lot of faith in science. When things like this come out that groups of people have been faking research, it breaks a lot of trust.
- defrost 2y ago
  Only the trust of people that didn't have much to start with. Or understanding of the process. Consider: * this large-scale fraud represents a small percentage of submissions to journals and * The extent of the paper mill problem has been exposed by members of the scientific community who on their own have collected patterns in faked papers to recognize this fraud at scale and developed tools to help surface the work. Reading the entire WSJ article, it's a problem in the tail end of papers that doesn't impact "working science" were people stick to papers in their field that make sense and talked about within the network of those in a domain. It's also a problem being self policed by working scientists. Likely with a better job of pushing back on bad apples than many a LEO. Paper mill's, as laid out in the WSJ, are about boosting the credentials of small publishing houses with little to no real use in order to defraud larger legiot publishing houses, or else they're about attempting to fake up and boost the credentials of "virtual researchers" and fake labs in order to boost dodgy marketing schemes - it's a lot like the dodgy USB TB memory stick market - it's a nuisance that isn't really having an effect on mainstream computing.
incomingpain 2y ago
>“This is a very powerful adversarial force that is seeking to undermine science, and now it’s not only going after the science. It’s going after the scientists,” he says. Some vague "very powerful" anti-scientist conspiracy theory is unbecoming of nature mag. You write this entire article about harassment and don't know the name to this 'adversarial force"? >Such threats to scientists aren’t new; those researching climate change and gun control, for example, have endured abuse for decades. So scientists whose feet are deep into politics and not science? Does being a scientist mean you can't ever be criticized during political topics? Gun control has basically nothing to do with science. But this reveals the truth of this entire article. >Anthony Fauci, the former director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Again, politics, not science. >Researchers say that the surge in abuse is showing no signs of slowing down, even as the pandemic itself slips from the headlines. The big change and "surge" is that scientists have gone deep into politics and are attempting to shield themselves from criticism. I get that we are moving toward a technocracy, but the rules of politics are VERY VERY different from science. >In the United States, says Hotez, “the aggression against science and scientists is coming from one political party, and the extreme element of one political party”. Again, politics. Rather biased here as well. I assume they are alleging MAGA is the 'very powerful adversarial force' but I certainly don't agree. This entire article has nothing, they do a poor job at deflecting that this is entirely about politics and not science.

36 points by anigbrowl 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Lumping attempted murder and people saying mean things on the internet into the same bucket is a mistake with far-reaching consequences.

HarryHirsch 2y ago
You know, if someone attacks your livelihood they are attacking your life, you won't last long, especially in a country with no social safety net, like the US. I am stringent here, having dealt with an awful boss.
bsder 2y ago
Internet threats should be considered as assault, harassment, libel, and defamation just like if the same threat was said in person. It's time that we quit thinking that just because something is "online" it isn't harmful. If anything, threats over the internet should be considered more dangerous as the reach is larger and you are more likely to attract people who are genuinely deranged along with the attendant increased risk of violence.
- petermcneeley 2y ago
  Im guessing you are not a fan of this work https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence#main-content https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence#main-content
  - jcranmer 2y ago
    The cypherpunk ideal of "you can't stop us in the digital world, so don't even bother trying" which runs up hard against the hard problem of yanks power cable.
  - bsder 2y ago
    The current crop of Bitcoin prosecutions shows that our legal laws and processes are quite capable of prosecuting violations of law in cyberspace if enough money is involved. The fact that we don't prosecute these kinds of online threats is simply because nobody cares about the plebians who don't have enough money to opt out of the problem.
  - causality0 2y ago
    What a lovely vision that was. Back when we imagined the potential of the internet would make people more like us, instead of peoples' checkbooks making the internet more like them. Rest in peace, digital frontier. You were too beautiful to last.
- oceanplexian 2y ago
  That's not how the law works. The threat needs to be imminent or a call to action, it needs to not be a parody, the person making it needs to reasonably be able to carry it out. The USA isn't like countries that have strict controls on speech, such as Germany or China. We have a very high bar to infringing on the right to free expression.
  - HarryHirsch 2y ago
    You clearly never had a stalker. Someone sending a stalker or ten to your doorstep is worse.
    - nomel 2y ago
      That is, clearly, not online harassment.
    - Turing_Machine 2y ago
      Whether or not the OP ever had a "stalker" is irrelevant to the accuracy of the statement of how the law works.
- causality0 2y ago
  That's exactly the issue I'm talking about: the practice of equating criminal behavior such as death threats or persistent targeted harassment with protected speech such as questioning, dissent, and heckling. When you put forth that someone's employer is responsible for stopping randos from calling them an asshole, a liar, a tool of the Illuminati, etc and say it's the same problem as someone having a threatening stalker or having someone camping at their front door, you make people think you might be lying or exaggerating about the latter.
denkmoon 2y ago
This view is straight up outdated. Online harassment is no longer just contained to nerds sending each other death threats on forums. It's _just_ harassment, and ought to be treated exactly the same as harassing someone in person with attached legal consequences.
- o11c 2y ago
  Not all "harassment" is death threats though - much of it is not a crime (just emotionally draining) even if taken at face value. In fact, it is very common for "I disagree" to be treated as harassment these days. I do think that actual death threats should always be treated as legitimate threats, though.
- _carbyau_ 2y ago
  I always thought it was weird that new laws had to be made regarding cyber-[activity] IE cyber-bullying. It's just bullying. We have laws already. Those consequences should apply.
  - o11c 2y ago
    Specific "bullying" (as opposed to harassment) laws AFAICT only exist for children, and historically were largely limited to events that take place on school grounds, so an extension definitely was needed there. For adults, I guess there's "hostile work environment"?
o11c 2y ago
Also, while not explicit in the article (which is mostly focused on hard biology), lumping all hardnesses of "scientist" together is a problem in general. Additionally, many claims that appear "hard" are actually pretty weak (sample size, etc.), even without outright fraud. To pick a uncontroversial example: scientists have made all sorts of false claims about food/diet in the last 50 years, and their retracted imperatives have taught people to reject listening to them. Since "scientist" (and "doctor", "professor") are the major terms that people think of, that distrust then spreads across to other fields.

roenxi 2y ago

There is an easy path the institutions can take to depoliticise science - spend more time talking about the importance of liberty and letting people make their own choices. I can see how scientists would be getting a lot of abuse at the moment, because they failed to get the message out that they didn't support the upswing of authoritarianism during COVID. I can appreciate the difficulties they faced, the authoritarians were organised and had one of their favourite opportunities - mass fear - in play. It is still bad to harass scientists. It shows a lack of thoughtfulness about where the problem is coming form.

beej71 2y ago
I haven't measured it, but I see crossover between people who perceive COVID science and policies to be authoritarian and political, and people who don't seem to care when a popular politician calls literally for the termination of articles of the Constitution.

petermcneeley 2y ago

Is this related to those recently released emails?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

Nasrudith 2y ago

Fluid dynamics were mentioned as one of the fields without further elaboration. What is political or inflammatory about that, even from the standards of deranged loons? Or maybe that is a case of a call coming from inside the house, toxic academic politics.

defrost 2y ago
Heat is a fluid, the atmosphere is a gas, which is fluid. Might sound odd but from the PoV of the primary equations it checks out. Can you think of any reasons there might be parties intent on discrediting or harrassing scientists that work in numeric fluid dynamic models of heat in the atmosphere?
- Nasrudith 2y ago
  Thank you, that makes far more sense.
bun_terminator 2y ago
"Fluid dynamics" is code for climate science

oceanplexian 2y ago

“This is a very powerful adversarial force that is seeking to undermine science, and now it’s not only going after the science. It’s going after the scientists,” he says. It's not appropriate to use the word "science" here. People aren't attacking Geologists nor is there is an uprising against Quantum Physicists. It's the ones who lied to the public and pushed for mandates and heavy-handed lockdowns that negatively impacted the economy and caused a great deal of harm. Those scientists will need to work a bit harder if they expect to regain the public trust.

defrost 2y ago
People are attacking the CSIRO, Australia's public science body, over their recent report stating nuclear power in Australia made no economic or evironmental sense .. nothing could come online prior to 2040 and in the meantime there were better things to do with that money in the near term to mitigate costs of energy and climate effects, etc. Further to the point, attacking all sciences and suggesting research papers are no better than toilet paper churned out from an AI factory serves the ends of all those that have a grievance wrt vaccines, climate, energy, etc.
- orwin 2y ago
  I'm pro-nuclear (in the sense that i would rather live near a nuclear than coal plant, and i don't really care if you build wind/solar or nuclear as long as you fade out the rest) and this report seems quite correct to me? If you have no prior knowledge, commercial power plant will be too late? Why are people mad?
  - gonzo41 2y ago
    Australia digs A LOT of stuff out of the ground. People (mining lobbyists pretending to be politicians) are mad because the Sun shines on Australia for free and the wind blows for free. Nuclear policy in Australia is more about maintaining coal mining contracts for as long as possible and less about actually building nuclear plants. Because if you were going to do the second, you'd need to radically fund and create nuclear engineering positions and industry to support the power companies and the oppositions hasn't mentioned much about any of this.

briantakita 2y ago

The general public was harrassed by law enforcement due to the policies based on pseudoscience. Playing my nano violin.

timr 2y ago

It's a shame that this article decided to focus so heavily on Peter Hotez. While I would never advocate for, or defend the people who are threatening the man, Hotez' actions both before and during the pandemic were questionable, at best. For those who do not know, Peter Hotez has been a staunch defender the EcoHealth Alliance, which recently had its funding pulled by congress in a bi-partisan response to ongoing revelations about mismanagement and lack of oversight of grants related to the Wuhan Institute of Virology [1]. Hotez has been on many threads (for example [2]) in recent releases of emails related to EcoHealth, where government officials were caught attempting to dodge FOIA [3, 4]. Again, I don't support threats or violence, but Hotez is not above the fray. He is not merely an innocent, naïve scientist, targeted unfairly for his research. He was intimately involved in an emerging scientific / political scandal related to the Covid-19 pandemic at the highest levels of the US government. [1] https://www.science.org/content/article/federal-officials-suspend-funding-ecohealth-alliance-nonprofit-entangled-covid-19 https://www.science.org/content/article/federal-officials-su... [2] https://x.com/emilyakopp/status/1788283704432844926 https://x.com/emilyakopp/status/1788283704432844926 [3] https://x.com/COVIDSelect/status/1794811284652753280 https://x.com/COVIDSelect/status/1794811284652753280 [4] https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/nih-foia-covid-origins-morens-hearing/ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/nih-foia-covid-ori...

graphe 2y ago
So you don't support people who for good reasons don't like peter hotez for covering up the lab leak but you understand that he was responsible for it? People died from it and the size of the pandemic could have been prevented, what is suitable punishment for him?
- timr 2y ago
  I don't support vigilantism, and also I don't know if anything you have said is true. All I know right now is what I wrote, which is bad enough.
addicted 2y ago
From the article [1] (quote at the end of the comment) you’ve linked, all the experts quoted from a variety of unaffiliated institutions and from both the U.S. and the UK call the pulling of funding political and baseless. Even the expert who supports the move only does so purely because of the optics. But even setting aside all of that, it’s ridiculous that you think that there is any sort of equivalence between supporting a research institution that even if we grant for the sake of argument fucked up here, at worst the fuckup is defensible as seen by all the credible people defending it, and actually threatening and attacking people. This is worse than saying “oh yeah, I’m against threats but you know, that guy got a parking ticket once” because a parking ticket isn’t least breaking some rules. Defending what at worst is an extremely reputable organization that made a filing mistake is not even close to getting a parking ticket. —————- From [1] > Lawrence Gostin, an expert on global health law at Georgetown University, says that although EcoHealth has 30 days to contest the suspension, he expects any such effort will fail. “All in all, this has an unpleasant political smell behind it,” Gostin says, adding that he believes the move reflects “a political campaign to dissuade scientific cooperation with China.” Virologist Stuart Neil of King’s College London says the alleged grant offenses are not “crimes, nor are they evidence of misuse of public money.” He calls the HHS action “performative political nonsense carried through by the cowardice of the ranking Democrat members [on] the select committee.” Peter Hotez, a vaccine researcher at Baylor College of Medicine, adds that “EcoHealth Alliance is one of the few organizations we have to track the emergence of new and dangerous virus pathogens. If they disappear, our national security suffers.” But critics of EcoHealth applauded the decision. Filippa Lentzos, a biosecurity expert at King’s College London, says that although “there are a range of views” among virologists and other experts about EcoHealth’s alleged transgressions, “for me, an overriding concern is to have, and to be seen to have, a robust oversight system,” particularly for potentially risky research.

PheonixPharts 2y ago

What has happened to people that even on HN a good number of the comments here are sympathetic towards harassing academics because they say something you don't agree with? Even in cases where scientists might be making a controversial (to some) statement with a bit too much assuredness (scientists are not beyond the occasional hubris now and then), my experience, having worked with many of them, is that the are rarely if ever acting in bad faith. There's comments here actively accusing these people of non-nonchalantly and intentionally lying to the public. I'm sorry but this is simply paranoid thinking no matter your view point. There are plenty of academics and scientists whose beliefs I loath, but I have never seriously entertained the thought that these opinions originating from a position of malice. I only comment about this because it's a bit concerning to me how wide spread this type of irrational paranoia has become. And, to be clear, I'm not attacking people's beliefs to be too "far out there". History has shown enough that strange beliefs can often turn out more correct then not. It's the rage towards people who have dedicated their lives to studying a subject holding a different view that I find concerning.

matthewdgreen 2y ago
We live on a planet with eight billion people who won’t be able to feed, clothe, or provide energy for themselves without continual investment in scientific progress. And our society is absolutely thrilled to toss away that capability. I guess this must be what the citizens of Rome felt like when their civilization was collapsing.
- fragmede 2y ago
  Or the Cultural Revolution.
- briantakita 2y ago
  Rome polluted the water in Roman cities with lead. Modern civilization pollutes the water all over the world with lead then PFaS. Good job!
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago

Joel_Mckay 2y ago

No job title should absolve someone from being accountable for their conduct, and uttering threats is a crime in most places. People like Didier Raoult simply perform a political role rather than a scientific one. The mistake people often make is assuming intelligence and ethics are universally correlated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0ZRQuNbkMw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0ZRQuNbkMw If someone is getting harassment, than take it to court like the above gentlemen does with his critics. These days, all too often self-proclaimed victim-hood is used to mask despotic political agendas. Smart people can also just be better liars, and sometimes they fool themselves first. Have a wonderful day, =3

graphe 2y ago
I was thinking of him too. It was a "scientist" who was attacking other scientists that criticized his tropical disease credentials and his "science". I'm out of replies, have a wonderful day to you too. :)
- Joel_Mckay 2y ago
  He is unfortunately hardly an exception, as electioneers have helped create entire fake journals to manipulate public opinion. Have a gloriously wonderful day =)

Ancapistani 2y ago

This article is terrible - it conflates “attacks”, “harassment”, and “confrontation” without defining any of those terms. While I admittedly read through it quickly, I saw exactly two people who are claimed to have experienced anything resembling violence: Anthony Fauci and Marc Van Ranst. It seems clear that Fauci wasn’t targeted because he was “a scientist”, but because he was a federal official who set political policy. Similarly, while Van Ranst is listed in the article as “Virologist Marc Van Ranst at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium”, he was both an important figure in the Belgian government during Covid and regularly shares controversial political views on X: https://x.com/vanranstmarc https://x.com/vanranstmarc Those two issues aside - the vast majority of these aren’t “attacks”; they’re people disagreeing with the same vehemence and (in some cases) vitriol offered by these very people. None of them seem to be motivated by their being “scientists”, but by their being outspoken advocates - if not decision-makers - of specific public policies.

faeriechangling 2y ago
>It seems clear that Fauci wasn’t targeted because he was “a scientist”, but because he was a federal official who set political policy. I don’t see that as clear at all given the open contempt for “experts” and scientists being a prominent example of an expert.
- Ancapistani 2y ago
  “Contempt” != “credible attempt on their life” This is exactly my point. Reputation damage, even to an entire field, isn’t equivalent to violence. Speech is not violence, and contempt is not incitement to violence.

throwaway22032 2y ago

The article opens with the line - "As a vocal advocate of vaccinations for public health..." That's a political manifesto. Science is W = mg, F = ma, etc. Politics is whether you mandate that every bridge has a 500% safety margin against gravity, wind, etc. In my experience almost no-one has an issue with scientific research into things like climate change, effective pandemic damage control, nuclear power, etc. But a lot of people get very upset when you tell them what to do, or spend their money on things without asking them.

addicted 2y ago
Vaccinations for public health is as science as you can get. Middle school science is F=ma. That stuff is barely interesting once you enter the 20th century.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway22032 2y ago
  I think you're missing my point, sorry if I didn't explain it well enough. Science tells you that, unless you wish for it to fail, a bridge needs to be strong enough to withstand gravity, wind etc, what the stresses are, how likely it is to fail given XYZ conditions, etc. Politics has you advocating for bridges to meet minimum standards under threat of legal sanctions, deciding what those minimum standards should be (one failure per 500 years? 5000? etc). They are different things. You cannot decide scientifically how many resources are worth spending on safety, value judgements are required. To put it another way - science can tell you how to build a stable bridge. It can't tell you whether you need to build the bridge in the first place, or whether one stable bridge is a better use of resources than three mostly-stable bridges.

transcriptase 2y ago

I’ve been disparaged and insulted on social media for years over peer-reviewed papers I’ve published that go against widespread layman beliefs of the topic at hand. Luckily I have the type of personality that finds it amusing, knowing that if anyone actually had an issue with my work they would contact me via my institutional email present in the papers themselves where I would be happy to engage in dialogue and answer any questions. If someone could present a compelling case for errors in my analyses I would be thrilled to either amend or retract my work rather than have it cited further. So far the Venn diagram of people “harassing” me and those wanting clarification on my studies or requesting additional data or details amounts to two circles you could drive a car between, and the latter has generally used the info to validate my findings.

musicale 2y ago

*harassment

benterix 2y ago

But this isn't just limited to scientists. The general rule is that you will be harassed if you tell the public something that a vocal minority doesn't like.

tmaly 2y ago

This recent article on WSJ https://www.wsj.com/science/academic-studies-research-paper-mills-journals-publishing-f5a3d4bc https://www.wsj.com/science/academic-studies-research-paper-... people put a lot of faith in science. When things like this come out that groups of people have been faking research, it breaks a lot of trust.

defrost 2y ago
Only the trust of people that didn't have much to start with. Or understanding of the process. Consider: * this large-scale fraud represents a small percentage of submissions to journals and * The extent of the paper mill problem has been exposed by members of the scientific community who on their own have collected patterns in faked papers to recognize this fraud at scale and developed tools to help surface the work. Reading the entire WSJ article, it's a problem in the tail end of papers that doesn't impact "working science" were people stick to papers in their field that make sense and talked about within the network of those in a domain. It's also a problem being self policed by working scientists. Likely with a better job of pushing back on bad apples than many a LEO. Paper mill's, as laid out in the WSJ, are about boosting the credentials of small publishing houses with little to no real use in order to defraud larger legiot publishing houses, or else they're about attempting to fake up and boost the credentials of "virtual researchers" and fake labs in order to boost dodgy marketing schemes - it's a lot like the dodgy USB TB memory stick market - it's a nuisance that isn't really having an effect on mainstream computing.

incomingpain 2y ago

>“This is a very powerful adversarial force that is seeking to undermine science, and now it’s not only going after the science. It’s going after the scientists,” he says. Some vague "very powerful" anti-scientist conspiracy theory is unbecoming of nature mag. You write this entire article about harassment and don't know the name to this 'adversarial force"? >Such threats to scientists aren’t new; those researching climate change and gun control, for example, have endured abuse for decades. So scientists whose feet are deep into politics and not science? Does being a scientist mean you can't ever be criticized during political topics? Gun control has basically nothing to do with science. But this reveals the truth of this entire article. >Anthony Fauci, the former director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Again, politics, not science. >Researchers say that the surge in abuse is showing no signs of slowing down, even as the pandemic itself slips from the headlines. The big change and "surge" is that scientists have gone deep into politics and are attempting to shield themselves from criticism. I get that we are moving toward a technocracy, but the rules of politics are VERY VERY different from science. >In the United States, says Hotez, “the aggression against science and scientists is coming from one political party, and the extreme element of one political party”. Again, politics. Rather biased here as well. I assume they are alleging MAGA is the 'very powerful adversarial force' but I certainly don't agree. This entire article has nothing, they do a poor job at deflecting that this is entirely about politics and not science.