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“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,

“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.
  - algorias 2y ago
    In this case, they're vaguely gesturing towards the "money being better spent elsewhere", instead of making a cost-benefit analysis including the time value of money. Do you see how the argument is overly general? You can use it to shoot down anything that's not immediately useful. It's especially silly at the level of nations, which can obtain money much more easily than a random individual. Cash flow is much less of a problem at that level. The way it's phrased exploits people's tendency of thinking about a nation's budget like their own household budget, only bigger.
- Ancapistani 2y ago
  > People are attacking the CSIRO In what way?
  - defrost 2y ago
    So far largely the Murdoch press (Fox, Sky, The Australian (newspaper) et al) and outspoken ministers of the Liberal|National coalition (former governing party of former Australian PM Scott Morrison). That side of Australian politics has been strongly pro nuclear as their strategy for to address climate issues (sans any deep studies on the matter) - now that a solid report has landed that isn't "anti nuclear" (in the sense of "we hate all things nuclear") but rather "pro economic feasibility and pro effective climate strategies" that concluded "nuclear (in Australia) ain't it", the character assisinations have began "the CSIRO are all closet green lefty types" etc. On the other side of the aisle in Australia, the Labour Party is backing carbon capture and other pie in the sky wishful thoughts .. they've bought what Santos and other Oil & Gas giants are selling. While Australia is home to "the largest carbon capture project in the entire world!!!" (wow, that sounds great) the scale of capture proposed is far short of the scale of additional carbon emissions that go with it ... and the scale of capture to date is .. uhhh, far less than promised.
  - ggm 2y ago
    From the left, from too strong links into industry and so backing the farm sector to send animals to sea alive, which is cruel but economically justified and we are the least cruel of the choices. From the right, for showing that Nuclear is economically unfeasible in Australia, despite being really ok otherwise. From anti-AGW, for showing how climate change is fucking up the economics behind Australian lifestyle and primary production. From all politicians, for speaking up fearlessly, and then getting quashed when they question the politicians agenda. (declaration: I worked for the CSIRO for a year in 1988 in a very minor role)
- 7thaccount 2y ago
  Science is extremely important and I really admire scientists and appreciate scientific advancement. With that being said....I just read an article about the fake publications being churned out by AI in the thousands and many of the papers published in my own industry (certainly not all, but a LOT) are essentially worthless outside of keeping academics employed. There's also the replication crisis going on. I'm not sure if it's "publish or perish", politics, or professors having to spend all their time dealing with busy work from the bloated administration or what, but it really seems like we're seeing a lot of "research" that looks a lot like padding a resume instead of actually pushing discovery forward. This doesn't excuse harassment, but probably shows why trust in science is at an all-time low.
  - jltsiren 2y ago
    And that lack of trust will likely make science worse. The number one issue in the academia is the lack of (public) funding. There are far more people trying to make a career in academic research than funding to enable that. When there is a lot of competition for scarce resources, people who are good at politics and gaming the metrics have an advantage. And if the resources become even scarcer due to the lack of public trust, the advantage will grow larger.
  - defrost 2y ago
    It's an issue, it's a real issue. That said, the AI generated papers are obvious bullshit and aren't taken seriously by "real" scientists at the cutting edge of various fields, they represent more of an issue in the long tail of the "publishing mills" and the puffed up prestige part of the lesser acedemic life. As an issue it's one that gets push back, recent articles highlight how variou groups have written bullshit detectors for bogo papers and forced the publishing companies to reject those papers and close some of the paper mills. That's a positive. The negative circles back to this posts assertion, that there's a growth in bad mouthing scientists and good science .. and articles | blog posts that have used recent reporting of bogus papers being discovered to justify why they have low trust in science .. and so should you. Ponder that, if it was not for the people in the field complaining about BS papers edging in and working to detect and eradicate them .. nobody would know, not least the trash talking blog authors who don't much read science papers in any case.
- lll-o-lll 2y ago
  > P eople 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. People are challenging the CSIRO report. Like it or not, politics infects every aspect of vaccines, climate, energy etc. Science and scientists are both players and pawns in such endeavours. As much as we want and need, unbiased, reliable information when making policy decisions, that’s just not how humans work. To quote Sneakers “Everything in this world, including money, operates not on reality but the perception of reality”. Unfortunately, the modern world is all about controlling that perception, and science is often just a tool in that game.
chjj 2y ago
Notably, they said "the science" which has nothing to do with science. "The science", as I've seen it used, is almost always an appeal to authority and has very little to do with the scientific method. So maybe their statement is accurate: people aren't mad at science, they're mad at the science -- the authoritarian technocratic regime that locked everyone inside for a year and force-fed them a "safe and effective" vaccine the next.
- kevingadd 2y ago
  Are you seriously arguing that vaccines don't work?
  - chjj 2y ago
    Not sure how that was your conclusion. To be clear: I'm a fan of vaccines. I'm not a fan of a rushed experimental vaccine forced on a populace through government and corporate tyranny.
    - nitwit005 2y ago
      You're portraying it like the police burst into your home, and forcefully injected you with a completely untested vaccine. The reality is, of course, an extremely boring public health campain. Plenty of people just opted out.
      - nomel 2y ago
        Many people would lose their jobs if they refused by "opting out", and many people did. Kissing your job goodbye, in a pandemic, where the government forcefully shuttered many business, was not some free choice to make. Top google search, but I suggest you look into this more, since your perspective is far disconnected from reality: https://www.npr.org/2021/10/24/1047947268/covid-vaccine-workers-quitting-getting-fired-mandates https://www.npr.org/2021/10/24/1047947268/covid-vaccine-work...
        2y ago
nitwit005 2y ago
A big reason to fund science is that it's relevant to public policy. You aren't going to get great advice if every scientist fears a storm of death threats for saying something unpopular.
- drewcoo 2y ago
  Science is corrupted by funding. Scientists are people and people are swayed by influence, power, and politics. Any advice we get has to be understood in that context. We don't get "great advice" regardless of whether scientists are held accountable.
  - nitwit005 2y ago
    You think things are bad, so you just accept it getting worse?
faeriechangling 2y ago
I recall think the very time the lockdowns started “this won’t just be 2 weeks, I don’t know if this is even justified or just an example of a bias towards looking like one is doing something” straight away. That was how things started. With a lie and a politically motivated CYA overreaction. The lockdowns in hindsight seem to have caused more harm than they prevented. I think masks and vaccines were decent and underrated though, although sadly the vaccines lost efficacy fast as COVID kept mutating. The lockdowns were an abomination.
incomingpain 2y ago
Agreed. This had absolutely nothing to do with science. This is entirely people who abused their authority in politics and are hoping someone else will save them. >Those scientists will need to work a bit harder if they expect to regain the public trust. These harassed scientists didn't understand politics, went deep and damaged public trust to an extreme degree. They are now repeating their consequences.

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.
- algorias 2y ago
  In this case, they're vaguely gesturing towards the "money being better spent elsewhere", instead of making a cost-benefit analysis including the time value of money. Do you see how the argument is overly general? You can use it to shoot down anything that's not immediately useful. It's especially silly at the level of nations, which can obtain money much more easily than a random individual. Cash flow is much less of a problem at that level. The way it's phrased exploits people's tendency of thinking about a nation's budget like their own household budget, only bigger.
Ancapistani 2y ago
> People are attacking the CSIRO In what way?
- defrost 2y ago
  So far largely the Murdoch press (Fox, Sky, The Australian (newspaper) et al) and outspoken ministers of the Liberal|National coalition (former governing party of former Australian PM Scott Morrison). That side of Australian politics has been strongly pro nuclear as their strategy for to address climate issues (sans any deep studies on the matter) - now that a solid report has landed that isn't "anti nuclear" (in the sense of "we hate all things nuclear") but rather "pro economic feasibility and pro effective climate strategies" that concluded "nuclear (in Australia) ain't it", the character assisinations have began "the CSIRO are all closet green lefty types" etc. On the other side of the aisle in Australia, the Labour Party is backing carbon capture and other pie in the sky wishful thoughts .. they've bought what Santos and other Oil & Gas giants are selling. While Australia is home to "the largest carbon capture project in the entire world!!!" (wow, that sounds great) the scale of capture proposed is far short of the scale of additional carbon emissions that go with it ... and the scale of capture to date is .. uhhh, far less than promised.
- ggm 2y ago
  From the left, from too strong links into industry and so backing the farm sector to send animals to sea alive, which is cruel but economically justified and we are the least cruel of the choices. From the right, for showing that Nuclear is economically unfeasible in Australia, despite being really ok otherwise. From anti-AGW, for showing how climate change is fucking up the economics behind Australian lifestyle and primary production. From all politicians, for speaking up fearlessly, and then getting quashed when they question the politicians agenda. (declaration: I worked for the CSIRO for a year in 1988 in a very minor role)
7thaccount 2y ago
Science is extremely important and I really admire scientists and appreciate scientific advancement. With that being said....I just read an article about the fake publications being churned out by AI in the thousands and many of the papers published in my own industry (certainly not all, but a LOT) are essentially worthless outside of keeping academics employed. There's also the replication crisis going on. I'm not sure if it's "publish or perish", politics, or professors having to spend all their time dealing with busy work from the bloated administration or what, but it really seems like we're seeing a lot of "research" that looks a lot like padding a resume instead of actually pushing discovery forward. This doesn't excuse harassment, but probably shows why trust in science is at an all-time low.
- jltsiren 2y ago
  And that lack of trust will likely make science worse. The number one issue in the academia is the lack of (public) funding. There are far more people trying to make a career in academic research than funding to enable that. When there is a lot of competition for scarce resources, people who are good at politics and gaming the metrics have an advantage. And if the resources become even scarcer due to the lack of public trust, the advantage will grow larger.
- defrost 2y ago
  It's an issue, it's a real issue. That said, the AI generated papers are obvious bullshit and aren't taken seriously by "real" scientists at the cutting edge of various fields, they represent more of an issue in the long tail of the "publishing mills" and the puffed up prestige part of the lesser acedemic life. As an issue it's one that gets push back, recent articles highlight how variou groups have written bullshit detectors for bogo papers and forced the publishing companies to reject those papers and close some of the paper mills. That's a positive. The negative circles back to this posts assertion, that there's a growth in bad mouthing scientists and good science .. and articles | blog posts that have used recent reporting of bogus papers being discovered to justify why they have low trust in science .. and so should you. Ponder that, if it was not for the people in the field complaining about BS papers edging in and working to detect and eradicate them .. nobody would know, not least the trash talking blog authors who don't much read science papers in any case.
lll-o-lll 2y ago
> P eople 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. People are challenging the CSIRO report. Like it or not, politics infects every aspect of vaccines, climate, energy etc. Science and scientists are both players and pawns in such endeavours. As much as we want and need, unbiased, reliable information when making policy decisions, that’s just not how humans work. To quote Sneakers “Everything in this world, including money, operates not on reality but the perception of reality”. Unfortunately, the modern world is all about controlling that perception, and science is often just a tool in that game.

chjj 2y ago

Notably, they said "the science" which has nothing to do with science. "The science", as I've seen it used, is almost always an appeal to authority and has very little to do with the scientific method. So maybe their statement is accurate: people aren't mad at science, they're mad at the science -- the authoritarian technocratic regime that locked everyone inside for a year and force-fed them a "safe and effective" vaccine the next.

kevingadd 2y ago
Are you seriously arguing that vaccines don't work?
- chjj 2y ago
  Not sure how that was your conclusion. To be clear: I'm a fan of vaccines. I'm not a fan of a rushed experimental vaccine forced on a populace through government and corporate tyranny.
  - nitwit005 2y ago
    You're portraying it like the police burst into your home, and forcefully injected you with a completely untested vaccine. The reality is, of course, an extremely boring public health campain. Plenty of people just opted out.
    - nomel 2y ago
      Many people would lose their jobs if they refused by "opting out", and many people did. Kissing your job goodbye, in a pandemic, where the government forcefully shuttered many business, was not some free choice to make. Top google search, but I suggest you look into this more, since your perspective is far disconnected from reality: https://www.npr.org/2021/10/24/1047947268/covid-vaccine-workers-quitting-getting-fired-mandates https://www.npr.org/2021/10/24/1047947268/covid-vaccine-work...
      - 2y ago

nitwit005 2y ago

A big reason to fund science is that it's relevant to public policy. You aren't going to get great advice if every scientist fears a storm of death threats for saying something unpopular.

drewcoo 2y ago
Science is corrupted by funding. Scientists are people and people are swayed by influence, power, and politics. Any advice we get has to be understood in that context. We don't get "great advice" regardless of whether scientists are held accountable.
- nitwit005 2y ago
  You think things are bad, so you just accept it getting worse?

faeriechangling 2y ago

I recall think the very time the lockdowns started “this won’t just be 2 weeks, I don’t know if this is even justified or just an example of a bias towards looking like one is doing something” straight away. That was how things started. With a lie and a politically motivated CYA overreaction. The lockdowns in hindsight seem to have caused more harm than they prevented. I think masks and vaccines were decent and underrated though, although sadly the vaccines lost efficacy fast as COVID kept mutating. The lockdowns were an abomination.

incomingpain 2y ago

Agreed. This had absolutely nothing to do with science. This is entirely people who abused their authority in politics and are hoping someone else will save them. >Those scientists will need to work a bit harder if they expect to regain the public trust. These harassed scientists didn't understand politics, went deep and damaged public trust to an extreme degree. They are now repeating their consequences.