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What’s disempowering is sending a family member a link to a study demonstrating that COVID vaccines reduce one’s risk of long COVID or dementia, and having that

by avazhi 2y ago

What’s disempowering is sending a family member a link to a study demonstrating that COVID vaccines reduce one’s risk of long COVID or dementia, and having that family member say ‘Oh this is Nature, they hate Trump and I’m not interested in reading something from this.’ And for what? So a bunch of PhDs can virtue signal to one another that they’re all voting for the same candidate?

shiroiushi 2y ago
If your family member is a die-hard Trump supporter, they're not going to care about what any science publication says. They're already a lost cause. We're talking about people who think taking horse dewormer or injecting themselves with bleach is going to cure their COVID. When one "side" is explicitly making itself the enemy of actual scientists, when exactly is it OK to call a spade a spade, in your book?
exe34 2y ago
maybe that's natural selection in action? if they love trump more than their health, I'm happy for their sacrifice if it gives future generations a chance.
legacynl 2y ago
So people shouldn't write what they care about, just so they don't offend uneducated rednecks who might stumble on an article that's not meant for them anyway? If you have a family member who distrust msm and 'the globalists' then you're not going to convince them with a nature article anyway. You have to understand that these maga-cultists don't use logic. Just like religion their beliefs are based on faith. Faith is exactly believing something despite facts and arguments. Someone who has drank the kool-aid and has progressed to the level of; "they said something bad about X, so they must be on the other side and I shouldn't trust anything they say", cannot be brought back with scientific proofs and logical arguments. If you want your trump-family to stop taking bleach you cannot just argument against bleach. You have to repair their trust in science, education, the government, etc. Not talking politics, but just sending snarky links to science they don't understand anyway is not doing your family a service.
- avazhi 2y ago
  This is not my experience. I've convinced two family members to get vaccinated on the basis of very strong evidence for protection against long COVID. Not all the 'uneducated rednecks' are as intransigent as you or the others in this thread apparently think they are. But you do say this: "If you want your trump-family to stop taking bleach you cannot just argument against bleach. You have to repair their trust in science, education, the government, etc." I agree 100%, and the starting point for repairing that trust involves ostensibly apolitical scientific institutions like Nature refraining from directly and expressly engaging in partisan politics. It would be one thing if Nature promulgated a particular policy about, say, salt marsh restoration or carbon sequestration; it is something else entirely for Nature to praise Harris and bash Trump, something that prima facie has literally nothing to do with science and serves only to undercut Nature's notional objectivity with the wider public. Surely that isn't controversial.
  - exe34 2y ago
    > Surely that isn't controversial. yes it is, because the candidates aren't equally supportive/dismissive of science, one side is absolutely against.

by avazhi 2y ago

shiroiushi 2y ago

If your family member is a die-hard Trump supporter, they're not going to care about what any science publication says. They're already a lost cause. We're talking about people who think taking horse dewormer or injecting themselves with bleach is going to cure their COVID. When one "side" is explicitly making itself the enemy of actual scientists, when exactly is it OK to call a spade a spade, in your book?

exe34 2y ago

maybe that's natural selection in action? if they love trump more than their health, I'm happy for their sacrifice if it gives future generations a chance.

legacynl 2y ago

So people shouldn't write what they care about, just so they don't offend uneducated rednecks who might stumble on an article that's not meant for them anyway? If you have a family member who distrust msm and 'the globalists' then you're not going to convince them with a nature article anyway. You have to understand that these maga-cultists don't use logic. Just like religion their beliefs are based on faith. Faith is exactly believing something despite facts and arguments. Someone who has drank the kool-aid and has progressed to the level of; "they said something bad about X, so they must be on the other side and I shouldn't trust anything they say", cannot be brought back with scientific proofs and logical arguments. If you want your trump-family to stop taking bleach you cannot just argument against bleach. You have to repair their trust in science, education, the government, etc. Not talking politics, but just sending snarky links to science they don't understand anyway is not doing your family a service.

avazhi 2y ago
This is not my experience. I've convinced two family members to get vaccinated on the basis of very strong evidence for protection against long COVID. Not all the 'uneducated rednecks' are as intransigent as you or the others in this thread apparently think they are. But you do say this: "If you want your trump-family to stop taking bleach you cannot just argument against bleach. You have to repair their trust in science, education, the government, etc." I agree 100%, and the starting point for repairing that trust involves ostensibly apolitical scientific institutions like Nature refraining from directly and expressly engaging in partisan politics. It would be one thing if Nature promulgated a particular policy about, say, salt marsh restoration or carbon sequestration; it is something else entirely for Nature to praise Harris and bash Trump, something that prima facie has literally nothing to do with science and serves only to undercut Nature's notional objectivity with the wider public. Surely that isn't controversial.
- exe34 2y ago
  > Surely that isn't controversial. yes it is, because the candidates aren't equally supportive/dismissive of science, one side is absolutely against.