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Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
- favorited 2y ago> For example, did you know that "Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White Supremacy"? Yes, because I read Inherit the Wind in middle school.
- lanstin 2y agoThank you for some historical context.
- aidenn0 2y agoInherit the Wind uses the historical case of the Scopes Monkey Trial to discuss the contemporary McCarthyism, neither of which is particularly closely tied to white supremacy?
- anonymousiam 2y agoUgh. I'm sorry, but could you please explain yourself? I also read Inherit the Wind in middle school, and my understanding is that it fictionalized the (true) story of the "Scopes/Monkey Trial", which was an ideological conflict between science and religion. It's been over 50 years, and maybe I'm so pure that I disregarded any racial context, but I don't remember any. How does "White Supremacy" come into the story, or the denial of evolution as a whole?
- IvyMike 2y agoAs a whole? White supremacists hate the idea that they could have had non-white ancestors. Belief in a white Adam & Eve is much more in line with their world view. Non-whites were created by "the Curse of Ham". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_Ham https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_Ham
- FooBarBizBazz 2y agoAs usual, when a "Christian" wants to be un-Christian, they do it by mining the Old Testament.
- leereeves 2y agoSurely you understand the difference between "Some X believe Y" and "Y is a form of X". Examples of the former pattern do not prove the latter. Even if we correct the logic here, and change the conclusion to something like "All people who dismiss evolution are white supremacists", that would still be disproven by counterexamples, like the many non-white people who don't believe in evolution. "Acceptance of evolution was lower [than in the US] in ... Singapore (59%), India (56%), Brazil (54%), and Malaysia (43%)" https://ncse.ngo/acceptance-evolution-twenty-countries https://ncse.ngo/acceptance-evolution-twenty-countries
- IvyMike 2y agoI just gave a connection white supremacy and evolution denial, not trying to prove any absolutes. Everything you are saying seemed kinda obvious and thus I didn't mention it.
- leereeves 2y agoI apologize if I misunderstood. I thought your comment was related to the statement being discussed in this chain. ("Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White Supremacy")
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- gopher_space 2y agoBiological evolution was butting heads with the dying concept of social evolution at the time, and that conflict provides illuminating subtext to the trial and book.
- rbanffy 2y agoWhich is another interesting aspect of the political use of science: that people will cherry-pick and bend all they can in ways that support their policies.
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- FooBarBizBazz 2y agoPretty sure "scientific racism" owes more to pop versions of evolutionary theory than it does to a near-Eastern religion that endows all people with immortal souls, spreads the faith in all languages following Pentacost, tells parables about Samaritans, and makes a point of adding Galatians to its sacred book.
- dmagee 2y agoTrust in institutions is at an all time low. The last thing we need is for these institutions to veer away from their goals to push a political agenda. Good riddance to her.
- red016 2y agoI used to love Popular Science but these magazines all died 20 years ago. Science reporting was the first type of journalism to go, much easier to write clickbait about current events. Remember Scientific American already endorsed Biden last election which was a wtf moment.
- tzs 2y ago> Remember Scientific American already endorsed Biden last election which was a wtf moment. In his first term the Trump administration tried to massively cut scientific and medical research, tried to change the rules for the board of outside scientists that review EPA decisions for scientific soundness to not allow academic scientists so that it would only consist of scientists working for the industries that the EPA regulates, tried to make it so that most peer reviewed medical research that showed products causing health problems could not be considered by the EPA when deciding if a chemical should be banned, tried to massively increase taxes on graduate students in STEM fields, wanted to stop NASA from doing Earth science, and let's not forget repeatedly claiming climate change is a hoax. I'm sure I'm forgetting several more. I don't expect my technical publications to have an opinion on things politicians do that have nothing to do with the fields they cover, but when politicians start doing things directly concerning those fields I don't see how it is a WTF moment for them to comment.
- ourmandave 2y agoI'm sure I'm forgetting several more. Like putting a climate science denier in charge of NOAA as he was reluctantly heading out the door. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/12/912301325/longtime-climate-science-denier-hired-at-noaa https://www.npr.org/2020/09/12/912301325/longtime-climate-sc... So he could publish a piece under the official NOAA logo to try and gain legitimacy. Looking at all the latest insane picks, can't wait to see what toon he install this go around.
- refurb 2y agoYikes, quite the scathing article and example of a the politicization of science. “Trust the science” has always bothered me for two reasons: 1) science is frequently not black and white and anyone who has done hard science research knows there are plenty of competing opinions among scientists and 2) while scientific facts are facts, we still need to decide on how to act on those facts and that decision making process is most certainly political and subjective in nature.
- senderista 2y ago"Trust the science" is the very antithesis of the scientific spirit. The essence of science is to distrust authority and received wisdom. If you treat scientists as some sort of infallible priesthood then you've missed the whole point of science.
- yks 2y ago> The essence of science is to distrust authority and received wisdom. This is not "the essence of science" by any means.
- dekhn 2y agoThe motto of the Royal Society: "The Royal Society's motto 'Nullius in verba' was adopted in its First Charter in 1662. is taken to mean 'take nobody's word for it'. It is an expression of the determination of Fellows to withstand the domination of authority and to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment." It's highly consistent with the statement above and in many ways is consistent with science as it is practiced.
- bashmelek 2y agoTo be honest, even 18 years ago, long before this editor in chief, I found Scientific American rather ideological. Maybe it got more obvious over time, but I don’t see its recent tone categorically different.
- sbuttgereit 2y agoI agree. This editor may well have been a current-day culmination of a trend that started some time ago. I stopped my own print subscription to SciAm once the articles started to ostensibly push certain sociopolitical viewpoints in the guise of science journalism. This was well before the editor being discussed was editor enough so I never knew this person existed. While this editor may have crossed some redlines, I am doubtful this change in represents a genuine philosophical shift at the magazine.
- jgalt212 2y agoTrue. SciAm has been broken for a long time. The same can be said for most magazines, but SciAm being broken probably just hurts more for our crowd.
- itishappy 2y agoAny examples? I'm in the same boat as you, and while I agree with the premise, I don't recall anything as egregious as the examples from the article: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/denial-of-evolution-is-a-form-of-white-supremacy/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/denial-of-evoluti... https://archive.is/H8hJw https://archive.is/H8hJw https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-the-term-jedi-is-problematic-for-describing-programs-that-promote-justice-equity-diversity-and-inclusion/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-the-term-jedi... https://archive.is/oMzz7 https://archive.is/oMzz7
- bashmelek 2y agoFrom my own impression back then, it was less political but more subtly ideological. Truth be told, I have my own ideology as well. Some things that I remember were an article that used a trolley problem of throwing someone in the way to save five as the “obvious rational” choice; and how the covers would often try to link entanglement or dark matter to consciousness. It was numerous little things like that.
- rayiner 2y ago[flagged]
- underseacables 2y agoI grew up believing that science was the search for truth and fact, and that it should be constantly challenged to further that. What has happened I think, is that there has been a great polarization of science as government and groups have used and twisted it to fit a political agenda. Which essentially stops that search for truth. Challenging scientific conclusions should be encouraged not cancelled.
- tumnus 2y agoBut only to a point, correct? Otherwise we end up in the current dialogue where flat earthers, moon landing deniers, and a large percentage of religious believers feel more platformed than ever. It's far too easy for the uninformed to challenge science simply because it challenges their non-scientific beliefs.
- dijksterhuis 2y agoScientist 1: If we put a sugar cube into water whose temperature is exactly 74.7373 degrees centigrade, the water will likely turn pink. here is our evidence for this. Scientist 2: we tried this and found that if the water is cooling that it doesn’t work, it has to remain at a constant temperature. Scientist 3: we tried it with refined and unrefined sugar. unrefined sugar did not work. scientist 1: we took another look - it seems there was some weird additive in the refined sugar, when this additive added to water at 74.7373 degrees centigrade the water turns pink. that’s a very silly and stupid example of “challenging” other scientist’s work. you precisely explain what you tried and how it differed, in the hope it leads to a more specific and accurate picture down the line. flat earthers et. al just “say stuff” they think is right, where the evidence does not actually challenge any hypothesis or existing evidence because the claims are just … bad. this is not “challenging” science. it is stubborn ignorance. pure and simple. most of it is so easy to refute any random youtuber with a spare hour can do it (read: 6-12 months [0]) - https://youtu.be/2gFsOoKAHZg https://youtu.be/2gFsOoKAHZg however, your point about platforming is important, because people who wouldn’t have had a soapbox 15 years ago, now have a soapbox anyone in the world can find them on. if you’re looking for something to confirm your world view, there’s something on the internet for you. rule 1 of the internet should be spammed in front of everyone’s eyes for seven minutes before anyone is allowed to use a web browser — don’t believe anything you read on the internet. [0]: there’s a running joke about how long this person takes to make new videos.
- nickpsecurity 2y ago[flagged]
- morkalork 2y agoPlease explain to me the Marxism angle. Seriously, show me. Demonstrate for me. Apparently the prime minister of my country is a Marxist but as far as I can tell we're living in a neoliberal paradise where capital gets to freely influence government policy. Nobody has had their property confiscated by the government, nobody had been sent to a gulag, free enterprise is still a thing, where is the Marxism? Where is it? Under your pillow?
- nickpsecurity 2y agoMarxism started spreading in universities decades ago. It was rooted in conflict theory. It put the class (group) before the individual. It divided them up into oppressors and the oppressed. Its notion of “justice” was taking power from the “oppressors” to redistribute to the “oppressed.” Over time, people developed identity politics which put your group first but with race, gender, etc. That got merged with Marxist concepts into a new form of it with a new name: intersectionality, or critical race theory. Those people build on conflict theory. They make decisions about your group before you as an individual. They divide them up as oppressors vs oppressed with a goal to redistribute power/wealth from one to the other. They play games with words like saying “privileged” instead of power or oppressor to get more support. As implemented in the Soviet Union and China, the Marxists were mostly atheist, dogmatists, and no dissent was allowed. They wanted their ideology forced on everyone in every institution. You’d get canceled with no job or rations, often starving, if disagreeing. They’d go after peaceful dissenters. They also used labels to dehumanize their opponents which, combined with their rhetoric, justified harsh treatment in their minds. Those pushing intersectionality, critical race theory, etc. are just like that. Cancel culture with mobs hounding dissenters. Labels like Nazi’s, TERF’s, extortionists, etc. They use these claims to frame it like war is justified. People are just disagreeing with them peacefully, though. So, their ideology is similar to Marxism, started in hotbeds of Marxism, has goals similar to Marxism, and works like it as implemented. So, conservatives noticing this call them modern Marxist’s. They’re also using it to say it’s too close to Marxism, not exact equivalence. They also note that the philosophy that wrecked many countries, even killing millions, will likewise devastate our country. It already is driving division up so much. That’s why non-Progressives are pushing back so hard. Well, also since the Marxist/DEI/woke folks are forcing it on everyone from business to criteria for movie awards. We can’t even enjoy movies anymore since they prioritize indoctrination over film quality!
- crackercrews 2y agoThe funniest part was when she claimed the posts "do not reflect my beliefs". Her allies seem to know that isn't true. On BS there are plenty of congratulations for her willingness to say what so many others are thinking, etc. 1: https://www.npr.org/2024/11/15/nx-s1-5193258/scientific-american-editor-resigns-after-comments-about-trump-supporters-went-viral https://www.npr.org/2024/11/15/nx-s1-5193258/scientific-amer...
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- devindotcom 2y agoEvery piece called out here is clearly labeled "opinion" - did they even read the normal news and analysis sections? Countless newspapers and outlets and actual scientific journals have opinion/editorial sections that are generally very well firewalled from the factual content. You could collect the worst hot takes from a few years of nearly any site with a dedicated opinion page and pretend that it has gone downhill. But that this the whole point of having a separate opinion section — so opinions have a place to go, and are not slipped into factual reporting. And many opinion pieces are submitted by others or solicited as a way to show a view that the newsroom doesn't or can't espouse. Whether the EIC of SciAm overstepped with her own editorializing is probably not something we as outsiders can really say, given the complexities of running a newsroom. I would caution people against taking this superficial judgment too seriously.
- defrost 2y agoThe linked article itself is an opinion piece. Reason does interesting stuff, sure, but no mistake it has a bias and that is a right centre libertarian view that loads factual content toward a predetermined conconclusion that individual free thinkers trump all. As such they take part in a current conservative habit of demonising "Science" to undermine results that bear on, say, environmental health, climate change, on so on that might result in slowing down a libertarian vision of industry. I still read their copy, I'm a broad ingestor of content, but no one should be blind to their lean either.
- leereeves 2y agoI agree people should be aware of the bias of their sources (all of them), but there's no reason for anyone to be mistaken about Reason. (Please forgive the wording, I couldn't think of better.) Unlike many other sources, Reason doesn't pretend to be neutral. They admit: "Reason is the nation's leading libertarian magazine." https://reason.com/about/ https://reason.com/about/
- mitthrowaway2 2y agoDoes libertarianism take a position on transgender issues? (This seems to be one focus area of the article.) I can see the author has a strong view but I don't know how libertarianism informs it.
- wrp 2y agoI loved Scientific American as it was in the 1970s-80s, and was saddened to see what happened to it after around 2000(?), but I can see how having an editor like Helmuth would be a rational choice for the owners. The purpose of a commercial magazine is to generate income, and as Fox/CNN/NYT/Guardian realized, being objectively informative is a sub-optimal approach. I do wonder how we can ever again have something like the old Scientific American.
- bsenftner 2y agoRelish the memory, it is gone and the civilization that supports such things is gone too. What we have today is a sad, sensationalist farce. We're entering a new Dark Age, and it is riding in on fascism.
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- degrees57 2y agoMy mom had subscribed to Scientific American for more than twenty years (maybe 30), but for this very reason stopped her subscription a few years ago. It had turned from informing its readers about science to political posturing. She was sad that she's lost a previously intellectually valuable resource. I suspect we'll eventually get something like a Substack for Science author (editor) on a subscription model that will do long form pieces and invite SMEs to talk about their stuff.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoI clicked on the links of the articles linked to by the author as "egregious" examples of Helmuth's editorial bias, and they're both clearly labeled _OPINION_. (Opinion articles are not scientific articles because they are __opinion__.) May need to choose some better examples if the author wants to support his point.
- crackercrews 2y agoWhy does a scientific magazine have an Opinion section in the first place? Has it always? I would guess the number of Opinion pieces has gone up dramatically in the last decade.
- taeric 2y agoIt provides a valuable path to outside perspective? Generally you would expect some credentials and vetting in what opinion you post. But the idea seems fine? Good, even.
- davorak 2y agoProbably because opinions are interesting to most people and people who read pop sci magazines want to read opinions that have more of a science/evidence bent then what they can get out of other magazines and/or newspapers.
- insane_dreamer 2y ago> Why does a scientific magazine have an Opinion section in the first place? Nature has an Opinion section. New Scientist does too. Most magazines do. > I would guess the number of Opinion pieces has gone up dramatically in the last decade Did you do any research on this or just throwing out random guesses?
- crackercrews 2y ago> Did you do any research on this or just throwing out random guesses? As I said, I said it was a guess. I tried chatgpt, but no help there. I was hoping that people here who are more regular SA readers than me would have a sense of this. It is well-known that people do not discern reporting and opinion coverage. IMO this barrier is exacerbated in scientific publications, where science-like language is used throughout. It gives the sense that "science" is behind the opinion. This may not sway science-savvy readers of the magazine, but when it is reported elsewhere ("Scientific American magazine says XYZ"), it surely misleads people. I'd rather science magazines stick to science, but that's just me.
- bell-cot 2y ago[flagged]
- UncleOxidant 2y agoI really don't care if she went on a political rant on BlueSky. What I do care about is that SA has become a click-baity site without much depth. I don't know if she's responsible for that, though (I doubt that she alone made that happen).
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- tptacek 2y agoI want to be sympathetic to Singal, whose writing always seems to generate shitstorms disproportionate to anything he's actually saying, and whose premise in this piece I tend to agree with (as someone whose politics largely line up with those of the outgoing editor in chief, I've found a lot of what SciAm has posted to be cringe-worthy and destructive). But what is he on about here? Or that the normal distribution—a vital and basic statistical concept—is inherently suspect? No, really: Three days after the legendary biologist and author E.O. Wilson died, SciAm published a surreal hit piece about him in which the author lamented "his dangerous ideas on what factors influence human behavior." (a) The (marked!) editorial is in no way a refutation of the concept of the normal distribution. (b) It's written by a currently-publishing tenured life sciences professor (though, clearly, not one of the ones Singal would have chosen --- or, to be fair, me, though it's not hard for me to get over that and confirm that she's familiar with basic statistics). (c) There's absolutely nothing "surreal" about taking Wilson to task for his support of scientific racism; multiple headline stories have been written about it, in particular his relationship with John Philippe Rushton, the discredited late head of the Pioneer Fund. It's one thing for Singal to have culturally heterodox† views on unsettled trans science and policy issues††, another for him to dip his toes into HBD-ism. Sorry, dude, there's a dark stain on Wilson's career. Trying to sneak that past the reader, as if it was knee-jerk wokeism, sabotages the credibility of your own piece. Again, the rest of this piece, sure. Maybe he's right. The Jedi thing in particular: major ugh. But I don't want to have to check all of his references, and it appears that one needs to. † term used advisedly †† this is what Singal is principally known for
- taeric 2y agoAgreed fully on the JEDI stuff. I was somewhat hoping it was from an April first issue. That was bad. And I thought I recognized the name. I really do not understand how trans debate has come to dominate some online discourse. I thought the complaint on the normal distribution was supposed to be claims that many things are not normally distributed? Which, isn't wrong, but is a misguided reason to not use the distribution?
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- KaiserPro 2y agoScience has _always_ been political. On the front page a few days ago was the story of a bunch of physicists bitching at each other over what happened in WWI I have a book from Scientific American from the 1960s that has a whole section removed for the british audience because it contained instructions on how to run experiments on bears. That is a political act. But, seeing as how administrations of various colours have differing approaches to funding science, its pretty hard for "science" to be a-political. Trump has expressed "policy" for completely removing NOAA, which provides massive datasets for wider research. His track record isn't great on funding wider science either. So its probably legitimate to lobby for more funding, no? (did the editor actually lobby effectively, is a different question) Now, should the editor of SA also take on other causes, probably not. But "science" has been doing that for year (just look at psychology)
- jhbadger 2y ago>I have a book from Scientific American from the 1960s that has a whole section removed for the british audience because it contained instructions on how to run experiments on bears. That is a political act. I think you'd need a bit more evidence for that being "political". A far more plausible reason for the removal is that Britain doesn't have bears to any degree (there have been isolated sightings but most think they've been extinct there for over 1000 years).
- tomgp 2y agoIt's true! Britain has no bears so we like any refrence to them to be removed from our books ensuring we never have to think about them.
- partomniscient 2y agoStrangely enough, I read about a bear that was lurking around at Paddington Station.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
- standardUser 2y agoI sympathize with her. There's a big movement in this country that defines itself largely by opposing what its perceived enemies support. When science (or culture) makes a reasonably sound assertion, and it's met with an opposition that wields rhetoric like a weapon with no regard for rationality, it's tempting to fight fire with fire. And when the victims of that opposition are among the most marginalized in society, it's easy to feel like you have the moral high ground. Maybe in culture it's ok to fight dirty and stretch some truths in order to force newer perspectives into the zeitgeist. Maybe it's even neccesary when the opposition is willing to lie outright, and loudly, as a first resort. But that doesn't work with science. Even if the motivations are pure, it's destined to backfire. It should backfire. Science itself is under assault and losing its ability to hold together some semblance of a shared reality. If people start to believe that science is just as corruptible as journalism because of shitty science journalists, we're fucked.
- rayiner 2y agoIt’s misguided and toxic to center your worldview around the “most marginalized” or to think that focusing on them somehow gives you the moral high ground or frees you from the obligation to play by the meta-rules of society and its institutions. Or to think that your worldview somehow has a monopoly on helping marginalized people. You invoke “rationality” but as Spock would say, “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”
- everforward 2y agoI trust you’ll maintain that view if and/or when you become a marginalized group, and the dominant group shifts the meta-rules of society and its institutions in ways you don’t like? This view usually strikes me as hypocritical because it’s almost always paired with a paranoia of becoming a marginalized group and a belief that maintaining majority status for their group is “right” in some way. It’s easy to quote Spock when you make sure that you’re always part of “the many” and never part of “the few”.
- faggotbreath 2y ago
- bapsfan 2y agoIf anyone is interested, there's some discussion of this piece on the subreddit of the Blocked and Reported podcast (which is co-hosted by Jesse Singal, the author of this article): https://old.reddit.com/r/BlockedAndReported/comments/1gult0b/how_scientific_americans_departing_editor_helped https://old.reddit.com/r/BlockedAndReported/comments/1gult0b... https://www.reddit.com/r/BlockedAndReported/comments/1gult0b/how_scientific_americans_departing_editor_helped https://www.reddit.com/r/BlockedAndReported/comments/1gult0b...
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- thaw24612107 2y ago[flagged]
- thunfischtoast 2y agoCitation needed.
- error_logic 2y agoIt's similar to how if you think heterosexuality or homosexuality are choices due to your own experience, that's not everyone's experience, and you're probably bisexual...congratulations. Even though there are only two sex chromosomes, issues with them can cause people who are physically intersex. Then there's all the complexity of the sense of self. Some people could feel they have the 'wrong' body and be fine with that. Some can't. -Heterosexual male tired of oversimplifications
- thaw24612107 2y agoAffirming a delusion was never the correct response to treating mental illness. We should stop pretending their delusions are real, if we really want to help them. It is completely different if it is a physical disorder, but this is not the case in vast majority of cases.
- thunfischtoast 2y agoWhat are the delusions that you speak of? Because it seems to me that you are mixing up identity and illness. Also: if a identity or an emotion is real to me, does it not become real through that act itself?
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- thunfischtoast 2y ago
- thrance 2y agoBut denial of evolution is linked to white supremacy. A rejection of the biological links between white people and colored people helps to justify discrimination based on skin color. And non-believers in evolution often share other backwards views. As for the the bell curve, I'd encourage you to read her article first, befire forming an opinion from disingenuous caricature of what was said in it. She doesn't deny the usefulness of the concept, just points to some harmful and pseudoscientific ways it is/was used. Think phrenology for example. Reason is a heavily biased right-wing website, as you can see on the articles on the front page. This doesn't necessarily invalidate everything coming from them, but take it with a grain of salt at least, and go form your own opinion based on her articles, instead of the mockery they wrote to make a point about "the woke political agenda controlling academia".
- Clubber 2y agoI've always understood denial of evolution's primary reason is that it contradicts scripture. I've never heard it associated with white supremacy until today. >But denial of evolution is linked to white supremacy. A rejection of the biological links between white people and colored people helps to justify discrimination based on skin color. And non-believers in evolution often share other backwards views. How do you know this?
- thrance 2y agoHere is a link to an international meta-analysis that finds a link between disbelief in evolution and general bigotry: https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fpspi0000391 https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fpspi0000391 White supremacy, at least in the United States, finds many of its members (not all, of course) in evangelical circles.
- llm_trw 2y ago>But denial of evolution is linked to white supremacy. Acceptance of evolution also leads to white supremacy. One only need to read what Victorian Eugenicists had to say about colored people. So if both accepting and rejecting evolution are linked to white supremacy it stands to reason that neither is the causal factor.
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- _aavaa_ 2y agoThere are 2 sets of male-female pairs of the species which have different chromosomes. I am not sure what about her characterization is complete nonsense. https://www.audubon.org/news/the-fascinating-and-complicated-sex-lives-white-throated-sparrows https://www.audubon.org/news/the-fascinating-and-complicated...
- kgwgk 2y agoIn white-striped males, tan-striped males, white-striped females and tan-striped females a less enlightened person would see two sexes (male and female) and two color forms (white and tan). > It's almost as if the White-throated Sparrow has four sexes. Ok, whatever.
- codocod 2y ago[flagged]
- _aavaa_ 2y agoFrom the actual paper [0]: "Our long-term genotypic analysis builds on previous work [6, 7] and, through extensive genotyping of thousands of individuals over more than two decades, confirms that white morphs are almost always heterozygous for alternative chromosome 2 alleles (2m/2). We find that 99.7% of white morphs are heterozygous (n = 1,014; Table S1) ... As a consequence of obligate disassortative mating the species effectively has four sexes, wherein any individual can mate with only 1/4 of the individuals in the population." The actual sex chromosomes of the birds, and hence they're gametes, have significant differences between the two colours. You can quibble over if this technically fits the current definition, but the original characterization is pretty far from "complete nonsense". [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982215015626 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098221...
- jmull 2y agoPopular science has always promulgated culture. If you're only complaining now, it's just because you don't like the culture SA is promulgating today. I don't disagree that SA has a lot of nonsense in it, but that's a long trailing symptom. We've been in a time for a while now where easily observable facts are untrue and manufactured fictions are true, as long as it follows a self-serving narrative. Helmuth became editor in chief of SA in 2020 -- well after reality stopped mattering pretty much anywhere. No doubt a publisher trying to keep a traditional publication afloat in the internet age noticed. (And no doubt the publisher has noticed it's now time to flip the politics the other way, hence Helmuth is out.)
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- rbanffy 2y agoIt's interesting how we see positions we agree with as just common sense while the positions we strongly disagree with as "overtly political".
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- Jotra7 2y ago[flagged]
- toshredsyousay 2y agoA lot of criticism of SA seems to be from those who don't read the magazine. It is still mostly just thorough coverage of developments in physics, biology, engineering, and other pretty uncontroversial science topics and this coverage has not 'gone downhill'. It is a lot of work to do good reporting of an area of science by talking to a range of experts in that area and SA still does good work here. Some topics are politicized, but that doesn't mean you just don't report on the science in those areas. Almost everyone who thinks 'SA used to be good now it is woke' are either revealing they don't read it or just don't seem to like how the consensus in an area of research might now conflict with their worldview. They do have an opinion section, like many journalism outlets, which sort of by definition have to be 'hot takes' (e.g. you don't publish opinion pieces that 99% of people will already agree with). Out of thousands it is seems hard to avoid having some bad ones (all major outlets seem to have opinion pieces that are dumb). Most of the flack they get seems to be from these dumb pieces, and it is sad that the entire brand gets tarred with it. You could argue that SA just shouldn't have opinion pieces at all, but ultimately opinion pieces are pretty good at drawing readers and SA is not a non-profit. Additionally, while there are some that overstep the research and are 'click-baity', some opinion pieces are thought-provoking in a valuable way. Nonetheless, perhaps it would be better to get rid of the opinions just to avoid hurting the reputation of the rest of the magazine, but running a journalism magazine is a tough business and it is easy for commenters on the internet to pop in and say stuff like this who don't actually have to run a magazine. I would rather they exist with occasional bad opinion pieces than not exist at all, as their coverage in general is still great. This guy seems to really not like their coverage of science around gender non-conforming individuals, though I don't see why I should trust his representation of the research over theirs as he seems to have an agenda as well. He then cherry-picks a few examples of some bad opinion pieces not written by their journalists that overstepped the research and then paints the entire outlet with it, and that is frustrating because most of the science coverage reporting is still excellent.
- spamizbad 2y agoThe author of this article very (in)famously re-launched his career as a writer (prior to GNC youth he wrote mostly culture pieces) by misinterpreting a scientific paper on the subject he now claims to be an expert on. I don’t think he did this maliciously, but I do think, like many writers, he struggles to digest scientific literature accurately.
- nemo44x 2y ago[flagged]
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- tlogan 2y agoThe issue isn’t that Scientific American leans “pro-Democrat” and it is political. It always has, and that’s understandable. The real problem is that the modern Democratic Party increasingly aligns with postmodernism, which is inherently anti-science (Postmodernism challenges the objectivity and universality of scientific knowledge, framing it as a social construct shaped by culture, power, and historical context, rather than an evidence-based pursuit of truth).
- wolfram74 2y agoWe have such low standards for republicans, it's amazing. We complain that democrats are increasingly acknowleding that science is done by humans and humans will tend to ask questions based on what phenomena they've encountered and what explanations they've been given in their lives up til then, but totally give the republicans a pass on catering to groups that deny global warming, evolution or even that the world is more than 6000 years old.
- decremental 2y ago[dead]
- Philorandroid 2y agoTu quoque; Republicans harboring fringe beliefs in some cases isn't a response to Democrats' mainstream acceptance of beliefs that the scientific method doesn't accurately reflect reality.
- UncleMeat 2y agoThis is not "some cases." This is core policy of the party. You can see major leaders within state and federal legislative and executive bodies actively denying climate change research on a daily basis.
- Philorandroid 2y agoSo biological denialism is a morally superior position to hold, then? Democratic leaders can't ever seem to acknowledge biological differences between the sexes, certainly not with regards to competitive advantages. As for it being "core policy", I'd need to a see a citation, otherwise it's conjecture. The 2024 GOP platform [1] doesn't mention climate change, global warming, IPCC, et al. once, whereas the DNC's platform [2] discusses it at length. [1] https://ballotpedia.org/The_Republican_Party_Platform,_2024 https://ballotpedia.org/The_Republican_Party_Platform,_2024 [2] https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/FINAL-MASTER-PLATFORM.pdf https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/FINAL-MASTE...
- gjs4786 2y ago[flagged]
- crispyambulance 2y agoI read Scientific American from time to time. It's not what the Reason author claims it is. It's a popular, non-specialist science magazine that reaches out to the public (mostly through Dentist's office waiting rooms). It's OK for it to have a political point of view. I see this a lot lately. Someone takes issue with something(s) in a magazine or journal and tries to burn them to a crisp because of it. Even on here, folks periodically roast Quanta magazine for something that's not exactly right from a subject matter expert perspective. It's a perfectly good magazine, also for the general public (perhaps a little more high-brow than Sci-Am). The Reason article takes a very rigid and persnickety point of view, which is common in libertarian arguments. It's like the kind of rhetoric you hear from insufferable debate-club enthusiasts in high-school and college.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- PathOfEclipse 2y ago> It's not what the Reason author claims it is. The article literally describes Scientific American as "the leading popular science magazine". What exactly did the author mis-claim? > It's OK for it to have a political point of view. Not if that political point of view is anti-science, as others have elsewhere described in this comment page (post-modernism). > The Reason article takes a very rigid and persnickety point of view, which is common in libertarian arguments. I'm not a libertarian, But I also have no idea what you're talking about with the "rigid" and "persnickety" descriptions. > It's like the kind of rhetoric you hear from insufferable debate-club enthusiasts in high-school and college. I think it's a real problem when a popular science magazine doesn't just get the detailed facts wrong, but takes on a point of view that is hostile to objective scientific inquiry in general, and also attempts to inject poisonous identity politics into subjects as banal as the normal distribution or Star Wars.
- nyeah 2y agoI agree. You're right. On science reporting, Scientific American has been on par with Wired or Technology Review for more than a decade. SciAm wasn't mutated/destroyed by a few recent opinion pieces. (Whether those pieces were unhinged or not. I can't force myself to go and check, because see above.)
- alistairSH 2y agoDoes the author not understand the concept of "opinion piece"? Every "article" he takes issue with is NOT a scientific article, but an opinion piece.
- philipov 2y agoA lot of people really don't understand the difference between science and opinion, and that's exactly what's gotten us into the trouble we're in today.
- miltonlost 2y ago[flagged]
- xpe 2y agoCan you point to some more detail on this?
- miltonlost 2y ago[flagged]
- figlent 2y agoAnd the reason is because you are lying, and you know you are lying.
- pfdietz 2y agoI remember when libertarians were actually about individual liberty.
- miltonlost 2y ago[flagged]
- aliasxneo 2y agoIt would be nice to add some evidence to justify the character assassination. I browsed the recent articles and it didn’t seem filled with titles targeting trans rights. Perhaps you’re thinking of a specific one?
- bithead 2y ago"In the process, SciAm played a small but important role in the self-immolation of scientific authority—a terrible event whose fallout we'll be living with for a long time." Which is it - small or important? All that seems like a bit much.
- vonneumannstan 2y agoFor want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider the message was lost. For want of a message the battle was lost. For want of a battle the kingdom was lost. Was the nail small or important?
- iwontberude 2y agoWhy does a person want a nail and then lose a shoe? Why does a person want a shoe and then lose a horse? Why does a person want a message but lose the rider? Why does a person want a message and lose the battle? Why does a person want a battle but lose the kingdom? I don’t understand the point or reference being made.
- throwaway0123_5 2y agoThey're talking about a horseshoe on a horse which was being used to deliver an important message
- iwontberude 2y agoThere are too many leaps of abstraction, which to me, proves the missing horseshoe nail is irrelevant in the big picture. Too many other things could have transpired positively for the kingdom in a space so expansive. It’s classic scapegoating. “Bro my controller totally didn’t work that time! We would’ve won the match otherwise I promise.”
- throwaway0123_5 2y ago
- Bhilai 2y agoDon't be mistaken, Science and politics are intertwined and have been for a long time. Talk to any lead scientist who has to secure funding for their project and they ll tell you how its all political. So I dont see a problem with science magazine editors taking a political stance. The Right tends to harp on this purist view from time to time while ignoring their own house of glass. For them, it's ok for for example, WSJ to be a completely biased in one direction. They dont complain about skewed viewpoints then. They will also defend famous podcasters for providing a platform pseudo science people with agendas. But as soon as a science magazine editor takes a stand, they flip out.
- FredPret 2y ago[flagged]
- Bhilai 2y agoSciAm is allowed to be wrong and is allowed to be opinionated as well. The Bro however pretends to ignore proven science in order to have "interesting conversations." The dissonance here is astounding.
- FredPret 2y ago[flagged]
- ben7799 2y agoI think most of the Anti-Rogan sentiment is mostly people attributing things to him that he does not actually do or say. People from the far left are so opposed to listening to him their opinion of him is almost completely formed by hearsay and taking small snippets of what he or his guests say out of context. I fell victim to this. After the recent talk about just how important his show was in the election I listened to the Trump, Vance, and Fetterman interviews. His show is nowhere near as bad as the left says it is, and he is hardly "far right" just because he decided to endorse Trump this time.
- nyeah 2y agoThe Reason article blurs the distinction between SciAm's opinion pieces and its factual (or putatively factual) reporting. That's disconcerting. "Opinion piece" objectively means "free bullshit zone". Reason is usually much more responsible than this. SciAm has of course fallen into terrible disrepair. But that happened long ago and the cause wasn't BS in the editorials. Who even reads editorials in a science magazine? I was a Young Libertarian in my day and I recognize the urge to blame lunatics who disagree with my politics for everything wrong in the world. But this particular case isn't convincing. It died and then the loonies moved in, not the other way around.
- 23B1 2y ago> The Reason article blurs the distinction between SciAm's opinion pieces and its factual (or putatively factual) reporting. How are readers to know the difference?
- nyeah 2y agoSorry, I can't tell whether this is sarcasm or not. If it's a genuine question, the articles are labelled.
- fireflash38 2y agoYou can't expect people to read past the title, cmon now.
- 23B1 2y agoLabeled by whom, and following what set of rules or guidelines? Are those rules agreed upon and enforced in some way? What are the consequences for breaking those rules?
- Supermancho 2y ago> Labeled by whom, and following what set of rules or guidelines? Ostensibly, the staff. More specifically, editors and leadership. > Are those rules agreed upon and enforced in some way? Editorials were labeled to distinguish scientific findings, distilled to simple language for a larger audience, from opinion pieces and what-ifs. This evaporated over time. > What are the consequences for breaking those rules? The content wasn't published. Asking inane questions with simple answers, that are readily available, is not productive.
- BurningFrog 2y agoTo the "everything is political" crowd: The complaint is not that SciAm writes about politics. It's that they write SCIENTIFIC NONSENSE when arguing for political causes. Exhibit A: "the so-called normal distribution of statistics assumes that there are default humans who serve as the standard that the rest of us can be accurately measured against."
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jayd16 2y agoIs that nonsense? Isn't it just saying that normal distributions are misleading when multimodal distributions would be more accurate? The indignant tone is unnecessary but it's not wrong to say complex systems cannot be modeled with a simple normal distribution.
- thatcat 2y agoIt is simply saying the assumption of a normal distribution is incorrect for the population, which without context of what particular data they were observing would be impossible to know if it is in fact nonsense.
- jayd16 2y agoSo, quite sesnsical indeed but possibly, circumstantially incorrect? It seems like a non-controversial stance to take.
- BurningFrog 2y agoPerhaps something like that was the intention, but it's not what the written text says. Normal Distribution is a mathematical concept used in probability theory and statistics. It has nothing to do with any concept of "default humans". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution
- InsideOutSanta 2y ago
- jorgeleo 2y agoHilarious! The while message of the article is to trash talk the departing editor accusing her of political left bias... which in it self (the trash talking) is a political statement from the conservative side. To the author of the article: you are no better than her...
- Levitz 2y agoCan you reconcile that view with the paragraph at the end? >That doesn't mean the editor needs to be apolitical or that there's no role for SciAm to chime in on social justice issues in an informed manner, with the requisite level of humility and caution. It simply means that Scientific American needs to get back to its roots—explaining the universe's wonders to its readers, not lecturing them about how society should be ordered or distorting politically inconvenient findings. He explicitly states he is ok with bias.
- jorgeleo 2y agoNo need to reconcile because one thing does not excuse the other. If I go complaining that you go around beating people up, and that is why I will go and beat you up, and at the end I claim that it is ok because I agree with hitting people is ok doesn't excuse my action. Also, stating the obvious (SA needs to get back to its roots) serves in this case as a straw man argument, the point was how bad an inexcusable was the editor behavior, not what the roots of SA should be. This article is closer to the son of the president in the "Don't look up" movie than anything else. It tries to push the previous editor to a square of just do scientific work... but there is a point, in defense of the editor, where people claiming that the earth is flat need to be push back. Objective truth needs to prevail regardless of how people feel about it politically, and it is ok, in my book, to defend that
- Levitz 2y agoBut there is nothing about that. The point of the article is that SA can't sacrifice science to push propaganda. That's it. Like this point of yours: >but there is a point, in defense of the editor, where people claiming that the earth is flat need to be push back. Objective truth needs to prevail regardless of how people feel about it politically, and it is ok, in my book, to defend that Is true, for the article, not for the editor. That's his whole point.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- weberer 2y agoOh boy, after 30 years we're finally getting a resurgence of the Science Wars! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_wars Edit: Also be sure to read the prequel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mrkeen 2y agoDid you know that [...] the normal distribution—a vital and basic statistical concept—is inherently suspect? [...] That author also explained that "the so-called normal distribution of statistics assumes that there are default humans who serve as the standard that the rest of us can be accurately measured against." But the normal distribution doesn't make any such value judgments, and only someone lacking in basic education about stats—someone who definitely shouldn't be writing about the subject for a top magazine—could make such a claim. This is Jesse Singal (Reason) throwing shade at Laura Helmuth (SciAm) for publishing a piece in which Monica McLemore allegedly claims that scientists shouldn't judge humans against a normal distribution. Singal thinks only morons would make that mistake. This is why SciAm was "really bad" under Helmuth, not just "bad".
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- greentxt 2y agoPeople double down as part of human psychology. Some grasp their own biases much better than others. We should try to train people to be more self reflective and less biased politically. It does not correlate with education level so something is clearly broken in higher ed..
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- BuyMyBitcoins 2y agoI sense this has to do with personality, namely high conscientiousness and low neuroticism. That’s not something that can be taught.
- kenjackson 2y agoHow do you know it doesn't correlate with education level? I'm not saying it does, but it certainly could. I was definitely exposed to more ideas, even conflicting ideas through formal education. That said, I've never been one with strongly held opinions.
- GoblinSlayer 2y agoYou need autism to be more self reflective. Ar you sure it can be trained?
- squigz 2y agoIt's difficult for me to believe that higher education levels don't correlate to being more rational. Do you have any source on that?
- anonfordays 2y agoDoes the following phenomenon have a name? Open an article about the detrimental politicization of something, click to the social media profile of the offender and you know with high certainty the exact kind of poster they are and posts they make/repost.
- tylersmith 2y agoYes, it's called bias.
- anonfordays 2y agoIt's accurate, so by definition it cannot be bias.
- jpollock 2y agoIt's a cognitive bias, since we remember the events that match our expectations and don't keep track of experiment over time.
- anigbrowl 2y agoThis is a rather large assumption. I have had plenty of times when I thought I had noticed a trend of some sort and turned out to be mistaken, and so stopped relying on the heuristic. Insisting that everyone is biased (as opposed to observing that anyone can be) is a good way to filter out unexpected and perhaps unwelcome observations.
- Manuel_D 2y agoYou perceive it to be accurate, that doesn't mean it is accurate. Furthermore, these sorts of things are highly subject to post-rationalization. Did you write down on a piece of paper what you expected before you clicked? Or did you just click and think to yourself "yup, that's what I expected"?
- 4bpp 2y agoThis sounds like what you would expect to see if everything subject to politicisation is politicised in a direction opposed by the same "kind of poster". I imagine you could observe the same sort of predictability if you looked at the social media profiles of anyone writing an article that politicization of something is actually unproblematic or good. When it is this easy to delineate and stereotype those for and those against a measure, the appropriate word is polarisation.
- csours 2y agoI feel like rational communication requires an overlap in perspective - not the same point of view, but some amount of overlap. Science relies on rational communication between people who disagree, because we can fool ourselves, and we can fool our in-group. The narrative fallacy doesn't just affect weak minds; by yourself, you won't outsmart your own filters. To learn about the world, you have to accept the world, and some things about the world are hard to accept as bare facts. Donald Trump was elected president. Can you accept that as a bare fact? Probably not if you've fought with people about it. There's a drag show in town. Can you accept that as a bare fact? ... IQ tests have a history of racial disparity. ... The earth is round and orbits the sun. ... A lot of rational minded people tend to disparage emotional intelligence, but I feel that rational communication across strong moral feelings requires a lot of emotional work and trust, and it's really hard to trust while you are fighting. --- I feel like 'virtue signaling' is poorly named. I think 'Comfort Signaling' and 'Loyalty Signaling' are easier to talk and reason about. * I am flying this flag because I want my people to be comfortable with me. * I am flying this flag because I want my people to know that I am loyal to them, and I don't care about what other people think. (Or, I'm fine with the other people hating me because of this flag)
- nonethewiser 2y ago> I feel like 'virtue signaling' is poorly named. I think 'Comfort Signaling' and 'Loyalty Signaling' are easier to talk and reason about. > * I am flying this flag because I want my people to be comfortable with me. > * I am flying this flag because I want my people to know that I am loyal to them, and I don't care about what other people think. (Or, I'm fine with the other people hating me because of this flag) Why don't you think "virtue" signaling works for that? That's the same meaning.
- csours 2y agoBecause I don't feel that the confederate battle flag is virtuous. Virtue signaling is done by people in every in-group; when it is done by people my in-group is fighting against Virtue Signaling does not feel like a virtue.
- Crayfish3348 2y agoA book came out in August 2024 called "Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola," by Susan Greenhalgh. She's a professor (emeritus) at Harvard. The book is a history. It shows how the Coca-Cola Company turned to "science" when the company was beset by the obesity crisis of the 1990s and health advocates were calling for, among other things, soda taxes. Coca-Cola "mobilized allies in academia to create a soda-defense science that would protect profits by advocating exercise, not dietary restraint, as the priority solution to obesity." It was a successful campaign and did particularly well in the Far East. "In China, this distorted science has left its mark not just on national obesity policies but on the apparatus for managing chronic disease generally." Point being, the science that Coca-Cola propagated is entirely legitimate. But that science itself does not tell the whole, obvious truth, which is that there is certainly a correlation in a society between obesity rates and overall sugar-soda consumption rates. "Coke’s research isn’t fake science, Greenhalgh argues; it was real science, conducted by real and eminent scientists, but distorted by its aim." "Trust the science" can thus be a dangerous call to arms. Here's the book, if anybody's interested. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo221451790.html https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo221451...
- grecy 2y agoAnd this is exactly the problem we face now in so many aspects of life. If cell phones or microwaves or a hundred other things were harmful we would not find out, because of all the lobbying and armies of scientists paid to find and publish a very narrow version of truth
- rootusrootus 2y agoThat would be a good time to remind people that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Being skeptical does not mean embrace the conspiracy theory as probably true but not proven yet.
- mrandish 2y ago> If cell phones or microwaves or a hundred other things were harmful we would not find out While I agree that there may be things which have subtle but cumulatively harmful effects over time, the two specifics that you cited (cell phones and microwaves) are very poor examples because they've been deployed so broadly for so long, the chances there is some significant medical harm still undetected is vanishingly small.
- jenkstom 2y agoI'm sorry, but reason magazine has personally made my life difficult by participating in medical gaslighting. There may be something to some of this, but I'm not inclined to trust them at face value.
- Empact 2y agoIs there any particular basis for this statement, or do you prefer to leave it unsubstantiated?
- devmor 2y ago[flagged]
- gandalfgeek 2y agoThere was one slogan that was repeated during COVID that perfectly encapsulates the degeneration and capture of science: "Follow the science". That's not how science works. Religions are "followed". Science is based on questioning and skepticism and falsifiability.
- some_furry 2y agoVaccine denial's conclusions are so woefully unscientific that one can excuse the lack of technical precision in the synthesis of a pro-vaccination slogan.
- anon291 2y agoThere are legitimate reasons to be concerned over the COVID vaccines that have nothing to do with 'vaccine denial' [1]. What does 'vaccine denial' even mean? I've never met anyone who denies the existence of vaccines. [1] Such as the elevated cardio vascular risk for young men that exceeded their risk from COVID.
- lukas099 2y agoIf we know that [1] is true, then we know it because of science. So believing it is not against trusting the science.
- anon291 2y agoWhat does this have to do with 'trusting the science'. I'm wondering what the phrase 'vaccine denial' means.
- some_furry 2y ago> What does 'vaccine denial' even mean? It's a shorthand for "science denial" about vaccines. See also: The belief that vaccines cause autism.
- shadowgovt 2y agoTrue, but practically speaking: on the flip-side, basically nobody affected by the pandemic had the resources to execute on hypothesis-testing during the pandemic. There wasn't anything else they could do but decide what sources they trusted and follow them.
- PaulHoule 2y agoI grew up in the 1980s reading SciAm and still getting old issues out of the library so I remember the legendary monthly columnists such Martin Gardener and C.L. Strong and his illustrator Roger Haywood. They tried the likes of Jearl Walker and Richard Hofstader but they never found anyone who could fill those shoes. They went from a beautiful spot color printing to the same process color everybody else used. Got bought by a German publishing conglomerate. Looking back I can already see the signs of physics "jumping the shark" because of the articles that came out in the early 1980s that conflated inflation and the Higgs field because... I guess you could in the early 1980s. I did my PhD and then got settled in the software business and did not pay a lot of attention to SciAm, especially because they never had a particularly porous paywall. I did notice the stupid "woke" editorials a few years before the right-wing trolls noticed them. I had lost interest long before then. Susa Faludi wrote a book about the "backlash" to the feminist movement which had actually accomplished something. Unfortunately there are a lot of people today who believe in struggle for the sake of struggle and will fall behind a standard that will maximize their experience of backlash without doing anything to help their situation (e.g. bloomberg businessweek runs gushing articles about Bernard Arnault and $3000 a night hotel rooms and $600 bottles of wine but you know they're on the right side of the barricades because they always write "black" with a capital b) It is a selfish meme though and very much likes the backlash because the existence of the backlash confirms their world view.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- GMoromisato 2y agoI'm conflicted about all of this because I gave up reading Scientific American when I felt it had become too political. But of course, you can't remove politics from science. Scientists are human and humans are political. When a scientist chooses an area to investigate, it is influenced by their politics. You can ask scientists to be factual, but you can't ask them to be non-political. It's not SciAm's fault that scientists (and science writers) are political. The root failure, IMHO, is that several professions, including scientists, journalists, and teachers have become overwhelmingly left-wing. It was not always that way. In the 80s, 35% of university employees (administrators+faculty) donated to Republicans. In recent years it has been under 5%.[1] I don't know the cause of this. Perhaps conservatives began rejecting science and driving scientists away; or perhaps universities became more liberal and conservative scientists left to join industry. Maybe both. Personally, I think it is important that this change. Science is the foundation of all our accomplishments, as a country and as a species. My hot take is that trust in science will not be restored until there are more conservative scientists. Sadly, I think restoring trust will take a long time. Maybe this change at Scientific American will be the beginning of that process. I certainly hope so. --------- [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01382-3.pdf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01382-3.pdf
- disentanglement 2y agoOr perhaps the republican party has developed such an astonishing anti-science attitude that hardly any reasonable scientist can support them? Imagine doing research on vaccines and hearing the soon to be secretary of health speak on that topic. As long as these kind of people count as "conservatives" in the US, how could you be a conservative scientist?
- TimTheTinker 2y ago> Imagine doing research on vaccines and hearing the soon to be secretary of health speak on that topic. I hope I'm not entering a minefield here... but from what I've heard, it sounds like he's not against vaccines in principle, just ones that haven't undergone clinical trials equivalent to what the FDA requires for pharmaceuticals. (A sound byte I heard sums it up, where he said something like "no one called me anti-fish for working to get mercury removed from the fish sold in supermarkets, so I don't see why I should be labeled 'anti-vaccine' either.")
- henearkr 2y agoThis whole debate is surrealist. Bigotry and intolerance are fundamentally irrational and illogical, so the so-called "left-bias" of science is just science being itself. Now the comments in this HN page and the reason.com article are completely ignoring that, and only considering everything through a political filter.
- TheBlight 2y agoIs "intolerance" objectively defined?
- henearkr 2y agoEasy enough: make matter things that have no reason to matter. Like what the skin color has to do with how good your physician is? Nothing. Science is smart enough to propose the adequate metrics, in this case it does absolutely not include melanin.
- Manuel_D 2y ago> Like what the skin color has to do with how good your physician is? Nothing. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Malpractice and disciplinary rates among Black and Latin physicians are higher: https://www.library.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/MedicalBoardDemographicsJan17.pdf https://www.library.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Medica... > After controlling for a number of other variables, Latino/a and Black physicians were both more likely to receive complaints and more likely to see those complaints escalate to investigations. Latino/a physicians were also more likely to see those investigations result in disciplinary outcomes. On the other hand, some other minority physicians — in particular Asian physicians — actually saw reduced likelihoods of receiving complaints, or of those complaints escalating to investigations. These observations remained even after controlling for age, gender, board certification, and number of hours spent on patient care.
- tomrod 2y agoNow do it outside the country, and I anticipate the results don't replicate, meaning your cited study probably fails replication.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- chrisbrandow 2y agoI remember when that article wildly mis-describing the normal distribution came out and I was so sad. It was just so embarrassing. The author was in no way qualified, yet the burden rests on the editors of a publication with the reputation to catch this incredible incorrect statement to come out. I usually think woke/antiwoke complaints go too far, but that was such a failure.
- mtlynch 2y agoReference for the curious: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6202 https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6202
- Agingcoder 2y agoThanks. I didn’t realize how bad things were. I’m not American. Is this an example of America’s culture war I keep reading about ?
- jmb99 2y agoThis would be an example, but far from the whole picture.
- charlescearl 2y agoHere is a list of Soviet nobel prize laureates, courtesy of Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_Nobel_laureates https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_Nobel_laurea.... There are several in the sciences up to the year 1978. I’m sure that many were committed Communists, Bolsheviks, perhaps Marxist-Leninists until their last breath. Perhaps there were “Tankies” and Trotskyists among the bunch. Perhaps there were many who recited the right thing, or longed for the restoration of Tsarist rule, perhaps some who ended up ended by colleagues who thought they’d subverted revolution. I haven’t read all the biographies. Perhaps science can be conducted by people across a political spectrum, and perhaps that might be a good thing.
- jahewson 2y agoAfter Stalin had all the scientists he didn’t like executed, he allowed the ones who were useful for developing weapons to live. Truly inspiring. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repression_of_science_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repression_of_science_in_the...
- kgwgk 2y ago“Leave them in peace. We can always shoot them later.” https://cerncourier.com/a/reviews-2/ https://cerncourier.com/a/reviews-2/
- agentultra 2y agoI can't really speak to the author's credentials but they link to two of their own articles and seem to be sour that SciAm didn't publish their work under this out-going editor's direction. In general though, it seems like publications such as SciAm are under a lot of pressure in this political environment. Maybe more than ever. I'm sure they've no doubt faced criticism from scientists that wanted to publish climate-denialist "science," over the last 40-some-odd years. It seems like the folks clamouring for "neutrality," in science are those that were most often marginalized for their unscientific writing and claims. This whole environment of "both sides," and pseudo-scientific conspiracy theories, and alternative-facts must be absolutely exhausting for editors. I hope SciAm manages to stay progressive and continue to publish good stuff.
- rurp 2y agoI feel like you missed a big chunk of the article. The author points out a number of cases where SciAm published outright false or misleading information, which always echoed progressive activist talking points. This has nothing to do with publishing climate denialism or other pseudoscience, it's about not publishing poor information just because it aligns with a particular world view. SciAm is hardly an isolated example of this. It is wild to me how many organizations have twisted themselves around to promote various trendy progressive social causes that have no connection to their actual mission over the past decade or so. Mozilla is the poster child for this in tech. I used to shake my head at this stuff, finding it mildly annoying but not all that consequential. After seeing the results of the last election and what voters have been telling pollsters for years, it's clear that this sort of activism is a massive albatross weighing on every single liberal politician and cause.
- agentultra 2y agoTurns out the author has no scientific credentials of any kind. They've been criticized for having an anti-trans bias in their writing [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Singal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Singal
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- throwaway657656 2y agoBy chance I just started reading Sci Am after a lapse 10 years. This month, there is an article that mentions that empathy is mentally taxing, which is obvious but worth stating. Shortly afterwards it is followed by a series of articles on sickle cell disease. I suspect the order of these two articles was a deliberate choice by the editor. Subconsciously I never cared much about sickle cell since I am not black and I am more interested in diseases that would affect me and my family. But then I realized that I am choosing to be dismissive, which has zero cognitive cost, as opposed to empathy which comes at a cost. I read the report and immediately reflected on how I should give more blood since transfusions can ease the unbearable pain of this disease. I learned a lot of science too. The examples in the parent article make it clear the editor needs be replaced. But like all over-corrections I hope some of the changes made during her tenure remain.
- sandspar 2y agoYou're happy you got psyoped?
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- Seattle3503 2y agoI notice there has been a mixing of expert/academic opinion with advocacy, and this is an example of that. But expertise and advocacy are important but different things.
- squigz 2y agoThey don't seem mutually exclusive to me. I would think an issue would only arise if one lets their advocacy jeopardize their expert judgement.
- Seattle3503 2y agoI think Jonathan Kanter lays it out much better than I can here, when it comes to research into monopoly https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/assistant-attorney-general-jonathan-kanter-delivers-remarks-fordham-competition-law-0 https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/assistant-attorney-genera...
- hamolton 2y agoThe author's critiques seem nit-picky to me. I'd like to hear from somebody that follows this, scrolling through SciAm articles published in the past few years, it seems like the bulk of content is still normal popular science. While it does publish a large chunk of partisan opinions now, a lot of them are pretty normal party-line defenses of democrats and their causes with respect to science, health, and whatnot. While I see they published a half-dozen or so articles defending gender-affirming care in youth, it's not like this is so central to the rag that this was mentioned on the covers. Is the author trying to rationalize an aversion to partisan politics in a magazine coming from a nation with a climate change denialist party?
- agentultra 2y agoMake of it what you will, but the author's wikipedia page seems to put this article in perspective: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Singal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Singal
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- z3ncyberpunk 2y agophobia... sure.
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- ZeroGravitas 2y agoThe basic purpose of Reason magazine, since their early days supporting Holocaust denial and Apartheid, through to modern climate change denial is exactly the politicization of science. So this is massively hypocritical.
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