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I'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 politic

I'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 ago
Or 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.")
  - cromwellian 2y ago
    No, he’s pretty much against them and makes a new excuse each time. He would claim that no vaccine ever has gone through enough testing. He also denied HIV causes AIDS, days it’s Poppers or lifestyle. He also pushed ivermectin which studies show has no statistically significant effect on COVID. He also pushed raw milk when prior to pasteurization, milk was the cause of 25% of all communicable diseases (it’s a great medium for bacteria, it has avian flu viruses, parasites, etc). We invented pasteurization for a reason. The guy latches on to whatever statistical outlier study he can find like an ambulance chasing lawyer and is a threat to public health that has been massively improved over the last century. All of his attacks on dyes and seed oils won’t move the needle when the real reason for US health decline is too much sugars/carbs, too little exercise, and addiction to opioids and nicotine.
    - bitcurious 2y ago
      > He also pushed raw milk when prior to pasteurization, milk was the cause of 25% of all communicable diseases (it’s a great medium for bacteria, it has avian flu viruses, parasites, etc). We invented pasteurization for a reason. Raw milk is legal to sell in most of Europe and they still have overall better health outcomes, so at the very least it’s a triviality.
      - cogman10 2y ago
        Europe also has higher standards for animal husbandry and food products. In most of Europe you can sell unrefrigerated chicken eggs. Why? Because chickens in the EU are vaccinated against salmonella, so the eggs don't need to be washed (and consequently it's also safer to eat poultry in the EU). I'd be happy to sell raw milk on the market if there's a requirement that raw milk be tested for common pathogens to milk (Like listeria, for example).
    - cogman10 2y ago
      I'll also say that this is not unique to him, it's how conspiracy minded people operate. You'll see exactly this playbook playout with flat earthers. "We can't know the earth is round because it's not been tested." or "It's actually industry captured" or "The US government prevents people from doing real tests to see if the earth is flat". You see, if you asked them "what would it take for you to abandon this theory" their honest answer is "nothing" because any counter evidence to the theory will just get wrapped up in more conspiracy. What would it take for me to abandon my belief in evolution? Evidence that explains why things appear to evolve and shows what actually happens instead. What will make me abandon my support of vaccination? Evidence that shows vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they protect against.
- ALittleLight 2y ago
  If you look at political identification by academic discipline [1] you can see that the harder sciences tend to have smaller Democrat to Republican ratios relative to things like English Literature, Psychology, or Fine Arts. To me, this implies there is an explanation other than partisan dislike for science that explains the large discrepancies in academic faculty. Whatever this reason is, perhaps it extends to other academic/scientific institutions. 1 - DOI:10.2202/1540-8884.1067 (this paper also discusses how Republican faculty tend to have better credentials controlling for the quality/rank of institutions they teach at)
- 5040 2y ago
  Plenty of reasonable scientists support a political party which explicitly denies the existence of biological differences between groups of humans. In the final analysis, it seems scientists will align with organizations that hold unscientific tenets. It's probably not really a big deal.
  - immibis 2y ago
    You mean the Republicans? I don't know any reasonable scientist who supports the Republicans.
- mvdtnz 2y ago
  Until 2020 the anti-vax movement was dominated by the left wing, so maybe you should take a step down from your high horse.
- anglosaxony 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - archagon 2y ago
    “Newspeak”? Is there any point in engaging with this comment?
    - anglosaxony 2y ago
      Merriam-Webster changed their definition of "vaccine" in 2021. They did this so the COVID shots could still be called "vaccines" despite not preventing infection, not preventing transmission, and providing only a moderate therapeutic benefit. In doing so they cannibalized and damaged public trust in "vaccines" which the medical community had built for so many years, and at such great expense. As is often the case, the problem was not a dumb public "losing trust in [thing]" but managers playing sleight-of-hand with the meanings of words. See also: racism.
      - archagon 2y ago
        Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. And nobody treats them as an authority on labeling. This makes absolutely no sense.
        anglosaxony 2y ago
        [flagged]
      - booleandilemma 2y ago
        I haven't verified if it's true yet, but thanks for this. I think it deserves to be a whole HN post. It's a shame this place is such an echo chamber.
      - samatman 2y ago
        I'm unaware of any definition of 'vaccine' which fits seasonal flu shots, but not COVID vaccines. Specifically, flu vaccine does not prevent infection or transmission, it has moderate therapeutic benefit and reduces instances of infection somewhat. That meets your presented criteria in full. You're correct that many aspects of how the vaccine was handled in terms of authoritarian social policy, overpromising on results, sweeping bad reactions under the rug, and much more, has undermined public trust in vaccination. But this has no bearing on whether the half-dozen or so vaccines developed against the virus are vaccines. They are.
- jahewson 2y ago
  Back in 2008 RFK Jr was a Democrat and Obama was considering appointing him to a cabinet post. Anti-vaxers have historically been crunchy-granola hippie folks. https://www.politico.com/story/2008/11/obama-considers-stars-for-cabinet-015320 https://www.politico.com/story/2008/11/obama-considers-stars...
- wyager 2y ago
  Thinking this is about science per se betrays a very naïve understanding of the political dynamics involved. It's quite easy to come up with examples where the official progressive position is nonscientific; Lysenkoism, for example, is as popular in left-leaning politics as ever (in the context of human biology). I can come up with plenty of other examples, although stating them here is guaranteed to draw some administrative ire. In reality, institutional political alignment is just a natural equilibrium outcome of a political process with pork-barrelling as a feature (which is almost all of them).
  - immibis 2y ago
    > It's quite easy to come up with examples where the official progressive position is nonscientific; Lysenkoism, for example, is as popular in left-leaning politics as ever (in the context of human biology). You believe the left believes children of parents with amputated arms will be born with amputated arms, that genes don't exist, that any species can be changed into any other species at the genetic level by manipulating only environmental conditions, and that random mutations do not occur? Who do you think believes this? Name specific people who aren't irrelevant.
    - wyager 2y ago
      Lysenkoism persisted in the Soviet Union because people who pointed out the inconsistencies too straightforwardly would find themselves in hot water. Anyone who wanted to discuss the issue had to approach it somewhat obliquely. Most people were unable to comprehend this discourse - a necessary precondition to avoid trouble. You could try looking very closely at your middle paragraph and looking for analogies with contemporary bio-politics.
- z3ncyberpunk 2y ago
  In what way are democrats pro-science and not simple pro-paycheck? "Science" today is a joke and most research is lacks reproducibility, rigor, or depth thanks to things like publish or perish. Quality science is almost impossible in today's academic and "scientific" ecosystem.
squigz 2y ago
It might be because what being a "conservative" in America means has been grotesquely distorted into what it is today.
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
  > being a "conservative" in America means has been grotesquely distorted into what it is today. I am a recovering conservative and agree with this. Today's right wing occupies a space that I find to be distressing and deeply concerning. From my perspective, conservatism has become thin-skinned, extremely malleable and hair-trigger reactive - the same complaints we lobbed at the left, 20y ago. From my perspective, the right is dominated by the same boogeymen we once visualized and railed against.
  - anglosaxony 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - squigz 2y ago
      The fact that you think we can just engineer our way out of climate change is half of the problem - to say nothing of the fact that, as far as I'm aware, the Republican party does not really accept the threat of climate change.
      - dang 2y ago
        Please don't post political battle comments to HN, and also please remember this site guideline: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html (I'm not banning your account the way I banned the other account, because it doesn't look like you're using HN primarily for this purpose. Your account is still unfortunately on the wrong side of that line a lot of the time, though, so it would be good to correct this.)
    - 2y ago
quasse 2y ago
> Perhaps conservatives began rejecting science and driving scientists away There isn't even a "perhaps" about this. My parents (both physicists at a research university) voted Republican my whole childhood. The last 15 years has changed that despite the fact that they are still fairly conservative. Why would they align with people who are vocally anti-education, consistently work to undermine trust in the scientific process, censor research and constantly try to shift schooling away from being a public right to a private good?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
sangnoir 2y ago
> In the 80s, 35% of university employees (administrators+faculty) donated to Republicans The Republican party used to be the leftwing party, right up until the 1960s - which is the right timeframe for the staff to have grown up in a "Republican family" without being conserve themselves. AFAICT academia, in any country, since the 18th century, has leaned more towards being progressive than conservative, which is why academia has been consistently near the top of (s)hit-lists by dictators or strong-man "revolutionaries"
- downrightmike 2y ago
  Barry Goldwater's Presidential campaign ran on "I'm the only one that matters. Me me me." Party. I'm not wrong, he was a piece of shit
- cdot2 2y ago
  You think FDR was the right wing candidate?
  - samatman 2y ago
    Support for segregation is generally thought of as a right-wing position to take, is it not.
lazyeye 2y ago
"Perhaps conservatives began rejecting science..." Naah...I think left-leaning/collectivists tend to be much less tolerant of people they disagree with, and when the pendulum swing of the wider culture allows it, this is manifested in hiring outcomes over time. This may swing back in the years to come...
rurp 2y ago
It's one thing to have liberal beliefs that influence your work in subtle ways, and a whole other thing to actively manipulate research to promote those social causes. Research on gender affirming care for minors should not be published or buried simply based on which side it supports, but that is exactly what has happened in that field. Given how anti-science and anti-education the republican party has become I doubt we'll see a swing in political beliefs among researchers any time soon, but they absolutely can and should be as diligent as possible about maintaining their intellectual honesty.
- z3ncyberpunk 2y ago
  > Research on gender affirming care for minors should not be published or buried simply based on which side it supports, but that is exactly what has happened in that field. Yes, work done by a liberal researcher, was buries because it didn't support her political views. Liberals hinging the entirety of their scientific "evidence" on political pseudo-nonsense like the WPATH files. Republicans maybe anti-science and anti-education, but the other side is very much the same. One cult does not excuse the other.
wyager 2y ago
> I don't know the cause of this. I think it's pretty clear when you analyze it from the perspective of Selectorate Theory (c.f. Bueno De Mesquita's Logic of Political Survival). Basically, there's a natural tendency for political parties to bring entire classes of institutions into their patronage network, leading to extremely high polarization within given industries. The choice of which party an institution class gets aligned with may be entirely arbitrary, but you expect it to happen. It's an efficient way to pork-barrel buy votes. E.g. the education sector is part of the D patronage network and the ag sector is part of the R patronage network. There's no inherent reason this particular selection needs to be the case, but you do expect some kind of polarization to emerge.

disentanglement 2y ago

Or 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.")
- cromwellian 2y ago
  No, he’s pretty much against them and makes a new excuse each time. He would claim that no vaccine ever has gone through enough testing. He also denied HIV causes AIDS, days it’s Poppers or lifestyle. He also pushed ivermectin which studies show has no statistically significant effect on COVID. He also pushed raw milk when prior to pasteurization, milk was the cause of 25% of all communicable diseases (it’s a great medium for bacteria, it has avian flu viruses, parasites, etc). We invented pasteurization for a reason. The guy latches on to whatever statistical outlier study he can find like an ambulance chasing lawyer and is a threat to public health that has been massively improved over the last century. All of his attacks on dyes and seed oils won’t move the needle when the real reason for US health decline is too much sugars/carbs, too little exercise, and addiction to opioids and nicotine.
  - bitcurious 2y ago
    > He also pushed raw milk when prior to pasteurization, milk was the cause of 25% of all communicable diseases (it’s a great medium for bacteria, it has avian flu viruses, parasites, etc). We invented pasteurization for a reason. Raw milk is legal to sell in most of Europe and they still have overall better health outcomes, so at the very least it’s a triviality.
    - cogman10 2y ago
      Europe also has higher standards for animal husbandry and food products. In most of Europe you can sell unrefrigerated chicken eggs. Why? Because chickens in the EU are vaccinated against salmonella, so the eggs don't need to be washed (and consequently it's also safer to eat poultry in the EU). I'd be happy to sell raw milk on the market if there's a requirement that raw milk be tested for common pathogens to milk (Like listeria, for example).
  - cogman10 2y ago
    I'll also say that this is not unique to him, it's how conspiracy minded people operate. You'll see exactly this playbook playout with flat earthers. "We can't know the earth is round because it's not been tested." or "It's actually industry captured" or "The US government prevents people from doing real tests to see if the earth is flat". You see, if you asked them "what would it take for you to abandon this theory" their honest answer is "nothing" because any counter evidence to the theory will just get wrapped up in more conspiracy. What would it take for me to abandon my belief in evolution? Evidence that explains why things appear to evolve and shows what actually happens instead. What will make me abandon my support of vaccination? Evidence that shows vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they protect against.
ALittleLight 2y ago
If you look at political identification by academic discipline [1] you can see that the harder sciences tend to have smaller Democrat to Republican ratios relative to things like English Literature, Psychology, or Fine Arts. To me, this implies there is an explanation other than partisan dislike for science that explains the large discrepancies in academic faculty. Whatever this reason is, perhaps it extends to other academic/scientific institutions. 1 - DOI:10.2202/1540-8884.1067 (this paper also discusses how Republican faculty tend to have better credentials controlling for the quality/rank of institutions they teach at)
5040 2y ago
Plenty of reasonable scientists support a political party which explicitly denies the existence of biological differences between groups of humans. In the final analysis, it seems scientists will align with organizations that hold unscientific tenets. It's probably not really a big deal.
- immibis 2y ago
  You mean the Republicans? I don't know any reasonable scientist who supports the Republicans.
mvdtnz 2y ago
Until 2020 the anti-vax movement was dominated by the left wing, so maybe you should take a step down from your high horse.
anglosaxony 2y ago
[flagged]
- archagon 2y ago
  “Newspeak”? Is there any point in engaging with this comment?
  - anglosaxony 2y ago
    Merriam-Webster changed their definition of "vaccine" in 2021. They did this so the COVID shots could still be called "vaccines" despite not preventing infection, not preventing transmission, and providing only a moderate therapeutic benefit. In doing so they cannibalized and damaged public trust in "vaccines" which the medical community had built for so many years, and at such great expense. As is often the case, the problem was not a dumb public "losing trust in [thing]" but managers playing sleight-of-hand with the meanings of words. See also: racism.
    - archagon 2y ago
      Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. And nobody treats them as an authority on labeling. This makes absolutely no sense.
      - anglosaxony 2y ago
        [flagged]
    - booleandilemma 2y ago
      I haven't verified if it's true yet, but thanks for this. I think it deserves to be a whole HN post. It's a shame this place is such an echo chamber.
    - samatman 2y ago
      I'm unaware of any definition of 'vaccine' which fits seasonal flu shots, but not COVID vaccines. Specifically, flu vaccine does not prevent infection or transmission, it has moderate therapeutic benefit and reduces instances of infection somewhat. That meets your presented criteria in full. You're correct that many aspects of how the vaccine was handled in terms of authoritarian social policy, overpromising on results, sweeping bad reactions under the rug, and much more, has undermined public trust in vaccination. But this has no bearing on whether the half-dozen or so vaccines developed against the virus are vaccines. They are.
jahewson 2y ago
Back in 2008 RFK Jr was a Democrat and Obama was considering appointing him to a cabinet post. Anti-vaxers have historically been crunchy-granola hippie folks. https://www.politico.com/story/2008/11/obama-considers-stars-for-cabinet-015320 https://www.politico.com/story/2008/11/obama-considers-stars...
wyager 2y ago
Thinking this is about science per se betrays a very naïve understanding of the political dynamics involved. It's quite easy to come up with examples where the official progressive position is nonscientific; Lysenkoism, for example, is as popular in left-leaning politics as ever (in the context of human biology). I can come up with plenty of other examples, although stating them here is guaranteed to draw some administrative ire. In reality, institutional political alignment is just a natural equilibrium outcome of a political process with pork-barrelling as a feature (which is almost all of them).
- immibis 2y ago
  > It's quite easy to come up with examples where the official progressive position is nonscientific; Lysenkoism, for example, is as popular in left-leaning politics as ever (in the context of human biology). You believe the left believes children of parents with amputated arms will be born with amputated arms, that genes don't exist, that any species can be changed into any other species at the genetic level by manipulating only environmental conditions, and that random mutations do not occur? Who do you think believes this? Name specific people who aren't irrelevant.
  - wyager 2y ago
    Lysenkoism persisted in the Soviet Union because people who pointed out the inconsistencies too straightforwardly would find themselves in hot water. Anyone who wanted to discuss the issue had to approach it somewhat obliquely. Most people were unable to comprehend this discourse - a necessary precondition to avoid trouble. You could try looking very closely at your middle paragraph and looking for analogies with contemporary bio-politics.
z3ncyberpunk 2y ago
In what way are democrats pro-science and not simple pro-paycheck? "Science" today is a joke and most research is lacks reproducibility, rigor, or depth thanks to things like publish or perish. Quality science is almost impossible in today's academic and "scientific" ecosystem.

squigz 2y ago

It might be because what being a "conservative" in America means has been grotesquely distorted into what it is today.

WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
> being a "conservative" in America means has been grotesquely distorted into what it is today. I am a recovering conservative and agree with this. Today's right wing occupies a space that I find to be distressing and deeply concerning. From my perspective, conservatism has become thin-skinned, extremely malleable and hair-trigger reactive - the same complaints we lobbed at the left, 20y ago. From my perspective, the right is dominated by the same boogeymen we once visualized and railed against.
- anglosaxony 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - squigz 2y ago
    The fact that you think we can just engineer our way out of climate change is half of the problem - to say nothing of the fact that, as far as I'm aware, the Republican party does not really accept the threat of climate change.
    - dang 2y ago
      Please don't post political battle comments to HN, and also please remember this site guideline: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html (I'm not banning your account the way I banned the other account, because it doesn't look like you're using HN primarily for this purpose. Your account is still unfortunately on the wrong side of that line a lot of the time, though, so it would be good to correct this.)
  - 2y ago

quasse 2y ago

> Perhaps conservatives began rejecting science and driving scientists away There isn't even a "perhaps" about this. My parents (both physicists at a research university) voted Republican my whole childhood. The last 15 years has changed that despite the fact that they are still fairly conservative. Why would they align with people who are vocally anti-education, consistently work to undermine trust in the scientific process, censor research and constantly try to shift schooling away from being a public right to a private good?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

sangnoir 2y ago

> In the 80s, 35% of university employees (administrators+faculty) donated to Republicans The Republican party used to be the leftwing party, right up until the 1960s - which is the right timeframe for the staff to have grown up in a "Republican family" without being conserve themselves. AFAICT academia, in any country, since the 18th century, has leaned more towards being progressive than conservative, which is why academia has been consistently near the top of (s)hit-lists by dictators or strong-man "revolutionaries"

downrightmike 2y ago
Barry Goldwater's Presidential campaign ran on "I'm the only one that matters. Me me me." Party. I'm not wrong, he was a piece of shit
cdot2 2y ago
You think FDR was the right wing candidate?
- samatman 2y ago
  Support for segregation is generally thought of as a right-wing position to take, is it not.

lazyeye 2y ago

"Perhaps conservatives began rejecting science..." Naah...I think left-leaning/collectivists tend to be much less tolerant of people they disagree with, and when the pendulum swing of the wider culture allows it, this is manifested in hiring outcomes over time. This may swing back in the years to come...

rurp 2y ago

It's one thing to have liberal beliefs that influence your work in subtle ways, and a whole other thing to actively manipulate research to promote those social causes. Research on gender affirming care for minors should not be published or buried simply based on which side it supports, but that is exactly what has happened in that field. Given how anti-science and anti-education the republican party has become I doubt we'll see a swing in political beliefs among researchers any time soon, but they absolutely can and should be as diligent as possible about maintaining their intellectual honesty.

z3ncyberpunk 2y ago
> Research on gender affirming care for minors should not be published or buried simply based on which side it supports, but that is exactly what has happened in that field. Yes, work done by a liberal researcher, was buries because it didn't support her political views. Liberals hinging the entirety of their scientific "evidence" on political pseudo-nonsense like the WPATH files. Republicans maybe anti-science and anti-education, but the other side is very much the same. One cult does not excuse the other.

wyager 2y ago

> I don't know the cause of this. I think it's pretty clear when you analyze it from the perspective of Selectorate Theory (c.f. Bueno De Mesquita's Logic of Political Survival). Basically, there's a natural tendency for political parties to bring entire classes of institutions into their patronage network, leading to extremely high polarization within given industries. The choice of which party an institution class gets aligned with may be entirely arbitrary, but you expect it to happen. It's an efficient way to pork-barrel buy votes. E.g. the education sector is part of the D patronage network and the ag sector is part of the R patronage network. There's no inherent reason this particular selection needs to be the case, but you do expect some kind of polarization to emerge.