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It depends on who’s running it. If it’s started by a bunch of science deniers who are bitter about losing a fair election and they solicit testimony from conspi
by acdha 2y ago
It depends on who’s running it. If it’s started by a bunch of science deniers who are bitter about losing a fair election and they solicit testimony from conspiracy theorists, you shouldn’t expect more than politics.
If it was started on more even grounds and based on testimony by domain experts with traceable evidence, etc. it’s a lot more reliable. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect - e.g. past testimony on Alzheimer’s disease would have reflected the scientific consensus skewed by Eliezer Masliah’s fraud – but it usually won’t be out of line with what experts in the field agree.
This is why the gold standard government reports are prepared not in the legislature but in dedicated agencies where the people working on them are not political appointees. If NIH or the EPA releases a report, it’ll often be peer-reviewed and will list the people who worked on it and their qualifications – usually advanced degrees in the subject and often a research career prior to becoming a civil servant.
- hackeraccount 2y agoI don't think there's a level of qualification that puts you above politics. The higher the stakes the greater the scrutiny.
- acdha 2y agoNobody is above politics but if something is started for political reasons and the people involved are all politically motivated non-experts, you’re only going to get political pieces. If it’s run by people who have subject matter expertise, they can still have political opinions but they’re probably not going to embarrass themselves professionally by taking outrageous positions. As a concrete example, Republicans made vaccination a highly contentious political litmus test. A lot of doctors are Republicans, but that lead to most of them staying quiet or making very moderate positions – the few exceptions being noteworthy because they represented such a small minority of their peers.