4 ms·

> What if a significant portion of the electorate no longer believes institutions like the EPA are neutral arbiters of science, but instead see them as politica

> What if a significant portion of the electorate no longer believes institutions like the EPA are neutral arbiters of science, but instead see them as political actors pushing an agenda? This is clearly the case. The next question is, how did this happen? Did these people come to this conclusion based on their own diligent research, or were they led to this opinion by supremely funded vested interests that influence every branch of our society?

dash2 1y ago
For sure Fox et al. have been pushing the idea that scientists have biases, but it can also be true that science has become more biased. Update: a little evidence. This doesn't cover change over time, but it strikes me as fairly extreme, unless you are willing to go very far down the "reality has a liberal bias" road: https://github.com/hughjonesd/academic-bias https://github.com/hughjonesd/academic-bias
- throwaway4220 1y ago
  Liberal in US = center right
  - reliabilityguy 1y ago
    As opposed to…?
- amanaplanacanal 1y ago
  Scientists can have biases, but science itself is just a methodology for determining truth. The political leanings of the people publishing papers shouldn't matter at all. Anybody can read a study and point out the problems with it. Anything else is just ad hominem.
thuridas 1y ago
Republicans not always do what the electorate wants. Abortion, gun control and releasing the Epstain list are have popular support but the are against it. Sometimes a small influential group can push for an agenda. That are more organized and have more money
- sokoloff 1y ago
  Democrats also do not always do what the electorate wants. How many times did they have executive and both houses since Roe v Wade without passing law to enshrine the right to abortion? Surely they could have released the Epstein list as well. We can argue which party is “worse than the other” for sure, but both serve themselves and neither is a bright shining star of serving the actual people IMO.
  - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
    Why would they need to enshrine the right to abortion in law when the supreme Court said it was guaranteed in the Constitution? They probably thought they had more pressing matters to work on. I didn't hear any call to pass a right to abortion law. Maybe there was some grovel I missed? And from what I can see, the Democrats didn't care much about the Epstein list because there wasn't much evidence there even was a list. The current administration ran on the idea that there was a list and the Democrats were covering it up.
    - sokoloff 1y ago
      Surely you got many of the DNC fundraisers that breathlessly urged donors to give to the DNC to protect the right for a woman to choose? Or remember the turn out the vote campaigns to protect abortion rights? It appears to me that the possibility that Roe v Wade would be overturned was more valuable to the DNC as a threat than cementing the issue by law-making was.
- DaSHacka 1y ago
  > Republicans not always do what the electorate wants. > > Abortion, gun control and releasing the Epstain list are have popular support but the are against it. No they're not, though? At least, amongst their voterbase. The Epstein files are the first truly bipartisan issue I've seen, the other two are very strictly partisan issues, and most Republicans/Conservatives I know do not want either.
  - 1y ago
lenkite 1y ago
Its a fact that the EPA added ~6000 employees during the Biden administration and also instituted DEI policies to follow President Biden’s Executive Order 14035 (2021). This included employee-led special emphasis groups, LGBTQ+ events, and justice-oriented programs. All this is out of focus from the EPA's goal to safeguard the natural environment. It should be NO surprise that there is massive push-back after a republican administration came to power. Donald Trump explicitly campaigned to cut the EPA’s size and funding and to eliminate DEI and environmental justice programs in the federal government.
- auggierose 1y ago
  If the EPA added ~6000 employees during Biden, why did it have 1,155 employees when Trump took office? Wow, the bullshit some people are high on.
  - colinmorelli 1y ago
    1,155 is the number of employees in the research office. The EPA overall had 16,155 employees in January 2025 [1]. [1] https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-announces-reduction-force-reorganization-efforts-save-taxpayers-nearly-three#:~:text=In%20January%202025%2C%20EPA%20had,Voluntary%20Early%20Retirement%20(VERA). https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-announces-reduction-for...
  - reliabilityguy 1y ago
    > Wow, the bullshit some people are high on. From the article, which was easy to google: > The EPA currently has more than 16,000 employees, adding more than 6,000 during Joe Biden’s administration as the agency sought to rebuild. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/11/environmental-protection-agency-staff-react-trump-second-term https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/11/environm...
reliabilityguy 1y ago
> or were they led to this opinion by supremely funded vested interests that influence every branch of our society? I hope you realize the irony that this argument applies to both sides of the argument here. In other words, how do you know that your research was done in an unbiased way?
- consumer451 1y ago
  Being led on a leash, or at least being nudged, by monied interests is not unique to either side of US politics. Do you know who has funded anti-nuclear power propaganda since the 1950s? The same fossil fuel industry involved with the destruction of the EPA.
  - reliabilityguy 1y ago
    How does your comment answer my question?
    - consumer451 1y ago
      The good thing about science is that it doesn’t depend on trusting any one person or institution, it depends on a process designed to catch bias and error. Scientists don’t just publish opinions. Well, they can, but we generally call these people crackpots. However, in modern times they do financially well on YouTube and podcasts. Scientists test ideas through predictions and experiments, share their data and methods, and other scientists try to reproduce the results. If findings can’t be repeated, they’re usually rejected. Over time, only the most reliable results hold up. Yes, funding and politics can influence science, on all sides. But the scientific system has: peer review, conflict-of-interest disclosures, reproducibility, and open data. These are not perfect, but they make science far more reliable than all other known systems. What I believe is a continuation of how we built our modern civilization, since the time of Newton, and earlier. I cannot personally audit all of science, so instead I rely on the scientific method, which is the best system (warts and all) that we have yet found to discover the base truth.
      - 1y ago

dash2 1y ago

For sure Fox et al. have been pushing the idea that scientists have biases, but it can also be true that science has become more biased. Update: a little evidence. This doesn't cover change over time, but it strikes me as fairly extreme, unless you are willing to go very far down the "reality has a liberal bias" road: https://github.com/hughjonesd/academic-bias https://github.com/hughjonesd/academic-bias

throwaway4220 1y ago
Liberal in US = center right
- reliabilityguy 1y ago
  As opposed to…?
amanaplanacanal 1y ago
Scientists can have biases, but science itself is just a methodology for determining truth. The political leanings of the people publishing papers shouldn't matter at all. Anybody can read a study and point out the problems with it. Anything else is just ad hominem.

thuridas 1y ago

Republicans not always do what the electorate wants. Abortion, gun control and releasing the Epstain list are have popular support but the are against it. Sometimes a small influential group can push for an agenda. That are more organized and have more money

sokoloff 1y ago
Democrats also do not always do what the electorate wants. How many times did they have executive and both houses since Roe v Wade without passing law to enshrine the right to abortion? Surely they could have released the Epstein list as well. We can argue which party is “worse than the other” for sure, but both serve themselves and neither is a bright shining star of serving the actual people IMO.
- amanaplanacanal 1y ago
  Why would they need to enshrine the right to abortion in law when the supreme Court said it was guaranteed in the Constitution? They probably thought they had more pressing matters to work on. I didn't hear any call to pass a right to abortion law. Maybe there was some grovel I missed? And from what I can see, the Democrats didn't care much about the Epstein list because there wasn't much evidence there even was a list. The current administration ran on the idea that there was a list and the Democrats were covering it up.
  - sokoloff 1y ago
    Surely you got many of the DNC fundraisers that breathlessly urged donors to give to the DNC to protect the right for a woman to choose? Or remember the turn out the vote campaigns to protect abortion rights? It appears to me that the possibility that Roe v Wade would be overturned was more valuable to the DNC as a threat than cementing the issue by law-making was.
DaSHacka 1y ago
> Republicans not always do what the electorate wants. > > Abortion, gun control and releasing the Epstain list are have popular support but the are against it. No they're not, though? At least, amongst their voterbase. The Epstein files are the first truly bipartisan issue I've seen, the other two are very strictly partisan issues, and most Republicans/Conservatives I know do not want either.
- 1y ago

lenkite 1y ago

Its a fact that the EPA added ~6000 employees during the Biden administration and also instituted DEI policies to follow President Biden’s Executive Order 14035 (2021). This included employee-led special emphasis groups, LGBTQ+ events, and justice-oriented programs. All this is out of focus from the EPA's goal to safeguard the natural environment. It should be NO surprise that there is massive push-back after a republican administration came to power. Donald Trump explicitly campaigned to cut the EPA’s size and funding and to eliminate DEI and environmental justice programs in the federal government.

auggierose 1y ago
If the EPA added ~6000 employees during Biden, why did it have 1,155 employees when Trump took office? Wow, the bullshit some people are high on.
- colinmorelli 1y ago
  1,155 is the number of employees in the research office. The EPA overall had 16,155 employees in January 2025 [1]. [1] https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-announces-reduction-force-reorganization-efforts-save-taxpayers-nearly-three#:~:text=In%20January%202025%2C%20EPA%20had,Voluntary%20Early%20Retirement%20(VERA). https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-announces-reduction-for...
- reliabilityguy 1y ago
  > Wow, the bullshit some people are high on. From the article, which was easy to google: > The EPA currently has more than 16,000 employees, adding more than 6,000 during Joe Biden’s administration as the agency sought to rebuild. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/11/environmental-protection-agency-staff-react-trump-second-term https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/11/environm...

reliabilityguy 1y ago

> or were they led to this opinion by supremely funded vested interests that influence every branch of our society? I hope you realize the irony that this argument applies to both sides of the argument here. In other words, how do you know that your research was done in an unbiased way?

consumer451 1y ago
Being led on a leash, or at least being nudged, by monied interests is not unique to either side of US politics. Do you know who has funded anti-nuclear power propaganda since the 1950s? The same fossil fuel industry involved with the destruction of the EPA.
- reliabilityguy 1y ago
  How does your comment answer my question?
  - consumer451 1y ago
    The good thing about science is that it doesn’t depend on trusting any one person or institution, it depends on a process designed to catch bias and error. Scientists don’t just publish opinions. Well, they can, but we generally call these people crackpots. However, in modern times they do financially well on YouTube and podcasts. Scientists test ideas through predictions and experiments, share their data and methods, and other scientists try to reproduce the results. If findings can’t be repeated, they’re usually rejected. Over time, only the most reliable results hold up. Yes, funding and politics can influence science, on all sides. But the scientific system has: peer review, conflict-of-interest disclosures, reproducibility, and open data. These are not perfect, but they make science far more reliable than all other known systems. What I believe is a continuation of how we built our modern civilization, since the time of Newton, and earlier. I cannot personally audit all of science, so instead I rely on the scientific method, which is the best system (warts and all) that we have yet found to discover the base truth.
    - 1y ago