Science is political, and that's a bad thing
stuartritchie.substack.com
stuartritchie.substack.com
Said another way, while it is possible for science to be less political, it explicitly requires that the questions being posed are as far removed from policy decisions as possible (i.e., useless). I would challenge the author to articulate an alternative in which [(a) scientists desire to have a positive impact on society (beyond simply increasing knowledge) and (b) they recognize the limitations of their capabilities] but do not need to think carefully about how the results of a resource or technical limitation of their work might lead it to be misapplied to bad policy. Saying "remember science is political" is no different than saying "remember that if you decide to always check PSA levels you'll mess up more people's urinogenital loves with unnecessary tests than you'll save from cancer.
Note: many scientists (like me!) gravitate to "basic" science so they won't have to worry. But I don't think that makes us better.
That isn't to say scientists should only publish findings that perfectly accord with their political beliefs, but perhaps they could spend more effort trying to present their findings in such a way as to limit the inevitable attempts to draw totally wild conclusions or take them completely out of context. And, for the love of all, don't write abstracts that make it sound like you've made some sort of revolutionary breakthrough or stumbled on hidden fundamental truths! Non-specialists (absolutely including myself) will often read abstracts at best, more likely articles written from other articles written by someone who skimmed the abstract while grinding their proverbial axe. People educated in science are aware of the limitations, non-scientists on the other hand...
If a topic is hotly contested in our society, publishing plenty of high-quality, reliable scholarship about it is one of the best available ways of gradually turning it into a less-hotly contested topic. This applies even to things like climate science, where people sometimes like to remark that "the science is settled". So yes, we should always be mindful of impact but undervaluing the benefits of that impact would be just as wrong.
Let me rephrase the last part of this slightly to help illustrate the problem:
Most scientists aspire to answer questions that will have value for people.
Scientists have discovered all kinds of fascinating stuff that has vastly improved people's lives. For example, all the discoveries that made possible the medium in which we are having this conversation. But there's no reason any of that has to be political. Scientific discoveries have greatly empowered people in all kinds of ways that don't require any politics to work.
The reason science is political is that some people want to use it as a tool, not to empower all people, but to empower themselves at the expense of other people. They want science to give them an excuse to tell other people what to do or what not to do. That is the difference between "value for people" and "value for society". If it's "value for people", then each person can judge that for themselves, and use the tools of science as they choose to improve their lives. But if it's "value for society", then who gets to judge that for "society"? That is where the problem lies. To the extent that there is a valid point lurking in this article, I think that's it.
I mean, does it have value for society that scientists recovered old administrative documents about the French revolution? Not really.
But as a society, we can now decide to continue to be wrong about most beliefs we held about that time period or to correct those beliefs. Did those researcher knew what they would find? Yes, probably. Were those finding aligned to their political views? Probably yes, i doubt there is a lot of Furetien left, and they probably wouldn't have searched those documents. (i wanted to use the verb seek and not search, but couldn't remember if it was irregular)
Does it really have value for people? Not really. I will now get internet points everytime someone talk about the French terror for the foreseeable future. That's it.
But maybe, if our civilization last long enough, our history myths will match our real history and everyone will be less wrong.
And that's the best science can do.
You must be joking. The very fact that you are posting here indicates that you are making use of countless products of science. They're just not products of science that are tied to any political controversy or help anyone to gain political power, so everyone takes them for granted and doesn't stop to think about them when they think about "science". But they should.
History is not a science, although it can make use of tools that science has developed.
> And that's the best science can do.
Again, you must be joking. Even leaving aside my comment above, science has done a huge amount more than discover some old historical documents.
Perhaps it should be political, to some extent, assuming a well-educated public that understands why studying infectious disease outbreaks, earthquake seismology and patterns, historical drought/flood patterns, etc. is important.
However, if control of funding of scientific research is taken over by specific sectors - fossil fuel interests, established depression treatment interests, mortgage security interests, etc. - then one can expect low-quality science resulting in an academic system where the willingness to fudge data to please one's corporate owners on their next-quarter stock profile becomes more important than scientific rigor, in terms of career advancement.
That's how Soviet biological academics worked under the control of Lysenko for about three decades... just replace Lysenko with Wall Street and you have the current American research program.
There are other ways for science to be political than that:
Source: https://libguides.umn.edu/antiracismlens
===
Learn the racist history of statistics
Francis Galton, Karl Pearson, and Ronald Fisher are three of the statisticians who established the fundamental basis and techniques of modern statistics, and they were all eugenicists. There is a modern discourse on the racist history of statistics and data collection methodology, and a number of books published:
Thicker than blood: how racial statistics lie (sociology)
Weapons of math destruction (mathematics)
White logic, white methods: racism and methodology (sociology)So if science does what it always does (trying to find truth in hard questions that matter) and suddenly someone starts complaining about it being "political", one should also consider that it might not be science that changed, but the relationship political actors have with the truth.
Example: If you are the head of the flat-earth party any science reporting the earth as sphere-like would seem political (or even criminal) to you. But this would have nothing to do with science — and all to do with the mismatch between your believes and the reality out there.
This is far from accurate. Sure you can pick a strawman example, but in reality questions can be posed and useful irregardless of what the politics are at the time.
That's where you're off into Error Land. Increasing knowledge is the only legitimate goal of science. If you wanted to benefit society, you should have gone into a different line of work.
Should we build a super collider in Texas or a space telescope at the sun-earth L2 point?
There are many factors when considering what science to fund, but if society is footing the bill then the expected benefit to society should be a big part of the decision.
According to some, not according to others. There is no consensus on what science is. Prominent philosophers like Foucault say science is a power-confirming tool first, and therefore definitely political.
It's like that Debt book from David Graeber where in the beginning he talks about how it is odd that paying debts is supposed to be good moral behaviour as if taking on business risk and failing is a decision that people make voluntarily. It is especially strange because lenders slap on a risk premium on top of their loans because they are fully aware that some are going to default.
Can you summarize why Foucault thought the application of the scientific method to empirical questions is “power-confirming first?” If that’s not what he meant by science then what was he specifically referring to?
He was an actual communist who thought of everything in terms of "the struggle." Scientists (etc.) are respectable? They must be oppressing people.
EDIT replying to sub comment (I am once again rate limited)
Indeed he literally wrote an essay called “On the ruthless criticism of everything existing” which argued against the French socialists who came up with prescriptions rather than solid critiques. Marxism isn’t about communism, it’s about criticising capitalism. That’s why he spent so little time talking about communism. That would be like a slave or a serf wondering what might come next. A strong scientific (in the German sense) critique was his project
context, man. it matters.
So by observation of actual occurrence Foucault means ignoring the entire history of science radically improving living conditions and extending lifespans for the previous centuries and instead conflating it with Nazis? That explains a lot.
And Foucault is only "prominent" for people who can't do science, or really anything else useful.
Ok, thanks for your opinion i guess.
Whether that means political or apolitical is hard to assess. I would say that the aspiration either way might be good for your own work, but shouldn't be used to judge the scientific work of others.
And who are you, so wise in the ways of science, to decide what the only legitimate goal of science can be?
Science, technology, none of these exists in a vacuum. People, even academics, have a life outside of their work. What affects that life affects what they work on as well. It's only natural.
The public perception of science, though, is not dictated by scholarly journals. It's what's discussed on the nightly news or seen in the Facebook news feed, and that often comes with a helping of politics.
We're also seeing a recent uptick in criticism (and also suspicion) of "elites", and academics are generally lumped into that bucket.
And then COVID happened, making everybody an armchair epidemilogist overnight. You could see this play out on Twitter, where accounts with large followings with no previous professed statistical experience started sharing non-peer-reviewed study after study, often drawing inaccurate conclusions.
Scientists continue on, but there's absolutely no putting the genie back in the bottle. Science is political, and we need (a hopefully small number of) scientists to get some decent media training and start explaining their work to the general public.
I saw lots of people sharing studies, including before peer review, I mostly didn't see anybody come to a substantively different conclusion from the authors after like the first few months of pandemic confusion had cleared up. I found scepticism and DIY science very helpful this pandemic especially when things were more chaotic.
Stress a lack of evidence (at that time)? Sure.
Stress that N-95 and KN-95 masks must be reserved for hospital workers, and possibly even pre-press banning their sale under emergency commandeering measures? I think we can all guess why that didn't fly politically (it would require admitting there was a serious pandemic).
The public should never be 'lied to' nor 'ticked' (which the people I've spoken with mostly assume was happening with that initial mask stance) and should be treated as adults, possibly ones without a full set of information from expert matters on a subject.
Usa and other Western European countries were much slower to adopt.
When there are discrepancies in the global adoption, then one can look into political factors.
Also studies from SARS back in 2000 convincingly showed that masks worked.
Masks and Vaccines are 2 massively misunderstood things during the pandemic.
When I was at school (New Zealand) we learned that vaccines help give the immune system the information to fight a virus. But people in America and Europe have this idea that vaccine is like a shield that prevents you from getting sick entirely and then claims vaccines don’t work…
I never understood the "masks are useless" claims. I've seen it in lots of forms, sometimes covering all types of masks or sometimes just cloth ones.
We've spent so long teaching people to cover their mouths when they cough specifically because it's been proven to help! We teach little kids to "Vampire Cough/Sneeze" for that very reason. Literally anything you put in front of your virus spewing face hole is going to do some good, but since N95 masks aren't 100% effective every single time it's not worth doing anything to protect the people around you? It really just seems like people looking for any excuse or justification to not be inconvenienced in any way for the benefit of the people around them. Like a very aggressive kind of selfishness I can't wrap my head around. Like people will hurt themselves to avoid doing anything that might help somebody else.
I think though that it’s extremely obvious that it’s very likely the general public could take certain actions to make the efficacy of their mask use similar to that of medical professionals, but the interpretation of the data early on was simply “the general public shouldn’t use masks”. This was obviously nonsense, and I interpreted the data as meaning I should carefully use masks.
No they have not. That's why you think it's weird - if you look at the state of mask science pre 2020, you will find a whole lot of nothing. There's no evidence masks have ever been able to stop respiratory disease.
After 2020 the space was flooded with nonsensical studies claiming efficacy but they all have rather large and obvious problems e.g. CIs that include zero or even worse problems, but the reason scientists pretty universally pooh-poohd at masks at the start had nothing to do with shortages. That was a lie retconned into their claims later and wow, was it ever successful at confusing people. No, they said that because there was no actual scientific evidence to point to. There still isn't.
"it’s like yes it wasn’t about preventing you from getting sick, it’s reducing a sick person from spreading"
The idea of a magical one way mask is also completely unsupported by any scientific evidence and in fact by now strongly refuted by it, because there is lots of evidence masks have no effect on COVID. It was invented out of nothing to justify forcing everyone to wear masks even if the risk to them was minimal to none.
"But people in America and Europe have this idea that vaccine is like a shield that prevents you from getting sick entirely and then claims vaccines don’t work"
Yes I wonder why they think that, after all, they were only told the vaccine was a shield against getting sick and spreading it by the guy who runs Pfizer, the president of the USA, public health officials in every country, etc. People are so totally unreasonable, aren't they? But I see from a sibling comment you weren't aware of that, so why are you so confident about all the other things you think you know?
There’s a reason why China was buying up all the masks and such and shipping it all back in the early days.
But seems like I’ve struck a nerve from someone who probably is anti mask anti vax.
Clearly you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Which makes sense since you don’t even read the studies you claim “prove masks don’t work”
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2021-07-21/ap-...
And then you get Whitty and his infamous 4000 deaths per day graph.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8908503/Was-lockdow...
The bet being wrong is a separate matter to whether or not it was reasonable. Conversely, I would argue the early anti-mask messaging was unreasonable based on similar logic (well bounded and low costs, potentially high benefits).
The conclusion that I know some people took away from it is that critical thinking is not an evolutionarily favored trait in certain administrative roles.
The wisdom of locking down toddlers and children for years on end was also a spot where the uppity rubes were correct and all the science wizards were disastrously incorrect.
Unfortunately we can't train 100% of people to understand all the science that gets published. That's why scientists need to learn to trust each other and communicate to the public as a single body, not as individual scientists. How they are going to do that, that's internal to the body of scientists. Politics has broken scientific unity, fix it.
That's a laudable goal. You will never, never get any body of scientists, or any other class of people, to agree on their overall goals for society, so if science IS indeed political, you've lost already.
On the other hand, if they only have to agree on what the data and logic tell us, that's still hard, but it's much closer to being achievable. It requires everyone to take a deep breath and say "I might be wrong but this is what I think, and here's why." And then listen.
If you ("you" being a scientist) are explicit that your "science" is in service of your political agenda, then you've accomplished this:
Anyone who disagrees with your agenda will reject your "science"
As we saw with vaccines & lockdowns.
On the other hand, if they trust you to just report what the data says, even when you don't like it, then you have a chance of not being vilified.
So there you have it: if you want to stand above the Twitter mob and be believed, you have to earn back the public's trust.
I'm immediately reminded of how deeply skewed towards treatment (rather than curing) pharmaceutical research is, because of our economic structure.
It's a convenient "just so" story people who don't work in bioscience love, told with all the certainty of "did you know you swallow 8 spiders a year on average".
I don’t disagree that most science is pretty non political. But it’s also true that the contact surface that a large swath of America has with “science” is through publications like Scientific American, scientists who go on TV, social “scientists,” etc.
(Isn’t it funny how you never see article headlines talking about how post-modern philosophy was invented by white people?)
I’m not making a gratuitous reference to critical theory by the way. Your example illustrates the problem. According to critical theory, “Jews are white.” So where does your example fit in? Also, math as a field is full of Indian and Chinese people. How does it make sense to label it “white?” Under critical theory, it’s “white” because Black people are underrepresented. Critical theory compels a mode of analysis that groups people a certain way, focuses on certain kinds of discrimination or power relationships to the exclusion of others, and all for distinctly political reasons.
That's probably not true. Based on the charts here [1], it is safe to say that at least 20-30% of successful NSF grant applications have political/ideological terms used in the abstract.
Maybe more importantly, it's really hard to know how much research isn't being done or published because of the current political climate.
> And then COVID happened, making everybody an armchair epidemilogist overnight.
Well, I don't see that as a bad thing. Blind trust in authority isn't an admirable quality in my books. Also, the other option really was to become an armchair epistemologist. You had to somehow make decisions.
> Science is political
But it shouldn't be. At least not this much. We have choice to encourage or discourage that.
[1]: https://www.cspicenter.com/p/increasing-politicization-and-h...
Science is political because the organizations and institutions that fund/support science decide which scientific studies get funded/supported, and the outcome of the scientific process often affects the legitimacy of those organizations' and instutitions'.
The statement "objectivity is a tool of white supremacy" is generally used to refer to asserting confidently objective truth exists, which is more of a philosophical statement than a refutation of the scientific method like it's often framed.
The use of perceived objectivity to enforce linear thinking and silence people who react emotionally is why this comes up in the literature you're referring to. You wouldn't tell someone crying at the death of a loved one that crying isn't an objective response to the situation at hand, but this happens in many ways ("why are you so upset about X behavior from a colleague? -> you are behaving irrationally" rather than trying to understand why someone was upset, and knowing everyone reacts to things differently)
This is a topic on science and the example about someone crying over someone's death is a strange example. It's clear that if it wants to be called "science" then it has to have what you call linear (vs circular?) thinking. And yes there is an objective truth as far as what experience can measure.
Saying "everyone reacts to things differently" is a truism. Then what? As everyone reacts differently, the logical result is to IGNORE the emotional/irrational part of people when we deal about science/technology. As simple as that.
I don't read it quite this like. “science” concepts still have emotional impacts on people, especially when many things outside "hard" science get framed as science — think about all the management advice that gets passed around as objective fact (that also changes every few years, oops!).
it's not arguing about the truth of how many electrons are in a carbon atom, it's your boss arguing that they have a "scientifically proven" management philosophy that is objective. would you believe someone if they said that? even if they showed you a study?
It's "hewed", not "hued"
What the hell? The literal process of science is conflict. It’s not a bad thing. It’s the sorting out of which ideas are most accurate and most useful for answering questions. Edit: gob help me I’ll just say “dialectic”. I’ll take whatever is incoming for saying it.
I'd rather take up the second point, namely that the author almost takes it as a given that politicized science is bad. He puts forward this idea that science ought to be bureaucratic, ideally all scientists ought to be disinterested, universalist, apolitical monks who try to improve reproducibility, and so on.
To chain science to objectivity or to any kind of formulaic process may help everyone to agree on results, but it impedes the evolution of the scientific process (or better, processes) itself. There's nothing wrong with methods that in different places drift into different directions, because overall this makes for a more competitive field of methodologies. in fact something even as stupid as Lysenkoism serves a purpose, it's in itself part of the scientific map of ideas that need to be discovered before they could be disregarded.
So if you want to do insular corporate science, and someone wants to do militaristic science, and someone else wants to do cooperative 'objective science', all of this is valid and in fact useful, not despite, but because it creates conflict. To do ideological science is simply to run an experiment on the scientific method itself, it's what Feyerabend called 'epistemic anarchism' which he identified as the only thing that avoids limiting the potential of science.
Sorry, there, but "objectivity" is not up for debate. Unless you subscribe to the woo-woo "different ways of knowing" crap.
The scientific method is not up for debate.
> To do ideological science is simply to run an experiment on the scientific method itself, it's what Feyerabend called 'epistemic anarchism' which he identified as the only thing that avoids limiting the potential of science.
"the potential of science": Berkeley nonsense. It's too bad he didn't just stick with Popper, who'll be around long after he's forgotten.
It really obviously is up for debate, all the way from the fundamental question of whether objective knowledge is accessible at all, to things like the measurement problem in quantum mechanics
"obviously" to you, I guess. Not to anyone else who realizes that life expectancy beyond 30 and absence of periodic famines with mass starvation is the result of objectivity.
> whether objective knowledge is accessible at all
How to make steel, plumb our houses, cure our bacterial infections, and bring A/C power to them is not knowledge that's "accessible to all." Most of us are happy that someone somewhere knows how to do those things. That's called "division of labor."
> whether objective knowledge is accessible at all
Kind of like the missing link in the fossil record which causes creationists to say "Look! Darwin was wrong!": quantum mechanics is the difficult-to-understand problem giving an easy out to people who don't believe in science anyway. Give it a rest.
"At all" is equally fatuous, though. The philosophical problem of whether objective knowledge is attainable was settled centuries ago. "How do you really know that Einstein's Relativity is valid?" is something that was settled when its predictions were borne out. If there are still questions about it, those will be settled by more science.
Not chaining the scientific process to objectivity might improve the evolution of scientific processes, but it won’t really bring the world any good as of now. Objectivity, as nebulous as it can be sometimes, is reliable enough at aligning what we think the world is and what it actually is. Plus, having competitive methodologies would just create silos of scientists all working on their own “science is X” methods, with nothing binding them all together. And how would you get someone who believes ‘science should be X’ to listen to someone who believes ‘science should be Y’?
Maybe if we’re on a new planet, an ‘epistemic anarchy’ is worth trying, but not on Earth, where the objectivity train is full speed ahead on an Ouroboros track.
A layman’s perspective: While not necessarily because of politics, the replication crisis had made some, if not many, people very skeptical of psychology research and maybe the whole scientific enterprise as whole. Whenever someone brought up anything about science, they’ll link to some news about the replication crisis or some other flaws of the science, followed by preaching about how much of a sham science can be.
It’s not that skeptics don’t think there’s value in science. They might believe in science as a theory but not in its application. Evaluating the application of science can be very difficult and time-consuming especially for a layman. If the application of science is as flawless as its theory, we can just read the abstract and be done with it. But that’s not the reality, and people are expected to have a bevy of skills to read scientific papers. When they don’t have the skills and try to share their interpretation of the papers, you can expect someone criticising them (normally with a very adversarial tone) because of their incompetence, ignorance, blindness, biasses, etc. Because of the difficulty and intellectual battleground surrounding scientific paper discussions, some people would rather take the default route of not caring about or even denigrate science; the replication crisis is the best they could’ve hoped for to justify and bolster their positions.
The progressiveness espoused by the author shouldn’t be limited to scientists. Anyone interacting with science should try to read scientific papers even if they’re not some hotshot supposedly unbiased scientists. Similar to the scientists, non-scientists should also try to improve their objectivity, and not think that they should be supremely objective before they can read anything.
People who are part of the dominant group (often rich, white, WASP, male in American history) do stuff that is biased.
People try to remove that bias.
The first group attacks that as "political" because when they do it, they don't consider it political.
"Political correctness" is what the other side does, not hounding the Dixie Chicks for speaking out against war.
"Identity politics" is something only minorities do, not the KKK etc.
Now, political science is bad when they do it, we don't do political science, please ignore the several hundred years of history behind the curtain.
This whole argument is the "red team" strategy that the Trump admin was pushing for climate change, and previously "teach the controversy" in evolution. It's just stalling from people who have lost the argument presented as balance.
- Blur the distinction between non-credible fringe groups and some of the most credentialed institutions around so you can play the underdog
- Ascribe all actions taken in name of minorities as the express wishes of those minorities, even if they are ineffective or destructive
- Frame it as redress for hundred years of "history" (read: the specific grievances of North American colonialism)
- Wrap it all up in a blue=good red=bad American apple pie with a Trump bow while simultaneously deriding others for being too set in their ways
There are colleges that are demanding _diversity and inclusion loyalty pledges_ with adherence to a _specific socio-political agenda_, and you think "science is political" is just stalling from people who have lost perspective?
The American left is insane and delusional.
Anyything that does not try to its best to be like that would be something else to me, honestly. So no, science is not political, it would be more tied to politics philosophy itself. But it looks it could be convenient for some to promote people to believe that. This article seems to push in that direction.
And because of that, science is political. Or at least, how we talk about science is.
But science itself (in its aspirational form) isn’t political. Back when I was in the lab, one of the most accomplished things you could do is prove an existing theory wrong - that was the very definition of scientific progress.
It got Semmelweis put into an insane asylum by his fellow academics and beat to death. And everyone remembering Pasteur instead of him. That was his reward for being correct and saving mothers and their babies -- with his unhinged conspiratorial idea of "washing yor hands is good".
Wow. You're really not. Let me give it a go.
Bias can never be eliminated, but it can be overcome by a greater commitment: the commitment to truth. We commit to pursue the evidence wherever it leads, because we believe that the truth is of such great and ultimate benefit and significance that this overwhelms any personal or political inconvenience. We will be the first ones to say what no one in our generation wants to hear, but what the next generation will be glad we uncovered, as has been the role of so many of our forefathers, heroes in the past. Though my peers abandon me and seek to bury the inconvenient out of fear of the consequences or desire to manipulate, I will tell the truth because I trust my fellow man to always make the best decisions with the benefit of full and accurate knowledge. We will not blink, and we will not lie, and we will not allow professional ambition, personal benefit, or cherished beliefs to overpower our sacred trust as humanity's best line of defense against ignorance and lies.
The biggest risk factor for transmission is bad ventilation and the biggest comorbidity is age.
So they weren't really wrong, and people at the time encouraged other political and entertainment events to be held outside to reduce risk.
Except that public health experts, at least on CNN, didn’t run with “outside activists involving young people are pretty safe.” They could have done that, but instead they framed the carve-out expressly in terms of “we think protests are really important.” This was early in the pandemic, when we were still ragging on Florida for not shutting down beaches and shutting down school sports.
CNN/mainstream media have so many people on that say different things and get re-reported by other stations. Plenty of people on TV at the time were discouraging protests. I think you just remember what made you feel angry.
See also: https://www.upworthy.com/public-health-experts-defend-antira... (“More than 1200 public health experts, infectious disease professionals, and community stakeholders have signed onto an open letter explaining why they support anti-racism protests happening across the country despite the potential risk of coronavirus spread.”)
I want to charitably understand your opinion here. Do you feel they should have kept quiet about their political views because as public health experts or epidemiologists they must remain neutral or else sully the fields as biased as a whole?
Clearly, such people aren't scientists and never were. What was more interesting/depressing was the total lack of outrage coming from academia. Ritchie observes that biologists in particular seem to have serious problems with communist ideology to the extent that they advertise it on Twitter, and in the UK (where he's from) somehow the official SAGE advisory group ended up with someone on it who is a literal member of the Communist Party of Great Britain! We can infer that academia was silent about this massive perversion of science because they agree with it or at least don't disagree enough to speak out, meaning that public health research in general is nonsensical.
I actively supported the 2020 protests and still think that it was the right choice for people to make. But the way press coverage skirted the issue of COVID was despicable to watch, especially after they (rightly) devastated similar pro-Trump gatherings.
I don't want my news to not tell me that it's unsafe to go because they have a political agenda. I want them to tell me that it's unsafe, and then I will decide based on my politics.
Rather, the argument here is that the reason they turned on a dime with the position, which was, to remind you, explicitly about the topic of the protest, and not them being outside, shows quite clearly that they will gladly put political consideration above scientific ones. This means that you cannot trust in their integrity in other contexts either, especially ones where their recommendations just so happen to match their political proclivities.
As a result, the credibility and trust their predecessors have earned over last century, are gone with the wind.
Stick to doing the one thing you're meant to be doing. We don't need a dozen organizations to be chasing whatever is popular right now - poorly - we need organizations that follow the course regardless of what happens.
I don't think this is really a problem as long as they aren't being hypocritical. If a web browser company wants to make "outreach for women" (whatever that means) something they strive for that's perfectly fine unless it undermines their other goals.
Telling people in the middle of a pandemic to gather in large groups for chanting and screaming is a bad look for an origination whose purpose is to promote people's health. If Mozilla went around looking for ways to encourage women to take an interest in open source browser development that could easily support their interests.
There isn't a problem if the violence to women orgs start spending half their budget on building a good open source browser. Otherwise there is very much a problem.
Climate change is used as a bat to hit poor people in the head politically. The politics come from the left.
Climate change has nothing to do with right or left, or any other way people use to paint things black and white.
I am sure the poor people who are suffering through the droughts in Europe, floods in Pakistan, increased erosion in Senegal and the hottest ever temperatures in Death Valley would disagree.
Climate change is happening and the science has been ignored for far too long.
My point is, anecdotal evidence is not meaningful for something as multifaceted as world climate.
The point is that the costs to adapt to this change will be in the trillions and be disproportionally felt by the poorest in our society.
Hence it is a change we should avoid where possible.
False. Some people are saying the world will end and humanity will be wiped away.
I personally believe there may be more truth to that statement than many wish to believe, but not as a direct result of climate change itself. Rather, it's much more likely that the growing stupidity and political polarization surrounding climate change (and many other "hot-button" topics) will drive humanity to the ultimate stupidity of another World War, which these days can absolutely be a life-ending (on a planetary scale) path to go down, considering the types of "mass destruction" weapons the mad-men in power these days have access to.
We still can, but we could have too.
But right now cost wise it's massively uncompetitive with solar/wind + storage.
Then why are energy prices rising in every grid the more renewables it uses?
It's also possible that some investments in renewables will take time to pay off, like any investment in new infrastructure. I'd expect the same thing if some area built a brand new coal plant. (Ideally these costs are buffered out by some kind of financial instrument so rate-payers don't get hit by it all at once.)
Solar power is actually quite cheap. Storage can be cheap or expensive depending on whether it's done with pumped hydro (where geography allows) or chemical batteries.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-14/renewable...
Look no further than the 2008 Hadley CRU "climategate" leak.
Edit: The leak actually happened in November 2009. The file you're looking for is "FOI2009.zip".
Further reading:
https://www.newsweek.com/factcheck-climategate-doesnt-refute...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_c...
https://science.slashdot.org/story/10/07/02/1433246/climateg...
https://www.factcheck.org/2010/04/some-climategate-conclusio...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_E._Mann#Controversy_ov...
https://skepticalscience.com/Kevin-Trenberth-travesty-cant-a...
The only encouraging finding was “no outright scientific fraud”.
I haven't read all the reports yet, but it was good to see all of them ended up at that same conclusion. I'm sure there are people who would complain about the amount of time, money, and effort that went into investigating, but I'm glad there was so much scrutiny from so many different eyes.
https://www.rossmckitrick.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/climat...
1. How could a climatologist be an outsider? Climatologists are by definition not outsiders when criticizing climatology.
2. Why is working for a conservative think tank a conflict of interest? There are no such conflicts. If you think there are then, well, academia is well known to be dominated by people on the left, is that also a conflict of interest? If so then you have to write off most of climatology.
3. The whole problem climategate exposed is that "actual experts" are manipulating the scientific process to ensure that anyone who disagrees with their claims can't get published, and therefore gets labelled as "not an expert" and kicked out of the institutions. That's why the only people who can properly actually openly criticize that edifice are those entirely outside the sphere of government run science - but that fact is then used to write off anything they have to say. Do you therefore recognize that the argument you're making here is a circular one?
4. Given that, do you agree that climatologists are by definition conflicted - if they were to admit they had been manipulating the scientific process as was shown by the climategate emails, they would lose status, power, influence and quite possibly open themselves up to prosecution. They will obviously never do that.
Also, "scientists are human"? What the emails showed is that scientists were willing to totally distort the scientific process to ensure their claims won the day even in the face of contradictory evidence. If you blow off terribly unscientific behavior with "they're only human" then you can't be upset when people decide they aren't really scientists and can safely be ignored.
That doesn't even include the possibility of storm surges that far exceed that, which are expected to become more frequent/extreme.
"A study simulating analogous conditions to the Dust Bowl drought in today’s agriculture suggests that Dust Bowl-type droughts today would have unprecedented consequences, with yield losses about 50% larger than the severe drought of 2012 (Glotter and Elliott 2016). Damages at these extremes are highly sensitive to temperature, worsening by about 25% with each degree centigrade of warming. By mid-century, over 80% of summers are projected to have average temperatures that are likely to exceed the hottest summer in the Dust Bowl years (1936)"
I can continue if you like.
I read many of the climate-gate emails. At worst you could claim there were a few cases where scientists were applying techniques to paint their research results in a more favourable light than it might otherwise appear.
1. I don't live near the sea.
2. I won't be alive in the year 2100.
3. RCP8.5 is a ridiculous scenario that assumes, amongst other things, that all renewable power is demolished and coal usage increases 500%. Even the BBC has debunked this one, reporting that researchers no long consider this scenario plausible:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51281986
The fact that you're citing it indicates you aren't really that well informed about this stuff.
4. Even if that did happen, a 1m or even 3m rise that happens over the course of more than 100 years isn't going to cause anyone to suddenly have to evacuate their home whilst grabbing tin cans. That's pure Hollywood. People would simply build sea defenses.
5. The whole point of climategate was that it showed scientists were exaggerating their predictions, so quoting those same predictions as an argument against the emails is nonsensical and circular.
"At worst you could claim there were a few cases where scientists were applying techniques to paint their research results in a more favourable light than it might otherwise appear."
That's distinctly underplaying the seriousness of what was going on (and probably still is).
There are reports that many scientists involved in the IPCC report have been deliberately understating the case for more extreme outcomes too. No doubt both behaviours occur - again, we're all human, and the scientific method is the best (imperfect) way we have of ensuring such claims don't unduly influence our best scientific understanding.
Do you really honestly believe we'd be better off simply ignoring the IPCC report and not worry about fossil fuel emissions at all just because there may have been a few exaggerated data points published?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email...
> When co-anchor Katie Couric asked Al Gore on the May 24, 2006 Today show “What do you see happening in 15 to 20 years if nothing changes?…Even Manhattan would be in deep water”, he replied: “Yes, in fact the World Trade Center Memorial site would be underwater.”
> New York City is highly vulnerable to flooding from coastal storms due to its intensively used waterfront and its extensive coastal geography. Floods have the potential to destroy homes and businesses, impair infrastructure, and threaten human safety. With climate change and sea level rise, these risks are expected to increase in the future, but will most adversely affect low-lying neighborhoods.
- https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/plans-stud...
Looks like he was correct about the increased risks from storm surges et al as a result of climate change.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1893_New_York_hurricane
https://www.weather.gov/okx/1938HurricaneHome
https://www.nytimes.com/1976/08/10/archives/hurricane-donna-...
etc etc etc
If we are that generous in interpreting him everything he says then becomes non-falsifiable.
Trying to talk your way out an prediction that was clearly false just makes it look even worse.
If his prediction does come true and someone says “but you said BAU but we actually cut emissions”, everyone will wave hands around saying “that doesn’t really matter the prediction was accurate”.
Heads you win, tails you win.
You are being dishonest.
He was relaying his understanding of the general predictions he'd been told and took things a little too literally on an accelerated time scale.
Increasingly underwater increasingly frequently as storm surges increase and mean water levels increase leading to greater extremes is a complicated sound bite.
"New York will be underwater" is simpler and turned out to be true in a literal sense.
I literally have zero knowledge of what he has said, I'm not in the US, I didn't watch his film, and I wouldn't watch a US political figure for an explaination of anything technical when there are better and more primary sources.
It's a lot more worrisome when you have scientists taking money to falsify data or faking results to push their own political agenda. We expect politicians to lie to us, but when science does it that risks setting back our collective understanding of the world we live in and can keep us from the truth for a very long time.
He is a liar and also a sexual predator, but he some how escaped #MeToo.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2010/07/why-the-masseuse-s-...
https://tunza.eco-generation.org/file/kilimanjaro-melting.jp...
Let's face it, both the left and the right politicize science. The left sometimes does it when it comes to biological sex (conflating gender and sex), intelligence testing (saying they're next to useless), genetic determinism (saying all outcomes are environmental), GMOs, nuclear energy safety, sociology (denying impact of culture on outcomes). The right can do it when it comes to gender identity, GMOs, climate change, stem cells, intelligence testing (race realism), sociology (thinking it's all culture and not racism), creationism, anti-vax and public health.
Nobody has a monopoly on politicization of science. The problem is that the right's politicization is, in the current moment, more dangerous. Covid denial and social acceptance of vaccine hesitancy has killed hundreds of thousands. Climate change denial threatens the entire world.
How should we govern ourselves? By understanding the world. Forming theories and testing them. Developing models that can predict the future. Peer review. Following the data where it leads us. Controlling for variables. And on and on and on.
Said another way - there are people who are actively fighting a scientific understanding of the world, in declaring how we should govern ourselves. Please, be careful to not sound like you're on their side. Because they're so painfully wrong.
Science has the ability to self-correct and get to the truth, but that takes time and money and the ones with the most money are more interested in pushing whatever lies are needed to preserve their power.
Informed by science, absolutely. I think the point here though is that science is inherently amoral (meaning without judgement). For a mundane non-political example, Science may say: If we ban skiing the outcome will be fewer people dying in accidents. It takes a politician to assess the effects of making that decision in the context of societal values (freedom, privacy etc).
Science should not be prescriptive, only descriptive. It cannot weigh its descriptions against the values of a society or people.
These are all performed by humans. And yes, the risk vs the reward is an inherently political discussion, but science is performed by scientists and they are welcome to say, "the model says if we do X, then Y will happen, and I think we should avoid that at all costs."
Maybe I should have gone for a more direct metaphor. An epidemiologist may say - if we institute martial law we can cut Covid deaths by X. Most in society would not make that trade, some would. Knowing the facts in a matter is vital but the society makes that judgement call (via representatives in a representative democracy), not science, not scientists (except inasmuch as they participate in the democracy).
Should representatives pay particular attention to scientists?
If all else were equal, and one candidate said scientists cannot be trusted, and the other one said we should look to science to guide us, which candidate would you rather vote for?
> How should our representatives try to form an informed understanding about the world around them, and make predictions about the consequences of various courses of action?
Through science
> Should representatives pay particular attention to scientists?
Certainly, my first comment was that politics should absolutely be informed by science.
> If all else were equal, and one candidate said scientists cannot be trusted, and the other one said we should look to science to guide us, which candidate would you rather vote for?
The latter obviously.
I think substack should be banned completely from HN.
But that’s because the right has become synonymous with, or at least tacitly supports, insane racists, fascists, bigots and more unpleasant adjectives. You can be pedantic about our wording and try and slide the issue but the data is there.
There are plenty of issues where you can have multiple sides or perspectives and want to allow debate. But that is not what is happening.
If there is any hope for those hoping anti-intellectualism won't come for them, remember that current resentment appears to be primarily reserved for the rich ( I have a very unscientific way of determining the current sentiment ).
The educated. (Example: Making a criminal out of Dr. Fauci)
It’s the educated that resent the rich.
By the way, those “resentful 33%,” in their own way, are not wrong. I saw a YouTube of what a young woman did when home from college. She sat in a cramped enclosed office, 20 feet off the ground with a narrow 18” (450mm) shelf with three crappy looking PC’s. She was plowing about 100 acres of farmland, riding in this combine. If farming can be automated to this degree, of course manufacturing can.
That's the explanation for the phenomenon, but it doesn't mean I have sympathy for these people. They are perpetuating white supremacy and domination without realizing it. I simply wish our culture didn't create such a hostile climate for white men for purely pragmatic downstream reasons (i.e. I don't want fascism), as well as for egalitarian realism (i.e. race essentialism is wrong, even when directed at white people).
Regarding trade: such people aren't entitled to my trade or business. If I want to buy something from a Chinese person, that is my right, and they have no right to interfere with that.
There's no science that is safe.