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Comment by oceanplexian | Hacker News Reader

“This is a very powerful adversarial force that is seeking to undermine science, and now it’s not only going after the science. It’s going after the scientists,” he says.

It's not appropriate to use the word "science" here.

People aren't attacking Geologists nor is there is an uprising against Quantum Physicists. It's the ones who lied to the public and pushed for mandates and heavy-handed lockdowns that negatively impacted the economy and caused a great deal of harm. Those scientists will need to work a bit harder if they expect to regain the public trust.

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A big reason to fund science is that it's relevant to public policy. You aren't going to get great advice if every scientist fears a storm of death threats for saying something unpopular.

Science is corrupted by funding. Scientists are people and people are swayed by influence, power, and politics. Any advice we get has to be understood in that context.

We don't get "great advice" regardless of whether scientists are held accountable.

You think things are bad, so you just accept it getting worse?

Notably, they said "the science" which has nothing to do with science. "The science", as I've seen it used, is almost always an appeal to authority and has very little to do with the scientific method.

So maybe their statement is accurate: people aren't mad at science, they're mad at the science -- the authoritarian technocratic regime that locked everyone inside for a year and force-fed them a "safe and effective" vaccine the next.

Are you seriously arguing that vaccines don't work?

Not sure how that was your conclusion. To be clear: I'm a fan of vaccines. I'm not a fan of a rushed experimental vaccine forced on a populace through government and corporate tyranny.

You're portraying it like the police burst into your home, and forcefully injected you with a completely untested vaccine.

The reality is, of course, an extremely boring public health campain. Plenty of people just opted out.

Many people would lose their jobs if they refused by "opting out", and many people did. Kissing your job goodbye, in a pandemic, where the government forcefully shuttered many business, was not some free choice to make.

Top google search, but I suggest you look into this more, since your perspective is far disconnected from reality: https://www.npr.org/2021/10/24/1047947268/covid-vaccine-work...

We all lived through it. We know what happened. I've likely even seen that exact article before.

Your original portrayal remains exaggerated.

That was my first interaction with you. I just wanted to point out how it was financially forced for many people. Being here, I suspect you, like I, had a choice. It's really bending reality to say everyone had that choice in any sort of equal capacity. Again, you should really look into this more. Your experience, clearly, does not match the reality of many others.

Applologies, didn't pay enough attention to the username.

Don't ignore the rest. To save you effort, I'm a totally new person. Don't just apologize. You didn't acknowledge completely valid points.

Your misrepresentation deserves attention as well. Weasel arguments like this are so annoying to observe.

'Be the whole bitch.' I want you to realize you were on shit ground to begin with. The wrong person getting your ire is a distraction.

You went off on the slightest bit of hyperbole. The claim wasn't wrong, people were forced by the government and their employers to comply.

If you didn't want to suddenly risk your life being turned over, you had to participate in a grand social experiment. Individual risk assessment be damned.

Every reader deserves an apology for you, and now, me.

I'll close with an anecdote, why I care so much. I'm the un-monitored control group. I had absolutely no risk to the disease. Young, able bodied, living/working remotely in the woods for years.

Yet, to maintain employment and frankly, my standard of living, I had to endure additional risk. Because someone else has risk? How did this help?

I can't edit now, but to add/clarify... When I say no risk - I really mean it. I have receipts. I was a shut-in before it was cool. I participate in society only as much as I have to - employment, bills, voting, whatever.

To be direct: I don't generally go out and do things. I sleep, work, and pay. Complete subsistence.

My frustration comes from the imposition when I've already moved myself so far away, in every sense.

To be sporting I contracted it/recovered before the vaccine. As you can probably tell, I'm not worried about my own outcome. It wasn't that bad.

I could've handled the immaculate infection received in isolation. Without that, and being pulled back into society for the jab, I couldn't have infected anyone.

The point is plenty of us couldn't opt out, when really, we could - with the powers that be having the slightest bit of grace, tact, or whatever.

That's the problem. It was ham-fisted. That's politics. Once objectified, reason went out the window. End of.

An excellent case for the road to hell being paved with good intentions. This isn't singular; others and myself have all told 'nitwit005' similar stories.

I'm getting various numbers from different sources on this. Some sources claim 70% of the US population are vaccinated, some say as high as 81%. Whichever it is, it was a minority of people that had the ability to opt out. I suspect a significant number of those who got the vaccination did so under duress. The coercion used in this campaign often threatened peoples' livelihoods and ability to travel, among other things.

Personally, I was lucky enough to have a job which did not require vaccination, and I was able to avoid anything that required a vaccination card up until restrictions were lifted. I'm grateful the "vaccine passport" was never brought to fruition during this period of time. I think they realized they pushed too hard with that one and pulled back. I suspect they'll try again eventually though.

But it was just like that, depending on the country! I was forced to "vax" by my employer. The police would have come into my home if I would have for example had people over, since that was illegal. It was illegal for me to go outside for a walk - alone. And I would have been sued for that. I was not allowed in some doctors offices - although I pay about 1K per month. And so on...

The last time humanity forced something like that, the world later came together and executed those in charge. And I'll never stop being furious that this is now being swept under the rug. Inhuman crimes happened

You know that mRNA vaccines have been in development, testing, and use long before COVID happened? that's part of the reason it could be deployed so fast.

Yes, I'm aware of mRNA and its history. I'm also aware of Moderna and the purpose of their existence. The covid vaccine was the first approved and widely deployed mRNA vaccine, and R&D is a far cry from injecting such a substance into human beings on the scale of billions.

I'm pretty sure I test my software more than they tested that particular vaccine before deployment, and I personally don't like the idea of being a guinea pig.

Define the word vaccine.

Yes. "The science" has become a religion for many.

That's not how science is supposed to work.

Agreed. This had absolutely nothing to do with science. This is entirely people who abused their authority in politics and are hoping someone else will save them.

>Those scientists will need to work a bit harder if they expect to regain the public trust.

These harassed scientists didn't understand politics, went deep and damaged public trust to an extreme degree. They are now repeating their consequences.

People are attacking the CSIRO, Australia's public science body, over their recent report stating nuclear power in Australia made no economic or evironmental sense .. nothing could come online prior to 2040 and in the meantime there were better things to do with that money in the near term to mitigate costs of energy and climate effects, etc.

Further to the point, attacking all sciences and suggesting research papers are no better than toilet paper churned out from an AI factory serves the ends of all those that have a grievance wrt vaccines, climate, energy, etc.

I'm pro-nuclear (in the sense that i would rather live near a nuclear than coal plant, and i don't really care if you build wind/solar or nuclear as long as you fade out the rest) and this report seems quite correct to me? If you have no prior knowledge, commercial power plant will be too late?

Why are people mad?

Australia digs A LOT of stuff out of the ground. People (mining lobbyists pretending to be politicians) are mad because the Sun shines on Australia for free and the wind blows for free.

Nuclear policy in Australia is more about maintaining coal mining contracts for as long as possible and less about actually building nuclear plants. Because if you were going to do the second, you'd need to radically fund and create nuclear engineering positions and industry to support the power companies and the oppositions hasn't mentioned much about any of this.

In this case, they're vaguely gesturing towards the "money being better spent elsewhere", instead of making a cost-benefit analysis including the time value of money.

Do you see how the argument is overly general? You can use it to shoot down anything that's not immediately useful. It's especially silly at the level of nations, which can obtain money much more easily than a random individual. Cash flow is much less of a problem at that level. The way it's phrased exploits people's tendency of thinking about a nation's budget like their own household budget, only bigger.

> People are attacking the CSIRO

In what way?

So far largely the Murdoch press (Fox, Sky, The Australian (newspaper) et al) and outspoken ministers of the Liberal|National coalition (former governing party of former Australian PM Scott Morrison).

That side of Australian politics has been strongly pro nuclear as their strategy for to address climate issues (sans any deep studies on the matter) - now that a solid report has landed that isn't "anti nuclear" (in the sense of "we hate all things nuclear") but rather "pro economic feasibility and pro effective climate strategies" that concluded "nuclear (in Australia) ain't it", the character assisinations have began "the CSIRO are all closet green lefty types" etc.

On the other side of the aisle in Australia, the Labour Party is backing carbon capture and other pie in the sky wishful thoughts .. they've bought what Santos and other Oil & Gas giants are selling.

While Australia is home to "the largest carbon capture project in the entire world!!!" (wow, that sounds great) the scale of capture proposed is far short of the scale of additional carbon emissions that go with it ... and the scale of capture to date is .. uhhh, far less than promised.

From the left, from too strong links into industry and so backing the farm sector to send animals to sea alive, which is cruel but economically justified and we are the least cruel of the choices.

From the right, for showing that Nuclear is economically unfeasible in Australia, despite being really ok otherwise.

From anti-AGW, for showing how climate change is fucking up the economics behind Australian lifestyle and primary production.

From all politicians, for speaking up fearlessly, and then getting quashed when they question the politicians agenda.

(declaration: I worked for the CSIRO for a year in 1988 in a very minor role)

Science is extremely important and I really admire scientists and appreciate scientific advancement.

With that being said....I just read an article about the fake publications being churned out by AI in the thousands and many of the papers published in my own industry (certainly not all, but a LOT) are essentially worthless outside of keeping academics employed. There's also the replication crisis going on. I'm not sure if it's "publish or perish", politics, or professors having to spend all their time dealing with busy work from the bloated administration or what, but it really seems like we're seeing a lot of "research" that looks a lot like padding a resume instead of actually pushing discovery forward.

This doesn't excuse harassment, but probably shows why trust in science is at an all-time low.

And that lack of trust will likely make science worse.

The number one issue in the academia is the lack of (public) funding. There are far more people trying to make a career in academic research than funding to enable that. When there is a lot of competition for scarce resources, people who are good at politics and gaming the metrics have an advantage. And if the resources become even scarcer due to the lack of public trust, the advantage will grow larger.

It's an issue, it's a real issue.

That said, the AI generated papers are obvious bullshit and aren't taken seriously by "real" scientists at the cutting edge of various fields, they represent more of an issue in the long tail of the "publishing mills" and the puffed up prestige part of the lesser acedemic life.

As an issue it's one that gets push back, recent articles highlight how variou groups have written bullshit detectors for bogo papers and forced the publishing companies to reject those papers and close some of the paper mills.

That's a positive.

The negative circles back to this posts assertion, that there's a growth in bad mouthing scientists and good science .. and articles | blog posts that have used recent reporting of bogus papers being discovered to justify why they have low trust in science .. and so should you.

Ponder that, if it was not for the people in the field complaining about BS papers edging in and working to detect and eradicate them .. nobody would know, not least the trash talking blog authors who don't much read science papers in any case.

I appreciate the context, but will add that it doesn't address the replication crisis where huge amounts of papers literally cannot be replicated (likely fraud) and I forget the exact situation, but I think it has happened to prominent cancer researchers and so on. This goes a lot deeper than just AI BS. Someone just posted an article on HN a few months ago about junior researchers being told to move data points to make the results statistically significant.

> P eople are attacking the CSIRO, Australia's public science body, over their recent report stating nuclear power in Australia made no economic or evironmental sense .. nothing could come online prior to 2040 and in the meantime there were better things to do with that money in the near term to mitigate costs of energy and climate effects, etc.

People are challenging the CSIRO report. Like it or not, politics infects every aspect of vaccines, climate, energy etc. Science and scientists are both players and pawns in such endeavours. As much as we want and need, unbiased, reliable information when making policy decisions, that’s just not how humans work. To quote Sneakers “Everything in this world, including money, operates not on reality but the perception of reality”. Unfortunately, the modern world is all about controlling that perception, and science is often just a tool in that game.

I recall think the very time the lockdowns started “this won’t just be 2 weeks, I don’t know if this is even justified or just an example of a bias towards looking like one is doing something” straight away. That was how things started. With a lie and a politically motivated CYA overreaction.

The lockdowns in hindsight seem to have caused more harm than they prevented. I think masks and vaccines were decent and underrated though, although sadly the vaccines lost efficacy fast as COVID kept mutating. The lockdowns were an abomination.

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