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Comment by spacephysics | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately recent issues since the last couple elections have become partisan. We should stop using scientific institutions as means to political ends. Its bad for science in general, and sows distrust.

No one who reads scientific american supports X candidate will suddenly vote for them. However, people who see scientific american has begun to play in the political arena will think less of them. Myself and some friends have agreed they should stick with what they know, and not become a political instrument

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The other side of this is that politics won’t stay out of science. We have a number of areas where the scientific consensus has been well established but some people pretend otherwise for political reasons, and while in the past that was somewhat distributed on the political spectrum it has increasingly become concentrated in single parties. I don’t know how we can expect experts not to use their professional qualifications when rejecting false claims, especially when the alternatives being offered under false pretenses will cost lives and significant amounts of money.

Both sides engage in science denialism. For the far left, it's nuclear power being dangerous or "too expensive" , a problem they manufactured.

Nuclear power is dangerous - perhaps you meant to say that it’s manageable but the scientific consensus has been clear since the Eisenhower era – and the expense is similarly not an artificial creation: it’s not like the “far left” theory was real, you’d see nuclear plants in, say, Texas producing power at prices competitive with China. The problems with nuclear have nothing to with science denial and everything to do with being an immensely capital-intensive industry with massive startup costs and results which are marginally competitive with renewables on pricing. If we’d built out Carter’s nuclear program in response to the OPEC price crunch we’d be in a very different place now but it’s a really hard sell now that renewables’ costs have come down so much.

That doesn't explain why it isn't considered "green" energy. That's a grift. Its only emissions are the carbon footprint of building it, which is no small feat, but given the 40-60 year lifespan, is well in the "green" by my estimation. "Green" is just some subjective label stamped by the far left, meaning sources of energy they can use for handouts like solyndra.

The naive idea that your views are somehow the inherently non-political and scientifically objective perspective is silly. The fact is that everything is political because there will always be people who build identities around denying reality and evidence, at the cost of everyone else.

> The naive idea that your views are somehow the inherently non-political

You are responding to a claim that wasn't made.

I unsubscribed from Scientific American a few years back when they became a venue for political commentary instead of science. The opinion pieces try to masquerade as soft science. It's an insult to the actual scientists in their readership.

If you're looking for a replacement, I picked up MIT Tech Review. It's not a stand-in replacement for what SciAm used to be, but scratches the same itch for me.

It’s pretty hard to avoid politics with respect to science. But it’s pretty easy to figure out who is going to complain about it.

You must feel strongly about this given that you've chosen an article about the magazine Popular Science to rant about an entirely different magazine.

It's almost like politics does, in fact, have a way of intruding in everything and everything has a touch of politics in it - even your comment on HN. :)

At a glance, the only points where Scientific American has entered politics are:

* climate change kills people

* GMOs save people

* guns kill people

* diseases kill people

All of which seem pretty uncontroversial. Is there something I'm missing?

The question of genders and how many different ones there are, I believe.

Ah, fair enough. I do see that now that I look for it explicitly.

They are controversial because they are not using science in good faith when they contain a call for action. For example, many of those questions require you to answer if it moral to cause harm to individuals to solve a collective problem.

That’s not science, it’s philosophy.

Look to the history of Eugenics for an example where the scientific community was on the wrong end of history. Science is a tool for understanding, not a way to control people.

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