Scientists Are Caught in a Political Trap

theatlantic.com

9 points·petethomas··2 comments

This is nothing new though.

Plenty pretend semiconductors or programming is a non political field where the science and creativity are rewarded, but the truth is both technology are "dual use".

I think programming or people who do a lot of work in cryptography and signals intelligence would know this all to well. What can be seen as scientific or academic curiosity can be seen as a threat to the establishment or a potential tool that the MIC can use.

Hell part of the reason semiconductors have come so far is due to how close they tie into defense and intelligence.

The government has long created rules it imposed on researchers such as the export restrictions on pgp, or on DVD keys, or prosecution of security researchers. This is nothing new for those who have been aware of the general trends.

> Many of the scientists I spoke with for this story insisted that they didn’t feel their actions were political—and expressed concern over them being perceived as such. Although they were fighting back against the government, they told me, their intentions are to advocate for evidence. […] That decline in trust, Shariff predicts, will concentrate among those on the right, who “will see science as more politicized than they did before,” he said, “because it’s taking a side.”

The article is about defending scientific methods and the field as a whole and how that is shifting society to the right, not how scientific research is applied?

Besides that nobody claimed it was "new": What I think is new, unheard of before, that a US president is openly advocating against evidence-based science.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com