What do you mean? Activism is an essential part of science but maybe I’m misunderstanding your use of “activist.”
Right now I feel like there are a scientists who would hide or discard results if they contradicted their advocacy beliefs,which is a dangerous place to be imo.
It enacts no rules, laws, or regulations. That's done by policy makers who can listen to or ignore the guidance and data from the CDC at their discretion.
What is a scientist to do when they discover a vaccine or cure for something; say fuck it who cares if we change behavior? Are you saying a good vaccine advocate is someone who ignores the underlying science and acts dogmatically?
It just feels like you want to demonize this action of activism for… why? Just because there are lots of bad activists? There are a lot of bad scientists as well, to be honest the view of “good scientist” and “bad activist” feels dogmatic.
To answer your second point, science has a process for disseminating new findings. It's not perfect, but it works. Organizations that scientists work for do pay attention to those sources, discoveries do get patented and productionized. I encourage you to conduct some research: See how many people were talking about mRNA vaccines and gain-of-function research on social media before COVID vs after. The lack of social media coverage didn't affect the science or the scientists, who had spent the past decade conducting research on the subject.
I will maintain that Twitter/X/Bluesky are not part of the scientific process, nor should they be. These platforms do not encourage objective thought or reasoned arguments.
And then that’s just to get money in your specific direction, getting money in your general direction requires more broad activism.
It would be a sampling bias fallacy to draw conclusions based on your lack of observations.
Eg: "mountains, never seen them, they don't exist."
It is funny then for a geologist to be considered an activist when they say the mountains most certainly do exist.
Your first paragraph is unfounded. (Fwiw, The other two I found interesting. )
How so? It seems obvious that you can do science (that is: attempt to advance the understanding of how the natural world works) without being an activist for any cause.
Why? Which of these other jobs would you call "Activism" an essential part of:
- Fire fighter
- Elementary school teacher
- Auto mechanic
- ER nurse
- Professor of Medieval History
- School shootings
- Sure, they can shut up
- COVID
- Is this one serious?
Are you calling it "Activism" when someone shares the opinion of 99.9% of the population, and spends 0 time advocating for that opinion?
Professor of Medieval history: Lots of political discourse makes claims about history or things like "the dark ages" that turn out to be mis-interpretations or false. Note that I have a friend in that field who often writes gentle corrections to false historical claims in online discourse.