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Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

(reason.com)
490 points Bostonian | 12 comments | 18 Nov 24 22:04 UTC | HN request time: 1.201s | source | bottom
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refurb ◴[19 Nov 24 00:14 UTC] No.42178748[source]▶
Yikes, quite the scathing article and example of a the politicization of science.

“Trust the science” has always bothered me for two reasons: 1) science is frequently not black and white and anyone who has done hard science research knows there are plenty of competing opinions among scientists and 2) while scientific facts are facts, we still need to decide on how to act on those facts and that decision making process is most certainly political and subjective in nature.

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senderista ◴[19 Nov 24 00:20 UTC] No.42178808[source]▶
"Trust the science" is the very antithesis of the scientific spirit. The essence of science is to distrust authority and received wisdom. If you treat scientists as some sort of infallible priesthood then you've missed the whole point of science.
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1. yks ◴[19 Nov 24 00:30 UTC] No.42178888[source]▶
> The essence of science is to distrust authority and received wisdom.

This is not "the essence of science" by any means.

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2. dekhn ◴[19 Nov 24 00:56 UTC] No.42179068[source]▶
The motto of the Royal Society:

"The Royal Society's motto 'Nullius in verba' was adopted in its First Charter in 1662. is taken to mean 'take nobody's word for it'. It is an expression of the determination of Fellows to withstand the domination of authority and to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment."

It's highly consistent with the statement above and in many ways is consistent with science as it is practiced.

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3. marcus_holmes ◴[19 Nov 24 00:58 UTC] No.42179079[source]▶
"Science advances one funeral at a time" [0]

The Scientific Principle (hypothesis -> experiment -> conclusion and all that) does not pay any heed to authority and received wisdom. And it should not; the experiment results are all that matter.

Academia, the set of very human organisations that have grown to manage our implementation of the Scientfic Principle, are a long way from perfect and are heavily influenced by authority and received wisdom.

So yeah, I don't think it's the essence of science, but distrusting authority and received wisdom definitely required to practice good science.

[0] https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/science-really-does-adva...

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4. itishappy ◴[19 Nov 24 01:03 UTC] No.42179098[source]▶
... source?

(sorry, couldn't resist)

https://royalsociety.org/about-us/who-we-are/history

5. elevatedastalt ◴[19 Nov 24 01:11 UTC] No.42179151[source]▶
The Scientific process does not have any authority except observed natural phenomena.
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6. yks ◴[19 Nov 24 03:56 UTC] No.42179981[source]▶
Yes, therefore trusting or distrusting authorities is irrelevant. One can distrust authorities and do bad science, one can trust authorities and do good science, and other combinations.
7. yks ◴[19 Nov 24 04:07 UTC] No.42180032[source]▶
One funeral at a time is true but “standing on the shoulders of giants” is also true and there is absolutely good science done without redoing all experiments since Newton, like there is a bad science standing on the sand hill of the other bad science. Having distrust by itself will not make one a good scientist and so it can’t be “the essence of science”.
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8. davorak ◴[19 Nov 24 06:32 UTC] No.42180571[source]▶
The motto here does not align with how I read it compared to:

> The essence of science is to distrust authority and received wisdom

"take nobody's word for it" -> anyone can say anything, that is just a claim, things other than that matter like data, replication, etc.

That is different and superior than a simple, broad, statement to 'distrust'.

9. cryptonector ◴[19 Nov 24 08:43 UTC] No.42181239[source]▶
The scientific method has no authorities, but science does.
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10. mrguyorama ◴[19 Nov 24 17:18 UTC] No.42185848{3}[source]▶
It literally doesn't. Even Nobel Prize winners do not get a free pass to make baseless claims.

There's an entire realm of people who did great science, won a Nobel prize, and then went on to make absurd unfounded claims about shit they do not know.

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11. cryptonector ◴[20 Nov 24 06:53 UTC] No.42191378{4}[source]▶
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle

Why do you suppose he said that? Do you really think it's different now? It's not.

12. marcus_holmes ◴[20 Nov 24 08:17 UTC] No.42191771{3}[source]▶
Which is what I said...