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Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

(reason.com)
473 points Bostonian | 1 comments | 18 Nov 24 22:04 UTC | HN request time: 0.231s | source
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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. twixfel ◴[19 Nov 24 09:44 UTC] No.42181629[source]▶
Science is built on trust because in reality it’s not practical to check every single result in a paper. Often it’s literally impossible (e.g the result from a one of a kind, billion dollar machine).