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Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

(reason.com)
473 points Bostonian | 22 comments | 18 Nov 24 22:04 UTC | HN request time: 0.002s | source | bottom
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devindotcom ◴[19 Nov 24 00:59 UTC] No.42179087[source]▶
Every piece called out here is clearly labeled "opinion" - did they even read the normal news and analysis sections? Countless newspapers and outlets and actual scientific journals have opinion/editorial sections that are generally very well firewalled from the factual content. You could collect the worst hot takes from a few years of nearly any site with a dedicated opinion page and pretend that it has gone downhill. But that this the whole point of having a separate opinion section — so opinions have a place to go, and are not slipped into factual reporting. And many opinion pieces are submitted by others or solicited as a way to show a view that the newsroom doesn't or can't espouse.

Whether the EIC of SciAm overstepped with her own editorializing is probably not something we as outsiders can really say, given the complexities of running a newsroom. I would caution people against taking this superficial judgment too seriously.

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1. 46307484 ◴[19 Nov 24 10:38 UTC] No.42181975[source]▶
Why do opinions need a place to go? Why can't we just demonize professionals who lack the ability to report factual content without mixing in their opinions as unfit to be writing?
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2. resource_waste ◴[19 Nov 24 10:59 UTC] No.42182118[source]▶
When I was in my 20s, I believed you.

Now that I'm in my 30s, I think we need a nanny police state making sure everyone is rational.

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3. bsenftner ◴[19 Nov 24 11:11 UTC] No.42182196[source]▶
You can't make people rational after their education, that's the whole insanity of all this: education is the key, critical thought, not creating gullible fools. But religion and many political ideologies depend upon gullible people or they would not exist, so the powerful members of those tribes impel society (for the children!) to denigrate education to produce morons. The United States is filled with them, they may have graduate degrees but they can't logically identify a con man.
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4. strken ◴[19 Nov 24 11:14 UTC] No.42182210[source]▶
Because expert opinions are sometimes the only data available. "What will computer architecture look like in 20 years?" Clearly there's no factual content to answer that question, but I would argue that it's still an interesting question to ask an expert.
5. FrustratedMonky ◴[19 Nov 24 11:36 UTC] No.42182337[source]▶
Warp Drive is impossible? So never ever write about it or you are an evil person spreading false information?

Speculation is also about looking to the future, 'what might be possible'. These are opinions.

And. 'A Lot' of people confuse raw data with 'facts'. Every single paper or news report is taking 'raw data' and 'figuring out what it means'.

So, there is always bias, but also it is impossible to report anything without trying to 'infer' information out of the raw data. There is no such thing as 'just report the facts'.

6. Nevermark ◴[19 Nov 24 12:10 UTC] No.42182576{3}[source]▶
Simple advertising too. It is a constant reinforcer of subconscious anti-rational thought.

Even if you imagine you never buy anything due to exposure to advertising, advertising is still hammering away, with its manipulative motivated based impressions on our minds.

If some source of information is worth consuming, at least for me it is worth paying to consume without advertisements if that is an option.

The fact that YouTube video advertising isn’t scratching the chalkboard level unacceptable to many people is all the evidence I need to know they have been deeply impacted by ad programming.

7. abirch ◴[19 Nov 24 12:11 UTC] No.42182581[source]▶
I love and hate this quote by Carl Sagan in 1995

I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”

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8. Nevermark ◴[19 Nov 24 12:15 UTC] No.42182603{3}[source]▶
I don’t think “prophet” was to a title he aspired to, but like other insightful forward thinkers, he managed to be one.
9. doodaddy ◴[19 Nov 24 12:19 UTC] No.42182633{3}[source]▶
I agree that there seems to be, on the whole, a downward trend of educated, critically thinking populace. The statistics and anecdotes align to make this clear. But I struggle to pick the cause. Certainly I don’t buy into the idea that there are rooms of politicians and school board members discussing how to keep the population uneducated.

Behind every outcome is an incentive. So what do you think is the incentive that’s behind the decline?

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10. forgingahead ◴[19 Nov 24 12:48 UTC] No.42182847{4}[source]▶
Did you vote for or do you support the "opposite team"? Because if your standard is "easy to accuse of 'ism' based on association", you might be in for a rude shock.
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11. sofixa ◴[19 Nov 24 13:13 UTC] No.42183035{5}[source]▶
I'm not American nor do I live in the US. The mere fact that there are only two teams, and everything has to be the opposite (oh, you don't support X? you must be from party Z because they hate X, and if they hate it, I love it!) even if it's basic scientific facts is infuriating.

And one of the teams is actively racist and sexist, has shown a blatant disregard for rules, norms laws and ethics, and now has full power over all branches of government. There's no scenario this ends well in the long term, and it's sad to look at from across the pond.

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12. resource_waste ◴[19 Nov 24 14:08 UTC] No.42183585{3}[source]▶
I think this is a universal law of human nature.

Or maybe that cycle of the inferior by circumstance work hard to become the superior and displace the complacent superior. “history is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up.”.

13. bsenftner ◴[19 Nov 24 14:40 UTC] No.42183923{4}[source]▶
Realize first that there is no single incentive, there is a diversity of incentives to "let others do it", "let others worry about it" and various other variations of "let others...". A nearly helpless person is good for business, a frightened with money person is also good for business, and a reasoned careful, informed consumer is not good for business. These basic truths end up running nearly all of society, which creates the drive to prevent consumers from ever becoming discriminating informed and critically aware in virtually all things they are not paid to be "the expert".
14. yamazakiwi ◴[19 Nov 24 17:06 UTC] No.42185676{5}[source]▶
Huh?
15. tptacek ◴[19 Nov 24 19:52 UTC] No.42187401{3}[source]▶
Her "parting rant" didn't appear in SciAm, a point even the article makes clear, but which you obscure here.
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16. sofixa ◴[19 Nov 24 21:11 UTC] No.42188133{7}[source]▶
> For example, you call (presumably Trump) “sexist.”

"Grab ’em by the pussy."

Convicted of sexual assault. Friends with famous pedophile ringleader.

When asked about what he has in common with his teenage daughter, he said sex.

Yeah, I'm calling him sexist.

Trump's position on abortion was obvious from his actions in the past, regardless of what he actually blabbed.

> Not a single EU country recognizes a judicially-imposed constitutional right to abortion. The only constitutional abortion decision runs the other way: the German constitutional court has declared that abortion violates the Basic Law’s right to life. France is the only country with a constitutional right to abortion, and it adopted that right by amending the constitution.

What is this weird strawman? Most EU countries have laws in place that allow abortions up to a certain point. It doesn't have to be a constitutional right for it to be a right. No EU countries have a constitutional right to get emergency medical treatment or to be allowed to be vaccinated either, so this is aggressively irrelevant. Exact healthcare procedures are between a patient, their medical professional(s), and potentially family in some cases.

On Roe, the US legal system is weird and broken. Courts effectively legislate by trying to pretend to understand what vague words from centuries ago mean and how they could relate to today and things that sometimes they couldn't even imagine back then (not abortion of course, there is plenty of written advice from centuries ago about them). In normal law countries, legislators legislate. And thus abortions are legal because legislators decides so, based on popular demand.

Trump getting away with literal treason is also symptomatic of the broken American legal system, where judges and prosecutors are political entities more interested in their careers and ideology than the actual law they should be upholding.

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17. rayiner ◴[19 Nov 24 21:56 UTC] No.42188532{4}[source]▶
It’s probative of state of mind.
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18. rayiner ◴[19 Nov 24 21:58 UTC] No.42188545{8}[source]▶
What do you think Roe actually did? And what do you think overturning it did?
19. tptacek ◴[19 Nov 24 22:10 UTC] No.42188644{5}[source]▶
It would have been if you'd described it as such, rather than misleading about it (deliberately or not).
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20. rayiner ◴[20 Nov 24 01:35 UTC] No.42189994{6}[source]▶
The context of the rant is clear in the article we all presumptively read.
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21. tptacek ◴[20 Nov 24 01:51 UTC] No.42190099{7}[source]▶
As I just said, the article itself contradicts the claim you made here. At some length.
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22. rayiner ◴[20 Nov 24 13:16 UTC] No.42193681{8}[source]▶
How could the article “contradict” my statement when I didn’t say anything about where the rant appeared? I didn’t reproduce the content of the rant either. The article provided both the content and context of her parting rant; my post simply referred back to it.

You seem to be assuming my point somehow turns on Helmuth’a statements appearing in SciAm. It does not. Her words are ipso facto indicative of religious and moral fervor, not rationality.