←back to thread

Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

(reason.com)
473 points Bostonian | 4 comments | 18 Nov 24 22:04 UTC | HN request time: 0.659s | source
Show context
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.

replies(15): >>42179132 #>>42179166 #>>42179285 #>>42179346 #>>42179613 #>>42180939 #>>42181377 #>>42181626 #>>42181975 #>>42182171 #>>42182356 #>>42182383 #>>42182536 #>>42183012 #>>42183062 #
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?
replies(3): >>42182118 #>>42182210 #>>42182337 #
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.

replies(3): >>42182196 #>>42182581 #>>42182589 #
1. 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.
replies(2): >>42182576 #>>42182633 #
2. Nevermark ◴[19 Nov 24 12:10 UTC] No.42182576[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.

3. doodaddy ◴[19 Nov 24 12:19 UTC] No.42182633[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?

replies(1): >>42183923 #
4. bsenftner ◴[19 Nov 24 14:40 UTC] No.42183923[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".