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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: 0.244s | source
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nyeah ◴[19 Nov 24 16:00 UTC] No.42184916[source]▶
The Reason article blurs the distinction between SciAm's opinion pieces and its factual (or putatively factual) reporting. That's disconcerting. "Opinion piece" objectively means "free bullshit zone". Reason is usually much more responsible than this.

SciAm has of course fallen into terrible disrepair. But that happened long ago and the cause wasn't BS in the editorials. Who even reads editorials in a science magazine?

I was a Young Libertarian in my day and I recognize the urge to blame lunatics who disagree with my politics for everything wrong in the world. But this particular case isn't convincing. It died and then the loonies moved in, not the other way around.

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23B1 ◴[19 Nov 24 16:04 UTC] No.42184966[source]▶
> The Reason article blurs the distinction between SciAm's opinion pieces and its factual (or putatively factual) reporting.

How are readers to know the difference?

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nyeah ◴[19 Nov 24 16:06 UTC] No.42184993[source]▶
Sorry, I can't tell whether this is sarcasm or not. If it's a genuine question, the articles are labelled.
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knowitnone ◴[19 Nov 24 16:59 UTC] No.42185584[source]▶
So the articles themselves have no opinions? They don't make conclusions and use carefully chosen words to sway the reader?
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Supermancho ◴[19 Nov 24 17:10 UTC] No.42185730[source]▶
Other than to simplify the concepts for a subjectively "inclined" reader, no. Language is not mathematics. There is no perfection in the area of communication. This is not an insightful observation.

Scientific America aimed to be informative and useful in context of that information, when I was a reader (80s).

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1. 23B1 ◴[19 Nov 24 17:58 UTC] No.42186335[source]▶
> There is no perfection in the area of communication.

Bull puckey. I can be precise in my estimate, and contextual in my language.

"We believe x to be generally true because of y chance of likelihood" while not precise in conclusion, it is precise in its intent, which is to communicate a degree of certainty and to convey integrity of thought.

This is commonsense science writing that even the plebs can understand.