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Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

(reason.com)
473 points Bostonian | 3 comments | 18 Nov 24 22:04 UTC | HN request time: 0.639s | source
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Crayfish3348 ◴[19 Nov 24 17:23 UTC] No.42185914[source]▶
A book came out in August 2024 called "Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola," by Susan Greenhalgh. She's a professor (emeritus) at Harvard. The book is a history. It shows how the Coca-Cola Company turned to "science" when the company was beset by the obesity crisis of the 1990s and health advocates were calling for, among other things, soda taxes.

Coca-Cola "mobilized allies in academia to create a soda-defense science that would protect profits by advocating exercise, not dietary restraint, as the priority solution to obesity." It was a successful campaign and did particularly well in the Far East. "In China, this distorted science has left its mark not just on national obesity policies but on the apparatus for managing chronic disease generally."

Point being, the science that Coca-Cola propagated is entirely legitimate. But that science itself does not tell the whole, obvious truth, which is that there is certainly a correlation in a society between obesity rates and overall sugar-soda consumption rates. "Coke’s research isn’t fake science, Greenhalgh argues; it was real science, conducted by real and eminent scientists, but distorted by its aim."

"Trust the science" can thus be a dangerous call to arms. Here's the book, if anybody's interested. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo221451...

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lazyeye ◴[19 Nov 24 18:25 UTC] No.42186598[source]▶
I wonder how much of this same kind of manipulation/distortion is going on when we are told to "trust the science" with regard to climate change? The pressure to ignore or minimise inconvenient facts would be overwhelming (career at stake situation).
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1. jmward01 ◴[19 Nov 24 20:35 UTC] No.42187824[source]▶
I have grown grumpier as the last decade has gone on and it is probably me just getting older but there is a point where you say enough is enough. You are starting with the premise that researchers are manipulating things and ignoring things so you have already 'won' by bringing doubt where there isn't any. 'I wonder how much of horrible terrible evil conspiratorial thing x is happening...' isn't a discussion opener, it is a statement that a thing is happening and now we just need to find out how much of that thing is happening. This is a terrible 'discussion' point and it needs to be called out, and stopped.
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2. trinsic2 ◴[19 Nov 24 22:34 UTC] No.42188812[source]▶
That's a good point. I tend to stay away from negative thinking about hot topics like this for that very reason. Even though I have my doubts about something, I tend to keep it to myself because I don't want to bring people down and anyway someone might come up with a way to look at, or take action in a positive light.

But I still feel its important for people to act from their own values, right or wrong, and not from a "hey trust the science" mentality which reminds me of majority thinking. Just because a lot of people have come to the conclusion that the science is sound, it doesn't make them right. There are plenty of situations where decided by majority viewpoints have been wrong.

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3. jmward01 ◴[19 Nov 24 23:30 UTC] No.42189200[source]▶
Science done well is distrustful of its own results. The key is to trust science practiced by trustworthy institutions and individuals and reported on in an accurate and informative way. Similar to good journalism, trust should be earned and verified at every level. Not every time, that isn't reasonable, but enough that you aren't surprised at what you find when you do additional checking. Check sources. Look for conflicts of interest. Survey the field. These are all basic things that people think they do but often don't.

I'll also say that that 'I don't trust science' implies that the scientific method is somehow corrupt. The scientific method is a thing that can be used well or badly. 'I don't trust science' is like saying 'I don't trust statistics'. The wrong person can use out of context science, done well, to imply totally absurd things.