Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

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.

The second point is critical. Relevant testimony from the former head of the NIH during the pandemic, Francis Collins: https://www.bladenjournal.com/opinion/72679/confession-of-a-...

> “If you’re a public-health person and you’re trying to make a decision, you have this very narrow view of what the right decision is.” “So you attach infinite value to stopping the disease and saving a life. You attach zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people’s lives, ruins the economy, and has many kids kept out of school in a way that they never quite recover from.”

While I agree with the fundamental point, I find that a kind of ironic choice of examples. I wonder what kind of person attaches so much value to keeping kids in school whether it's good for them or not.

It was well established before COVID that missing in-school days has a major adverse effect on learning. Keeping kids out of school had exactly the predicted effect—reading and math scores fell significantly: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/news/24/01/despite-progres....

We also knew early on that COVID posed little risk to kids themselves. So it was entirely rational for parents, especially of young children, to value keeping those kids in school over the negligible health risks (to the kids) of COVID exposure.

The point (as I understand it) was not to protect the kids themselves from covid, but that kids are active vectors of illness: they get sick easily and rapidly spread it to everyone around them. Sending kids to school during a pandemic is basically asking to fast-track that sickness to everyone in the community.

There was never any scientific basis for that belief. It was just made up without conducting experiments. And if fact we saw that some countries like Sweden kept primary schools open throughout the pandemic (without mask mandates) and it was fine.

> There was never any scientific basis for that belief.

This is an incorrect statement that can be fixed with minutes of research.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.0610941104 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00916...

One might argue about the quality of the research or point out contradicting studies, but saying there was zero basis is flat-out false.

Adding that the idea was "made up" is a great example of bending the idea of science to prop up a point.

COVID is not the Spanish Flu or asthma. Rayiner's point was about SARS-CoV-2 and he is correct. You can read papers published in 2020 to see.