Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

This whole debate is surrealist.

Bigotry and intolerance are fundamentally irrational and illogical, so the so-called "left-bias" of science is just science being itself.

Now the comments in this HN page and the reason.com article are completely ignoring that, and only considering everything through a political filter.

Is "intolerance" objectively defined?

Easy enough: make matter things that have no reason to matter.

Like what the skin color has to do with how good your physician is? Nothing.

Science is smart enough to propose the adequate metrics, in this case it does absolutely not include melanin.

Until a few years ago, if my physician was educated in the United States and were Asian American they had to have a measurably better academic track record to overcome anti-Asian bias in university admissions. Does that mean they are a better physician? Probably not - in my experience the difference between good and bad in a medical context is patience and care, not knowledge. However it’s not absurd to make the opposite claim.

Similarly, there is a body of scholarship that suggests that black physicians trust black patients more than white physicians trust black patients. If I am black, does the color of my physician matter when I talk about something hurting? The evidence suggests that it might.

The fundamental flaw in basing your moral philosophy in measurable metrics is that metrics are noisy and that noise will often undermine your point. Instead, you should be making a purely moral point: my doctor’s skin color shouldn't matter and I will act to make the world I live in more similar to this ideal. That moral point is the driving force behind the civil rights progress that has been made.