Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

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...

This is kind of why I get annoyed at the "facts don't care about your feelings!!!" crowd.

Sure, the raw facts don't care about your feelings, but the way that these facts are interpreted and presented absolutely do care. Two people can look at the exact same data and draw widely different but comparably accurate conclusions out of it.

Using your Coke example, the raw fact that "exercise is good for reducing obesity" is broadly true and not really disputed by anyone as far as I'm aware, but the interpretation of "exercise alone can be a solution to obesity" or "how much exercise vs how much diet restriction is a solution to obesity" is subject to interpretation and biases.

Why is it that people can't wrap their head around the "Facts don't care about your feelings." slogan? I don't agree with everything that movement says, but that slogan means exactly what it's saying; the problem is what everyone like yourself adds to it. What you are adding has originated and lives in your mind, and you project it onto something that has nothing to do with your thought that you are projecting.

The slogan is directed at fragile liberals who would rather yell like a toddler at a town hall meeting than have an informed discussion centered around facts. You can try and broaden that statement all you want to pull in other topics, but that slogan says nothing about having a disregard for how facts are interpreted OR presented.

It goes without saying that facts can be subject to multiple interpretations. I think people need to be more honest about what you're really saying: you don't like conservatives and you distorted a basic phrase as you gaslit a group of people and accused that group of doing what you yourself just did.

> The slogan is directed at fragile liberals who would rather yell like a toddler at a town hall meeting than have an informed discussion centered around facts.

Who created chaos at school board meetings with yelling about trans kids and history books over the last couple of years? I have yet to hear anyone who isn't on the Right freak out about "what they're teaching our kids" the way that conservatives do.

A sizable chunk of “banned” books were sexually inappropriate for school, and some even promoted pedophilia, so I have some serious concerns if you disagree with their removal.

I'm sure some of those banned books are reasonable to be banned, though I do find it amusing that the people promoting these book bans are simultaneously insisting on putting the Bible in the classroom, a book that has a passage about a woman fantasizing about donkey dicks and horse cum. That's not a joke: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel%2023%3A...

If there's actually a book in that list that promotes pedophilia, it probably should be banned; which book are you referring to?

She was not fantasizing about bestiality, it very clearly states she “lusted after her paramours”. Paramours being adulterous lovers. And, if you even skimmed the rest of Ezekiel 23, you’d know it was describing her being a prostitute to many, many men. I will concede that this chapter, and the Jewish scriptures in general, tend to be rather excessive and would not be where I would start my children for Biblical teaching.

What list are you referring to? Perhaps I missed something, but I don’t see a list of banned books. However, regarding books promoting pedophilia, the worst example I am aware of (that isn’t Lolita, which I feel is a cop-out) is The Bluest Eye. I won’t link directly to the passage, however searching “Passages Challenged Bluest Eye” should lead you to a website with excerpts. They have not just one, but two characters who prey on the main character, and she is assaulted twice by her father in unnecessarily graphic scenes.

I know she wasn't fantasizing about bestiality, but she is still fantasizing about guys with dicks as large as donkeys and cumshots as large as horses; sorry if I didn't make that clear.

Regardless, most of the old testament is pretty child-unfriendly. Lots of passages about rape and violence with extremely questionable morality (including unambiguous endorsement of genocide), and I do not think it has any place in a classroom, even if we disregard separation of church and state (which we shouldn't).

I didn't mean a literal "list", though I realize it was bad wording on my part.

"Unnecessarily graphic" doesn't imply "promotes". I haven't read the book, and it might not be appropriate for a school library, but your description here doesn't seem to indicate that it's promoting pedophilia.

The point that this is too graphic for children stands, but this is a metaphor for Samaria and Jerusalem. This is stated explicitly in the text.

Sure, I just was giving it as an example because I think it's a pretty funny bible verse out of context, and even a little funny in-context.

Still, the old testament in particular has pretty much every single theme that parents clutch their pearls at; Lot has incestuous sex with his daughters (and it's decidedly not condemned) [1], a man murdering his daughter because she's the first person to enter his house [2], prostitutes getting murdered, butchered, and mailed to her suitors [2].

If the old were accurately made into a movie, it would be right next to Se7en or Saw in categorization, certainly not appropriate for children.

I know that this stuff is probably wrapped in layers of metaphor and social context, that's fair enough, but I don't know why similar charity isn't awarded to books that aren't the bible.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lot_(biblical_person)

[2] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Judges+11&versi...

[3] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Judges+19&versi...