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EPA says it will eliminate its scientific research arm

(www.nytimes.com)
241 points anigbrowl | 8 comments | 18 Jul 25 23:00 UTC | HN request time: 0.501s | source | bottom
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globalview ◴[19 Jul 25 00:46 UTC] No.44611487[source]▶
A lot of comments are rightfully pointing out the destructive nature of this move. But looking at it from another angle, is it possible this is a symptom of a deeper problem?

What if a significant portion of the electorate no longer believes institutions like the EPA are neutral arbiters of science, but instead see them as political actors pushing an agenda? If that belief is widespread, is an action like this seen not as 'destruction', but as 'dismantling a biased system', even if it seems counterproductive to the rest of us?

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1. apical_dendrite ◴[19 Jul 25 00:58 UTC] No.44611551[source]▶
A significant portion of the electorate believes that the government is hiding aliens, or that the political leadership are all secretly lizard people (whether this is meant literally or as a metaphor for Jews or whether they think Jews are secretly lizard people depends on the person). There are vast and necessary government functions that most of the electorate doesn't understand or doesn't value or completely misunderstands.

Even on hacker news I frequently see people completely misunderstanding how, for instance, scientific research gets funded in the US. And the readership of this site is far more likely than a random sample of Americans to know about scientific research.

Dismantling chunks of the government based on the ignorance of some portion of the electorate is just bad policy.

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2. ivape ◴[19 Jul 25 01:14 UTC] No.44611643[source]▶
Do we have real proof that a sizeable portion of Americans believe in the secret lizard people thing? Best I could find:

https://www.publicpolicypolling.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/...

"Do you believe that shape-shifting reptilian people control our world by taking on human form and gaining political power to manipulate our societies, or not?"

11% said yes or were unsure.

That's from 2013, so I can't even begin to imagine what a poll from today would look like.

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3. burnt-resistor ◴[19 Jul 25 05:24 UTC] No.44612802[source]▶
Come to Texas. Qualitatively, the answer is a thunderous, enthusiastic "yes".
4. freeone3000 ◴[19 Jul 25 05:37 UTC] No.44612859[source]▶
11% said yes or were unsure?! One in fucking ten people, in the most generous interpretation, did not know whether the government were secretly shape-shifting aliens. God, how did we get here.
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5. tbrownaw ◴[19 Jul 25 05:44 UTC] No.44612885[source]▶
Well are we talking literally (under the old definition, not the new definition that the kids are apparently using these days) or metaphorically?
6. dash2 ◴[19 Jul 25 05:57 UTC] No.44612938{3}[source]▶
Yeah, but some proportion of those were joking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mischievous_responders
7. giardini ◴[19 Jul 25 06:07 UTC] No.44612975{3}[source]▶
Belief in aliens is fairly benign. Consider that half the population have an IQ below 50.
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8. freeone3000 ◴[19 Jul 25 07:32 UTC] No.44613359{4}[source]▶
Noooo, that’s not true. Below 100, as it’s weighted for this to be true: half above half below. It could theoretically be possible for the half below to also be below 50, but this would require the other half to all be above 150, and both are absurd, because there are a whole horde of people of completely average intelligence.

Checking IQ test results, we see they follow a Gaussian with a mean of 100 and a stddev of 15.