[HN Gopher] The Peril of Politicizing Science [pdf] ___________________________________________________________________ The Peril of Politicizing Science [pdf] Author : vikrum Score : 99 points Date : 2021-08-22 16:35 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (iopenshell.usc.edu) (TXT) w3m dump (iopenshell.usc.edu) | dluan wrote: | > "In modern terms, Hughes was canceled. For a few months, the | city was called Trotsk (after Leon Trotsky), until Trotsky lost | in the power struggle inside the party and was himself canceled | (see Figure 1)." | | lol | ardit33 wrote: | This is a sign of being of too many people studying social | sciences and other useless/pseudoscientific majors, that have | nothing else to do but create moral panics and problems that are | non-existent. If you are not useful, the only way to feel some | sense of importance by creating noise. | | Taxpayers should not be funding these idiocies | dang wrote: | This comment breaks the site guidelines by calling names (lots | of them) and adding flamebait (lots of it). Please review | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to | the rules when posting here. Note this one: " _Comments should | get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets | more divisive._ " | | Agree or disagree, the OP is substantive and thoughtful and | deserves much better than what you posted here. Not only that, | but threads are sensitive to initial conditions. Rushing into a | new thread with a denunciatory quickie risks destroying the | entire thread and is therefore particularly bad. | xmprt wrote: | People working in these areas are why we have things like 5 day | work weeks (instead of having to work 6 or 7 days) and human | rights. Why do you find them useless? | bena wrote: | The peril of noting the peril of politicizing science is that | that itself will be politicized. | | There's going to be some number on either side of the issue that | genuinely don't believe they're politicizing the issue, they're | just right. | | If I were to say the sun rises in the east, that would be just | objectively correct. If the Penguin Party were to say that it | instead rises in the west and not accepting their belief is | politicizing the issue, then what are my options here? | | Sure there are probably those in the Penguin Party who know the | sun doesn't actually rise in the west. But toe the party line, | because it antagonizes the other party. And they know that there | are those out there who actually believe it. And now they join | the Penguin Party because here's a major group that is validating | their existence. | | But there are both Democrats and Republicans who believe the | other party is the Penguin Party. They believe they are right. | And they believe the other party is led by people who are telling | people lies just to garner support. | | Which leads all of us, down here, back to where we started. | | And as long as there's support to be had for pushing a fantasy, | there's going to be some unscrupulous people who are going to do | it. I don't think it can be avoided. | umvi wrote: | For some reason I thought just the living conditions in the | Soviet Union were bad; I didn't realize 1984 (the book) is | _literally_ modeled after Stalinist Russia. I always assumed | thought policing was just a theoretical construct of a | technological dystopian future, I didn 't know the Soviet | government actually did it for decades - and to their best and | brightest scientists and thinkers! Interesting article, and | interesting parallels to our day. Luckily most of the parallels | in modern society are reflected in social media mobs and not the | government itself (or we would be in _very_ deep trouble), but it | 's still a bit disturbing how much power said social media mobs | seem to wield over corporations and politicians. | ardit33 wrote: | Orwell was initially a socialist sympathizer (went to spain | during the spanish civil war), but after the Soviet Union went | through major purges in the 30s, and the USSR (bad) treatment | of other countries and major ethnic forced relocations inside | USSR, he might have had a change of heart later on. He opposed | totalitarianism in general, and after the defeat of nazism, he | started seeing communism as evil/bad. | | He worked for communications in the BBC during WW2, and had | first hand experience with the language censoring of the time, | especially of communication towards British colonies at the | time. | spats1990 wrote: | >had a change of heart later on. | | He certainly did. Toward the end of his life he produced a | list of notable people in the UK and US whom he believed to | be Stalinist sympathizers, foreign agents, communists, etc, | and passed it to a British Foreign Office employee. Charlie | Chaplain was on it, among others. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwell%27s_list | nickff wrote: | My understanding is that the NKVD's purges of Republicans in | Spain was what first alarmed Orwell. I believe that he had to | escape 'warrants' out for his assassination on his way out of | Spain. | AlbertCory wrote: | Right. Read "Homage to Catalonia" for Orwell's own story. | vlovich123 wrote: | I'm curious how the thought policing parallel escaped you. Are | you younger or just didn't really get taught/research what | happened? Not intended as a critique- just genuinely curious. | | As for today's problems, why are you so sure the social media | mobs aren't in some instances government controlled? Certainly | we have clear evidence of this happening at least partially in | the 2016 US election. Lots of investigative journalism has done | good work uncovering how the industry around this kind of stuff | is financed. In fact, the KGB 100% exploited social divisions | in the past for political gains (eg supporting both white | nationalists and the black power movements to encourage more | political violence and destabilize US politics). Why would you | think that a ruthless politician like Putin who came from t be | KGB would be so opposed to leveraging those same tools again? | In fact, it seems like they've learned their lesson about how | to engage in such warfare more effectively. | pcrh wrote: | There are plenty of contemporary parallels in political parties | (who become government). | | The distinction with 1984 might be that the media is not | _entirely_ controlled by the government of the day, but that is | not for want of effort. | wffurr wrote: | Who exactly are the totalitarian rulers sending people to the | gulag or executing them for continuing to say "strawman | argument"? | | What an incredibly strained analogy this all is. | umvi wrote: | The author is pointing out parallels between the way our | society is trending in terms of ideological control, and | similar things that happened in the USSR. Your argument amounts | to "the US government hasn't rounded up political/ideological | dissidents and murdered them yet so this article is flawed" | which seems a bit dismissive. Two triangles can be similar even | if one is an order of magnitude bigger than the other. | dluan wrote: | Using someone's preferred pronouns is not "ideological | control". | isitdopamine wrote: | Using them it's not, forcing people to use them it is. | | It's the argument Jordan Peterson was making, and probably | one of his most misunderstood points. | | He's fine with people asking to be called in a certain way, | and he would most likely oblige. He's not fine with a state | law dictating how pronouns should be used. | | I think it makes sense. | dluan wrote: | > Jordan Peterson | | uhhh ok sure | watwut wrote: | In USSR, there was massive Civil War with around 6 different | parties struggling to gain power via violence. The victor | turned out to be violent. Nothing similar is going on in west | now, you could compare Islamic regions. | | And incidentally, both Russia and those regions were | destabilized by wars prior that. | wffurr wrote: | The author is essentially saying that being asked to use | respectful language makes her university administrator Joseph | Stalin. Cherry-picking a few examples, stating "I am not | personally offended by these so obviously no one could be", | and using that to claim "Social Justice (note the capitals) | has gone TOO FAR", does not a good argument make. | | It's a bit beyond "similar triangles". | | First they ask us to stop saying "master/slave architecture". | Next it's FORCED FARM LABOR. It's a non-sequitur. | etangent wrote: | The next step isn't "forced farm labor," that would indeed | be a non-sequitur. A most likely next step is putting | someone in jail over a tweet (already happening in the | United Kingdom). It takes three or four more steps to get | to forced farm labor. | KittenInABox wrote: | Seriously asking: How can putting someone in jail over a | tweet be closer to forced farm labor when the united | states already has forced farm labor (see below for | link)? How can we simultaneously be approaching something | and also already there? | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_farm | mturmon wrote: | Strong agree. Similarly, the OP's jocular use of the word | "canceled" when referring to Soviet assassinations during | the Stalin years. No, Stalinist political execution is not | comparable to losing your job because you have groped women | at work. | i_love_limes wrote: | I am just an interested layman, but I have found Historians as | prime examples of academics who get this balance right. This, to | me, seems to be because they have to squarely level with their | own biases and preconceived ideas of what they are studying from | the outset. | | Once that is addressed upfront (whether it is personal | preference, or cultural bias/context), the authors are able to | both express themselves more freely as well as be more critical | of their own perspective. | | I think other social sciences researchers are more OK with this | idea, and unfortunately STEM researchers seem to go out of their | way to assume they have no perspectives or biases, as the | assumption is that 'pure research' is unable to be tainted by | such things. | | To expose my own personal bias, I find this article to be very | heavy handed and reactionary. | dluan wrote: | Yeah this is a meme that surfaces every few years spontaneously | irregardless of the field or discipline. "Oh no we are being | oppressed for not following the [current mainstream boogeyman | idea], only we the true freethinkers are aware of the danger | and must warn blah blah". Usually too it is some former soviet | person. | | > Whereas in 1950, the greater good was advancing the World | Revolution (in the USSR; in the USA the greater good meant | fighting Communism), in 2021 the greater good is "Social | Justice" (the capitalization is important: "Social Justice" is | a specific ideology, with goals that have little in common with | what lower-case "social justice" means in plain English). | | It's just astonishing that it's so reliable even in 2021, so | far removed from the cold war, that the journal editors still | feel the need to stir the pot this way. Younger scientists | don't care about this, lmao. | | Science is inherently a political process, and this author | seems to lack the self awareness of how her own bias has | influenced her. | mensetmanusman wrote: | Science is a process of measuring cause and effect. What you | decide to study using the scientific method might be | political, but to call science political seems like a lazy | use of language. | dluan wrote: | Yes, hmm, let's use this consensus algorithm called "just | producing data". Look up the information deficit model | please. | fatcat500 wrote: | The people who are currently successfully utilizing science to | legitimize knowledge are doing so off of the moral, social, and | cultural capital accrued by previous generations of scientists. | | The assumption that the general public will always perceive | science with a reverent and trusting eye is wrong: once the | capital runs out, science will be perceived as just another | tentacle of the establishment. Politicizing scientific language | is a surefire way of accelerating this process. | | This is what has already happened with the MSM, of course. | jchw wrote: | The biggest problem from my PoV is that people seem like they are | always absolutely sure that the contemporary understanding of | morals is actually correct, unlike the primitive beliefs of the | past, and that there's nothing left to challenge. Convincing | people that this is what people _always_ believe and yet it has | _never_ been true seems impossible. It seems difficult for people | to imagine that there 's more left to discuss. | | What I'd rather do is try to convince people that it's wrong to | apply this kind of ideological control regardless of whether or | not you _think_ it 's correct. But that's hard, because if it was | correct, and people do earnestly believe it is, then what do they | have to lose? | | I also think that dishonest portrayals of even recent history are | a huge problem for understanding that a lot of the moral | conundrums we have today _are not new_. It 's mostly the | sensationalism and moral panics that are always changing. | exporectomy wrote: | I think part of it is that different conditions that different | societies exist in affect what's morally right and wrong. For | example, in a secure stable country, the need to fight wars may | seem unimportant and you might even think war is morally wrong. | But in a country that's constantly under threat of being | destroyed by enemies, war is essential to survival, and a | conscientious objector would reasonably be seen as morally | wrong. | ThrowawayR2 wrote: | > " _The biggest problem from my PoV is that people seem like | they are always absolutely sure that the contemporary | understanding of morals is actually correct, unlike the | primitive beliefs of the past, and that there 's nothing left | to challenge._" | | If they claim to be on the left, point out to them that that | type of worldview is actually a form of conservatism. Quoting | from Wikipedia, " _Traditionalist conservatism places a strong | emphasis on the notions of custom, convention, and tradition._ | " and note that "customs [and] convention" is the same as the | "social norms" argument trotted out by the modern left to | defend their activities. | KittenInABox wrote: | What do you do if they claim to be on the right? Or if they | claim that they're not political at all, they're just stating | facts? (Genuinely asking!) | [deleted] | burnished wrote: | I don't get it, what is that supposed to do? | AnimalMuppet wrote: | "Owning the libs", in a way that won't actually change | their minds, but will make the speaker feel smarter and | righter. | | In other words, nothing useful. | roenxi wrote: | The logical conclusion of this train of thought is ... not to | make policy based on science. Just make the science available, | and let people do what they like. | | If the plan is to create policies based on "the science", then | people will lie about what the science is in order to get their | policies into play. | | It is hard to convince people with that opener, but the | evidence is that it works quite well. One of the interesting | tricks about Western democracies is that it channels the | fleeting madness of crowds in the most productive direction | without trying too hard to suppress it. | watwut wrote: | Both past societies and current ones contain contradictory | points of view. There was always conflict between people of | opposing opinions. They were always people who broke | contemporary moral codes, either for money, power or profit or | idealism. | | There were always sociopaths or people who were cruel for fun. | | As in, here you are attacking strawman. | isitdopamine wrote: | > and that there's nothing left to challenge. | | Also, I would add that history is not linear, it's not the | progressive challenging of old prejudices. | | Sometimes, in our efforts to strive for better morals, we make | terrible mistakes. Phrenology come to mind, but there could be | many other examples. | dmingod666 wrote: | The science and societies of the past were always flawed, and | mistaken, they just didn't know better. The science and | societies of the present never are wrong or flawed in their | thinking. | | Always was true always will be. | | I think it's cause: 1. Arrogance 2. Dead people take blame very | well, and can't really argue back. | api wrote: | Or maybe it's always true, at least on average over long time | spans. | | I've always thought that if your children think they are | wiser than you it means you have been an excellent parent. If | they look back with awe at your superior wisdom, it means | things got worse and you perhaps failed to leave a legacy. | mancerayder wrote: | Yes and 3. There's an element of group belonging in a | collective righteousness. And that's definitely not unique to | the present. | TeeMassive wrote: | > The science and societies of the past were always flawed, | and mistaken, they just didn't know better. The science and | societies of the present never are wrong or flawed in their | thinking. | | That's also the reasoning the communists and the National | Socialists used in their reasoning; turns out they were faced | with the same problems their predecessors had to deal with | but they didn't really have better solutions. In the end the | people paid because it was more important to save face than | to admit being wrong. | just_steve_h wrote: | This article begins with the clearly implied belief that | "Science" is not political, and degenerates from this false | assumption into a paroxysm of wounded cries over the renaming of | buildings and other, may I say, even less weighty matters - | comparing them to the gulag and mass murder. | | "Science" is not a singular object, nor a single method, nor even | a set of ideas; what we must concern ourselves with is Science as | it is practiced in our society. | | Can one do Science without funding? Certainly! Any child with a | simple telescope can observe celestial bodies in motion, reason | about observations, make conjectures, and test them against more | data. But this is a toy example, and this young scientist's | influence may extend to a handful of child peers, and perhaps an | interested parent. | | The "Science" that concerns us almost always includes published, | peer-reviewed research. And thus, it is inherently and obviously | political. First, and most obviously: how does one become | recognized as a peer whose work is eligible for publication? It | necessarily requires many years of study, apprenticeship, and | supervised practice. Admission to these ranks requires scholastic | and social preparation, and is literally subject to the vote of a | committee. That we pretend this process operates entirely on | "merit" is but one of the many delusions and useful fictions we | tell ourselves when we speak of a "Science" that is somehow "not | political." | | Second, consider not the training of new scientists, but the | actual conduct of research. All research must be "sponsored" by | someone, in rare cases, by the wealthy scientist themself - the | exception that proves the rule. The sponsoring entity always has | a material interest in the science it is funding, whether it is | to extend the shelf life of canned goods, to more cheaply deposit | thin strips of metal onto a substrate, or to meaningfully improve | the accuracy of a weapon system guidance module. It is left as an | exercise to the reader to discern the various ways that this | process is clearly and nakedly "political." | | I feared the worst upon viewing this article's title, yet held to | a slender hope that the author might address the real threats of | using science to achieve political ends, such as that posed by | eugenics, or by nuclear weapons research. Reader, my hope was in | vain. | | We appear to have here another member of our society's | establishment who has become too accustomed to unquestioning | deference, yelping like a hit dog because, for instance, a | presumptuous collection of students and faculty has dared suggest | that perhaps UC Berkeley's $70,000 annual grants from the | Genealogical Eugenics Institute Fund might be not only better | named but more prudently distributed.* | | One wonders if there is a corollary to Godwin's Law that | stipulates that the first person to draw a comparison to Stalin | has already ceded the argument? | | *(this happened in October of 2020, you can look up the fund by | name). | kurthr wrote: | It seems like this has been with us since there has been science, | certainly Galileo paid a certain price and many others paid a | price for Lysenkoism. It's certainly sad what can be done "in the | name of science" and in denial of science (or service of | psuedoscience). | | I agree with the author's discussion of the complexity of | individuals, their beliefs, and their contributions. The desire | to simplify a narrative about a person's value or intent common | and even effective, but still dangerous. That can be a | simplification mores over different times or cultures. One of the | best cures I've seen is travel (outside your cultural sphere), | but that's not likely to be universally available any time soon. | | What I don't really see is that scientists themselves share a | greatly disproportionate responsibility or blame for the current | situation, which seems historically fraught. Media (social and | otherwise), "news", and advertising on the other hand... | cgrealy wrote: | There are undoubtedly massive dangers to politicising science. | | But personally, I am far more concerned with lobbied interests | persuading politicians that climate change is a hoax, or with | idiots deciding that masks and vaccinations are something you can | make your own mind up about. | | These are real problems with substantial negative outcomes. | | Whether we stop naming things after Nazis or pedophiles is lower | on my list of priorities. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | One follows from the other. If you politicize science, then I | have no reason to listen when you claim that science supports | your position. | dluan wrote: | Do you actually think science isn't political? | cgrealy wrote: | Given that a lot of science gets funded by the government, | of course it's political. | | Was just listening to a podcast yesterday about the | attempts to develop an AIDS vaccine. It was definitely not | prioritized in the early days because it was viewed as a | "lifestyle disease". | | https://gimletmedia.com/shows/science- | vs/dvhkd5k/presenting-... | | Obviously the decision as to what gets researched is going | to be at least partially political.. there's a finite | amount of money to split between NASA and the CDC for | example. | | But it would be really nice if results weren't politicised. | wffurr wrote: | It's amazing that someone could write an essay titled "The | Peril of Politicizing Science" and not once mention the actual | civilizational peril we are in due to the political | polarization over climate change and the coronavirus. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-08-22 23:00 UTC)