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Notes -
Should Nature endorse political candidates? Yes — when the occasion demands it:
The growth of activism in ostensibly-neutral organizations is old news, particularly since this event took place three years ago. What stuck out to me is that they seem surprised by those findings, and have to reach for esoteric explanations like the "rebound effect". The simple explanation works just fine, and Bret Devereaux put it best: "Public engagement is how you build support for the field; activism is how you spend support for the field. Yet the two are often conflated; spending is not saving.".
Also notable is the primacy of feels over reals: Nature literally is not impartial, and Trump supporters correctly identified that fact based on the evidence they were presented. They didn't even pretend to grapple with the base reality: Instead of looking at trustworthiness, they look at feelings of trust. More broadly, instead of looking at personal finance, researchers and reporters look at feelings of stability and instead of looking at crime, they look at fear of crime.
Why must "science" speak out? Science didn't.
The article doesn't bother to explain what the costs of inaction are. The endorsement didn't shift any votes, and to the extent it had a public impact it seems mostly to have pissed away some of whatever political capital Nature has. Even if you were to grant that Democrats are 100% aligned with reality and Republicans 100% opposed, the endorsement did nothing to further the cause of better public policy by maximizing Democrats' electoral fortunes. And it adds further to the Republican perception that "science" is just an institution driven more by fads and an ideological worldview with implacably opposed, non-empirical values.
I think it has to be understood less as Nature's editorial board trying to influence the election (implausible anyway) and more trying to position itself as a valuable ally to Democrats.
Funny you should mention Science. This may deserve its own top level post, but the Editor in Chief of Science today posted a tweet thread praising the decision by Nature and essentially making the claim that the role of scientists is not merely to provide evidence to be used in discussions of policy, but to demand that evidence is used exclusively to advance ostensibly left-wing goals.
To acknowledge the science and evidence underlying climate change, and develop a different policy prescription based on that is “unacceptable.”
Maybe I am naive, but I had some degree of faith in the scientist as a disinterested truth seeker. That is no longer the case. “Science,” and Science, have confirmed themselves as activist organizations only willing to expose (and, conversely, conceal) the truth in pursuit of political goals.
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