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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35515 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 2023

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Should Nature endorse political candidates? Yes — when the occasion demands it:

This week, Nature Human Behaviour publishes a study suggesting that Nature’s 2020 endorsement led many supporters of now former president Donald Trump to lose trust in science and in Nature as a source of evidence-based knowledge.

[...]

Participants who were Trump supporters did not view the summary favourably and, compared with Trump supporters who had been shown text on a different topic, had a lower opinion of Nature as an informed and impartial source on science-related issues facing society.

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.

Should Nature endorse political candidates? Yes — when the occasion demands it:

How tf do you get from the conclusion that endorsing Biden didn't help him at all but reduced public trust in your paper as an argument for doing more political endoresements?

Because the actual goal is to demonstrate that they’re team players for the blue tribe, not to do either of those two other things.

I really want to see Nature doing a piece on how, if Biden runs again, being 80 years old at the start of his campaign and potential second term says nothing about his cognitive abilities and general state of health. I dare them. Because when my own father got to 80, I could see the slow, gradual, but definite decline in his health and capacity. So tell me that Biden is Super Joe, defying the laws of biology!

Writing papers in the academic landscape of current year often means that the conclusion is already set. So if you want to argue X, you let your data speak to that effect and then tack on a hasty "but, uh, of course this shows that not-X".

We are just returning to the historical norm. A couple hundred years ago you were expected to squeeze a "so of course this all shows that God is magnificient and the church correct in everything" in your stuff as well.

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