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Notes -
Is Covid-19 still a thing anyone here is interested in? Anyway, Eric Winsberg of the Chronicle of Higher Education published this article entitled
We Need Scientific Dissidents Now More Than Ever (2023-08-10, archive link because the site is kinda borked)
Anyway, I'm not sure anything super new is said in here, but I found it to be an interesting meta-commentary on the clash between science and politics. It starts off by telling an abridged version of the story of Ignaz Semmelweis and then analogizes it to science discussion related to the Covid-19 pandemic. The analogy isn't exact but I think it's still relatively fair tbh.
My impression is honestly I agree with the article. Though I think there's a balance from being super close minded to having such an open mind your head falls out, the scientific consensus being at such odds with the political messaging seems... quite problematic indeed. So I think the question partially becomes... "how do you make sure that scientific consensus which is supported shines through, even when it may be politically inconvenient to do so?" My relevant concern seems to be less about "the science™ being wrong"1 and more about "the science being right but it becoming too politically inconvenient to do so" or the lack of even carrying out such studies in the first place in the worry that it might to inconvenient conclusions.
1. I recognize the problem of reproducibility of results. And while I do agree it's likely a larger problem than is known about, especially in light of the recent Stanford scandal, I do think there is quite a bit more malicious intent with regards to politically inconvenient conclusions.
Historically science flourishes best when you have motivated scientists that can devote multiple decades to learning everything about a problem.
Forget the name but there’s a book about one of the guys who ran Xerox PARC who talks about how this was his strategy. Just find scientists that seem brilliant and guarantee them 20 years to devote to a project, then sit back and let them do it.
The current scientific establishment is almost the opposite of this - in order to compete you have to publish quick and publish something important. And I don’t blame the scientists, most of them will lose their livelihood if they don’t get grants, and they typically don’t have skills to fall back on. Or much of a backup plan in general.
I think this problem is even worse than you're describing. How many potentially brilliant scientists are now working dead end jobs or posting on 4chan from the basement because they made a few socially awkward and politically incorrect jokes early on in life, inadvertently removing themselves from the ability to navigate that system at all?
Not many - neither the physical sciences nor the funded-because-upstream-of-medicine majority of the life sciences are politically sensitive enough to make forensically examining someone's past for hidden wrongthink worth the effort, so people don't do it. To get cancelled, one of three things needs to happen:
Googling cancelled physicists (and the results are consistent with my own recollection), in the last few years we have
That isn't many people, and they were all open and notorious heretics as adults. Their being cancelled isn't good (particularly Strumia, who is probably right), but it isn't the kind of cancel culture where a few socially awkward jokes as a teen can be dug up to end a career a decade later.
The attempts to cancel Neil deGrasse Tyson for sexual harassment and James Webb for homophobia failed. Ancient history now, but so did the attempt to cancel Matt Taylor (comet probe shirt guy).
I don't think you've actually grasped the point that I'm making.
You've provided an example of how there are very few prominent physicists getting cancelled - first of all, physics is the department of science I would expect to have the fewest issues along this line(Biology, psychology, anthropology and sociology would be bigger targets). But that's a minor aside compared to the main problem with your reply, which is that it doesn't actually have anything to do with what I was talking about. Notice how I said "early on in life, inadvertently removing themselves from the ability to navigate that system at all" - what this means is that I am talking about the people who never became prominent scientists, and as such the number of physicists who actually get cancelled isn't really relevant to the point I'm making. I'm referring to the chilling effect of social justice culture on the kind of people who could become brilliant scientists, and how the more complicated social demands required to navigate modern academia(not to mention resource conflicts) select against people who could have done great work if they didn't have to navigate the modern morass of invisible rules. To use a metaphor...
"I think that the public burning of witches has a chilling effect on research into sorcery and magic. Many people who could have become fantastic witches have instead been silenced and discouraged by the public treatment of others who take an interest in magic."
"But there aren't that many witches being actively burned - this isn't happening!"
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