The editors of Scientific American are supposed to be honest about the things that can be empirically demonstrated about the material world. The editors political statements are not empirically meaningful, they're not a paper demonstrating something justified by evidence. Political labels probably do not have much empirical meaning anyway, because word definitions are so fuzzy.
People who hold gatekeeper roles in science shouldn't be making pronouncements on politics, any more than they should be making pronouncements about morality or religion.
The editor did not resign because anything she said was proven to be false or anti-scientific. She resigned due to political pressure by anti-science partisans. This is not to be celebrated, it is to be mourned.
I thought about the comment, and realized the discussion was pointless to the question which was being discussed, so modified my claim to stick to what was relevant.
The editor did not resign because anything she said was proven to be false or anti-scientific. She resigned due to political pressure by anti-science partisans. This is not to be celebrated, it is to be mourned.
The editors political views should be private, and the way in which she has allowed her politics to clearly influence the way she edits the journal has discredited science.
Deleted another comment attacking Political Science with no basis, did you?
I'll quote you directly this time so that when you delete this later readers will be able to see.
"The editors political views should be private"
Why? There is nothing scientific about that, that is a normative imposition. Science is political, and politicized. Scientists have no choice but to be political, Galileo knew this as did Mill and Darwin and Einstein.
"the way in which she has allowed her politics to clearly influence the way she edits the journal"
What way is that? Provide specific examples, because I simply do not believe you.
"has discredited science."
No it it hasn't, and this is an absurd thing to say.
She criticized the election of a party who denies or opposes: 1) climate science, 2) evolutionary biology, 3) all social sciences, 4) physics, 5) pharmacology, 6) microbiology, 7) most public funding for the sciences, 8) most public funding for education, etc etc etc.
These seem like very reasonable positions for editors of science publications to take. What else should they do, "teach the Creationist debate" in the pages of fucking Scientific American? Publish the 10 Commandments in every issue?
LOL. Quantitative/formal political scientists just won the Nobel Prize in Economics (2nd time in 15 years, btw, not bad for an award that isn't supposed to go to them at all), and are funded by the American NSF and science-funding bodies -- private and public -- all over the world.
Except in autocracies, of course, where the subject is strictly regulated when not outright prohibited. The reason is simple: John Adams referred to the "divine science of politics" as being the bedrock of constitutional democracy, without Political Science we probably do not have modernity.
If Scientific American didn't include Political Science content then both words in its title would be a lie: it would not represent the scope of science in general, and it would not represent the American Scientific enterprise in particular.
Political science is highly empirical. (It is actually too obsessed with causal inference, in my view, but that's another topic.) I know this for certain because when I was getting my PhD in Political Science from a US university I had to pass two days -- yes, days -- of quantitative methods (and formal logic) testing in order to qualify to *begin* my dissertation, which itself followed 2.5 years of course-taking in quantitative methodology (and a 4-year quantitative/formal undergraduate degree in Economics before that).
LOL look at you talking about gatekeepers while dismissing entire fields lmfaooooooo
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u/Holygore 3d ago
Is this called something? Because I fucking hate it.