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fishos@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

• interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Science is a highly political process.

  The real actual science, just ask petroleum, cigarettes, sugar, mosanto glyphosate, lysenkoism, grant allocation, DDT, lead gasoline and paint, amiante, IQ, operation paperclip, nuclear testing, SSRIs, opioid crisis, covid 19, gain-of-functionr research, psychology replication crisis, trans fats, usda food pyramid, even cold fusion and the latest entry in this list PFOA/PFAS.

  Scientific truths and regulatory actions often “become allowed” only when they are no longer economically threatening to the incumbents.

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  • Gladaed@feddit.org ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Some of the examples are not shown to work. They are however still good examples since going down a dead end can be a good example. Deciding where to explore is deeply political.

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    • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Here is an excellent retelling of the cold fusion saga

      www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn92eWhGG14 www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbfJFPVApu8 www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWlBZT7L1qM

      Basically, as soon as the scientist had one anomalous reading, the political and academic machine got into overdrive, huge money started getting thrown around and the scientists got under huge amount of pressure and paranoia.

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  • fishos@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I think you’re confusing “politics injected into science” with science. Science is data and analyzing it. Pretending someone didn’t invent something is removing data points and I’m pretty sure science calls that fraud, just like we call the studies that found cigarettes healthy to be frauds, or the oil companies to be frauds. 2 wrongs don’t make a right.

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    • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      “No True Scientist” would say cigarettes don’t cause cancer or co2 emission don’t cause global warming, or glyphosate isn’t bad for the environment. Yet, it did, for multiple decades.

      You have to consider “actually existing science” with it’s political and financially directed function, choosing what questions get asked and who will answer them. You can say “oh that wasn’t science it was fraud” which is all well and good now but it wasn’t for those decades when they served to obscure or bury the truth rather than discover it.

      Actually existing science is a really troubled institution

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      • fishos@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Yes, and I’m here criticizing “actually existing science”. That’s exactly my point. It’s not “real science” when it’s injected with politics and emotions like that. It’s biased in a way science shouldn’t be.

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• HiddenLychee@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Have you ever been to a niche scientific community conference? It’s always been 90% politics.

  The Magellanic Cloud community collectively decided that they didn’t want to study objects named after someone who had subjugated the communities of ancestors studying it, so they agreed to call them the Milky Clouds. A pop science article went out about it and people complained that it wasn’t science, it was politics. But unless you’re a part of that community, you don’t get to decide on the names of the objects that these people understand better than literally anyone else alive or dead. They’re doing more science regarding these objects than anyone else has ever tried, they get to decide what’s best, even if it appears political.

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  • SlartyBartFast@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    And that’s how you end up with Gulf of America

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    • HiddenLychee@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I see it as the exact opposite. If we let the professionals, i.e. cartographers and historians hold the reigns rather than people who don’t have anything to do with it, eg. some pedophile politicians, nothing would have been changed.

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      • fishos@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Wtf are you going on about? I’m talking about changing the name of a plant because it’s discoverer was a racist. Nothing about politicians or pedophiles. Ffs, some of you have brain rot as bad as the MAGA. I’m literally saying that history should remain accurate and not try to whitewash away the negatives.

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    • fishos@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Remember, it’s only revisionist history if it’s the history you don’t like.

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  • fishos@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    “unless you’re a part of the community fuck you”

    I can see why it got heated…

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    • HiddenLychee@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Well yes, generally that’s how jargon is developed. Typically people who don’t contribute to the knowledge base of a field don’t have any say in how that field uses language.

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• Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  That didn’t feel like science so much as politics and I get why some would be against that.

  Respectfully, this is a weak sauce excuse, and a completely unscientific attitude. Scientists do not establish arbitrary barriers between different fields.

  These kinds of statements 99% of the time come from people who don’t even do science, and whose understanding of science consists of “take down data points, analyse data points, be neutral” (paraphrasing your comment).

  In reality, scientific names are usually given to honor specific people. The idea that the community just gives names to people who discovered things is simply ignorant of history. There are literally cases of people purchasing name recognition. There are also cases of people being honored by having their name on a phenomena they didn’t even discover, or a unit they did not create (typical for units, which are standardised by committees and not named after people in the standardisation committee)

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