I think that OP is saying that science has become exceedingly politicized over the last decade. In which case they're right. Politically tainted science has emerged from the entire political spectrum, and it's enough to make you not want to trust what anyone claims to be science.
Science allowed itself to be politicized. On the one hand, we are told to trust the science, but on the other hand, we are told to believe things that are absolutely contradictory to science, and common sense. It's no wonder people have lost faith.
Science is political now because evidence, studies, and results can impact policy, so it's deeply polluted.
Personally I've found many medical and scientific articles to contain vast amounts of misinformation and disinformation. I would recommend not relying on any of it, it is at the whims of whoever bothers to edit.
I agree completely: much of science now is highly politicized. We have seen what happens to professors or research scientists who try to take a position that countered popular opinion on a sensitive topic - they have protests against them, they are spat upon and assaulted, and they lose their jobs.
All of the other scientists and researchers see this and adjust their own behavior and areas of study to avoid being mobbed.
I have had to become increasingly cautious and wary of trusting all published science, especially that in social areas now.
No, just the science that's fashionable to politicize. You can't pretend that this article isn't at least more biased than the people they're supposedly warning us about.
I don't see it as politicized science, but as abuse of science by politics. Just as when religious speakers abuse science for their purpose, science doesn't become religious, analogously when politicians abuse science for their purpose, science doesn't become political. And this abuse isn't new, politicians did it for ages, it just hit the fan now.
I didn't read the article in its entirety and this comment isn't directed at the content of the article.
Science itself has been politicized where the pursuit of truth has become secondary to the pursuit of funding and the alignment with the political agendas du jour. When I was younger my faith and trust in science was quite high. As I have aged and seen more of humanity and how it permeates all aspects of our existence I don't trust science like I did when I was younger. Now all I see are the motivations of those who are doing the "research".
Having studied statistics in college with the express intent of how it is used for scientific studies I am well aware that with enough data you can get any statistical result you want. Even better vaguely word it so it resonates with main stream media and still gives the authors an out with their peers.
Science, and especially certain scientific conclusions have very obviously become politicized. Yes, that's unfortunate but it is the state of affairs.
Perhaps the problem is that scientists themselves are increasingly having to fight their own political battles because their elected politicians can not or will not.
That's not what anybody is saying. The thing I said was "Science is political", and that is not the same idea as "Science is politics". Science is political is just saying that what gets researched is influenced by politics, and how that research is interpreted and absorbed by society is influenced by politics, and that's a feedback loop.
> If you make science political you have ruined science
The endeavor to remove politics from science is a VERY good one, but you can't tell me that politics doesn't exist within science. The money for scientific research largely comes from two sources: Government, and commerce. They have agendas - the influence of the funding source on the results are well documented - which is a perversion of science, but further than that the TOPICS they chose to fund vs the ones that don't get funding are a way that politics influence science. The conclusion of a paper funded by some company may be true, but the fact that we know that piece of data is in service of some agenda. On top of that, there is the politics of how orthodoxies within science rise and fall - it's not a straight line walk towards the truth.
> Science shouldn't care about your feelings.
Except science does care about feelings and I would argue it should care. The main drivers of what gets researched in science are, as I said, what the funding sources want, AND what the people doing the research care about. That second part is all people's feelings. There is no scientific reason to cure cancer, it's not a threat to human existence, but when people we love get sick we want to help them. That's feelings in science - not in the conclusions, but in the directions we go and the consequences of the work. These kinds of feelings, that drive us to care for each other, are the heart and soul of science. A cold heart makes for bad science, in my opinion.
Science has always been driven by power. We tell ourselves it isn't precisely to hold power today and trick ourselves that there is a distinction between science that isn't politicized (which happens to agree with what I think) and science that is politicized (which happens to disagree with what I think). Making this distinction is itself politicizing science.
You are commenting on an article that is nearly as apolitical as I can imagine one being to say that politicization of this topic makes it impossible to have a debate rooted in science.
Isn’t this precisely an injection of politicization into a summary of scientific work?
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