Discussion of Big Science Today, by an Important Member of the National Association of Scholars

Conversation Side Conversation
41

Sure I have. They don’t want to end political interference in science they want right-wing political interference in science.

Why on Earth should we rely on their stated goals without also looking at their actions?

Climate change is a fact. To point to one - just one - current example - England is currently experiencing an unprecedented heatwave, and the temperature is expected to beat the highest recorded temperature - a record itself only set in 2019. General warming is well established. Richard Muller - then a skeptic - set out to scientifically check his criticisms. He found they were wrong. Now his views are different. https://berkeleyearth.org/

The whole idea of “open and fair academic debate” is a sham. We’re past that. The whole point is to try to suppress facts which are ideologically unacceptable. And that is the base for the charge of hypocrisy.

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42

I gave that as only one example of Jerry Coyne’s concerns. He certainly has said that “wokeness” is starting to affect university culture and science departments in the USA:

To be sure, the article I just cited wasn’t about the funding of science research in particular, but it does talk about the politicization of scientific life more generally, and hence is relevant both to some of the remarks in Turner’s article, and to the concerns of Turner’s NAS overall.

If you follow Coyne regularly, you will find more such protests about ideological concerns creeping into the university, including science departments, in the USA and in other countries. Though I disagree with him about much, I’m on his side on this point. In fact, I wrote about Jerry earlier on this site:

Jerry Coyne's Discussion of Free Speech and Universities.

43

You seem not to under the meaning of the term “hypocrisy.”

This exists where an individual or organization fails to actually practice the values and principles it espouses.

So simply quoting some of the values and principles the NAS claims to espouse does not in any way amount to a defense against the accusation of hypocrisy.

Hope that helps!

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44

You’ve provided no evidence, only surmise (weakly based) that they want that. Merely disagreeing with Paul King about the need for massive left-wing interventionism (re climate change) does not establish that anyone wants right-wing interventionism. Someone might prefer a policy that is biased neither by the right nor the left. Gosh, sounds like a great idea.

You haven’t listed any actions that are inconsistent with their stated goals. You have only indulged in paranoia about imaginary actions.

Nobody said otherwise.

You’re confusing climate with weather – a common mistake.

Nobody questioned that a degree of warming is real. The question is whether massive interventionism – at any cost whatsoever to working-class jobs, prices, employment, etc. – is the best response.

And there are others whose views have changed the other way, including an Obama Democrat, former Caltech president and pioneer in computational physics modelling, Steven Koonin. Citing individuals who have changed their minds proves nothing.

Obviously you’ve never been exposed to an educational program where that actually occurs. That’s an indictment of the university teachers and schools you’ve been exposed to, not a criticism of the ideal.

A reckless and unproved charge.

Not much of a base.

45

You’ve provided no evidence of that failure; you’ve provided merely conspiracy theory, and comparisons with an entirely different organization you read about on Wikipedia.

So, let’s discuss your own positive policy recommendations for a change. Do you believe, for example, that universities should have a quota system for hiring? Should faculty proportions correspond to the proportion of groups in the general population? So, for example, if 52% of the population is female, should universities deliberately set out to hire 52% female faculty, even if in some cases that will mean short-listing females with incomplete Ph.D.s over males with completed Ph.D.s plus many publications? (That’s an actual example I’ve seen more than once, by the way.) Or, to give another example, if 10% of a university’s faculty are Jews, and Jews represent only 2% of the population, should universities work on reducing the number of Jewish faculty until it’s only 2%? If only 15% of Physics faculty are women, should universities bend over backwards in hiring practices until the number of female Physics faculty is up to 50% (or 52% or whatever the current figure is supposed to be)? If 100% of the Women’s Studies faculty are women, should universities hire nothing but males to teach Women’s Studies until the number of women comes down to 50%? Or if .5 of 1% of the population identifies as neither male nor female, but some other gender, should universities reserve .5 of 1% of their faculty positions for those people? And in deciding such things, what population figures should be used, percentage of global population, or percentage of population in the country where the university sits? Or should all such considerations be ignored, and should universities hire based only on excellence in teaching and research, leaving the proportions of each group to fall out as they may? The NAS position seems clear, and appropriately a-political; what’s your position, and is it equally a-political?

46

I am aware of Coyne’s writing, I am also aware of his biases. I am also very much aware that these complaints have nothing to do with Federal funding - the supposed topic. Nor would they justify false accusations of fraud directed at science which comes to conclusions the Heritage Foundation objects to.

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47

Interesting position for you to take. Here is something you wrote earlier in this discussion about Wikipedia:

Meanwhile, here is how Wikipedia describes its own policy and procedures as one of its Five Pillars:

Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view

We strive for articles in an impartial tone that document and explain major points of view, giving due weight for their prominence. We avoid advocacy, and we characterize information and issues rather than debate them. In some areas there may be just one well-recognized point of view; in others, we describe multiple points of view, presenting each accurately and in context rather than as “the truth” or “the best view”. All articles must strive for verifiable accuracy, citing reliable, authoritative sources, especially when the topic is controversial or is about a living person. Editors’ personal experiences, interpretations, or opinions do not belong on Wikipedia.

With exactly what there do you disagree? Are you against articles being written “in an impartial tone”? Should they not “document and explain major points of view”? When there is legitimate disagreement regarding an issue, should Wikipedia not “present each accurately and in context rather than as ‘the truth’ or ‘the best view’”? Should their articles not “strive for verifiable accuracy”? Should they not cite “reliable, authoritative sources”?

Those all seem to me to be eminently reasonable and desirable practices to follow. What is your disagreement with them?

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48

From the (pay-walled) article:

" Prior to the Second World War, academic research was supported by an informal “Small Science ecosystem” of philanthropy, industrial research and development, university and college monies, and private contributions. Government support was modest. Ground-breaking science came out of this era. Then came the federal mobilization of science during the war."

Although not mentioned, I suspect that Turner has people like Peter Mitchell in mind when he waxes nostalgic about the era of small science.

49

As is your wont, you failed to understand the point of my comment. I was not making any accusations whatsoever regarding any organization. I was merely attempting to help you understand the meaning of the term “hypocrisy.” Not with much success, it would sadly appear.

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50

So as you are defending NAS and vouching for it. Let’s take a look.

  1. Funding is not disclosed. (not sure about US non-profit laws, yet waxing about transparency yet not being transparent is a red-flag)

  2. Looking at their formal published work

Educating for Citizenship: The Utah Case Study by John D. Sailer | Report | NAS

Author bemoans that traditionalist supposed apolitical stance that encourages uncritical respect for American history and government processes is not the focus of most 1st year civics courses. Courses that include the lenses of equality or other perspectives are termed to skew the noble purpose of what these courses are alleged to be about.

Priced Out by Neetu Arnold | Report | NAS

Apparently student lack communication skills, but at the same time activities that promote these are culture war-driven, apparently supporting contraception is “lack of consequence education”

also classic statements fill it like this: " social justice activists only care about identity groups, not individual responsibility"

“College is so loose and unfocused on job qualification”

Dear Colleague by Teresa R. Manning | Report | NAS

unfair and often harmful feminist direction, a direction which is now both overtly anti-male (“toxic masculinity”) and also opposed to robust character formation in students. For example, instead of students’ developing virtues such as patience, prudence, and self-restraint—or even discussing such virtues—students are encouraged to politicize, even weaponize, such ideals, and to see virtually everything through the lens of politics and power, especially dating, the primary source of most Title IX allegations of sexual misconduct

Now for the best winner:
Asserting that sexual violence is intrinsically discriminatory under Title IX, without any regard for the effect on educational opportunity

While the title IX is highly problematic, it is has such gems as when suggesting that this is not rape: because she didn’t have the nerve to say no

I think I cannot read more hundreds of pages of things ranging from culture wars to sexual assault apologists.

Now for more gems:

The Case for Colonialism: A Response to My Critics by Bruce Gilley | NAS

I make clear in the article that I define “colonialism” as referring to “British, French, German, Belgian, Dutch, and Portuguese colonies from the early 19th to mid-20th centuries.”

In the article, I make only a brief mention of colonial violence because in most cases I believe it was justified and in cases where it was not, it never rose to a level that rendered colonial rule as such illegitimate

They are well-funded and supported right wing culture warriors.

The OG article makes statements like: Rewards aplenty flow to those willing to jump on the “science” bandwagon, exemplified by the ongoing and dubious “climate crisis.

There are of course needed improvements. The small ‘s’ science is not justified in the article and in light of the continuing lobbying and political work, is not a good faith exercise.

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51

Your example of Wikipedia works against your intentions. Your intention is to show a parallel between my objection to Wikipedia and your objection to the NAS. You hope to get me to say that Wikipedia’s ideals may be fine, but it does not live up to them in execution. Then, with that statement from me in hand, you plan to say that this is exactly your critique of the NAS. But the parallel does not hold, because I could point out (and in the past, have pointed out) countless places where Wikipedia fails to live up to its own stated principles, whereas you have not pointed out a single case where the NAS has done so. It’s sheer assertion on your part that it does not adhere to its own principles.

I’m finding this discussion immensely frustrating. It is taking sometimes as long as two days before my replies are posted, and back and forth among several participants which used to occupy maybe two days in the past has stretched out over a week. I don’t understand the need for the delays. I wish discussions on this site were divided into two types: (i) discussions the public can’t see, and only registered users can see, and (ii) discussion the public can see. Discussions the public can’t see should be unmoderated on the whole, with replies and rejoinders going up immediately, to give the flow of everyday conversation people might have in a bar or a coffee shop. Discussions the public can see should be moderated, with the resulting delays before postings. Of course, there is always the possibility that some non-public conversations may get out of hand, with some members personally abusing others, and then the moderators could reserve the right to step in and delete posts or demand that authors rewrite them. But for the most part, in the non-public conversations the default mode should be: no moderation with replies going up immediately. That is, for those old enough to remember the Listserv software for mailing groups, non-public conversations here should operate the way Listserv did, with the public conversations supervised in a more cautious and slower way.

Because of the sluggishness of the back-and-forth caused by delays in posting (when the replies have all been civil and there has been no need to police them), I’ve lost patience waiting to see my replies go up and waiting to see how people will respond to what I’ve just written. If what has happened in this discussion is to become the new normal around here, I’m much less likely to post here than I have been in the past.

52

Thanks for explaining your meaning, Art.

The article was not paywalled the first time I looked at it. Now I see that it has a ribbon partly blocking the view, but I can still read the whole article, by scrolling up. There is a notice that I have only two free articles left, so I guess I must have at some point signed up for a free trial membership, and I can still get around the paywall. Perhaps your trial membership has run out? In any case, I thought I was presenting an article everyone could read for free, and I apologize for any inconvenience.

I think one of Turner’s points is that the massive injection federal funding into science has had a dark side. There is more money for science research now, yes; but there is also less freedom for scientists who are of independent or maverick tendencies, and he thinks this has a stultifying effect. He sees the downside as greater than the upside. I gather you see it the other way around. Well, it’s your right to disagree. My job, as I saw it, was to present his historical claim for discussion, not to demand agreement with him. I thought that a group of scientists, some of whom are still involved in research, might deem his concerns at least partly legitimate, even if they don’t entirely agree with him. But I thank you again for your second reply, which does address something of the substance of his article, even if only briefly.

53

What are your qualifications for assessing the quality of training of professors/MDs/epidemiologists, Eddie? You’re evoking the old joke, “What do you call the guy who finished last in his med school class?”

What do you make of the fact that mentions of studies are linked to other NY Post articles and not the primary literature? Is that your idea of how academics should roll?

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54

No; as is your wont, you have failed to understand the point of mine. I was referring back to your initial comparison of the NAS with a completely different organization – an organization which you, based the Wikipedia description of it, decided was a right-wing extremist one. I was saying that you have not provided a shred of evidence that the NAS is (a) right-wing extremist; or (b) in violation of its own principles and commitments. It may be the case that it is guilty on both counts, but if so, you have not provided a shred of evidence that demonstrates either.

As for your “help” in defining “hypocrisy”, I think someone with my level of education understands the meaning of that fairly common word quite well without your help, thank you. And the person who raised the charge of hypocrisy (not yourself) has failed to show where hypocrisy lies in the NAS. There may be hypocrisy there, but he hasn’t shown it. All he has shown is that one particular member of the NAS (Scott Turner) disagrees with him on climate change. And even there, his argument is fuzzy, since he makes out that Turner denied that climate change exists; but Turner was not discussing whether or not climate change existed; it is obvious in context that he was lamenting the politicization of the subject of climate change. It isn’t hypocrisy to lament the politicization of the scientific investigation of climate.

I defended the mission statement of the NAS. I did not defend all the papers and reports submitted by its members. I might well disagree with a large number of the statements and recommendations in them, including some of the statements you point out in your examples.

Any organization with a basically noble mission can attract a lot of third-rate people, who tend to weaken the organization rather than strengthen it. I certainly don’t agree with every statement in every paper or book written by every ID proponent, for example, or with every statement made by Roman Catholic bishops or Anglican bishops, even though I am sympathetic with the goals (the original goals, I mean) of those organizations.

Look at BioLogos. There is an organization with what was originally a noble (if somewhat clumsily expressed) mission: to put together Bios and Logos, to show the science of life, and in particular an evolutionary view of life’s history, need not clash with Christian belief. I actually support that proposition. But much of the literature written by BioLogos leaders, or by its fans, is poorly argued, filled with errors both scientific and theological, is historically uninformed, is philosophically hopeless, etc. This was a case where the talent of the majority of the members of the organization was not up to the task the organization set for itself. You’re not going to get a very good synthesis of evolution and faith when most of the people writing the reports are third- or at best second-string scientists and/or fourth- or at best third-string theologians, historians, and philosophers.

It would not surprise me if many of the reports written for the NAS by members of the NAS were second-rate or third-rate. It would not surprise me if some people with crude right-wing ideologies were attracted to the NAS and saw it as a vehicle for furthering their own lower agendas. The ignoble have a long track record of sheltering themselves in the vicinity of the noble, in order to acquire some of the prestige that comes with nobility. But there’s nothing in the stated goals of the NAS itself which make such outcomes necessary.

In any case, as I already said, I meant the discussion to focus around Scott Turner’s characterization of science funding today: is he accurate in his description of how science is funded, and are his concerns about the system warranted concerns? Instead, people here (mostly) have tried to turn the discussion into a discussion of the NAS. This is like saying that because Darwin belonged to the Royal Society, we should, instead of talking about whether his Origin of Species contains good or bad arguments, talk about the origins of the Royal Society in the class structure of a British society fueled by colonialism and imperialism. I was asking whether Turner’s facts were correct and whether his concerns were valid, not whether or not some members of the organization to which he belongs have right-wing political agendas that they are using the organization to promote.

55

They have this wingnut as an “important member” and if they’ve disavowed his views then I’d like to see that. D J Kriese provides more evidence,

On the contrary, the article described it as a “scam”. You characterise it as merely my opinion at the start of this very post.

That is not the question here. The whole question is about research into climate change and federal funding. Once you accept that climate change is real and not a “scam” then the allocation of federal funds for research into it would seem entirely sensible - and not anything to automatically object to.

So again you implicitly deny that climate change is an established fact. Indeed you claim that such a belief is the result of an inadequate education. I say that we are past the point where there is need for academic debate over whether climate change is occurring.

The author of the article happy to characterise research programs as “scams” just for investigating matters he rejects on ideological grounds. Has his organisation disowned these views?

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56

Incorrect. It was to help you understand that, when defending an organization against charges of hypocrisy, it is insufficient to merely quote that organization’s stated values. It appears I have succeeded and you now understand this. This gives me hope that you might actually benefit from future interactions with me.

It is unfortunate that, because of the delay in approving messages in this forum, your comment appears immediately following the one from @djkriese providing many such cases. Unfortunate for you, that is. Hilarious for the rest of us.

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58

I agree with these sentiments. Maybe this thread can be converted to something like “Side Conversation” or other type of discussion that does not need moderator approval for every posting.

59

I don’t believe this assertion. @Eddie, perhaps you can provide us the entire, unabridged, unedited email conversation (that may include others as well as Collins and Fauci). All of it. Everything. Not a few out-of-context snippets cribbed from Fox News or some other unreliable source. I don’t believe that you, @Eddie, have done the same sort of due diligence on this matter (or for most anything that has to do with climate and COVID) that you seem to expect of participants here.

Let’s see the entire conversation. Thanks in advance.

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60

The open denial of climate change was quite sufficient for me.

Presumably by doing science in his own field - which isn’t climatology. That doesn’t mean that he isn’t a wingnut.

But when one denies clear facts for political reasons- as Turner does?

If you had read my post more carefully you would have noticed that I addressed that - by pointing out that it isn’t true. Turner does indeed deny it.

Another favourite of wingnuts. In fact Britain began the pandemic with a “herd immunity” strategy but abandoned it because it wasn’t going to work. Healthcare facilities were severely stretched as it was.

That is a falsehood and one I have already corrected. I claimed only that calls for “open and fair debate” on the fact of climate change are a sham. Because the issue is settled. As you yourself say, except when you deny it.

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61

I understood “this” long before I ever heard of you, or of Peaceful Science, so your “help” was redundant. I was not disputing that people and organizations can be hypocritical. I was asking for evidence that either Turner or the NAS was hypocritical. You came up with virtually nothing, and Paul King (whom your intervention sought to defend) came up with virtually nothing. Now you want to lean on Kriese’s examples. Well, see my response to him. I granted that I might well agree with him that some individuals who belong to the NAS are hypocritical. It does not follow that Turner is hypocritical, or that the majority of NAS members are hypocritical, or that the NAS as a whole is hypocritical.

There is little hope of that, unless you show more philosophical openness regarding foundational questions than you have hitherto shown.

Yet you and some others here had already formed your negative judgments about the organization before he posted, and when asked to provide the basis for them, came up with nothing. So you believed what you believed without evidence, or at least, without any evidence that you actually adduced. It was no doubt with a sigh of relief that you read Kriese’s examples, since you had stuck your necks out on suspicion alone, without evidence. I respect Kriese for actually reading some texts before pronouncing an opinion. The usual pattern here is for people to be condemned on suspicion alone. Guilt by resemblance, guilt by association are the frequent patterns of reasoning.

The same pattern is occurring again. I post a topic, hoping to generate discussion about the specifics of science research funding in the modern world, and the influence of political ideology on science, and almost no one addresses those subjects (except Art Hunt, and glancingly, one or two others), and almost everyone attacks the alleged motives of the organization to which an author belongs. The discussion has turned almost wholly to the question of who is hypocritical and who isn’t, what secret agenda the NAS may have, etc. The constant attempt to turn every discussion about substance to a discussion about motives does not reflect well on a number of people here who show this tendency to an almost Pavlovian degree. In fact, it’s the mark of a culture warrior, rather than a scientist or scholar, to, when asked to comment on a thesis, focus on the alleged motives of the person offering the thesis, rather than the evidence for its truth or falsity. And ironically, that’s exactly what the NAS is complaining about, the increasing tendency to politicize what should be objective discussions.

Moderator, above you mentioned that you had been thinking of pulling the plug on the discussion. Now would be as good a time as any. :slight_smile: