Scientists should stop arguing about whether science is political and get on with defending science against increasingly powerful attacks on it, which, yes, means scientists should be political advocates 🔥🔥 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... - ThreadSky

rebeccasear.bsky.social • 97 days ago

Scientists should stop arguing about whether science is political and get on with defending science against increasingly powerful attacks on it, which, yes, means scientists should be political advocates 🔥🔥
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adt7194

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peoriabummer.bsky.social•97 days ago

Scientists can’t expect to get handed government money to do their jobs and then duck the responsibility of dealing with politics.

drdsthompson.bsky.social•97 days ago

To my mind scientists should try to be politically neutral in their research practice (including trying to avoid introducing cultural biases), but that does not entail a requirement that they are silent about politics, especially when policy intersects with scientific findings.

ianjoo.bsky.social•97 days ago

Depends on what is meant by political.
If it means advocating certain political ideologies (supported by science), then yes.
If it means advocating certain politicians who support such ideologies, then only as far as such advocation is advocating their ideologies and not them as individuals.

ianjoo.bsky.social•97 days ago

(Unfortunately in many political contexts, we advocate individuals at the sacrifice of advocating certain ideas.)

rasushrestha.bsky.social•95 days ago

Evidence based opinions. 💯

anchorduke.bsky.social•97 days ago

For instance, I bet there would be plenty scientists out there with opinions (based on scientific facts) about this: 🔗Bill Tex[t: https://legiscan.com/US/bill/SB5356/2](https://legiscan.com/US/bill/SB5356/2023)023

anchorduke.bsky.social•97 days ago

Thank you. As a transgender environmental scientist I have never had the choice of nonpolitical sciencing! I am so ready to have more colleagues drop the (very political) debate about science being political and just roll up sleeves and help out!!!

kaleidoscrote.bsky.social•97 days ago

Thank you, this is the kind of inspiration I needed first thing in the morning

shumon.bsky.social•97 days ago

This whole debate seems to utterly anachronistic to me; I can only recommend The Blind Spot (2024) for why we need to distinguish science, science triumphalism, and scientism (spoiler: only the latter two claim absolute standpoint neutrality for themselves, or however they wish to frame it)

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