by Noah Carl
Science, nominally the most prestigious scientific journal in the world, is at it again. In November, they published an editorial by Agustin Fuentes titled ‘Scientists as political advocates’. The gist is that scientists and scientific institutions need to be even more political than they already are.
Back in 2023, Fuentes wrote an editorial that claimed “being woke is just doing good 21st-century science”. And in 2021, he wrote one that described Charles Darwin as “an English man with injurious and unfounded prejudices”. Indeed, the prolific Fuentes has penned no less than eight editorials for Science over the last four years – suggesting that the editors like what he’s selling.
Returning to ‘Scientists as political advocates’, Fuentes begins by warning readers that science is “under attack”. Does he mean that it’s under attack from woke ideologues trying to bend science into a tool for promoting ‘diversity’? Or that it’s under attack from public health officials trying to shut down discussion over the harms of pandemic policies? Of course not. He means that it’s under attack from his political opponents.
Almost all the examples Fuentes gives involve accusations that some person or organisation on the political right is attacking science. He isn’t worried about attempts to redefine basic biological concepts like ‘sex’ or scientists being made the subjects of censorious petitions for opposing mask mandates. This isn’t to say that Fuentes’ examples don’t qualify as attacks – just that his presentation is so obviously one-sided and tendentious.
In the next paragraph, Fuentes manages to derive the conclusion that “science in many societies is political and always has been” by quoting a recent statement on “scientific responsibility” from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which incidentally publishes Science. I’m not convinced. Sure, scientists should act responsibly, just like everyone else. But this doesn’t mean that science as an institution is or should be political.
People like myself who oppose the politicisation of science aren’t saying that scientists should be free to act irresponsibly, or that they should be indifferent to “the interest of humanity” (Fuentes’ words) in their role as private citizens. We’re saying that science itself should be kept separate from politics, as prescribed by the four Mertonian norms:
- Scientists must be judged on impersonal criteria. (No firing people for ‘racism’.)
- They must share their data and results with one another. (No preventing access to datasets.)
- They must seek to advance knowledge, not pursue personal or political goals. (No requiring people to promote ‘diversity’.)
- And they must remain detached from the subject matter of their research. (No promoting feel-good dogmas.)
In the next paragraph, Fuentes reaffirms his woke credentials, complaining that “attacks are often especially intense when the scientists are also women, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color), queer, or from other marginalized groups”. What he’s basically saying is that attacks on white male scientists are the least intense, which is more or less the opposite of the truth. Attacks on white male scientists tend to be the most intense precisely because such individuals rank lowest in the woke’s victimhood hierarchy. Have any black female scientists been the subject of a censorious petition signed by hundreds of their colleagues?
Fuentes proceeds to criticise the “idea that scientists must maintain an air of neutrality”, which, he claims, is “ethically problematic and practically detrimental” in the face of an “anti-science onslaught”. He seems to believe the only reason people aren’t on board with his political agenda is that too many scientists are laying low because they’re hung up on this whole neutrality thing. But scientists in many fields aren’t keeping quiet: they’re engaging in precisely the kind of activism that Fuentes wants. And in doing so, they’re contributing to the loss of public trust in science.
Fuentes’ call for super-charging the politicisation of science somehow isn’t very compelling. Traditional scientific values like neutrality and impartiality – they’re worth hanging on to.
What Fuentes is advocating is not science, but kitsch Marxism. Like 1930’s monster movies, they are trying a zombie raising of their chimera of Marxist economic models with Critical Race Theory as the dead tissue they are using to patch the holes in the dead model.
AAAS has had overt communist members for going on 50 years. They’re probably the majority now. Like other scientific organizations, they are headquartered in DC. I’m most familiar with the American Chemical Society, which is not quite so overtly Marxist, but they both seem to be taking their membership, and industry, down Havana way.
The non-Marxist members need to fight back, not just quit.
The problems is that for the Marxists, taking over these organizations is their job, while everyone else has real jobs to worry about.
That doesn’t mean you don’t fight back.
Who is Fuentes? Main-man for the AAAS?
He’s a Berkeley educated communist anthropology professor at Princeton that wrote the editorial.
He definitely understands science methodology but seems to allow for closet or open motivations to guide one’s data interpretation.
AAAS at one time had chiefs like Philip Abelson then Daniel Koshland. It began its downhill slide in my opinion with Donald Kennedy who was brilliant but nevertheless a nasty partisan and Science magazine soon began to reflect this partisanship. A lot of the scientific community, many of its best minds in fact, have been attracted to the most unattractive political movements imaginable. Blind to their inhumanity and flaws. Look at the political naivete of Einstein for example.
“seems to allow for closet or open motivations to guide one’s data interpretation.”
Allows? More like requires.
I tried to convey that telling the truth or complete truth is more a choice to the likes of Fuentes. That’s similar to Schneider’s dilemma of offering “scary scenarios” vs. being honest.
The AAPG ( American Association of Petroleum Geologists) is pretty much doing the same thing. Rather than defending our profession, they sell it out to the woke, all to the detriment of their members & society at large
Most scientific research is government funded(Marxist?), not capitalistic.
Didn’t used to be that way.
I wonder if Fuentes would feel that way if scientists were right of centre instead of extreme left
“being woke is just doing good 21st-century science”
In what way is “men can get pregnant” and “women have penises” scientific? Or maybe he’s referring to the textbook definition of delusional. Yeah, that’s it.
Let’s see …… ESG, CRT, DEI, AGW, men are women, criminals are the victims, etc. if we can convince them of those things let’s go for science as a political tool next. If science is getting in our way let’s discredit it. Yea, that’s the ticket.
That’s how I see it too, and Marxists own the feelings trump card.
Scientists have a tendency toward sparkle-headed utopianism combined with lack of introspection. Some are awful people. Many are quite engaging and generous. They are less inclined to lie than politicians, and not quite as disciplined as tradesmen or engineers who have to make things actually work. That being said, there are a number of incompetent engineers just as there are incompetent doctors, lawyers, and so on.
I think you’re right.
Scientists and engineers are generally good at math and logic. Where these get led astray is in accepting assumptions. Many have fallen prey to propaganda, such as CO2 is the control knob or gender is a social construct. The incompetent are more easily fooled.
Any real scientist or engineer knows that politics – just like religion – is the opposite of, and the enemy of science. Politics (ideology) is based upon advocacy of a position or line of thought that inherently precludes, and always seeks to suppress, any questioning or challenging or adding to knowledge about how things are and how they work. Science is the search for truth – data and understanding. Politicians, political pundits, and religionists always claim to know all that is knowable and relevant, and any further investigation and offering of alternative explanation is heresy that must be stamped out.
The blatherings of SA and their writers are simply propaganda pretending to be science that is in fact the opposite of science.
“Any real scientist or engineer knows that politics – just like religion – is the opposite of, and the enemy of science.”
But in fact any real scientist is also a human, i.e. a political animal as Aristotle defined it. And you can’t have a society with having some form of politics. Politics is necessary for science. Furthermore the more democratic a society is the more science can thrive. And scientists should be as political as everyone else. They have kids, family, care about others etc — all things that require government support and if you don’t get involved in politics you can’t complain about the results.
“without having”
I agree with you to a point. Politics has been used to suppress and corrupt science as well as support it. The minute politics becomes the art of getting people to believe lies it becomes the antithesis and mortal enemy of science.
This seems to be an argument in favor of getting scientific thinkers involved in politics, so that it doesn’t become a game of lying, and rather becomes a game of rationally analyzing policies and outcomes.
An important difference between politics and science is that the essence of politics is consensus, while the essence of science is the search for facts and logical reasoning using the available facts. The ‘job’ of scientists is to provide the best available information from scientific studies (unbiased), and then vote their conscience in the privacy of the voting booth. While most scientists attempt to be objective in their analysis, it is not their responsibility to convince everyone else to see the world the way they do. After all, if they are objective, they realize that they could be wrong. Those with a Messiah Complex have a compulsion to convince everyone else that they have special insights that other scientists lack.
I recommend reading this:
https://www.mantleplumes.org/WebDocuments/Chamberlin1897.pdf
This perspective is appealing but flawed, as it assumes that the public is both capable of dissecting intricate scientific findings and immune to misinformation campaigns driven by ideological or financial interests. Sadly, this is not the world we live in. When scientists remain passive while bad actors distort or attack scientific conclusions, these attackers become increasingly successful in undermining public understanding and trust in science.
The job of a scientist is to contribute to the advancement of human knowledge, but this role can coexist quite harmoniously with their responsibility as a citizen to advocate for the integrity and application of that knowledge. In fact this should be viewed as a moral imperative.
So who gets to decide if select scientists’ “scientific conclusions” are valid or a crock (like many have proven to be)?
and PLEASE don’t say –
“by consensus”
Scientists evaluate the work of other scientists, test their ideas, produce new and challenging results, etc.
OK, but how does it serve the advancement of scientific knowledge if a cohort of scientists have already decided that they will deliberately limit their and try to limit others’ research conclusions to confirmation of a “cause” about which they’ve already settled their agreed position?
(e.g. Michael Mann’s referrals in emails to collaborators as “the cause”)
When has this happened? Citations please.
You never provide any citations for the shite that the voices in your head come up with.
Read A.W. Montford’s “The Hockey Stick Delusion”.
Yes, thanks for the example. Montford is one of the bad actors trying to lie about the science and mislead a credulous public.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/07/the-montford-delusion/
Keeping a list of people who can’t be trusted?
Unless you are a complete ‘newbie,’ this seems to be more of deflection than a sincere request for the source. Mr. cited Mann.
To what end? What if there is no agreement? The public still has to decide public policy and laws that they support. The scientist that is most eloquent or most favored by the news media is not necessarily right. It is still, ultimately, the call by the electorate, right or wrong.
Who decides who gets to be a scientist who evaluates work?
I knew 20 years ago that the climate liars were going to undermine public trust in science, but hey ho, with a word salad like that I’m sure you can be unburdened by what has been.
How would you know what the job of a scientist is? Did you drive by a chemistry department once?
What you are really saying is that you think that the concept of democracy is flawed and that we should be ruled by those charismatic individuals with “PhD” behind their names.
There is an old Japanese saying that, “It is rare to find a man who is both eloquent and trustworthy.”
If you read the link, can I assume that you subscribe to the idea that a scientist should pick the first hypothesis to comes to them and support it with all the vigor they are capable of as though it were chiseled in stone by the hand of God Himself?
The right to complain is absolute, it’s even delineated in our constitution.
Further, especially if one pays taxes (or fees), complaint for receiving poor services received is rational.
Being political is not a necessity, government support is not part of raising kids, taking care of family or caring about others. Government is the anthesis of these things.
Unless you want to live as a hermit you have to interact with other people and live in a society with shared rules and social norms. To do so is to be political. Protecting things like the NHS or free public education for everyone is part of caring for others and requires government support to be effective.
I would like for example for my family to have safe drinking water and clean air to breathe. And unless I am living off in the wild somewhere with nobody else living in a 10km radius that is going to require government intervention.
I agree government control of the NHS, education, water and some other essentials are required in society.
Then there’s government overreach.
How’s that clean air and water doing in Los Angeles? You also need competent leaders, and California has few to none. I note that you probably support these incompetent leaders.
Of course that is not what this article, nor the one being referenced is talking about.
Then again, you knew that already.
Religion is the enemy of science? The vast majority of scientists are and have been religious people.
But then, some like Pascal, were just playing it safe. Others, like Galileo, certainly saw religion as an impediment to truth. After all, it still moves.
Fighting last generation’s fight – the science vs religion debate fits between the Cuban missile crisis and ozone holes on the political football timeline. Thank goodness I had a public high school history teacher (!) who declared during class that large sections of the Christian bible were written during the middle ages. It was decades _after_ the dead sea scrolls were discovered and I still scratch my head thinking “how did that happen”? It was an early lesson in wondering where ideas came from.
Disagree that “politics – just like religion – is the opposite of, and the enemy of science”.
A scientist /engineer/whoever would recognize that the word opposite does not fit.
Oh, du lieber Augustin,
Alles ist hin.
And to get it back Mr Fuentes really has to start all over again. Perhaps he can reclaim tuition moneys paid on cr@p teaching.
as long as they can be held liable for their “science”
Funny thing I read blamed it on a senator long ago and his Golden Fleece Award making fun of certain research. Relevance does keep raising its ugly head, irrelevant as it may be. Used to call them “know-it alls.”
https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/25931/accelerating-decarbonization-in-the-united-states-technology-policy-and-societal
https://www.sigmaxi.org/meetings-events/science-policy-bootcamp
“Hack-a-thon: Final day where participants form teams and put their new tools and knowledge into action by developing and presenting a real world science policy solution.”
“First, I’d like to draw your attention to the recent publication of the areas of consensus and debate results from last year’s Communicating Science for Policy conference. In August 2015, Sigma Xi and Institute on Science for Global Policy coordinated this event, which focused on linking scientifically credible information to the formulation and implementation of sound, effective policies” Guess what. Hope it doesn’t discriminate during necessary reworking.
https://www.sciencealert.com/study-warns-that-science-as-we-know-it-is-evolving-into-something-shoddy-and-unreliable
There is a certain justification for questioning the value of an $800 hammer, which has little to do with the utility of science.
A refreshing view of the scientific method. We should not laboriously search for truth; it is always there – all we need is a consensus. Just be sure that only scientists participate; never invite Mother Nature. 🙂
Disney corporation: little girls need more animated princess musical movies?
Science has been corrupted for a long time. This editorial is not the worst.
They published Marcott in 2013. I easily proved that his ‘hockey stick’ paper was clearcut academic misconduct simply by comparing with his PhD thesis which served as the basis. Wrote then chief Science editor Marsha McNutt providing a ‘smoking gun’ written proof. Her admin acknowledged receipt, but then nothing was done.
I then published the proof as essay ‘A High Stick Foul’ in 2014 ebook Blowing Smoke.
A fish rots from the head.
It really stinks if you cut their belly open in the wrong place.
I found Marcott et al 2013 particularly stupid. If you extrapolated their hockey stick blade manually, using toilet rolls and Sharpie pens, their projected temperature of the earth would be higher than a blue dwarf and, when you finished the exercise, you could be two or three unrolled toilet rolls away from where you stapled that fine contribution to scientific fraud.
I could have sworn that the left wing definition of “political” was advocating any position that the left disagrees with.
At least that is the position the media constantly pushes. If a Republican publicly disagrees with a Democrat, they are just being political. It’s also always the Republican who is being political, it’s NEVER the Democrat.
The same with “science”, whatever position the left is pushing, is by definition the scientific one. While anyone who disagrees with them is just being political.
So by demanding that scientists be more political, isn’t he actually demanding that more scientists disagree with him?
What happened to the concept of the “disinterested observer” providing objective analysis of observations and measurements, or Chamberlain’s “Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses”? Those demonstrate that the claim of “always has been” is false.
Fuentes is either a poorly educated hack or a propagandist with no respect for truth.
There is no such person as a “disinterested observer”. Everyone is biased and the best way to reduce those biases is to start by admitting that they exist. To begin with an observer has to chose what to observe and what to measure. Measuring the success rate of people at university without
also measuring factors like the family’s wealth and their access to good schooling is going to give
a very misleading picture.
That is like saying that there is no such thing as pure water. While it is true, it overlooks the fact that there is a spectrum of purity and the “disinterested observer” is an ideal to be striven for, even if no one is perfect. Some are more biased than others. The point is not to ignore bias, but to be aware of its existence and to make a conscious effort to reduce it. Your ‘woke’ take on the world and its injustices suggests that you use bias as a hammer rather than a scalpel.
Basically, you deflected my question by stating the obvious — perfection doesn’t exist in the world. I disagree that we should not strive for perfection because it is not achievable.
What if my bias is toward objectivity?
I took an Anthropology class, it was interesting and even enlightening to a point. The professor would whine about Anthropology not getting the respect of the so called hard sciences. Later I got to thinking well maybe that is because of some of the stuff you say. I have no respect for Professor Fuentes.
I think I prefer 20th century science.
…described Charles Darwin as “an English man with injurious and unfounded prejudices”
Sadly, scientific endeavor has now become a popularity contest. You have to be a popular “influencer” to be accepted.
Just because Darwin was English and allegedly prejudiced does not mean that his scientific theories were wrong.
Sometimes it takes a special individual thinking outside the norm to make progress.
“Traditional scientific values like neutrality and impartiality – they’re worth hanging on to.”
Way more than that – neutrality & impartiality are the essence of science. Anyone who says otherwise literally has no idea why the scientific method was created. It was created because people recognized that people were hopelessly biased & that impeded humanity’s ability to discern the true nature of the world we live in. The scientific method is a way to divorce ourselves of these inherent flaws of humanity to find the true nature of our world. This needs to be hammered into people who say otherwise. They are literally rotting the foundations of science itself.
The problems facing scientists are mainly from another source: Too many people advocate scientism which is more and more confused with real “seriously peer reviewed” science. Many
“Institutions” (any organization can decorate itself with that name) and governmental agencies engage “scientists per order” to generate study results decided in advance in order to promote political agendas. This results in a general discredit for scientists and science as a whole. Before, scientists were consulted and listened to by politicians. I have now the impression these people think we’re only in their way, and the sooner we lose all credibility, the better it is for them.
The evolving “sabotage” of academic institutions is just another step in that direction.
“Fuentes’ call for super-charging the politicisation of science somehow isn’t
very compellingrevolting enough.”Last I heard, The Laws of Nature aren’t Left Wing or Right Wing. They just “are”.
Those who study and seek to understand them may have personal or political opinions and biases but, if they are honest and ethical in their research, such have no place in their findings.