MAGA- please explain…
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Anonymous
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NP. Personally I think some of the obvious untruths that were promulgated during the pandemic permanently broke trust in a lot of people who used to unquestionably trust organizations like the CDC, Scientific American, NHS, physician organizations, etc. The lies about no learning loss in children from remote learning, “kids are resilient,” college-aged young men must get the Covid vaccine when efficacy in that group was not clear and heart issues were a possibility, toddlers need to be masked, etc. caused a deep loss of trust. And that doesn’t even get to the ridiculous “settled science” lies about medical transitions of children. Government entities and professional organizations destroyed the careers of doctors who even mildly questioned gender medicine for children.
Therefore, this a predictable extremist pendulum swing in response to an extremist pendulum swing. And the unfortunate fact is that solid, useful, grounded-in-reality science is deeply suffering as a result. Research has been set back decades. I think this is an object lesson in the value of self-policing. In the pandemic, the most insane voices got elevated to the same level as more reasoned voices. When organizations don’t police their extremes, trust is lost. That’s what happened here. And we are all paying the price. |
Anonymous
lol @ "you read that entire post" No she didn't. She grabbed one of the top ten maga bad words and ran with it. |
Anonymous
Science is partisan. Engineering is not. Lots of tightly held views on the left and right fall apart in light of inconvient data. Rhetoric also works on most people. |
Anonymous
Yes, agreed. |
Anonymous
I can see this now, somewhat. I definitely didn't at the time. I was all for doing what the scientists said, figuring that even if they didn't know everything, they knew more than me. And I still believe that for the most part, but the school closures really hurt. It's the whole baby/bathrwater thing tho. Can the right wing not accept that no system will be perfect every time, and still understand that much good comes from it regardless? Ok, so some people got covid vaccines and did not benefit from them. Why is the right wing response "throw out all vaccines" instead of "let's do more research and learn new things?" |
Anonymous
Clearly you don't actually understand how science actually works. |
Anonymous
I am an engineer. I assure you I do. Engineering either works or doesn't. It is highly highly highly reproducable because when a design fails people die. Think failing bridges in Florida or 737 MAX planes falling out of the sky. This is the application of science, in other words engineering is science that is proven to work. Science on the other hand is suffering a reproducability crisis. Here's a journal than even the common man should recognize, "Nature" that covers the process.. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-04253-w https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/01/13/the-theory-crisis-in-physics-compared-to-the-replication-crisis-in-social-science-two-different-opinion-field-inversions-that-differ-in-some-important-ways/ Scientists are having a hard time replicating each others experiments. Despite what your average person thinks, peer review doesn't mean that another scientist (usually an unpaid reviewer who has published something else in that same area) actually reproduced the same results, it just means that they looked at it and it seems plausible. If multinational corporations can force the Lancet (another medical journal familiar to the common man) to print a retraction of peer reviewed science on their own say so alone then peer reviewed science is definitely not what it once was. Anyone familar with the topic is familiar with the concept of public or perish, and there's a ton of junk publications coming out of China. Physics is the gold standard in science, medicine is next and social science/psychology is way down the line. If you look at the reproducability numbers you will be shocked. 70% of physicists say they can't reproduce one another's findings, yet somehow those findings still get published. Science being partisian is in part due to gate keeping/consensus and that some topics are taboo (and I'm not talking about social science, I'm referring to some areas of physics you literally can't get funding to explore it, say alternatives to string theory). Your funding determines what science can be studied, and you're expecting to find something for that funding body, they're not doing it for charity. If other scientists aren't even trying to reproduce it before publishing, and they work in a similiar area with similiar findings... Hence it is partisan. |
Anonymous
Your comment grossly misrepresents pandemic science and policy. While public messaging evolved with new data, the core claims - about learning loss, vaccine safety, masking, and gender medicine, are either exaggerated or demonstrably false. Trust in science suffers more from misinformation than from cautious, evidence-based guidance. Let's look at your claims, compared to reality: Learning loss denial? No serious institution claimed there was no learning loss. In fact, the CDC and academic studies acknowledged significant setbacks, especially in math and reading, and called for targeted recovery efforts. “Kids are resilient” as a lie? This phrase was used to reassure, not deny harm. Pediatric psychologists emphasized resilience alongside the need for support. It’s not a scientific claim, it’s a framing choice. Vaccines for college-aged men? COVID vaccines were recommended based on risk-benefit analysis. Myocarditis risk from COVID itself was in many cases as high as 27x greater than from the vaccine in young men, and most cases where myocarditis was associated with vaccines, it was mild and resolved quickly, unlike the more serious cases that came from COVID. The vaccines slighly increased risk, but in the long run actually did more to protect young men from more serious COVID-related myocarditis. Masking toddlers? Masking guidance for young children was cautious and context-dependent. The CDC never mandated universal masking for toddlers, and policies varied by transmission rates and setting. Gender medicine and “settled science”? Medical organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics and WPATH support gender-affirming care based on decades of research. Debate exists, but your hyperbolic claims of career destruction for “mild questioning” are anecdotal and tied far more closely to political narratives than medicine. The real threat to science isn't the things you rail about, it's been the spread of misinformation, deliberate disinformation, and vicious politicization, not cautious public health messaging. That is what has done far more damage to erode trust. Science evolves. Early pandemic guidance changed as data improved. That’s not failure, it’s the scientific method in action. Research isn’t "set back decades" by the actions of science or our public health officials - mRNA vaccine development, remote learning tech, and public health infrastructure have advanced dramatically. But now we have fools like RFK Jr. attacking and undermining all of that, thanks to conspiracy theories, misguided MAGA politicization, and debunked nonsense. |
Anonymous
Y'all cain't take away mah freedom. |
Anonymous
Agree with this. The reproducibility crisis is real and significant, but I do not think partisan posters here can acknowledge that. “Follow the science” is a faith-based slogan, not a reality-based one. |
Anonymous
There are some valid concerns about reproducibility, driven by the publish-or-perish nature of academia, and driven by what funding may be available, however you oversimplify and mischaracterize, and it does not logically follow to make a blanket claim that "science is partisan." Engineering is application-driven, with immediate feedback loops. Science is by design exploratory, often dealing with uncertainty, abstraction and long timelines. Engineering benefits from tight coupling between theory and outcome, while science often operates in open-ended domains. You do indeed demonstrate you don't understand science with your expectation that science should operate the way engineering does. And worse yet, your attitude suggests we should just abandon science rather than reform the incentives and models. Science is a method, not a belief system. As for what's "taboo" one should also look at things like the massive disinformation, fear/uncertainty/doubt campaigns that the fossil fuel industry has poured into climate denial, easily over a billion dollars. https://www.budget.senate.gov/chairman/newsroom/press/new-joint-bicameral-staff-report-reveals-big-oils-campaign-of-climate-denial-disinformation-and-doublespeak It's sad that they didn't instead put that money into funding research toward solving problems. That massive disinformation campaign has resulted in delays in improving the research, delays in legislation, delays in strategic investments toward solving the problems, while undermining public trust in the research. But again, it wasn't scientists who did that - it was industry, using PR firms, lobbyists, conservative media outlets, front groups and so on. |
Anonymous
I never said that science should operate like engineering, rather it is a criticism of how science is being validated vs how engineering is validated and how poorly science is validated. I disagree that the take away should be that we should abandon science, rather that we need to reprioritize how science is validated and how it is funded. A combination of how science is gatekept+funded means that it is partisian. That is to say you can not just merely research whatever you want unless you are self funded (like the natural philosophers of old), nor will your discoveries be recognized should they get past the gatekeepers. Let's talk about climate denial since you brought it up. Why has albedo been largely ignored until really the past 5 years? Hotter temps mean that more water vapor, aka the primary green house gas can increase, yet conversely this increases albedo which reflects sunrays and causes a cooling effect. Why is such a known basic scientific effect not been modeled, let alone discussed in the past few years. This doesn't mean that climate science is magically invalidated, it just shows that it is poor science (and largely done in excel spreadsheets and fairly recently without even Kalman filtering!) which is why many of the earlier models and predictions should have been taken with a grain of salt. |
Anonymous
You're yet again misrepresenting both the scientific process and climate modeling. Science is not partisan. Funding and politics can influence priorities, but the method itself is neutral. Reproducibility issues are real, but they’re being addressed transparently across disciplines. That’s reform, not collapse. It's astounding that you are making claims that are demonstrably and provably false. Albedo has never been "ignored." It’s been a core variable in climate models for decades - See NASA’s CERES project, IPCC reports, and any basic Earth science textbook. Your claim that it’s "Excel spreadsheets without Kalman filtering" is not merely wrong, it’s a cartoonish misrepresentation of how global climate models work. Gatekeeping isn’t partisanship, it’s quality control. You don’t get funding to chase fringe ideas unless you show rigor. That’s not censorship; it’s standards. Peer review isn’t perfect, but it’s not a conspiracy. Retractions happen because science is self-correcting. That’s a strength, not a weakness. You falsely try to compare science to faith or religion - which are NOT self-correcting. You’re conflating frustration with institutional inertia and funding politics with a blanket dismissal of science itself. That’s not critique, it’s outright sabotage. You've gone so far out over your skis that you've lost this debate, friend. |
Anonymous
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Basically, they don’t understand that science is ever-changing as we get more information and technology. This mindset is nothing new. My 5th grade students are currently learning this. Just think about the fact that it was widely believed that the earth was flat. And then new data, observations, and technology came about. Can you imagine how unhinged it must have sounded when people started suggesting it was…round? That we are just hanging out here upside down or sideways? Lol
Maga went completely anti-science when pandemic guidelines changed as new data and technological/medical advances were made. I have a science degree, so I completely expected those changes. I just continued to follow those guidelines and adjust with the changes. I still do. I have never had covid. Closing schools really did them in. I don’t know how they blame democrats for this when a) Trump was potus b) this was not a US thing. Schools were closing all over the world. I am a teacher and still don’t know what the best approach would have been. It was an unprecedented and constantly evolving situation. Keeping schools open and continuing as usual definitely would NOT have been the way to go. |
Anonymous