Honest but still demonic
A "science" "writer" named Phillip Ball is arguing that science can't be separated from politics.

In one way, Ball is just being realistic. Academia has ALWAYS been ideological. The personal values of scientists have ALWAYS been part of academia's standards and judgments. Taboos change from decade to decade, so the specific standards also change, but the judgments are always ideological and personal, not "scientific".

A recent change in the economic structure of Big Science accounts for the modern purely partisan D team vs R team bias. Before 1980 there were competing centers of Big Science. Industries had major research labs that were more oriented to real problem solving and less oriented to raw ideology. Bell Tel, Westinghouse, RCA, GM, oil companies, farm coops, all had their "universities". When we handed our industries to China, those research centers faded out. Now the only non-academic centers are inside Deepstate.

When people are striving to solve real problems, ideology doesn't matter nearly as much. When people are working solely to satisfy a government grant, partisan labels are THE UNIVERSE. All bureaucrats are on the D team, and all bureaucrats hate the R team.

In my field of speech research, Bell Labs was the leader for 70 years. Bell was much less political than universities. (See Shockley.) Bell Labs dissolved in the 80s, and now the only non-academic center of speech research is GoogleNSA, which is even more nakedly ideological than any university.

= = = = =

Phillip Ball is completely blind to the fact that taboos change. He mentions that standards change, and then IMMEDIATELY knocks it down. MY standards RIGHT NOW are the ONLY standards, and MY rigidly conformist opinion RIGHT NOW must force us to cancel good scientists who were rigidly conformist to the norms of THEIR own time. (See detemporation.)

Krylov is right that ‘Scientists are not saints. They are human beings born into places and times they did not choose.’ Yet it is absurd to suggest that, by naming things after them, we do not in some degree elevate and sanctify them.

Good old Github. Good old Room 101.

As Fauci put it succinctly and perfectly:

I am science. Do as you're told.

Labels: #WholeOfSociety

  ¶ 11:21 PM