We can see the similarities with main stream media, government institutions, and academic institutions. MSM has a left leaning bias and has lost market share to independent and small media outlets, including SubStack. This would likely be true if MSM has a right leaning bias. Repairing with bias, rather than the truth, is assisting and accelerating the decline. Government and world institutions appear to follow this same path, leading to irrelevance. Scientific and academic institutions have not observed these trends and appear to follow in kind. It makes me wonder about the practice of science within the scientific institutions that take political stands. It is unfortunate that less discerning citizens are influenced by these experts in the media, government, or science. By then again, that is entirely the point. Shift the perception of the public to retain power and funding. The search for truth is not the focus.
This is a great article and the facts speak for themselves. No need to lead off with the AI generated picture of various democrats with plastic smiles. I couldn't send this article to many people who ought to read it because they will be immediatelhy turned off by that picture.
Hi Roger, long time free reader, I finally jumped the paywall, in part because of this article. The same issue you have identified for scientists (participation in partisan politics) is also endemic in my profession: Christian Ministry.
Far too many pastors and leaders compromise their service to all people by jumping on particular cultural bandwagons. So, I think the problem is probably culture wide, not just limited to Science (or religion). There seems to be pressure to "speak out" about every little thing, even when professional ethics suggests that silence might be of the most service to a person's constituencies.
From my perspective, it's also a problem of where the "speaking out" takes place. I have no problem with it in personal conversations, where questions can be asked, and interactions can soften and refine a person's statements. But social media seems to drive us toward "bold declarations" rather than conversations.
Trump cut USAID funding worldwide -- a retrospective analysis using a longitudinal design found a 15% reduction in all-cause mortality over 21 years. I guess we are running an 'experiment' to test those findings.
Trump installed the flat-earther RFK Jr as head of HHS -- his views on vaccines have fueled US outbreaks of diseases such as measles that we thought were ancient history, and gutted funding for one of the greatest technology breakthroughs of the 21st Century (mRNA vaccines) in favor of "novel platforms that don’t collapse when viruses mutate." Any beginning biology student can tell you that the latter is a pipe dream.
I was listening to a podcast wherein Ezra Klein's guest noted that he "followed the science" on climate change as a way of asserting that there existed such a thing as un-politicized "science". His attitude in "following" without questioning was an indicator of lack of intelligence. He's a product of groupthink, which is one of, if not THE most potent forces in human affairs, second only to the power of money to marshal groupthink to its service.
FWIW, "Proximal Origins" was a solid paper that went off-track after peer review to satisfy an editor. If you read the paper, it discusses three plausible scenarios by which SARS-CoV-2 could have evolved: two via zoonosis and one during laboratory experiments in cell culture or in animals. The latter was a "lab leak" scenario, though that terminology hadn't been invented yet. The paper ruled out a genetic engineering hypothesis. This is exactly what the 8 government groups of experts have been telling the DNI: Both scenarios are possible with the security groups having a modest preference for the lab leak hypothesis and the biology groups having a modest preference for zoonosis. "Proximal Origins" went off track a Nature editors requested that the Proximal Origins authors make their preference for zoonosis clearer. So they added one non-peer reviewed sentence to the concluding paragraph saying that the laboratory scenario was implausible even though an entire paragraph in the body of the paper was devoted to discussing how SARS-Co-V2 could have evolved in the laboratory. Later the whole thing was blown out of proportion (IMO) by Republican politicians out to pin responsibility for the paper on Fauci.
Within the 23 paragraphs of the paper, unless I miscounted, you say "an entire paragraph in the body of the paper was devoted to discussing how SARS-Co-V2 (sic) could have evolved in the laboratory" So 4.3% of the paragraphs in the paper, not including figures, explored the possibility of a lab leak. Got it. OK, maybe a couple more including the introduction.
The main problem with your focus on a paper, flawed enough to have about 5,000 requests for retraction of the paper, is it misses the context. Context that includes:
- Anderson email to Fauci in January 2020
- Slack conversations between the authors of the paper
- Fauci, though actively engaged as a funder and reviewer (instigator?), coyly references the paper at the podium April 2020 "totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human," BUT can't think of the name or authors. Right.
- Daszak involvement in The Lancet article labeling lab leak as a conspiracy theory - February 2020
The proximal origin paper you label as 'solid', well is something less than that. It looks, smells and tastes like propaganda. Narrative shaping. A$$ covering. Worse.
From those 23 paragraphs. "Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus." AND "It is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of a related SARS-CoV-like coronavirus." 2018 DEFUSE funding request. So the 2026 decision by NIH to remove all grants from the leading virologist of coronaviruses, Ralph Baric, is simply partisan? Also, the decision of the University of North Carolina to place Ralph Baric on leave? Partisan too?
"Fouchier, though not a coauthor, shaped the paper’s central conclusion during private discussions with the authors and funders, including Anthony Fauci and Jeremy Farrar." The House Democrats in 2023 released a report and documents noting the extensive involvement Jeremy Farrar played in the proximal origin paper. Something Paul Thacker labels as ghostwriting and says, "by failing to add funder Jeremy Farrar as an author to the paper, the authors also violated the ethics policies of Nature Medicine. According to Nature’s editorial policy".
This is Ron Fouchier, a Dutch virologist, and the same guy who in 2011 created a strain of deadly bird flu that became airborne and highly transmissible among mammals. What possible reason (money, cough cough, money) could Fouchier have had to put a nail in the notion of a lab leak? Science at its finest.
Thank you Kristian, Andrew, Ian, Edward, Robert (and Jeremy Farrar) for this, "and there are documented instances of laboratory escapes of SARS-CoV. We must therefore examine the possibility of an inadvertent laboratory release of SARS-CoV-2." Yeah, then there is this Copernicus guy and his theory...
DSB: I'll reply briefly, since I don't wish to hijack this thread. If you can suggest somewhere else to pursue this subject without annoying Roger, I'd be happy to continue there.
IIRC, on Jan 29, 2020, Andersen called Fauci to alert him to the fact that the furin cleave site in SARS-CoV-2 APPEARED to have been genetically engineered. Fauci commissioned him to immediately put together a team of experts to explore this hypothesis over the next few weeks. Then, Fauci sent an email to Farrar, his British counterpart, informing him of what he had done, and warning that positive findings would need to be reported to the FBI and MI5. From the first moment, there was no intent to cover up anything. Andersen’s team quickly found insurmountable problems with the initial genetic engineering hypothesis (as did most other groups that followed in their footsteps) and three members of the larger team joined Andersen in debating and refining other possibilities into what became known as "Proximal Origins".
My memory of the paper was somewhat faulty. It has two major sections: the first concerned genetic elements, which the authors concluded were incompatible with the genetic engineering hypothesis the Andersen team had been formed to test: a novel way of binding to the ACE2 receptor and a poor furin cleavage site with an adjacent proline that could induce O-glycosylation that could block the site. For example, the two groups that introduced a furin cleavage site into SARS-CoV-1 both independently elected to use RRSRR for their furin cleave site, the same sequence used by two coronaviruses that cause mild colds in humans. Genetic "engineers" pick elements that are KNOWN TO WORK and so would those implementing other unfunded proposals to add furin cleavage sites. The second major section (10 paragraphs) covers three scenarios for how SARS-Co-V2 originated ("was selected"): two zoonosis scenarios and one (three paragraphs) involving SELECTION BY PASSAGE in cell culture or lab animals - in other words in a leak from a lab experiment. PO didn't use the terminology lab leak, but if SARS-CoV-2 had evolved in a lab it must have escaped from there. Take out one of the sentences you object to: "It is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of a related SARS-CoV-like coronavirus" that was added at the recommendation of an editor after peer review and "Proximal Origins" would be an acceptable version of what we believe today. The phrases "laboratory construct or purposefully manipulated" referred to genetically engineered, a hypothesis all groups reporting to the DNI reject.
All three scenarios (and science to this day) have one enormous problem: No coronavirus is known that is similar enough to SARS-CoV-2 to evolve into the earliest pandemic variant in a reasonable period of time in the lab (one year) or in the wild (one decade). The nearest known variants differs by about 1000 bases out of 30,000! However, there are many more unknown variants in the wild than undisclosed variants hiding in the Wuhan lab, so zoonosis is the more likely solution to this problem.
Furthermore, there is no doubt that the Hunan "Seafood Market” (a mall with 650 vendors including 20 supplying live exotic animals for food) was critical to the initial spread and “super spreading” of cases in Wuhan before Beijing even knew it had a problem it might want to cover up. Whether or not SARS-CoV-2 entered the Market in a human connected to the WIV or an infected animal, of the earliest 150 known cases, half were known to be customers of the Market and the other half were neighbors of those customers. If SARS-CoV-2 was delivered by an infected human from the WIV, there were literally thousand of sites in Wuhan, many closer to the WIV than the Market, where the first super-spreader event(s) could have occurred. If the virus arrived in an infected animal, the Seafood Market was one of only four possible sites for the first super spreading events.
What many fail to understand is that CHINESE RESPONSIBILITY for 20-40 million Covid deaths would be far greater if the disease arrived at a wet market - after that danger was clearly revealed by the 2002 outbreak SARS-CoV-1 in wet markets - than if it were caused by some rogue scientists working with Westerners in one of the safest research facilities in the world. The Chi Com Party WANTS you (Luddites?) to believe the lab leak hypothesis - even though the NIH and NIAID imposed severe restrictions on gain-of-function research before the pandemic strain of SARS-CoV-2 existed. They KNOW whether those two WIV researchers with respiratory illnesses in November of 2019 were COVID Patienst Zero or not, but THEY HAVEN”T TOLD YOU. You must realize that Trump promotes hundred of conspiracy theories and that the lab leak hypothesis was just another useful conspiracy theory for him (not plausible science) to use when taunting the Chinese in the spring of 2020. The UNEXPLAINED DISAPPEARANCE of all live animals from the locked Seafood Market before they could be tested, and LATER discovery of Daszak’s risky, but unfunded, proposals absolutely made the lab leak hypothesis worth pursuing in 2021. If Baric were invoked, you’d know by now. Baric is likely as guilty as all of the other victims of Trump’s witch hunts: Comey, Lisa Cook, Letitia James, Jerome Powell, Rep Mark Kelly, and Jack Smith and UNC certainly doesn’t want to join his list of enemy colleges.
Once again, thank you for providing important background information. As a retired professor of chemistry who was active in research and teaching, I always enjoyed following the research reports in Science and frequently used them to demonstrate to my students, in sequential reports, how science self corrected itself. Then, the journal began emphasizing policy, "science news," and following the political climate for funding from DC. Its research reports, particularly the overviews, began emphasizing those topics that had "political legs." Science no longer was a useful tool in my teaching. I hung on to my subscription for years hoping for a return to Science being an effective window into scientific research until I had had enough and didn't renew my membership. In retirement, I follow alternate sources for my science news. AI provides some opportunity to broaden my survey of the landscape of science reporting but it, of course, has to be used with care and experience. Again, thanks!
Thanks Roger, your piece referenced the Covid response several times. I believe that there is no better lens to view the current landscape with respect to science. Virtually anyone that views themselves as “on the left” politically who states that they “believe in science” today actually means “F Donald Trump”, when they speak those words. “Follow the Science”, during the Covid response meant supporting a corrupt cabal of profiteers, led by Tony Fauci, as they directed a massive cover up of their crimes against humanity. Why would otherwise intelligent people do this? Because Fauci identified as anti Trump. You can still view the ravages of this intellectual carnage in people that still wear surgical masks out in public. Yes, it’s a problem for the journals and all other institutions of science to have established that they serve a purely political agenda, but more broadly the western world has lost the plot for scientific advancement that would benefit our species and our planet. It’s a lot to hope for that the plot can be recovered when Trump exits the scene.
This seems to be about Big Important Science and it's organizations and not the thousands of scientists out there quietly producing useful work. The problem is that the Big Science Establishment has defined Science as "whatever work we currently think is important."
Documenting scientific misbehavior is not hard. It should be done. You do it, and transmit what others have done, well. But that should not be the end point. It is not enough to point out that Insttution I at time T was mistaken to issue statement S. You and others who want to see cost effective policy concerning the effects of the accumultion in the atmosphere of greenouse gasses and adapttion to the same need to point out what correct behavior by journals and institutions, by research groups, by funding agencies, and by policy makers is NOW.
I have done IT and Network Engineering for decades. Engineering often suffers a similar fate of lack of integrity via diminishing safety of the product or service, either for larger profits, or "going along to get along."
The mantra I was taught in my STEM higher education is: Safety First
Any engineering discussion should never circumvent or deprecate safety. Anyone in such a meeting where this is happening should speak up.
My journey into thinking about the deprecation of safety began with the anti-shoplifting hard plastic packaging for small, easy to shoplift items. Formally, the noun is "clamshell packaging." I'm referring to the type of packaging one must open with scissors or a knife, after leaving the store.
Clamshell packaging to prevent shoplifting was patented in 1978, became common in the 1980s, and its use persists to this day. Frustration over opening such packaging is known as: "wrap rage" and results in Emergency Room visits every year.
All to circumvent the need as a society to say that shoplifting is an intolerable crime, with numerous second order effects, including less safety overall. Visible disclaimers on the clamshell packaging, disclosing the potential safety hazards of casually opening and handling such packaging, are mostly nonexistent.
To find the largest engineering violators of Safety First, one can look at the Market Capitalizations of Big Tech, especially Social Media and companies who use Advertising Technology to silently gather your personal data. There's minimal honesty about safety, right there.
The same is true for wireless technologies. Who really knows the long term effects of wireless technologies on children with their soft skulls? Don't count on the manufacturers and service providers to honestly appraise the safety of their wireless products.
Larger profits, even grotesque, monopolistic profits first. Not safety first. A difficult to obtain STEM degree is a prerequisite to work in these fields.
The professions soil themselves by deprecating safety, and earn their loss of trust.
Incentives matter. Individual scientists want (need) funding for their research. The funding decisions are decided by academic and governmental agencies that are administered by progressively educated bureaucrats. Hence, there is a continuity in the bias across political administrations for progressive research. Research that support progressive positions on climate change, sexuality (gender), and race will be funded. Opposing views will not be funded. Given this bias in funding, virtue signaling scientists do not face any costs in the potential loss of grants. The same incentives apply to scientific journals with the added incentive that virtue signaling editors gain political status.
We can see the similarities with main stream media, government institutions, and academic institutions. MSM has a left leaning bias and has lost market share to independent and small media outlets, including SubStack. This would likely be true if MSM has a right leaning bias. Repairing with bias, rather than the truth, is assisting and accelerating the decline. Government and world institutions appear to follow this same path, leading to irrelevance. Scientific and academic institutions have not observed these trends and appear to follow in kind. It makes me wonder about the practice of science within the scientific institutions that take political stands. It is unfortunate that less discerning citizens are influenced by these experts in the media, government, or science. By then again, that is entirely the point. Shift the perception of the public to retain power and funding. The search for truth is not the focus.
This is a great article and the facts speak for themselves. No need to lead off with the AI generated picture of various democrats with plastic smiles. I couldn't send this article to many people who ought to read it because they will be immediatelhy turned off by that picture.
Hi Roger, long time free reader, I finally jumped the paywall, in part because of this article. The same issue you have identified for scientists (participation in partisan politics) is also endemic in my profession: Christian Ministry.
Far too many pastors and leaders compromise their service to all people by jumping on particular cultural bandwagons. So, I think the problem is probably culture wide, not just limited to Science (or religion). There seems to be pressure to "speak out" about every little thing, even when professional ethics suggests that silence might be of the most service to a person's constituencies.
From my perspective, it's also a problem of where the "speaking out" takes place. I have no problem with it in personal conversations, where questions can be asked, and interactions can soften and refine a person's statements. But social media seems to drive us toward "bold declarations" rather than conversations.
Let's see ....
Trump cut USAID funding worldwide -- a retrospective analysis using a longitudinal design found a 15% reduction in all-cause mortality over 21 years. I guess we are running an 'experiment' to test those findings.
Trump installed the flat-earther RFK Jr as head of HHS -- his views on vaccines have fueled US outbreaks of diseases such as measles that we thought were ancient history, and gutted funding for one of the greatest technology breakthroughs of the 21st Century (mRNA vaccines) in favor of "novel platforms that don’t collapse when viruses mutate." Any beginning biology student can tell you that the latter is a pipe dream.
Perhaps Science didn't have this one so wrong
Hate to be cynical, but follow the money and that is the way most scientists and institutions will go. Wish it wasn’t so….
I was listening to a podcast wherein Ezra Klein's guest noted that he "followed the science" on climate change as a way of asserting that there existed such a thing as un-politicized "science". His attitude in "following" without questioning was an indicator of lack of intelligence. He's a product of groupthink, which is one of, if not THE most potent forces in human affairs, second only to the power of money to marshal groupthink to its service.
And of course the peer reviewed version of The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2 was published in Nature Medicine.
FWIW, "Proximal Origins" was a solid paper that went off-track after peer review to satisfy an editor. If you read the paper, it discusses three plausible scenarios by which SARS-CoV-2 could have evolved: two via zoonosis and one during laboratory experiments in cell culture or in animals. The latter was a "lab leak" scenario, though that terminology hadn't been invented yet. The paper ruled out a genetic engineering hypothesis. This is exactly what the 8 government groups of experts have been telling the DNI: Both scenarios are possible with the security groups having a modest preference for the lab leak hypothesis and the biology groups having a modest preference for zoonosis. "Proximal Origins" went off track a Nature editors requested that the Proximal Origins authors make their preference for zoonosis clearer. So they added one non-peer reviewed sentence to the concluding paragraph saying that the laboratory scenario was implausible even though an entire paragraph in the body of the paper was devoted to discussing how SARS-Co-V2 could have evolved in the laboratory. Later the whole thing was blown out of proportion (IMO) by Republican politicians out to pin responsibility for the paper on Fauci.
Within the 23 paragraphs of the paper, unless I miscounted, you say "an entire paragraph in the body of the paper was devoted to discussing how SARS-Co-V2 (sic) could have evolved in the laboratory" So 4.3% of the paragraphs in the paper, not including figures, explored the possibility of a lab leak. Got it. OK, maybe a couple more including the introduction.
The main problem with your focus on a paper, flawed enough to have about 5,000 requests for retraction of the paper, is it misses the context. Context that includes:
- Anderson email to Fauci in January 2020
- Slack conversations between the authors of the paper
- Fauci, though actively engaged as a funder and reviewer (instigator?), coyly references the paper at the podium April 2020 "totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human," BUT can't think of the name or authors. Right.
- Daszak involvement in The Lancet article labeling lab leak as a conspiracy theory - February 2020
The proximal origin paper you label as 'solid', well is something less than that. It looks, smells and tastes like propaganda. Narrative shaping. A$$ covering. Worse.
From those 23 paragraphs. "Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus." AND "It is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of a related SARS-CoV-like coronavirus." 2018 DEFUSE funding request. So the 2026 decision by NIH to remove all grants from the leading virologist of coronaviruses, Ralph Baric, is simply partisan? Also, the decision of the University of North Carolina to place Ralph Baric on leave? Partisan too?
"Fouchier, though not a coauthor, shaped the paper’s central conclusion during private discussions with the authors and funders, including Anthony Fauci and Jeremy Farrar." The House Democrats in 2023 released a report and documents noting the extensive involvement Jeremy Farrar played in the proximal origin paper. Something Paul Thacker labels as ghostwriting and says, "by failing to add funder Jeremy Farrar as an author to the paper, the authors also violated the ethics policies of Nature Medicine. According to Nature’s editorial policy".
This is Ron Fouchier, a Dutch virologist, and the same guy who in 2011 created a strain of deadly bird flu that became airborne and highly transmissible among mammals. What possible reason (money, cough cough, money) could Fouchier have had to put a nail in the notion of a lab leak? Science at its finest.
Thank you Kristian, Andrew, Ian, Edward, Robert (and Jeremy Farrar) for this, "and there are documented instances of laboratory escapes of SARS-CoV. We must therefore examine the possibility of an inadvertent laboratory release of SARS-CoV-2." Yeah, then there is this Copernicus guy and his theory...
DSB: I'll reply briefly, since I don't wish to hijack this thread. If you can suggest somewhere else to pursue this subject without annoying Roger, I'd be happy to continue there.
IIRC, on Jan 29, 2020, Andersen called Fauci to alert him to the fact that the furin cleave site in SARS-CoV-2 APPEARED to have been genetically engineered. Fauci commissioned him to immediately put together a team of experts to explore this hypothesis over the next few weeks. Then, Fauci sent an email to Farrar, his British counterpart, informing him of what he had done, and warning that positive findings would need to be reported to the FBI and MI5. From the first moment, there was no intent to cover up anything. Andersen’s team quickly found insurmountable problems with the initial genetic engineering hypothesis (as did most other groups that followed in their footsteps) and three members of the larger team joined Andersen in debating and refining other possibilities into what became known as "Proximal Origins".
My memory of the paper was somewhat faulty. It has two major sections: the first concerned genetic elements, which the authors concluded were incompatible with the genetic engineering hypothesis the Andersen team had been formed to test: a novel way of binding to the ACE2 receptor and a poor furin cleavage site with an adjacent proline that could induce O-glycosylation that could block the site. For example, the two groups that introduced a furin cleavage site into SARS-CoV-1 both independently elected to use RRSRR for their furin cleave site, the same sequence used by two coronaviruses that cause mild colds in humans. Genetic "engineers" pick elements that are KNOWN TO WORK and so would those implementing other unfunded proposals to add furin cleavage sites. The second major section (10 paragraphs) covers three scenarios for how SARS-Co-V2 originated ("was selected"): two zoonosis scenarios and one (three paragraphs) involving SELECTION BY PASSAGE in cell culture or lab animals - in other words in a leak from a lab experiment. PO didn't use the terminology lab leak, but if SARS-CoV-2 had evolved in a lab it must have escaped from there. Take out one of the sentences you object to: "It is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of a related SARS-CoV-like coronavirus" that was added at the recommendation of an editor after peer review and "Proximal Origins" would be an acceptable version of what we believe today. The phrases "laboratory construct or purposefully manipulated" referred to genetically engineered, a hypothesis all groups reporting to the DNI reject.
All three scenarios (and science to this day) have one enormous problem: No coronavirus is known that is similar enough to SARS-CoV-2 to evolve into the earliest pandemic variant in a reasonable period of time in the lab (one year) or in the wild (one decade). The nearest known variants differs by about 1000 bases out of 30,000! However, there are many more unknown variants in the wild than undisclosed variants hiding in the Wuhan lab, so zoonosis is the more likely solution to this problem.
Furthermore, there is no doubt that the Hunan "Seafood Market” (a mall with 650 vendors including 20 supplying live exotic animals for food) was critical to the initial spread and “super spreading” of cases in Wuhan before Beijing even knew it had a problem it might want to cover up. Whether or not SARS-CoV-2 entered the Market in a human connected to the WIV or an infected animal, of the earliest 150 known cases, half were known to be customers of the Market and the other half were neighbors of those customers. If SARS-CoV-2 was delivered by an infected human from the WIV, there were literally thousand of sites in Wuhan, many closer to the WIV than the Market, where the first super-spreader event(s) could have occurred. If the virus arrived in an infected animal, the Seafood Market was one of only four possible sites for the first super spreading events.
What many fail to understand is that CHINESE RESPONSIBILITY for 20-40 million Covid deaths would be far greater if the disease arrived at a wet market - after that danger was clearly revealed by the 2002 outbreak SARS-CoV-1 in wet markets - than if it were caused by some rogue scientists working with Westerners in one of the safest research facilities in the world. The Chi Com Party WANTS you (Luddites?) to believe the lab leak hypothesis - even though the NIH and NIAID imposed severe restrictions on gain-of-function research before the pandemic strain of SARS-CoV-2 existed. They KNOW whether those two WIV researchers with respiratory illnesses in November of 2019 were COVID Patienst Zero or not, but THEY HAVEN”T TOLD YOU. You must realize that Trump promotes hundred of conspiracy theories and that the lab leak hypothesis was just another useful conspiracy theory for him (not plausible science) to use when taunting the Chinese in the spring of 2020. The UNEXPLAINED DISAPPEARANCE of all live animals from the locked Seafood Market before they could be tested, and LATER discovery of Daszak’s risky, but unfunded, proposals absolutely made the lab leak hypothesis worth pursuing in 2021. If Baric were invoked, you’d know by now. Baric is likely as guilty as all of the other victims of Trump’s witch hunts: Comey, Lisa Cook, Letitia James, Jerome Powell, Rep Mark Kelly, and Jack Smith and UNC certainly doesn’t want to join his list of enemy colleges.
Well done Roger. This is one article I will have to read several times to absorb it all.
Once again, thank you for providing important background information. As a retired professor of chemistry who was active in research and teaching, I always enjoyed following the research reports in Science and frequently used them to demonstrate to my students, in sequential reports, how science self corrected itself. Then, the journal began emphasizing policy, "science news," and following the political climate for funding from DC. Its research reports, particularly the overviews, began emphasizing those topics that had "political legs." Science no longer was a useful tool in my teaching. I hung on to my subscription for years hoping for a return to Science being an effective window into scientific research until I had had enough and didn't renew my membership. In retirement, I follow alternate sources for my science news. AI provides some opportunity to broaden my survey of the landscape of science reporting but it, of course, has to be used with care and experience. Again, thanks!
Thanks Roger, your piece referenced the Covid response several times. I believe that there is no better lens to view the current landscape with respect to science. Virtually anyone that views themselves as “on the left” politically who states that they “believe in science” today actually means “F Donald Trump”, when they speak those words. “Follow the Science”, during the Covid response meant supporting a corrupt cabal of profiteers, led by Tony Fauci, as they directed a massive cover up of their crimes against humanity. Why would otherwise intelligent people do this? Because Fauci identified as anti Trump. You can still view the ravages of this intellectual carnage in people that still wear surgical masks out in public. Yes, it’s a problem for the journals and all other institutions of science to have established that they serve a purely political agenda, but more broadly the western world has lost the plot for scientific advancement that would benefit our species and our planet. It’s a lot to hope for that the plot can be recovered when Trump exits the scene.
I take comfort in seeing so few masks in public. It could be worse.
This seems to be about Big Important Science and it's organizations and not the thousands of scientists out there quietly producing useful work. The problem is that the Big Science Establishment has defined Science as "whatever work we currently think is important."
Documenting scientific misbehavior is not hard. It should be done. You do it, and transmit what others have done, well. But that should not be the end point. It is not enough to point out that Insttution I at time T was mistaken to issue statement S. You and others who want to see cost effective policy concerning the effects of the accumultion in the atmosphere of greenouse gasses and adapttion to the same need to point out what correct behavior by journals and institutions, by research groups, by funding agencies, and by policy makers is NOW.
Oh I long for the days when scientific institutions and others , including Hollywood shunned politics and considered it vulgar
I have done IT and Network Engineering for decades. Engineering often suffers a similar fate of lack of integrity via diminishing safety of the product or service, either for larger profits, or "going along to get along."
The mantra I was taught in my STEM higher education is: Safety First
Any engineering discussion should never circumvent or deprecate safety. Anyone in such a meeting where this is happening should speak up.
My journey into thinking about the deprecation of safety began with the anti-shoplifting hard plastic packaging for small, easy to shoplift items. Formally, the noun is "clamshell packaging." I'm referring to the type of packaging one must open with scissors or a knife, after leaving the store.
Clamshell packaging to prevent shoplifting was patented in 1978, became common in the 1980s, and its use persists to this day. Frustration over opening such packaging is known as: "wrap rage" and results in Emergency Room visits every year.
All to circumvent the need as a society to say that shoplifting is an intolerable crime, with numerous second order effects, including less safety overall. Visible disclaimers on the clamshell packaging, disclosing the potential safety hazards of casually opening and handling such packaging, are mostly nonexistent.
To find the largest engineering violators of Safety First, one can look at the Market Capitalizations of Big Tech, especially Social Media and companies who use Advertising Technology to silently gather your personal data. There's minimal honesty about safety, right there.
The same is true for wireless technologies. Who really knows the long term effects of wireless technologies on children with their soft skulls? Don't count on the manufacturers and service providers to honestly appraise the safety of their wireless products.
Larger profits, even grotesque, monopolistic profits first. Not safety first. A difficult to obtain STEM degree is a prerequisite to work in these fields.
The professions soil themselves by deprecating safety, and earn their loss of trust.
Incentives matter. Individual scientists want (need) funding for their research. The funding decisions are decided by academic and governmental agencies that are administered by progressively educated bureaucrats. Hence, there is a continuity in the bias across political administrations for progressive research. Research that support progressive positions on climate change, sexuality (gender), and race will be funded. Opposing views will not be funded. Given this bias in funding, virtue signaling scientists do not face any costs in the potential loss of grants. The same incentives apply to scientific journals with the added incentive that virtue signaling editors gain political status.
This is a little off-topic, but you might be interested in this article:
https://www.breakthroughjournal.org/p/who-killed-the-liberal-patriot