/sci/ - Science & Math

https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1606/1606.05786.pdf
Title:
>The Ecology of Fringe Science and its Bearing on Policy
authors:
>Harry Collins, Andrew Bartlett and Luis Reyes-Galindo

my thoughts:
wow, a great recap of pseuds and how retarded they are!

here's a nice excerpt to discuss:
>Secondly, there is a surprising readiness to discuss the possibility that the resistance of the mainstream to fringe ideas is the consequence of mainstream cabals, particularly, a Jewish conspiracy.The website scientificethics.org, makes allegations of ‘Jewish corruption’ and ‘scientific gangsterism’[33]as a cause of the ‘persecut[ion]of the Italian American scientist R. M. Santilli’,leading to the suppression of unorthodox scientific ideas, particularly those that conflict with ‘organized Jewish interests on Einstein’.[34]

1/3

hypothetical question: you get some email from the diversity committee being like "join our program! all people welcome for our diversity program!" doesn't matter what it is.

as a white hetero cis-male, i have no idea what to do here. i'd be happy to sign up but does that even make sense? i get the impression that the idea is for the program to just be for women and minorities and to a lesser extent non hetero/cis people.

i unironically support more women in stem and so forth (honestly i feel like my field, physics, is stagnant because of nature right now, not because of the people working on it, so if i get to work with more girls instead of all dudes that's fine and no great loss to our stagnant field) and minorities and gays/lesbos/trannies/queerfags are fine too. and i'm OK with them starting their little clubs for them. but when they invite me to clubs they start and act like i'm totally welcome i'm like "wot?".... just does not compute. i figure it is just a token motion to say "everyone is welcome" when really they mean "all non-cis-hetero-white-males are welcome"

privately i am completely economically liberal and socially libertarian (e.g. free college and healthcare would be good if we could siphon the money off from the .01% and if you want to have sex with whoever, go ahead, that's your business) but as a science person i tend to keep my political opinions to myself in public contexts, like my online presence and public presentations (and even one-on-one i tend to try and feel out the other person before revealing my political leanings).

however, some scientists just go all-out with political statements. i find that inappropriate for the basic reason that if you want to be trusted scientifically, you shouldn't push opinions. of a scientist does that, people whose opinions disagree with that scientist will tend to think the scientist is untrustworthy in general and might distrust even their legitimate scientific results. in other words you dilute the power of your stances on factual science by mixing what you stand for with political opinions.

shit like pic related is just not good for science, as far as i can tell. people like that should just stfu and go back to the lab and do real work instead of meaningless crap like posing for lame political photo ops