Does science promote rightwing viewpoints in the US?

[ngant17]

Ever since I read a previous article in the Scientific American, I've felt that there is a strong right-wing ideological presence in academic and particularly the scientific community of the US.

I'm not concerned with global warming, as their stance is pretty obvious. Believing in the logical evidence doesn't qualify you as a leftwing tree-hugger, or even a rightwing republican (does Bush have any clue?).

I think there is a tendency of science to interpret history which conforms to rightwing ideology, and this probably began right after the death of Pres. Kennedy in 1963.

would like to post a poll on the subject question, "Does science promote rightwing viewpoints in the US?" but DU wants to keep me donating, so maybe some one can chip in here. Or link to a similar poll.

[depakid]

1. I don't know many right wing scientists....

They're actually a comparatively rare breed- because science looks at evidence- and the evidence is that right policies are utter failures on every front.

[Monkeyman]

2. One word yes

[ngant17]

9. Scientific America and rightwing ideology

From my original post, I based my first conclusion of ideological bias in the US scientific academia from the June 1994 issue of the Scientific American article, "Was the Race to the Moon Real?"

Without turning this into a debate on the validity of the space race back in the 1960's, this would be a separate topic, and it's been debated a lot elsewhere.

Basically I was amazed that the author in that Sci. Am. article failed to examine the position of the US physicist Hugh Dryden with the Soviet academia (Dr. Dryden was the youngest man to ever get awarded Phd in physics, and he was appointed directly by the President to collaborate with the Soviet space scientists) - you'd think he would have deserved at least one sentence for a rebuttal of that position.

Does this represent offical policy in Sci. Am. magazine? If there is a taint of leftwing bias, it must get filtered out and overridded by rightist propaganda.

You'd think there would be balance in that area, especially when it is concerned with the history of scientific progess in the USA.

[Monkeyman]

15. Have you heard this one from the scientific research Dept

PTSD can be cured with a pill. YEEEKKKKKKKKKK

[ngant17]

18. wow, that's a mind-blower

What about those super-pure chemical drugs in outer space (crystal-formation under conditions of anti-gravity), I wonder if this is still a priority for NASA these days? I wonder if there's a suggestion to increase NASA's funding for this. That would encourage private pharmaceutical companies and private enterprise, and they probably are very much on the right.

Is it the same ones who are supporting the medical boycotts against Cuba, a country which develops free vaccines to 3rd world countries? The boycott only increases the expenses for the Republic of Cuba to actually get their product out there to the people that need it, but can't afford it. A cost that can and should be avoided for scientific and medical and ethical reasons. But not political!

[AngryAmish]

45. Sci. American has a left-leaning editorial policy

[ngant17]

55. Sci. Am has left-leaning tendencies?

I wonder when "they" (i.e., the editors who allow which papers are going to be published in the magazine), I would like to know when their historial revision of the 1960's "space race" will be reviewed and give us a more balanced perspective. For example, a review of the implications of NSAM 271 (Kennedy's 1963 order for NASA to cooperate with the Russians in a joint Apollo-Soyuz moon landing). When they will mention the important work by Dr. Dryden and his Russian counterpart Blagonravov in the USSR in this regard. There is a lot of history which hasn't seen much light of day yet.

I am not qualified to get published there, as I'm not in academia and I'm not a scientist, but I can, like any rational person, do independent research at the libraries. Some of their published material by their supposed experts falls well short of what an amateur like me can do.

I haven't read Sci. Am. lately, but if you can recommend some juicy reading in this regard, inquiring minds would like to know.

[pepperbear]

3. Please provide links to support your statements. n/t

[ngant17]

10. links at previous reply

See my 2nd post, which is above in this thread.

[greenman3610]

4. I live in a techy community, and yes

there are a lot of right wing scientists.
You don't stand around at a water cooler in a
major american corporation and discuss
left politics.

[truedelphi]

11. Is your techy community involved in weapons programs?

Even remotely (for instance, silicon chip building or design?) If an industry is weapons-related, it is pretty much a guarantee it will be right wing.

I recently becme a member of American Chemical Society, and boy that organization is constantly spewing out left-y editorials that I agree with.

They cannot stand Bush's stance on stem cell research. They cannot stand certain provisions of legislature that cuts research to NASA and other programs valued by Past Presidents. They are realizing first hand that spending three hundred billion plus on a war in Iraq means that while other nations have huge laboratory complexes and fabulous perks (in the international communities, a lot of grad students get assistance from their governments. Not so here.) While other societies ride on bullet trains, our infra-structure collapses.

Also the chemists in this country are watching their jobs go overseas. Some of the letter to the editor columns is taken up each month deploring the fact that high school seniors have no interest in becoming chemists - they have watched their mom or dad search for months for work, even though they have grad degrees in chemistry.

[SmokingJacket]

5. They might be desperately trying to please those who hold purse strings...

It's damn hard for scientists to get funding these days --

I don't know a ton of scientists, but the ones I do know are pretty apolitical, and have no use for the games that politicians play. But they HATE the crap that the current administration is pulling, with its lack of respect for science and its deep cuts in funding.

I would say that since realitly has a liberal bias, science does NOT promote rightwing viewpoints... at all!

ON EDIT: I only know academic scientists. Perhaps corporate scientists have a whole different POV.

[pinto]

6. No, imo.

I can't say much else without any more info. Are there specific instances you had in mind? I could see a case that say NASA engineers promote a bureaucratic point of view...that's well documented. But science promoting a right wing agenda? I don't know.

[ngant17]

12. above post

You've definitely zero'ed in on my thought-waves, pinto. I don't just want to single out NASA as they were forced to work with some crazy rightwingers from Nazi Germany in the 1960's.

But nonetheless, the larger question, please look at my previous reference to the June 1994 issue of the Scientific American article about the "space race" to the moon. Basically I was referring to the way Dr. Hugh Dryden perceived events when he was scientific advisor in the Kennedy/Johnson Administration back in the early and mid-1960's.

[truedelphi]

7. Here's my thoughts on this m atter

Real scientists are definitely not right wing

Real neo-cons do not believe in science (unless one of theirs has achieved a post in academia wherein they can say and publish whatever they want)

[BillZBubb]

8. Darwin, stem cells, global warming...

If those support "right wing viewpoints" I'm mystified.

[ngant17]

16. not really talking about those self-evident facts

I'm more curious about the US scientific interpretation of politics and history, especially in the international forum.

Greenhouse: there was never a scientific basis for the rejection of Kyoto protocols, at least, I never heard of one. One based on economics, sure, as it would 'possibly' be more costly.

But why doesn't, say, environmental costs of capitalism, ever even show up in scientific studies? Is is too difficult to document this? Computers should able to model an economic 'game theory' about this.
Maybe the rightwinger corporate community doesn't want this information to be considered as a possibility.

I'm sure there are scientists/biologists who reject evolution and support intel. design, or who deny global warming due to greenhouse emissions. A certain amount of dissent and criticism is expected anywhere, including in science. But they shouldn't have the ultimate policy-making control.

By the same token, are scientists prohibited from having more freedom of thought, especially if they might have some viewpoints which can be interpreted as leftist or progressive in some way, i.e., they might point out irregularities in the official version of 9-11 attacks?

[Random_Australian]

40. Environmental costs of capitalism not show up?

Since when?

Well, true, the data shows just an environmental cost, not the source, but really, the amount of data coming back about this stuff is pretty huge. (Part of the data of studying everything)

"are scientists prohibited from having more freedom of thought" nope, provided you have evidence and logical argument. You can at least argue hypotheticals all day long.

[ngant17]

59. yes, environmental data is there

I agree that there is ample amount of data to show the adverse effects of pollution. For example, Canadian maple trees (and commercial output of maple syrup) are negatively affected from acid rain, which is shown to largely come from the US side. But I think it takes 10 years or more to see noticeable effects with acid rain on trees, it doesn't show up right away or happen overnight. Same way with global warming, the signs aren't going away, to be sure. We're used to thinking of immediate cause and immediate effect. It's not helpful to think this way.

Second point. IMHO "freedom of thought" is a subjective statement which can't be easily measured, that seems almost a hypothetical argument in itself. It would be nice to see some non-parametric statistics to measure "freedom of thought", though. Maybe someone can suggest a way to do this for hypothesis-testing, i.e., how do you rank or measure 'freedom of thought'?

[AngryAmish]

47. Everyone knows that left run countries are pristine environmentally

The Soviet Union never polluted, not once, ever. When they experimented in nuclear power it was done with the greatest care and safety and was an unparalleled success for all of mankind. During the Great Leap Forward the backyard forges in China all had the latest technology that meant their emissions were pure and proper.

There can be no smog in China because that would be bad. Therefore the air in Beijing is pristine (like a mountain meadow) always.

[ngant17]

56. don't follow the logic here

I think you are making non-sequiturs here. I am not apologizing for Soviet science, but if you must know, I personally consider Marxism to be a valid economic discipline that still has use-value today.

My topic concerns right-wing American ideology which has contaminated and continues to contaminate the US scientific community here. I am not specifically concerned about right-wing Soviet (i.e. Stalinist) ideology which contaminated the Russian scientific community, unless it might have a bearing on that theme I would like to know how that might have influenced scientific thought here, for sure.

I don't think even the most loyal Stalinist could have made such absurd comments that you are stating, about the reality of life in the Soviet Union, same for China. The Soviet doctors were aware of the health problems for people living in intensely-industrialized areas, even back in Stalin's day. There is plenty of historical records to establish that.

[EST]

13. Science deals in facts and reproducible results.

Science does not deal in faith and one shot occurrences. Scientists who allow for things that are beyond their experience are normal. Scientists who promote and depend on those occurrences are not scientists; they are, at best, camp followers.

[ngant17]

17. Science has an obligation to be unbaised

The Scientific American article I mention earlier is a case in point. There was clearly a rightwing viewpoint here, and there was not any kind of 'equal time' awarded to opposite viewpoints.

[EST]

24. Prior to 1996 I did not subscribe, so only read S A irregularly.

However, regarding bias, bias in a scientific publication should, by no means, have anything to do with left vs. right, but strictly to do with false vs. fact. And they must always be biased toward fact or they lose credibility.

Occasionally, some political crap does sneak in, but rarely. I have seen some of the letters they publish from fantasy land readers who are threatening to cancel their subscriptions because SA or Discover dare to publish something to the effect that religion in no way qualifies as science or some other heinous blasphemy.

[ngant17]

28. Are psy-ops a valid scientific discipline?

I know that psychology, psychiatry, and related fields are scientific disciplines. So would you include "psychological operations" as a science, even though it may reguire disinformation and even outright lies to apply its "science" for some kind of advantage? Ruse and deception could be used to test a hypothesis in game theory. Lying and speading disinformation is proven to have scientifically valid results, so I would have to qualify your statement that applying falsehoods can have scientific applications itself. As long as the results weren't negated or fraudulent themselves.

In this sense, science could be baised toward the logic of falsehood in some cases.

The military has used science to attain advantage on the battlefield. Operations Research was used to hunt down u-boats and enemy vessels. Statistics was used to design armor on airplanes. There are many examples but military applications of science doesn't imply that they are always pursuing a right-wing agenda.

I guess what I'm pointing out is that our moral progress doesn't keep up with our scientific and technological progress. At least here in the USA. It seems to me that there are times when science has a moral obligation and it is failing us now.

But I guess we will always have reactionary politics that controls their purse strings of scientific research and development, until America collapses as a super-power like the USSR.

[EST]

32. You make an interesting point.

Science, itself, is apolitical, irreligious, and (generally) non confrontational. Every scientific or technological advance has always been used by one group to subjugate or disempower another. That excuses no one, of course.

I can't quite wrap myself around a concept of a scientific moral obligation, merely a human one. If anything, science cannot fail us; we fail science. We humans did not "invent" science. The best we can say about that is that we "discovered" science.

We have a fairly well developed system of laws not because those laws owe us anything or that there is any moral value embedded in the body of laws, in and of themselves.

We invented laws because a great portion of humanity, arguably even a majority, haven't a well enough developed sense of conscience or compassion to be allowed to operate in society without some specific rules to limit the damage those anti social types can cause.

In my universe, we have failed science by allowing these anti-social types to hide or otherwise prevent science's being used in productive, human empowering ways while using science to hurt, overpower, and defeat those better elements who carry the moral character of us all.

Bad people use knowledge to hurt good people and keep them powerless.
We will probably never be shut of this type of destroyer, and maybe even can't survive, as a race, without them. We must, however, find a way to limit their numbers and impact, maybe even to the point of euthanizing most of them in order to avoid the horrible contretemps we find ourselves in, now.
Hope this all makes sense-the medications I have to take, discovered by science investigators, messed around with by immoral humans, is having an effect on my reasoning ability while it helps my body to experience this universe for a few more hours.

[ngant17]

34. I've noticed a pattern of rightist ideology by American scientists

in the 1960's and the 1970's. I don't want to harp on the failure of NASA's rocket scientists and physicists, I'm only singleing out their higher-ups, not the worker bees within that organization who I believe do an outstanding job. However, I do believe this is one of the most blaring and shameful examples of a rightwing agenda pursued by American scientists.

Fact #1: In Sept./Oct. 1963, America had a leftist/progressive president in 1963 who wanted to steer science into an entirely different direction, the most important task being his proposed Apollo-Soyuz space missons which would ultimately culminate in a joint mission to the moon.

But the majority of top scientists/honchos within NASA (Dr. Hugh Dryden was in the minority) reacted negatively against it. For political reasons! This was a political stance by our American scientists who claimed it was impossible to work with the USSR on a cooperative (manned) lunar mission. In one case, Dr. Robert C. Seamans(Associate NASA Administrator)threatened to resign rather than cooperate in a joint US-USSR lunar flight. Another NASA scientist, Dr. B. Holmes stated that a Soviet-American mission to the moon would be, "a very costly, very inefficient, probably a very dangerous way to execute the program."

This was clearly a rightwing agenda by our space scientists in that day. They were practically committing mutiny against their command-in-chief, who was anything but a rightwinger!

Fact #2: Fast-forward a bit, about 10 years, and we suddenly had a rightwing/reactionary president in 1975 who also wanted to do more or less the same thing as Kennedy., i.e. the Apollo-Soyuz missions in 1975. This actually got started in 1972 with Nixon, by a formal agreement between the US and the USSR. Suddenly, NASA talks about the result of its "5 years of technical cooperation" between engineers of the same two countries! Under Nixon, NASA was more than willing to cooperate with the communists.
Suddenly, the impossible became the mundane. Because the scientists had a rightwing leader, they had this "can do" attitude with Nixon. Yet the same NASA scientists were denouncing the very idea 10 years earlier when it was proposed by JFK.

To me, it is proof that there has been a historical track record by American scientists to support rightwing ideologies. The other ones are quickly marginalized. I am not saying that all scientists in the USA are rightwingers, but many of them that make it into the upper levels of management seem to have this ideology.

Look at the physicist Edwin Teller and his influence in the Reagan years! And he was selling a load of crap about SDI, as if increasing the militarization of space wasn't bad enough.

Question. Are 'left-wing' scientists in the US, in particular, the ones who aspire to advance into the upper echelon of management (not just NASA but in all areas of US government and corporate world), are they an extinct species in America?

[Random_Australian]

41. Well, psy-ops fails all the various ethics tests, but politicians write

the rules on who has to follow the ethics.

Edit:

But as a scientific discipline, I suppose so.

[JHB]

48. In what way was it "right wing"?

Can you at least post a link to this article?

[ngant17]

57. the space race was a right-wing agenda

NASA's 'space race' to the moon, it did not occur on Kennedy's watch. The space race benefited the US military-industrial complex.

I may have a copy of the June 1994 Sci.Am article about above, but trust me, it's totally one-sided with no room for differing opinions. I would have to scan it in and edit it for you, I can't allocate the time at the moment.

I think Dr. Hugh Dryden died in 1965, and any of his published recollections of the events up to and immediately after that time (the 'space race'), they are very illuminating but I'd have to make some trips to the library to include them here.

He is the kind of American scientist that I greatly admire, because neither rightist or leftist philosophy is evident in his writings, he was a true man of science, open-minded and rational in all that he thought and did in his life. He collaborated with the Soviets as a fellow scientist, nothing political at all about that. A great example for anyone to follow.

[sweetheart]

14. the money hand is behind all things

The corporate money hand pays for science, designs what is "good" science and
what is not worthy of public grants. This has to appear like a meritocracy or
the entire knowledge thing is sortof a farce, so there appears like a respectable
bunch of scientists doing research for the benefit of humanity. The realistic
truth is that science is a bought and corporate as politics is.

[ngant17]

19. I'm seeing the big difference

in Cuba, which is a country which develops free vaccines to 3rd world countries. Advances in its medical/biological science gets funding only thru government. No corporate input possible.

Scientific (and bio-medical) fields can operate on ethics, and sometimes those ethics can be interpreted as being leftwing, communist, socialist, progessive, ect. But why is there so much historical rightwing control in the scientific community of USA? Hasn't it ever been much different?

[porphyrian]

20. Science doesn't promote any political agenda.

People with political agendas use science to try to prove their position is true.

[ngant17]

22. But why do institutions support them?

I'm still not sure, why do long-established scientific institutions promote and propagandize rightwing agenda consistently here in the US? I suppose that I am of the theory that a sort of benign fascist control is behind scientific establishments here. Hopefully some new paradigm will take over soon.

I haven't even seen "An Inconvenient Truth" yet, but Al Gore's recent interview with Der Spiegle is hitting me like a hammer against my head.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1711878

[porphyrian]

23. Institutions don't run themselves, nor does science run them.

People run them. People with agendas.

[nealmhughes]

21. Yes and no. Science just is. It is a process using empirical evidence.

The "discoveries" are just there: one can use the Fermi reactor to further research on controlled chain nuclear reactions and develop reactors for use for power and heat, or one can take the research and make bombs from it.

One discovers an effective drug to relieve disease, but then the results are patented by a corporation and the price made intolerable for all but those in Western/Central Europe and northernmost America. Is the scientist responsible for what ends his discovery takes?

What is more important to discuss is the military-industrial complex than science itself.

Scientific papers themselves are dispassionate very formal creatures, their edition and coallation into popular reading turn them into political instruments, not the science itself or its disemination.

[ngant17]

25. the political interpretations of science

I suppose I should be addressing the political interpretations of science. For example, NASA's official biography of Hugh L. Dryden, an outstanding American scientist who I greatly admire, it doesn't really go into his politics, which weren't extreme but simply of the ordinary type. A modest man with an exceptional intelligence. Although it does mention his religious affliations. So you have to go to the local libraries to dig out some pertinent facts.

Dr. Dryden was a scientific advisor to Pres. Kennedy, and I've read a little on his background from independent sources, including parts of his memoirs. For example, in one part I read, he could never understand why there was a reluctance by NASA to cooperate with the Soviets. He never understood why there was so much hostility between the two countries. He didn't follow the logic of the "space race".

Why didn't science (not just one man, but the majority) ignore politics and do the right thing, which was to work with other nations (communist as it were) even though there was a Cold War being manufactured by the military-industrial complex? Was it because science was afraid of being terrorized by its own government? Surely they should have separated science from political opinion.

Can science ever act independently of the political? Or are we still living in the Middle Ages despite all the technological progess it brings?

[porphyrian]

26. Until research is free, science will always be politically influenced...

...at least in its direction and presentation.

[KyuzoGator]

27. When scientific magazines have articles about "cool military toys"...

...I cringe a little. Popular Mechanics does it a lot.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

29. Not An Iota. Science Is Science.

Editorials can always have a whiff of political leanings in them, but general scientific data is simply scientific data. I have never for a second read Discover magazine and felt it was manipulating me to think like a right winger.

[XemaSab]

30. Probably depends on the science

Earth and natural scientists are mostly leftists, in my experience.

[freethought]

31. The right wing does not encourage science

because science employs various types of thinking. The political right wing does not encourage thinking of any type-believe only what we tell you and that's that.

I have speculated that * has a personal grudge against those in the science field. When his grand daddy
wangled him into Yale and when Daddy bribed someone to get him to Harvard Business School, at either school he MUST HAVE HAD some contact with students and grad students who were pursuing degrees in the sciences. Physics, medical science, biology, chemistry, and maybe he ran into some engineering students from MIT. People who could run academic circles around him and he knew it. That must have really gotten his goat, after all he was a Bush, an elite family. Who the hell were these people to be smarter than he was. If he can't win against them academically he'll do it some other sleazy or underhanded way.

Ah well, it's just a theory on my part.

[EST]

33. Junior's college experience must have been uncomfortable

in the extreme, other than the keggers and games, because of the feelings of inferiority engendered by encounters with bright, talented superiors.

Our president is a twisted, ill fitting, nasty little excuse for a human being or a great leader. History, even Asimov's future history, is replete with vicious, small minded little men who were put into positions of power and propped up by teams of more capable men of lesser social stature.

Surely, surely there are people of compassion who are smart enough to figure a way out of this, that allows most of the world to survive. How depressing.

[ngant17]

35. rightwing culture in science

I think in my previous threads, I've supplied historical
documentation of a right-wing extremist culture in the American
scientific community which, in my view, essentially began or was
at least most noticeable during the final months of the Kennedy
Administration (in Sept./Oct. 1963, when practically the entire
upper-level cadre of NASA scientist (with some notable exceptions)
revolted outright against his leftwing agenda for cooperative
space exploration with the USSR, and their mutiny was only for
poltical and not purely scientific reasons.

This right-wing culture in science has propagated since JFK's
untimely demise, and continues to this day.

I suspect it was bolstered under Nixon, which allowed for detente
but at the same time continued to promote America's Cold War policies
within the scientific community.

Scientists with right-wing, extremist ideologies continued to be
prominent in the 1980's, during the Reagan years, in particular
the physicist Edwin Teller and a coterie of scientists embedded
into the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex, especially
the ones who supported the militaristic Star Wars agenda.

I don't have much evidence of this trend becoming so obvious under
the Clinton years, I haven't researched this part of our history, but
it's possible this crowd was actively encouraged but kept a lower profile.

The current Bush Administration supports rightwing policies that
directly affect the scientific community in a political manner.
One typical example is his repeated refusal to grant visas for Cuban scientists to attend
conferences in the US, and vice versa (US scientists are being
prohibited from attending scientific and technical conferences in
Cuba). This is one small but glaring example of a policy which
would tend to reward scientists with rightist ideologies and
penalize those who have leftist (or 'nuetralist') persuasions in
America.

Will the next President continue to encourage this disappointing trend of
encouraging rightwing ideology into the scientific community?

[rman]

36. Science as such, no. But certain elements within the scientific community,

certainly (see creationism, global warming denial, peak oil denial).
Just as they do in the media, academics, government, intelligence agencies, religion, etc.

[Random_Australian]

39. AHEM.

Creationism within the scientific community?

Not within. Not even close.

Edit: I would like to point out that there is actually two sides of the debate (though rarely in the case of global warming) for the others. Just not creationism and ID.

[rman]

42. Creationism/ID is promoted by some who do have some scolary

credentials - though usually not in biology.
Granted though, it's a bit of a stretch.

[Random_Australian]

43. Yeah, no point getting bogged down in semantics.

I would like to try to QED the static component of creationism though, then that would exclude the rational from the creationists. :)

(Working on it)

[ngant17]

44. creationism/intel. design

I recall hearing one biological scientist speaking at a local congregation years ago(Baptist) about intel design and heard his refutations of some aspects of evolution. Don't recall the name, didn't really impress me but he apparantely had legitimate creditials as a scientist in this field. Note: I'm not a Baptist but I just went there at an invitation of a person I worked for in a business. I would think he probabaly was on the conservative right, you know how those Southern Baptists are, they will tend to go right on the issues.

So I think there are scientists who are willing to challenge the evolutionary theory, but I doubt it if the evidence they support wil be very conclusive to a person with a basically rational and open mind.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

50. You're describing pseudoscience.

It ain't the scientific community.

There are a few people who get scientific degrees and then turn to the darkside. But when they do so they stop becoming scientists.

[rman]

66. Pseudoscience gets easily confused with science by

a significant (ill-informed) part of the population.

[rman]

37. Maybe "Scientific American" has a RW editor dept.

I wonder how it compares to say "Science Magazine" http://www.sciencemag.org.

For what it's worth:
(Science Magazine is associated with AAAS)

AAAS Denounces Anti-Evolution Laws as Hundreds of K-12 Teachers Convene for 'Front Line' Event
http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2006/0219boardstatement.shtml
ST. LOUIS — The Board of Directors of the world's largest general scientific organization, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), today strongly denounced legislation and policies that would undermine the teaching of evolution and "deprive students of the education they need to be informed and productive citizens in an increasingly technological, global community."
...

[Random_Australian]

38. Science? Hell no.

No good scientist I know in any part of the world got there without bieng a good and reasonable thinker. That is how you go places in science; you don't take sides and go after the truth, but cautiously. You may find people who are not scienctists editing things in a way you don't like, but that is not science.


Finally, and most importantly, * will trot out self proclaimed 'scientists' to support his opinion. These are the same shmucks who try to make it mandatory to put 'theory' with 'big bang'. Not science itself. People who find something that sounds like it supports * for money. That is all.

Interpret history? What the hell? We interpret results. People are amusing, sure, but you must understand that to us they are not all that important.


In conclusion, no, science is not dominated or even all that concerned by politics.

[ngant17]

46. would a scientist be comfortable

working with, say an Arabic scientist with affiliations to Hezbolla or Al Queda? Or how about the ones who in the 1950's were willing to share advances in atomic research with their Soviet counterparts?

As long as the state doesn't arrest them for treason, I suppose.

[rman]

49. It is doubtful that the reverse would be true;

That an Arabic scientist with affiliations to Hezbolla or Al Queda would seek to work with any outsider - and revealing to him/her that he has affiliations with terrorists.
Although it does depend on the affiliations: Hezbollah is a political party with seats in the Lebanese parliament. If the only affiliation is that he has voted for Hezbollah, i see no problem. Russian and American scientists have cooperated in science throughout the cold war.
If on the other hand Arabic scientist does something like weapons research for the terrorist branch of Hezbollah, he probably wouldn't tell to begin with.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

51. I would need to see the article you reference in order to comment

I will say this, however, regarding the medical community which is a subset of the scientific community.

The medical community has been quite poisoned by business interests and agendas. With universities haveing less "untainted" funds with which to pursue inquiries, much of the funding has gone to the business community which isn't going to spend money to prove they are harmful.

Many studies done and commented on in newspapers for instance are no longer "double blind" studies.

Here is a site that watches the corporate funding of studies:

http://www.cspinet.org/integrity/

[ngant17]

53. reference articles

The (essentially reactionary) statements which were made by Dr. Robert C. Seamans(Associate NASA Administrator)and another NASA scientist, Dr. B. Holmes in 1963, I didn't dig them up on the internet. All you will find on NASA websites are a sanitized biography of them. Those critical months for NASA during Sept/Oct. 1963, immediately before the death of JFK, they can be referenced much more thoroughly in a university library,I neglected to make a detailed bibiliography of my independent research at the time. I do have some NASA papers I used for examining US-USSR space cooperation back in the 1960's, but I would never have depended on NASA material alone for a complete understanding of that important part of our history.

Don't think any references are needed for the hostile effects against the Republic of Cuba, especially in the field of science and subfields like biology and medicine, as this has been an on-going agenda with the right-wing for almost half a century now. You-know-who has recently turned more screws in this regard, and it's directly affecting academic freedom which of course includes scientific research and collaboration, of which Cuba has achieved high standards.

It's very strange to read how fundamentally different things were, back in those days (1963). Had JFK survived into 1964, I suspect our scientific community would have been much better off. But the agenda of the Cold War took over, and scientists like everyone else know who butters their bread. It is easy to be marginalized once you start to make waves, to go against the flow.

No one, especially scientists, should be cowered into hiding their opinions, political or otherwise.

With the Patriot Acts, terrorism, national security state, ect., I suspect this tendency by the rightwing control-freaks, it will be used to continue to empower more of their agenda within the US scientific community, at the expense of the rest of us of the more liberal persuasion.

[ozone_man]

52. Depends what branch of science.

If it is directly or indirectly tied to the military industrial complex, then yes. If it isn't military related science, then no. As a whole, scientists are the least religious (most secular) of our population. They tend to be liberal overall. Seeking truth promotes liberal thinking.

[renegade000]

54. I'm at a loss as to where you actually got that idea.

:shrug:

[ngant17]

60. where I got the idea

concerning rightwing ideology in science, I've at least traced it back to NASA, late 1963, and the space race. By a casual reading of some history books, I caught them 'flagrante delicto' as it were, that is to say, incriminating statements from upper-echelon scientists who should have been more responsible at the time. They crossed the line from science to politics, for no good reason, when they could and should have showed restraint. But no one (or only a few few) ever held them accountable in 1963, and they retired gracefully.

They had a chance to make America a better place for us, and they failed us miserably.

Edwin Teller was pretty much a right-wing wacko scientist who had his heydeys during Pres. Ray-Gun.
I don't just want to pick on Teller in this regard, he was/is typical of a lot of rightwing American scientists out there, just more vocal than most, but they're not hard to find if you go looking.

[Deja Q]

58. With the US offshoring science-based jobs, I don't think so.

[ngant17]

61. could the US one day off-shore some of those science jobs

to the socialist Republic of Cuba instead? Not that I want any US-trained scientist to be unemployed because of Cuba. But they don't seem to have any problems with hi-tech jobs going to communist China.

My guess is that the Cuban government would not allow direct payment by the US to its citizen-scientists and the money would re-surface elsewhere. And Cuban scientists would be very concerned about any bad publicity that would be generated in the US, arising for the negative consequences of out-sourcing US jobs to the island. OTOH it would be interesting to see if this policy could actually work against the right-wing for a change.

[distantearlywarning]

62. In my field, no.

We try hard to remain as neutral and unbiased as possible. If results indicate something about human beings that supports a right-wing or left-wing viewpoint, so be it. Interestingly, however, several pieces of work in my field have been heavily criticized by famous right-wing blowhards in recent years for being part of the vast academic left-wing conspiracy to turn our college-age children into hippy commie pinkos. I've personally read the work and can attest to the fact that the methods used were in fact neutral. It's not the scientist's fault that their research happened to support a left-wing viewpoint, but they caught flack over it anyway.

I haven't noticed this in any of the other (not in my field) scientific publications I read either. If anything, I think they tend to be a little anti-Bush (but not necessarily left-leaning in philosophy).

[ngant17]

64. I find some comfort in your comments

so perhaps there is still hope for America in scientific disciplines.

Rightist ideology in science didn't remain confined to NASA and its "moon-doggle", the space race. There's been a whole generation of scientists who benefited indirectly or directly from Cold War policies which really became institutionalized beginning in 1964. I don't want to denounce all of them as right-wingers but clearly a lot of those scientists who advanced up into positions of power/management, they adopted political positions which conformed to the right.

I admire Pres. Kennedy for trying to take on the military-industrial complex(MIC) at that time, in 1963 it was clear to me that he tried as hard as possible to steer science away from its unhealthy association with same MIC. His task remains unfinished. I wish someone would take up that guantlet again, but I fear Al Gore has had enough of the fight already and he's ready to pass the torch on to someone else. If we can make predictions based on past events, well, I'm not too optimistic at the moment...

[ngant17]

65. I find some comfort in your comments

so perhaps there is still hope for America in scientific disciplines.

Rightist ideology in science didn't remain confined to NASA and its "moon-doggle", the space race. There's been a whole generation of scientists who benefited indirectly or directly from Cold War policies which really became institutionalized beginning in 1964. I don't want to denounce all of them as right-wingers but clearly a lot of those scientists who advanced up into positions of power/management, they adopted political positions which conformed to the right.

I admire Pres. Kennedy for trying to take on the military-industrial complex(MIC) at that time, in 1963 it was clear to me that he tried as hard as possible to steer science away from its unhealthy association with same MIC. His task remains unfinished. I wish someone would take up that guantlet again, but I fear Al Gore has had enough of the fight already and he's ready to pass the torch on to someone else. If we can make predictions based on past events, well, I'm not too optimistic at the moment...

[electron_blue]

63. Surely you jest. I vote a resounding no.