Latest news with #antiScience
The Guardian
27-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Public trust in science has been eroded, from Covid-19 to climate
Jane Qiu rightly identifies that public trust in science has diminished in recent times (The Covid 'lab leak' theory isn't just a rightwing conspiracy – pretending that's the case is bad for science, 25 June), but she misses some root causes. Scientists and the media often don't differentiate or clearly distinguish between hypotheses, initial findings and accepted scientific understanding when publishing information, leaving the reader/listener confused. The media get viewers, readers or clicks (money); the scientist potentially gets interest that leads to longer tenure or funding. The public gets confused when a report is later refuted or overturned. Universities and the scientists employed by them used to be largely government-funded and independent of industry and politics. Now they are competing for government and private funds and are willing to muddy the waters around hypotheses, preliminary findings and peer-reviews. By doing so they are playing into the hands of anti-science groups. Scientists are now as market-oriented as any other professionals, and it isn't doing society any good. Why believe climate science when the boffins can't even agree on how Covid-19 arose?Steven LeeFaulconbridge, New South Wales, Australia Jane Qiu makes a lot of excellent points. But it is not fair to imply that blame for mistrust in science lies with scientists themselves. It lies with the populist right, and decades of sustained and largely baseless attacks on scientific integrity. Climate denial, anti-vaxxing and lockdown scepticism are three major examples. As well as manufacturing doubt, these bad actors remove any nuance from public debate – reducing complex issues to a binary shouting match. Meanwhile, climate denial has taught us that even statements in private emails can be ripped out of context and splashed across the global media, to promote a false narrative. In such an environment, any communication with the public on contentious issues is a minefield, and it is hardly surprising that many conscientious scientists avoid it. Scientists need to communicate openly and honestly with the public, but we need support from the media, challenging anti-science voices instead of platforming them. Only then can we achieve the sort of thoughtful and honest discussion of scientific evidence that the public deserves. Dr Richard MilneEdinburgh Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
Washington Post
02-06-2025
- General
- Washington Post
JD Vance: To infinity ... and beyond parody
JD Vance, it is well known, contains multitudes. He once described Donald Trump as 'morally reprehensible' … and now is his vice president. He's a tough Marine who served in the Iraq War … as a public affairs officer. He's the author who wrote 'To understand me, you must understand that I am a Scots-Irish hillbilly at heart' … yet has a curious antipathy toward immigrants (his wife's parents presumably excepted), and evidence for his Scots-Irishness is sketchy. Now Vance has added to his multitudiosity: He's a historian of the U.S. space program … who barely grasps the history of the U.S. space program. Last week, Newsmax interviewer Greg Kelly took a break from slathering Vance with praise to delicately broach the possibility of a 'brain drain' from American universities if researchers decamp for more hospitable institutions overseas. The White House, as you might have heard, is working energetically to dissolve arrangements between several research universities and the government that for the past century helped make the United States the most powerful and innovative country in the world. (That this anti-science campaign is being sanctimoniously conducted under the guise of punishing schools for fostering antisemitism on campus — which many did! — adds a nauseating angle.) 'I've heard a lot of the criticisms, the fear, that we're going to have a brain drain,' the voluble vice president told Kelly. 'If you go back to the '50s and '60s, the American space program, the program that was the first to put a human being on the surface of the moon, was built by American citizens, some German and Jewish scientists who had come over during World War II, but mostly by American citizens who had built an incredible space program with American talent. This idea that American citizens don't have the talent to do great things, that you have to import a foreign class of servants and professors to do these things, I just reject that.' There's a lot to unpack here, as they say. First of all, Kelly didn't mention anything about the nationality of researchers who might leave the United States (or are downloading their boarding passes right now). Foreign governments and universities are avidly courting any and all U.S.-based researchers who feel unloved, but Vance seems to think a defunded brainiac who happens to be an American citizen is going to tell a recruiter from Aix-Marseille University, 'You can keep Provence. I'd rather work on nanotechnology in my garage. U-S-A!' Let's cut Vance some slack about the scientists coming over 'during' World War II: The Jewish ones came beforehand, for obvious reasons, and the German ones afterward, because they'd been busy building V-2 rockets to rain ruin on London and elsewhere. But 'some' scientists came over? The war's end touched off a mad scramble by the United States and the Soviet Union to scoop up German and Austrian scientists, engineers and technicians, without being too picky about their Nazi connections. It was a sordid exercise, but the Cold War was kicking off. The Americans' Project Paperclip and other efforts eventually brought over hundreds of these experts, including, most famously, the German rocketry mastermind Wernher von Braun. Their knowledge was employed mainly by the military for nuclear ballistic missile development, then urgently redirected, in the mid-1950s, to create the U.S. space program. Von Braun and his many, many colleagues were instrumental to U.S. space supremacy — and, according to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, most of them became naturalized citizens in 1954 or 1955. But being a naturalized U.S. citizen apparently doesn't make you an American, by Vance's lights. This raises the age-old question: How many generations back do you have to go — who counts? Mayflower arrival? Obviously. Great-great-grandad fought in the Civil War? Pretty good. Ellis Island arrival? Hmmm. Afghan evacuee who aided U.S. soldiers? You've got to be kidding (and, sorry, we're probably not letting any more of you in). A suggestion: Vance should ask his boss to issue an executive order appointing as a special adviser to the president, in charge of issuing gilt-edged True American membership cards to all deemed qualified. Then Vance can turn his attention to reeducating those who subscribe to 'this idea that American citizens don't have the talent to do great things, that you have to import a foreign class of servants and professors to do these things.' Remember, he just rejects that. Which is peculiar, because he invented it, in the service of scoffing about the significance of U.S. universities losing a bunch of foreign eggheads when their funding evaporates. (Also: servants?) This might be a good moment to note that one of the greatest rocketeers the world has ever seen is a South African immigrant working out of Starbase, Texas. Earlier in the Newsmax interview, Greg Kelly marveled at Vance's performance as vice president soon after taking office. 'It just seemed like you were born for the role,' Kelly said. 'It was just, it came so easy to you. And I guess, I know this sounds corny or whatever, but when did you realize that you could operate at that level? Do you know what I mean?' Oh, yeah, we know.
E&E News
08-05-2025
- Science
- E&E News
NOAA database will stop tracking most expensive disasters
One of NOAA's most comprehensive climate disaster information portals will no longer be updated, according to an agency notice posted atop the Billion-Dollar Disasters webpage. The decision to abandon the website is 'in alignment with evolving priorities, statutory mandates, and staffing changes,' the notice states. 'All past reports, spanning 1980-2024, and their underlying data remain authoritative, archived and available via the landing page.' 'The NOAA Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters product will be retired, with no updates beyond calendar year 2024,' the agency said in its notice. Advertisement In a Bluesky post, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) called the move to discontinue updating the site 'anti-science, anti-safety and anti-American.'
