Insisting on expertise over ideology is not “politicizing” science. The ideologues installing scientific and governmental policy that is contradicted by evidence and data are.
By emphasizing ideology over expertise, THEY have made arguing for expertise and evidence-based decision making partisan.
Fighting back against the Trump administration means they start to look more like activists.
If you believe that data, evidence and expertise should inform policy, then you should fight for it.
And that may make you an activist (temporarily), but that’s where we are now.
Otherwise, we will lose the very institutions that contributed to this country’s cultural and economic success.
The problem -- a BIG problem -- is that there are always conflicting data, conflicting evidence and above all, conflicting experts.
“Tl;dr: If the GOP declares war on science, and the Democrats say they’re going to listen to science then science is going to be partisan. If the two parties agree on some aspect of science – or both ignore it entirely – it won’t. Scientists have limited influence, at best, over this process.”
Last month, Audra Wolfe wrote a fantastic post about how science is and always has been political. In the post, she analyzes statements from Nature and Scientific American, both of which endorsed J…
