SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
According to our dear friends over at Wired, we are losing the war on science. This interview with Shawn Otto, author of The War on Science [no-script hostile] ranges from the American presidential election to Albert Einstein:
His new book The War on Science explores ways that citizens can fight back against a creeping tide of anti-science nonsense promulgated by everyone from postmodern academics to greedy oil companies to nature-loving hippies. An important step is to make journalists understand that science and opinion should not be given equal weight.
"The purpose of a free press in a democracy is to hold the powerful accountable to the evidence," Otto says. "Journalists have really lost sight of that purpose, of their entire reason for being."
Fair enough. But things have gotten worse?
He fears that the war on science will only intensify once Donald Trump takes office in January. "I'm very concerned, as is the rest of the global scientific community," Otto says.
As a personal aside, I find it unlikely that the public, those who executed Socrates, burned the Library of Alexandria, and imprisoned Antoinio Gramsci, could fall for such a diaphanous fraud as the Republican attack on science! People back then were truly and profoundly stupid. But people today have the internet, and facebook, and a total misunderstanding of science, politics, ethics, and math. So, this will not end well? Help me, Soylentils, give me hope.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09 2016, @01:46AM
Honestly, that's a copout.
There really hasn't been a period in the country's history that hasn't been contentious. It has always been bitter compromises all the way through. Fuck, even the constitution was a compromise.
At some point both the left and the right will have to take inventory of what really matters and begrudgingly fashion a peace from the rest. There is actually more in common than isn't. It's just loudmouths on either side fanning the flames.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09 2016, @05:21PM
Some argue it's periodic and that it peaks roughly every 6 decades, but that's not good either.
The 70's and 80's had some degree of compromise in DC that we don't see much of anymore.