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posted by martyb on Tuesday February 21 2017, @12:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the not-ignoring-ignorance dept.

From the I've-heard-enough-and-won't-take-it-anymore department, http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39024648

The BBC reports that former Congressman Rush Holt, now part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), is the spokesman for a movement "standing up for science".

His remarks reflect growing concern among researchers that science is disregarded by President Trump.

Scientists across the US plan to march in DC on 22 April.

[...] "To see young scientists, older scientists, the general public speaking up for the idea of science. We are going to work with our members and affiliated organisations to see that this march for science is a success."

Mr Holt made his comments at the AAAS annual meting in Boston as President Trump appointed a fierce critic of the Environmental Protection Agency as its head. Scott Pruitt has spent years fighting the role and reach of the EPA.


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  • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday February 21 2017, @07:28PM

    by meustrus (4961) on Tuesday February 21 2017, @07:28PM (#469833)

    So you are leaving the true definition of science alone: the pursuit of knowledge through observation and evidence, with the goal of constructing a body of knowledge that makes useful concrete predictions. But while I can put those words in your mouth, that doesn't mean you or anybody else in the alt right thought of them.

    Trump represents a part of society that is fundamentally opposed to smart people. They are naturally skeptical of everything, not because of specific qualms about academia (although these problems you describe only push more people into this skepticism), but because they trust people, not ideas. Scientists come off as self-interested know-it-alls an awful lot of the time. Meanwhile, those with interest in swaying public opinion can adopt all the appearance of science to support a specific position, such as "my drug will help you" or "cigarettes are perfectly safe".

    Ultimately it has nothing to do with the actual scientists or the science. It has to do with the messenger. And as is becoming increasingly apparent, Trump doesn't distrust all the messengers. He only trusts the crazy ones (but not the bland corporate ones or the social crusade ones).

    Finding messengers worthy of trust is about as hard as finding root CAs worthy of trust. If you want your security done right, you have to examine for yourself the evidence that all of the devices you rely upon are secure down to the hardware level. Since that is impossible, you need to set up the incentives for everybody you are working with to align with your goals. Since that is tricky and hard, you trust that somebody smarter than you has set up those incentives correctly until proven otherwise. We occasionally have to stop trusting certain CAs because they have proven themselves unworthy of trust. That sort of works, because SSL is a relatively confined domain and there is an enormous multitude of providers. But it doesn't work for public policy, which literally defines everything about our society and about which fewer and fewer news organizations are capable of covering.

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