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When Political Mapping Leaks Into Science Research
An anonymous reader writes "Political and territorial disputes have been leaking to scientific venues like Nature, Science and Climatic Change. Many recent scientific papers submitted to these journals promote the highly disputed Chinese U-shaped line. One of the authors refused to change her map after being requested by the journals, stating that that her published map was requested by the Chinese government. This practice was condemned by Nature in its latest editorial, which asserts that political maps that seek to advance disputed territorial claims have no place in scientific papers."
Why not nominate the Nobel Peace Prize to the Science Editorial Board. They are correct in that "political maps that seek to advance disputed territorial claims have no place in scientific papers".
Bravo!
As long as governments are involved in the funding of scientific research this kind of crap will continue.
Powerful politicians stake their political lives on something scientific that they may or may not understand on any level, and suddenly opposing scientific views are damaging to their careers. Even if their side of the argument is correct, they muddy the water with dishonest tactics designed to discredit the opposition. Al Gore and climate change are of course the best examples of this.
Does that mean the government shouldn't be involved in funding research? Of course not. The money has to get into the right hands somehow. I guess it really just means we need better politicians, but since that isn't going to happen, we may have to just deal with things as they are.
Why not nominate the Nobel Peace Prize to the Science Editorial Board. They are correct in that "political maps that seek to advance disputed territorial claims have no place in scientific papers".
Since the Nobel Peace Prize awards committee has turned the Peace Prize itself into a political and ideological advocacy/popularity contest (e.g. Obama's award for, as it turns out, not much at all), good luck with that. Thanks to the Nobel Peace Prize awards committee, the Prize now ranks right up there with a bowling trophy in prestige and gravitas.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Science is the boss and should tell politics what to do, not the other way around.
The danger in that position is that there are people who are anxious to use science as an excuse to take away liberty. Is sociology science? If so, should sociologists be telling politicians what the laws should be? You used the example of the law of gravity, but what about when we get into areas where the science is less clear cut?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Underwater Exploring Is Banned In Brazil, New York Times (25 June 1985)
That is not fair. Presumably, you have to do something to get a bowling award.
"Science is the boss and should tell politics what to do, not the other way around."
I going to nitpick here, as the distinction needs to occur.
Science cannot tell anyone what to do because science is valueless and goalless.
For example. Science can tell you global warming is happening (play along even if you don't believe. Replace global warming with gravity if it helps you)
.
But science cannot tell you what if anything you should do about it.
Science can be used to slaughter a billion people as easily as can be used to provide clean energy.
Science cannot tell you if you should just ignore global warming, have a carbon tax, fund research, build transit... all those require goals and weighing people's values.
Should that billion dollars go towards funding solar research or healthcare for the poor? Should we include a carbon tax and raise the cost of living on the poor? Should we just be happy with increasing temperatures and move to more suitable climates?
It's a careful distinction.
I'd rephrase it as.
"Science is the thermometer and should tell politics what the temperature is, not the other way around. We can't have politicians telling the thermometer what the temperature is outside"
You see. If scientific journals like Nature publishes the map supporting China's claim to that territory, it lends more legitimacy to their rather ridiculous claim of those islands. The Chinese officials can then argue that their claim is supported by these respected journals. It does not really change much, but China is happy to gain any tiny advantage. This is totally in line with their increasingly aggressive stance in the Pacific.
It has always been a political affair and general popularity contest award.
That is not fair. Presumably, you have to do something to get a bowling award.
I'm sorry if my comparison to an award for actual achievement inferred or implied in any way that the Nobel Peace Prize required doing or accomplishing anything. :)
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
> Is territory relevant to this research?
The problem is anyone working in China is required to assert Chinese territorial claims because to do otherwise would be an admission that there is a dispute, i.e. that the State might be wrong; and that idea is sedition to a police state.
The only solution is for the scientific journals in the Free World to accept papers as written and then add a editorial note on the order of this:
"Note: This paper was submitted by a prisoner of the Communist Chinese dictatorship and thus must promote Chinese foreign policy goals or be sent to a labor camp or killed. Because the science in this paper is otherwise sound we are publishing it as written, however this should not be taken as an endorsement of Chinese territorial claims by this journal." [Internationally accepted map inset goes here with differences highlighted.]
In other words, throw a passive aggressive turd in their faces and they will be shamed into backing down.
Democrat delenda est
Arafat was small potatoes compared to Kissinger, who got the prize even earlier. Kissinger's body count is at least two orders of magnitude higher, although admittedly he never did any actual fighting like Arafat. His military experience was limited to being a translator for Operation Paperclip, IIRC.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
It's even more screwed up than that. The indigineous population of Taiwan has been disenfranchised and almost totally displaced by immigrant Chinese. For a long time they were prohibited from speaking their own language or practicing their traditional religion or holding their traditional festivals. Taiwan (aka Formosa) was independant of the mainland for a long time, it's inclusion in 'greater China' is fairly recent.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
The prosaic interpretation is that the amphorae were commissioned for decorative purposes by Américo Santarelli, a local diver, and placed in the bay in order to age them.
China is no longer a communist country. The ruling party has kept the name, but it renounced communist principles some time ago. China is now a largely capitalist dictatorship, albeit one in which the state, especially the army, owns a significant portion of businesses.
Pointing a U.S. gun at China, does two things:
1. It makes us look like exactly the same kind of thug as China, and that this is some kind of gang war.
2. It destroys any semblance of an attempt at peaceful resolution through international law.
Its hard for the U.S. to get all up in China's face when we own Islands throughout the Pacific that we took from Japan during WWII. We have our own history of land grabbing. That said, we don't lay claim on the ocean between Guam and the U.S., that would be patently absurd. We also have a strong presence on our islands and have maintained them as such since we claimed them. There is no Chinese parallel to the island claimed by China.
The U.N. needs to sit down with China, and make it clear that there will be no South Sea land grab. China's claim are groundless, arbitrary, and steps all over the rights of millions of people who have no intention of being Chinese citizens. This is another Tibet, now with global implications on shipping lanes and free navigation.
The U.N. needs to put its foot down and say that there are substantial sanctions that the entire world can take if China doesn't clean up its act. China can claim the entire pacific ocean if it wants, the rest of the world won't put up with an aggressive, bully, taking whatever it wants. What next, Australia? Indonesia? The days of land grabbing need to come to a halt for all nations (hear that Israel?) Use diplomacy, then international sanctions, only then does a large multinational force arrive and say, "We simply can't let you take what is not yours, step away."
Really, I've long held that the prize is of little value... I almost lost it when Kissinger got the prize, shortly after going down to South America and orchestrating the assassination of the democratically elected President of Chile using CIA operatives, and beginning one of the ugliest, bloodiest, and most oppressive dictatorships in the history of the Western Hemisphere. Ultimately leading to the slaughter of between 50,000 and 70,000 innocent people, and the absolute gutting of all human rights.
When Japan laid claim to huge sections of China just before WWII, it was to stoke the fire of their growing economy with raw materials and cheap slave labor from China. It was also a flagrant thumb at the rule of international law, and the rest of the world. How would you have handled that in a neutral way? China has been marching all over Tibet for years now, claiming its a long lost state come home. Nobody wanted to start WWIII over Tibet, and that's understandable, but it was still wrong on a thousand levels. Now they claim the entire South Sea, all its islands and inhabitants. Their claim would give them complete control over critical shipping lanes and vital resources that don't belong to them. How exactly would you handle a pit-bull in a neutral fashion?
I do agree this has to be a global response. The U. N. has to say "China, enough already with the sucking up the landscape. It was wrong when Germany did it. It was wrong when Japan did it to you. Its now wrong when you try to do it to others. Cease and desist, before things get out of hand and unhappiness ensues for all."
When I was working as a science editor, any maps like this extending disputed political claims were sent back to the author for revision, and if they refused, were revised by us. We refused to be used as a proxy for claims of "publically recognized acknowledgment" in support of these claims.