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Do Comments On Web Pages Ruin Science?
GregLaden writes "Last week Popular Science shut down comments on their web pages citing the damage being done to the public perception of science as their reason. Earlier research suggested this might be a good idea because trollish, negative comments can color the perception by readers of a news story. However, some have taken Popular Science's move to be anti-science, implying that science itself is positively affected by web and blog comments, as though these comments contributed to the science being done itself. Here, I take exception to this and suggest that while comments are important in relation to the public perception of science (which itself is important) blog and web commentary never, or only rarely, influences the process of scientific inquiry itself."
They don't have to. They can be scaredy-cats and get all butthurt by words on the internet if they want to.
It is done all the time. Just look at both sides in the DC Shutdown. Both sides are lying. But those that watch FOX News believes one side, and those that watch MSNBC believe the other. Only a few of us can actually decipher the bullshit enough to know that both sides are out to screw the American Public.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Scientists, in my experience, typically respect dissident thought. (I am not going to say that good dissident ideas are always embraced, but they are generally listened to if there is serious thought behind them.) Dissident speech devoid of thought, on the other hand, is generally ignored in science. (It is, after all, not a democracy.)
My mileage varies. If your "dissident thought" would negatively impact funding, like the study of AGW, scientists neither respect "good dissident ideas" nor do they ignore them. They are, in fact, quite abrasive about it. I've seen this is the local papers especially. Someone writes a letter to the editor about AGW that the scientists don't like and there are immediate public responses shouting them down.
Stop being silly.
I've seen it happen much more than once.
Scientists getting grumpy about anti climate change letters to the editor have nothing to do about funding.
You didn't read what I wrote. I said that the original comment (letter to the editor, in this case) could have an impact on the funding, not how grumpy the scientist is. Yes, indeed, if a well written letter can create a response of "why are we spending so much money on this" or "that makes sense" in the public, then that can have a negative impact on funding.
They have everything to do about the fact that no serious scientific discussion goes on in letters to the editor.
You're right. No discussion takes place. Someone tries but the "scientists" respond with either "you aren't a climate scientist and therefore have nothing useful to say about science" or "the question has been settled and there is no more debate", or both. Sometimes if the author can be identified as working for "the wrong people", the claim that their opinion has been bought and paid for is the insult used by the "scientists" who are ignoring dissenting opinions.
You aren't exactly getting novel scientific ideas in letters to the editor in your local paper.
Only in the realm of modern AGW research is it considered a "novel scientific idea" to have more than correlation to back up a theory. But then, the claim was that scientists ignore such dissenting opinions, and the truth in the real world is much much different.
Scientists just don't like being called out as incompetent at their job by people who generally have no idea of what they are talking about, which is generally what you have with letters to the editor on climate change.
Not always, but the response is usually the same. And questioning the science didn't used to be considered calling someone incompetent. Science used to be above that. I've seen it in areas that don't involve AGW. A lot of areas that don't involve AGW.
There was nothing stopping any state from establishing a socialized single-payer healthcare system, except perhaps voter disapproval. Case in point Romneycare. Romneycare affected one state and hasn't exactly turned that state into a model of health care efficiency. If it had, more states would have followed suit, but they didn't.
Alas, we now have, let's call it what it really is, the Subsidized Care Act and the 28hr A Week Underemployment Act and the 49 Employee Small Business Act and the Waived For Obama's Buddies Act and the Insurance and IRA Growth Act and the Stick it to the Youth Yet Again Act.