Scientific American, which dates to 1845 and touts itself as “the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States,” recently ran an article arguing that scientists should prioritize “reality” over scientific “rigor.” What would make a publication with a name like this one set empirical evidence at odds with reality? Masks, of course.
Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard professor of the history of science, argued that by “prioritizing scientific rigor” in its mask studies, the Cochrane Library may have “misled the public,” such that “the average person could be confused” about the efficacy of masks. Oreskes criticized Cochrane for its “standard . . . methodological procedures,” as Cochrane bases its “findings on randomized controlled trials, often called the ‘gold standard’ of scientific evidence.” Since RCTs haven’t shown that masks work, she writes, “[i]t’s time those standard procedures were changed.”
This…person has just made the Left’s epistemological premise explicit. For the benefit of the less philosophically inclined, here it is, in large font:
If the facts contradict your Narrative,
Dismiss the facts!
Harvard must have some strange criteria for awarding high faculty posts.
Concerning Scientific American, I stopped reading it when the Left colonized and conquered it in the late Seventies. It’s no longer a reliable journal for any purpose I can think of. But then, how many publications of any description remain reliable reporters of verifiable facts?
3 comments
How else could they prove they made every effort to fill all quota slots?
Wait. Evidence is insufficient….
Perhaps there is hope.
My father subscribed to Scientific American and I enjoyed reading it growing up, so I eventually subscribed myself when I retired and had time to satisfy my engineer’s curiosity about other fields. Unfortunately by that time Scientific American had succumbed to the disease of wokeness which has permeated every academic institution and was publishing hogwash from long discredited shills pushing climate change, gun control, gender dysphoria, and every other demented program of the new left. I cancelled my subscription with the comment that they needed to return to the roots of science if they wanted to keep the name.
As I say repeatedly, Science + Politics = Politics
I stopped reading SA when they “debunked” Reagan’s “Star Wars” space defense in the 1980s. The dishonesty in the approach and the calculations, in peer-reviewed articles, showed that science and engineering were being used only as props for their agenda. I’d dropped my subscription before then, having seen the yellow journalistic writing on the wall (and being a broke college student) but that was the point at which I stopped looking at the magazine in the library.