Comment by InsideOutSanta | Hacker News Reader

Comment by InsideOutSanta | Hacker News Reader

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"There is absolutely nothing political about studying the mating patterns of beetles"

It will be used as an example of how we are wasting tax money by politicians. It will be used as an example of how homosexuality is natural by one side, and then it will be used as an example of how science is used to "groom" children by the other. There will be fights about whether it should be in school books, and then some states will ban all school books that mention that research, and then publishers will be forced to remove it to still have enough of a market for their books. The authors will be called out on Twitter and receive death threats, their university will cut their funding to avoid the controversy, some students will complain about it, and then that will be used to show how universities indoctrinate our kids.

And so on.

That's what "everything is political" means. When people say things like "get politics out of x," they really mean "make x match my politics", because there's no such thing as "no politics."

The important distinction is that it is possible, and should be the expectation, that you can study beetles and publish the results without any sort of political motivation or bias.

In that sense, it is perfectly possible and reasonable to "take the politics" out of scientific research. Simply do the research and publish the results. There absolutely is a thing as "no politics".

Once the results are out in the world, politicians and pundits are going to talk about it. That doesn't make the science itself a political act.

Yes, neutrality is an important principle: we want a study to proceed without outside influence.

Yet, there is an additional point worth mentioning: to the extent public money is allocated to e.g. study beetles, it is downstream of a political process. Meaning, there was allocation of resources that allows the study to proceed.

"Simply do the research and publish the results"

And then you don't get any grants anymore.

>> "Simply do the research and publish the results"

> And then you don't get any grants anymore.

This is exaggerated to make a point, which I interpret as: savvy researchers are mindful of how to conduct their work and communicate their results so they get more grants in the future. To what degree does this distort or corrupt an ideal research process? This is complicated. Political economists often frame this as a principal-agent problem. Organizational theorists discuss concepts such as resource dependence. (What other concepts would you include?)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal–agent_problem

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_dependence_theory

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