At worst, science will play its part in accelerating us toward a tech-obsessed end-times-fascist future. At best, science will broaden its power as a positive force, serving the wellbeing of humans and nature alike. Imagining this latter vision in exquisite detail is essential, and we argue here that to first envision and then work towards the best version of science, we need to reckon honestly with science’s past and present.
Most crucially, we need to confront the commonplace claim that science is – or ought to be – objective and apolitical, uninfluenced by human culture, norms, or values. The current moment has rudely awakened many scientists to the fact that research is indeed political, and further makes clear that scientists’ attempts to distance themselves from politics will backfire.
So the way to stop that awful future where science is politically dominated is to have more politics in science.
Rightie Ho.
Fascist futures are baked into science fiction.
Blake’s 7 Federation is probably one of the best representations of it on telly.
Even “optimistic” futures as in Star Trek are pretty dystopian really.
So…to prevent fascist science we must have commie science…
If it’s political it’s not scientific research.
It is possible to make a political decision as to which topics you want researchers to study, but politics do not change the facts being researched.
The authors clearly do not know what “science” means – oh! they are female Guardianistas, that explains it.
john77
100% She’s fallen for the politically driven ‘the science’. Covid, global boiling, women with cocks are just recently examples.
@ Theophrastus
IMHO, one case of Chernobyl is more than enough
Ambika Kamath is trained as a behavioral ecologist and evolutionary biologist. She lives, works, and grows community in Oakland, California, on Ohlone land
Melina Packer is assistant professor of race, gender and sexuality Studies at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, on Ho-Chunk Nation land. She is the author of Toxic Sexual Politics: Toxicology, Environmental Poisons, and Queer Feminist Futures
LOL
,i>So…to prevent fascist science we must have commie science…
Beat me to it. Can’t have the wrong sort of totalitarianism, can we?
She lives, works, and grows community in Oakland, California, on Ohlone land
WTF does “grows community” mean? And why is she boasting about squatting on someone else’s land? So much for her blather about justice.
Ohlone land – I wonder how many tribes occupied that land back to the time of human-free North America and were displaced in turn by their successors. Do they not get recognition in her world view too? Same for the bird in Wisconsin.
Jimmers said:
“She’s fallen for the politically driven ‘the science’. Covid, global boiling, women with cocks are just recently examples.”
Yup. It’s a bit much when the newspaper that leads they way in saying “the science is settled” so we must all obey the resulting government diktats complains about totalitarian science.
I may have lifted this from a poster on here:
The first humans to inhabit the Black Hills of Dakota arrived from Asia some 10,000 years ago.
They were “replaced” by a second wave called the Clovis.
A third wave of Asians, laughably called by some “Native Americans” then arrived and wiped out the Clovis.
Around a millennia ago the Arikara had taken possession of the land.
That didn’t last long as they were defeated by the Crow.
Who then lost it to the Pawnee.
Who in turn lost it to the Kiowa.
Who got stuffed by the Cheyenne.
Then around 1776 the Lakota Sioux stole the Black Hills from the Cheyenne and immediately declared it to be their sacred ancestral land.
Finally a bunch of melanin-deficient immigrants showed up and sent the Lakota packing.
Reading anything in the Graun about science is almost as bad as reading the new New Scientist…
What can you say? Clueless, deluded, silly girls. Science is nature. All we can do is learn about it. We can use what we learn to make technology, which is not science. Technology is what makes human lives better. Wheels are technology. This is why our lives are no longer quite as nasty, brutish and short as they once were.
I look forward to someone at Cambridge proclaiming that he is lecturing on land belonging to the Catuvellauni who’d nicked it from the Trinovantes who’d nicked it from …
Mind you, he’d be sacked for Satire Contrary to the Spirit of the Age.
Just read this:
“[Intellectuals are] an effete corps of impudent snobs.” – Spiro Agnew
I’ve never seen it put better.
@ Norman
Intellectual and Intelligent are two different words.
Precisely, J77. They’re evidently quite often different people, too.
“Is this ‘science’ in the room with us now?”
Is the tech-obsessed end-times-fascist future likely to be different from the tech-obsessed end-times-fascist present?
How will we tell?
‘Denying the inherent entanglements of science and politics leaves scientists lacking the capacity and tools to mount effective defenses against bad-faith political attacks.’
Commie dick Murphy believes that if A buys a loaf of bread from B, a representative of government, C, should be present. These creeps think that as I examine leaves of a magnolia, a representative of government should be present.
And why would scientists ‘mount effective defenses against bad-faith political attacks?’
“Not my job, mon.”
‘This denial also allows science to go unquestioned when it undermines the needs and rights of marginalized beings and places.’
Wut? So if ‘science’ gives a wrong answer . . . . I’m speechless. This is too bizarre to comment.
They mention science 33 times, yet have no idea what it means.
“You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.” — Inigo Montoya
@ Norman
Quite!
I remember at school a fair number of boys used to make fun of the “pseudo-intellectuals” , none of whom were among the cleverest or most intelligent boys.
@dearieme – “who’d nicked it from …”
Ultimately, it must be Ice Cube’s ancestors. He’s a real chip off the old block.