Science is not taking Trump's win lightly

Scientists' fears over funding and research may be the shifting tide that we need to produce real science.

As one would expect the science world has not taken to Trump’s election with much positivity. It’s no different than the fallout being seen across the political spectrum in which Democrats have not seemed to understand why Harris lost, resulting in a complete lack of introspection from the party and a doubling down on the belief that the country is just becoming too extreme and too divisive in nature due to those on the right.

It’s ironic that Latinos are being called racist against black people, and ironic that black Trump voters are being called xenophobic and sexist.

There’s a lot about the election fallout that is worth examining, but that discussion will be saved for another time when I am able to sit down and collect my thoughts into several posts.

Unsurprisingly the science world has not responded kindly to the election of Trump’s second win and has been even more critical of RFK Jr.’s nomination for the secretary of Health and Human Services position as it is being heralded as the destruction of public health- at least that’s how the media is spinning the situation.

From the Seattle Times

In a show of histrionics and hyperbole from scientists the journal Science released an article admonishing the political attacks that have been levied against science, and how scientists’ attempts at pushing back against claims on social media seemed to have overall failed:

Make no mistake, the political assaults on science stem largely from those who seek to undermine the truth for political gain, and this dynamic is the major contributor to declining trust in science. Still, science needs to find better ways to protect itself from these attacks. During Trump’s previous term in office, scientists often responded to incidents by fighting back on social media and cable news. (I was an enthusiastic participant but left Twitter, now called X, a year ago.) Although this animated and often confrontational banter created a sense of unity among many scientists and provided a platform to defend science, it ultimately failed to persuade the public that the attacks were baseless. For example, almost 20% of Americans refused to get the COVID-19 vaccine. This failure can be partly attributed to the nature of social media and cable TV news. Social media algorithms evolve to create division, and cable news thrives on conflict. These platforms are not conducive to building trust, no matter how artful or passionate the rhetoric. But it follows from the continued erosion of trust in science that the spirited pushback—during the pandemic especially—had little impact.

Speaking of lack of introspection this paragraph reads wholly of someone who seems to not understand why people have grown skeptical of science, or why many scientists’ endeavors of “fact-checking” are partially the reason for this growing mistrust as many people become less swayed by the protestations of the scientific elite. It reeks of the ingroup-like nature of scientists and how they can become so entrenched within their own bubble that they fail to understand what goes on in the public’s mind.

It also speaks down to the public and enforces this notion that the public is too ignorant and unintelligent to be able to figure things out for themselves, that many people (including those without a formal scientific background) cannot do their own research and come to their own conclusions without mandates from high above. They are the arbiters of science, and we must show fealty to them.

Also, it’s obvious that the only reason people chose not to get the COVID vaccine was because scientists did not work hard enough to tell these people that they are too stupid to make their own decisions for what they want to put into their own body.

I and many others were too stupid to realize that our decision to not get the COVID vaccine was based on false pretenses rather than a skepticism regarding if there was robust clinical evidence to support their use paired with robust clinical evidence about their possible harms.

This makes it ironic that the following paragraph (not shown here) mentions problems with scientists’ biases and how scientists and institutions may not be forthright in the research that they conduct, and that this also helps to sow mistrust among scientists. It’s as if lack of transparency, heavily biased research, and consensus-by-fiat science are some of the real reasons why people continue to mistrust science at an ever increasing degree.

As I have reported several times before most of the foundational work in Alzheimer’s has come under scrutiny, with the most critical paper in Alzheimer’s pathology-which is also one of the most widely cited papers in science- has been retracted due to questions regarding image tampering and other questionable data.

And that several of the most eminent scientists in the field of Alzheimer’s and neuroscience have had their work come under fire for allegations of fraud. It’s as if the entire field is wrought with contamination from fraud, and yet these very same people are the ones who find it necessary to enforce “fact-checking” when they can’t even fact-check the work of their own fellow scientists. How can they lay claim to being the ones to know what science is when they themselves are not following the scientific method.

The science journal Nature also fell into the bandwagon of histrionics over Trump’s win, putting out an article full of woeful scientists who aren’t too worried about showing their heavy political biases, and even going so far as to emphasize that worries over the alleged attacks on science have resulted in scientists considering moving out of the US in the following years.

From Nature

It’s funny how little emphasis was placed in the Nature article regarding its possibly heavy Democratic-reader bias, which is made rather obvious by a survey put out by Nature in which nearly 86% of the survey’s respondents stated that they were voting for Kamala Harris, with reasons ranging from climate change to, of course, social justice:

Concerns and priorities differed substantially among Harris and Trump supporters. Those who said that they prefer Harris were more likely to cite climate change alongside issues of security, social justice and public health as their chief concerns. Some also said that trust in science is important. Whereas Trump presents himself as being guided by political convictions, “Harris and her party show willingness to update policies based on evidence”, wrote Kate Radford, a researcher in biochemistry and biophysics at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “This is the heart of science.”

It’s another show of how scientists are just as likely to fall into groupthink and cult-like mentality like any other group- just because scientists are argued to be more logical and rational in their thinking doesn’t make it so. The fact that Nature is not even bothered that their survey shows a heavily left-leaning reader base, and that it may be suggestive of a heavily left-leaning bias in science in general gives concern regarding how much scientific research is being done on the basis of a one-sided political narrative.

I’ve used this word too often in this post already, but ironic that some of these voters are believe that the current health and medical establishment are the ones that are updating policies given the mandates and the policies we were all forced to live under during the Biden administration. It’s also very ironic that the same people who speak so highly of upholding the principles of science are so quick to abandon their beliefs when the starts to get a little uncomfortable, just like the many celebrities who go on about how much they love the US but are so quick to move and abandon it when things don’t go their way (again, lots to say on this topic, maybe in a future post).

It’s the abandonment of actual science for narratives, of substantiating conclusions without any evidence, and of the enforcement of acceptable ideas and the curation of discourse that has caused the uproar over science these past few years.

I would argue one of the biggest problems science is facing is that science has not been in a good position for years now, and many of the people who hold on to the belief of “trusting the science” are those whose questionable research is likely to be up to scrutiny now. Many of these people are likely the very same scientists who have helped create the structures that have made people so distrusting of science, and have likely curated the institutions to suit their own needs rather than the needs of the public and the needs of science. It’s worth considering if the lack of innovation and breakthrough in research is a consequence of the fact that most of the research being done today is based off shoddy, irreproducible work that more than likely was completely falsified- bad science begets bad science, after all.

Science is about asking questions

Irrespective of what one believes of RFK Jr. it’s quite clear that his nomination is allowing us to do the one thing that should always lie at the heart of science- and that is to ask questions. It allows us to chip away at the structures of these institutions which have gatekept access to knowledge through arbitrary formal education and degrees. It has allowed us to look at the guidelines and the mandates that have made up public health for decades and ask ourselves if these guidelines are meant to help us be healthy, or are they meant to serve the perverse incentives of the food and pharmaceutical industry.

Science requires that people ask questions, and it requires that we be able to freely discuss ideas and information, and its for this very reason that many within these institutions are so scared, because it now requires that they produce good science rather than the bad science that has been released for decades.

Science and the institutions that tout to be about “the science” have been corrupt for far too long, and its now time that we can finally bring to light the corruption that we have all been forced to live under.

Libertarians like to use the phrase “audit the fed”, and now seems like the most appropriate time to audit the NIH, audit the CDC, audit the FDA, and audit any of these other institutions for the sake of transparency, for the sake of true science, and for the sake of real public health.

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