The American Astronomical Society is apparently led by craven suck-ups who don’t believe in standing up for science. They removed a post that was critical of the incoming Trump administration, making bogus arguments about how they are a non-political organization. I’m sorry, but you’re a science organization, and when an anti-science goon comes into office, you decide to hide under your desks rather than opposing him? What use is such an organization? If you refuse to take a stand when your members are under threat, when you actively silence criticism, you become a collaborator. And if you think bowing to the overlords of ignorance will shelter you from their ire, you haven’t thought things through.
We’ve got a Trump coming in who wants to wreck the economy and build a wall and is already complaining about those protesting college kids. You think if you scuttle to do his bidding that that will protect you from the inevitable cuts to science programs, the starving of our universities, discrimination against our students? Have you noticed that his administration is going to be managed by a raving racist and anti-semite? Does the fact that the vice president is going to be a theocrat who thinks the universe is only a few thousand years old trouble you at all?
The AAS has censored one of their own, but it’s not going to help them, because here is Sarah Tuttle’s piece. She’s saying what our scientific institutions ought to all be saying, although they probably won’t.
To those of you preaching appeasement and patience: No. We know what that looks like. We are better students of history. I am not afraid to stand up to protect the existence of those who society has pushed to the margins. I am not afraid to stand up to protect myself.
Everyone needs to rise up, and if our institutions, from the AAS to the Democratic party, are unable to share our outrage and help, then it’s time to throw down their leadership and replace them with people who are conscious of the real threat now facing this country…and facing science.
Well I haven’t read the censored piece, and I was a big Hillary supporter, largely because she mentioned basic science in her answer to the “innovation” question in the 20 questions the sciencedebate web site sent to the candidates. BUT, isn’t it a little early to be calling Trump an “anti-science goon”? He’s wrong about climate change, but we don’t know yet what his policy on funding science research will be. If he tries to cut NIH and NSF and DOE and NAS, and ACS and APS and AAAS and so on, THEN we can call him an “anti-science goon”. But if he does, I’ll frankly be a little surprised. Not VERY surprised, but a LITTLE surprised. Or, if he tries to control science in order to fit his agenda, that would be very bad, and less surprising. Or, if he promotes evolution-denial, that would be a sign of anti-science goonery. But we don’t know yet what he’ll do; he’s still a mystery-man, at this point.
UPDATE OK, I have just read Sarah Tuttle’s censored post. As I expected, she’s worried about what MIGHT happen to science. L. Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, said, in another book: “Danger doesn’t mean getting hurt; danger only means you might get hurt.” (Quoting from memory, probably not exactly accurate.)
PZ:
Yes, they do. Especially since the normalization has begun.
handsomemrtoad:
Wrong? You think he’s fucking wrong? Jesus Christ, it’s way more than that. I, I just can’t take the fucking idiocy and ignorance anymore. Fucking educate yourself before you decide to start yapping. FFS, you’re one of those that will happily help the fascism along. Thanks so much.
It’S called “Gleichschaltung”
You better start brushing up your German because we invented quite a lot of useful terms and phrases that will come in handy some 80 years ago.
Every question that asks “Isn’t it early to worry about Trump doing X?” tends to push me towards the counter-argument: “Isn’t it a little late to not know?”
similar
https://medium.com/@amandadeibert/dear-trump-supporter-who-says-they-love-me-78c2aab188a9#.h4r33i532
.
refusing to criticize “normalizes” the behavior. Shelling up behind a category wall helps no one. Make clear one’s purpose and nature or organization. Criticizing the opposition is par for the course.
I can see wanting to avoid any association with of POTUSelect (whose name shall not be spoken)
speak out, oppose him by all means available. He plans to wreck everything around him, trying to clean up everything he misunderstands or disagrees with. His list of delusional dislikes is virtually infinite.
sputter, running off rails. ahem. I see myself out.
Is there a genetic marker for quislings?
Trump has chosen Myron Ebell to head the EPA.
He wants Ben Carson, a young earth creationist, to be secretary of education.
His team is lead by Steve Bannon, a notorious racist, anti-semite, and misogynist.
And you think it’s ? Do you even read the news?
@#1, handsomemrtoad
About a month or two back, it was revealed that the Clinton campaign had sent out a memo to down-ticket candidates coaching them on how to sympathize with Black Lives Matter without making any promises. If you read that memo, and then read her “pro-science” answers, you will notice certain similarities. Considering that Clinton — before Sanders was running against her — was pro-fracking, pro-Keystone XL, and pro-TPP (which would have demolished environmental controls all over the place), and that her picks for VP and staff were all rather notoriously pro-fracking, pro-Keystone XL, pro-TPP, etc. etc. etc., I think that on the subject of global warming the practical difference between a Clinton administration and a Trump administration would be much less than optimists were hoping. Just repeating “global warming is true” like a mantra doesn’t do much if you don’t act on it.
@#8, PZ Myers:
I just saw someone at Salon mention — without citing a source, oh how I wish this were confirmed — that Ben Carson has refused, saying he felt he was unprepared for such a role.
(Tuttle): “The livelihoods of so many are tied directly to funding that is controlled now by an erratic leader …”
That was your first mistake. I can see a decent “public goods” case for the search for Earth-crossing asteroids and the study of sun-like stars. Otherwise, why not let non-State organizations fund space research?
(Tuttle): ” … We have elected someone who doesn’t believe in climate change.”
Seems to me it’s the people who suggest that Earth’s climate would be stable absent anthropogenic CO2 who “don’t believe in climate change”.
(Myers): “His team is lead by Steve Bannon, a notorious racist, anti-semite, and misogynist.”
Evidence? Accusations by SPLC don’t qualify. Genuine –quotes– from Bannon or convictions for bias crime qualify.
You will find nothing like that.
Question for all you proudly pro-science people: Do you exempt from natural selection the human nervous system in the last 100,000 years? Do you take as axiomatic that regional varieties of human cannot, axiomatically cannot, vary in nervous system function? If so, why?
Clean up on aisles 10 and 11
“Steve Bannon, a notorious racist …”.
Defined by use, in modern American English, “racist” means “Caucasian who disagrees with a socialist”.
Malcolm Kirkpatrick
Which version of the bible do you use?
>”Do you exempt from natural selection the human nervous system in the last 100,000 years?”
I’m sure you will provide your reason for wanting to consider such changes any time now. Phenomena don’t tend to get studied without reasons to think they are there.
>”Do you take as axiomatic that regional varieties of human cannot, axiomatically cannot, vary in nervous system function?”
It’s more that the people that want to propose such things tend to be racist shit stains who want to justify being human atrocities when it comes to belief, thought, and action, and they want to avoid the natural course of reputation.
Such things are a primary area of interest to me but I spend a lot of time thinking over related morals and ethics because of the shit stains. The nature and nurture issues are not clear cut and some of the nature part does not involve changes in sequence. I’ve no interest in enabling human atrocities and much interest in actively undermining them politically.
Buh-bye, Malcolm Kirkpatrick! Not a fan of racist creationist climate-change-deniers around these parts.
But yes, Bannon is a racist by his own words. We know that climate change is real, and I’m not going to play games with your wacky definitional twists. The human population has been evolving over the last 100,000 years — it never stops — and that includes the nervous system.
Which doesn’t mean it won’t be critical to the survival of civilization. Trump, in case you somehow missed it in PZ’s comment immediately before yours, has appointed Myron Ebell to head the EPA: that means he intends to destroy it. He has stated his intention of withdrawing from the Paris agreement (yes, yes, I know the Paris agreement is a lot of warm words and near-zero action, it is still a lot better than no international agreement), and cutting off funding for the UNFCCP. He has promised to revive the coal mining industry. He has described climate science as a Chinese plot against the USA. When the world’s leading industrial power, and second largest current emitter of greenhouse gases is ruled by people who make absolutely clear that they intend to deny the science and block any agreement to cut emissions, and indeed to accelerate anthropogenic climate change as much as possible, that is the greatest possible encouragement to denialists and the fossil fuel lobby everywhere.
But hey, what does any of that matter compared to your smug certainty of your own rectitude?
I didn’t intend almost all of #17 to be in bold. But who knows? Maybe that will finally get through the Vicar’s up-to-now inpenetrable shield of smug.
The Vicar: Your routine is getting old. I was not a Clinton fan boy, but I think I had a more realistic view than you do: she is a very competent career politician who has been grossly maligned by right wing fanatics to the point that some liberals are believing their lies. She would have been a good president, but not the revolutionary one many of us wanted. She was most definitely not the personification of evil you strain so hard to represent her as.
But relax. You got your wish, and she’s not going to be president now. She also doesn’t have a chance of ever getting the nomination ever again. Happy now? You can stop clenching all your sphincters in rage.
Every single time I hear some asshole saying “Wait and see what his policies are!” I get this dumbfounded look on my face. The man has been actively campaigning for the job for a year and a half—if you can’t reasonably infer his policies from that campaigning, then you’re tacitly (or even explicitly) saying that we should assume he was lying the whole time he was campaigning, and furthermore that we should now assume the best going forward until new evidence comes to contradict that assumption. Both of these assumptions are fallacious. We have evidence of what Trump and his compatriots intend to do; we can form inferences about what they are likely to do; and where we cannot, we have no reason to assume the best. Indeed, we have a duty to assume the worst.
Thank you PZ
our host wrote @16:
replying to @11 who wrote:
Which I inferred was an example of racial bigotry. @11 was trying to assert that some races have inferior intelligence, genetically, than others, with whites having the genetically superior intelligence.
argh. sorry, just me, reading the worst into the words of people I disagree with. FWIW (nuthin I suppose).
goodbye Malcolm, let the door hit you on the way out.
“Axiomatic”?
@Seth #20, he’s been campaigning for over a year, but alas, he’s yet to actually speak to any policy beyond “we’re building a wall”, which now will largely be fence (it was on BBC News and USAToday yesterday).
@KG #17, he can go on and on about withdrawing from the Paris Accord, but that’s all that he can do in anything resembling a term in office, as it is a ratified treaty and the Constitution clearly states that ratified treaties are the law of the land. He’d need Congress to withdraw from the treaty and that would take a total of four years, due to stipulations in other treaties.
Hell, Trump has said that he wanted to do many, many things, most of which are far outside of his authority to do as POTUS, as they are matters for the legislature to enact or repeal.
Oh, that unmitigated disaster that is the ACA? Trump is open to leaving its pillars standing, which means the act remaining still in effect. In short, he’s backing off of his campaign lies in wholesale numbers.
Now, he has some real tools as transition team members, not actual cabinet level officers, let’s see if he jettisons the lot of them when it comes time to submit cabinet member names to Congress and the transition team choices was a last bit of pandering.
re wzrd@24:
‘cept Congress is fully behind him so what he says will be enacted unquestioned.
Grassroots oppo is all we gots.
@wzrd1 #24: That’s kind of my point. The fact that he hasn’t effectively articulated any coherent policy is a mark against him, and justifies the assumption of bad faith. It is foolish in the extreme to use the vacuity of the campaign’s substance as an excuse to assume the best. We *have* to assume the worst, because assuming the worst and being wrong leaves us in a much better position than assuming the best and being wrong.
Joel’s law: the probability that someone will claim Poe’s law approaches one, the more invective, bigoted and poorly spelt the original comment, post, or email is.
Crap wrong thread. Sorry all.
Picking nits:
PZ:
KG:
Trump has chosen Ebell to lead the EPA transition; as of now, he can’t appoint Ebell (or anyone) to head the EPA.
That said, my neighbors who work for the EPA are nervous.
“Reading the worst into?” What else COULD he have been getting at, in context?
Hi again PZ:
Well, you are persuading me, but, (partly playing Devil’s advocate)…
I would say Myron Ebell qualifies Trump as an anti-environment goon, but not necessarily as an anti-science goon. Of course there’s overlap, but the “EPA-is-too-active” people have some science in their corner too. Not much, but some: read what Bruce Ames said about banning (or pressuring manufacturers to withdraw) weak carcinogens like Alar. (Bruce Ames, as you know but maybe some readers don’t know, invented the Ames test, which is the gold-standard test by which mutagenicity and carcinogenicity of compounds are measured. Winner of numerous big science accolades, including National Medal of Science.)
Ben Carson for SecEd is very very bad. I concede the point. This is anti-science-education goonery, but may or may not be actually very significant, depending on what Carson actually does, (if he takes the position at all, which looks unlikely now).
Bannon is very nasty, all you say about him is true, but what does it have to do with science? Bannon makes Trump a goon, but not necessarily an anti-science goon.
For me, the real test of anti-science goonery will be: if he cuts funding for basic-science research, or if he tries to control the scientists in order to support his agenda. Again, I will not be very surprised if he turns out to be an anti-science goon on either or both of these criteria, but we don’t know yet.
@19, PZ:
…who somehow managed to forget Rule #1 of politics— don’t alienate your base.
Except that there’s virtually no overlap between the right-wing lies and the liberal criticisms. I’ve never heard a Republican denounce her support for the TPP or fracking or any of the several wars she’s backed.
I’d argue the flip side of this— Clinton has been grossly maligned by right wing fanatics to the point that some liberals are dismissing legitimate criticisms of her on the grounds that if everything else said about Clinton is a lie, this must be too.
What, like Obama?
‘Does the fact that the vice president is going to be a theocrat who thinks the universe is only a few thousand years old trouble you at all?’
Just out of curiosity, is there actual evidence that Pence is a young earther? I’ve tried looking but haven’t seen anything that says this exactly. I’ve always gotten the impression that he was one of those wishy-washy ‘Intelligent Design’ types like Michael Behe who accept evolution ‘in some form’ but think there are pockets of ‘irreducible complexity’ that required God to intervene…am I wrong?
He denies the science of climate change, and is extremely hostile towards scientists and who study the issue and what they do. I believe he tweeted something to the effect of “your gravy train is now over, global warming people!” in response to Trump’s victory, echoing the supremely stupid belief that global warming researchers and activists are perpetuating a giant fraud for personal gain (unlike himself, whose massive salary from the CEI must be purely incidental to his beliefs).
How does that not make him an anti-science goon? I’m hard pressed to think of how one could be a worse anti-science goon.
None that I’ve ever seen. The evidence clearly points to the EPA under-regulating, being too timid and waiting too long to implement new regulations. History shows that the costs of the regulations are vastly lower than even most optimists think, and the benefits vastly greater. Usually by a factor of 10 or more. Once we get the point of environmental regulations only generating a benefit/cost of merely 2 or so, then we can wring our hands over potential over-regulation.
Even if this were a legitimate counter-argument against EPA regulation, this happened in 1989. And there wasn’t even a regulation, it was purely voluntary. Industry only voluntarily gives up using environmentally problematic compounds when they have low-cost alternatives, so there isn’t even an economic case to be made against it. And it would be slightly more persuasive if you didn’t have to reach back over a quarter century to find an example.
wzrd1@24,
Formal withdrawal from the Paris accord may not be possible until four years after it came into force – which means Trump can formally withdraw during his term, but only just – but he can announce that the USA will do nothing to meet its obligations under the agreement, sabotaging the accord quite as effectively. Congress has nothing to do with it, because Obama called the accord an “executive agreement” that did not need formal approval (2/3 Senate majority IIRC, which Obama could not have attained) as a treaty.
Not to *completely* come to the defense of the AAS, but with my own experience with my own scientific professional society, it’s also true that there’s a limit to the amount of advocacy a non-profit can do without violating their non-profit status. (For example, we were warned not to use the word “lobby” or any of its forms when we went to visit folks on Capital Hill – an experience I would recommend to any concerned citizen!). What may be interpreted as lily-livered by some may be considered saving one’s tax-exempt status by others (especially the lawyers). Of course, that never stops the churches…
That’s because you keep your fingers so embedded firmly in your ears. Trump has criticised her on TPP, on Iraq, and on Libya. He’s also criticised her close ties with bankers. Of course Trump supported the Iraq invasion and Libya bombing at the time (I don’t know whether he supported TPP before being against it), and of course, in these cases he happens to be right, but your claim as stated is as far removed from reality as most of Trump’s.
My guess is that he had no idea what it was prior to realizing (or, more likely, being instructed) that he could capitalize on it politically. Putting his economic nationalism in context, a 2013 CNN op ed published under his name – it isn’t well written or especially cogent, but even so the odds he actually wrote it are pretty much zero – reads in part:
What Trump has done is take longstanding, legitimate, systemic arguments about trade deals from the Left, blot out their systemic nature in order to deradicalize and personalize them, and then repackage them in racist and nationalist terms. It’s not a new tactic of the far Right, and people on the Left have to be very careful to avoid playing along with it.
The amount of hyperskepticism is astounding.
I guess it will be the prevailing tune white liberals, especially white liberal men will play for the next X years: Is it really that bad? Can you be sure? Sure it’s not a Poe? But can we make a trend out if it? It’s isolated incidences!
And when the bodies are counted they’ll weep their crocodile tears and say “but how could we have known!”
They’ve put Steve Bannon in the White House and have Kris Kobach advising on what to do with Mexicans and Muslims.
The one thing I do get joy out of is seeing our resident Trump supporting scum in denial (and those elsewhere) writhing, squirming and contorting to make it look like they weren’t responsible for this.
@ 24 wzrd1
I’m not an american and have basically no knowledge of ACA or american healthcare, so all of this might be moot. I’ve understood that ACA is quite a complex piece of legislature that has some parts that are “popular” and I’m writing under the assumption that these are the pillars that Trump is referring to. However, again, if I’ve understood correctly and my knowledge comes from a NYTimes article* but repealing parts of the ACA is basically rendering the whole thing pointless.
Of course, Trump might have lied throughout his campaign. In this, yeah, he maybe made statements that meant nothing. In this case, as in pretty much concerning everything Trump.. I’d say prepare for the worst would be the best course.
*link to the article in question: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/upshot/why-keeping-only-the-popular-parts-of-obamacare-wont-work.html
handsomemrtoad @31: Trump has been an anti-vaxxer since 2007. Yes, he is anti-science. (For citations see ORAC’s many, many posts over at Respectful Insolence at ScienceBlogs.)
@KG, 37:
Normally, I’d admit my previous comment was poorly worded— it should have said: “I’ve never heard the right denounce her support for the TPP or fracking or any of the several wars she’s backed.”
However, you have a long history of deliberately misunderstanding things you don’t agree with so I’m less inclined to be charitable.
If you actually read my post instead of just quote-mining it, my claim was quite clearly this:
There is no overlap between false claims about Clinton generally promulgated by the right and legitimate criticisms of Clinton generally promulgated by the left. This point is not disproven by the existence of a handful of conservatives repeating legitimate criticisms of Clinton that are generally promulgated by the left.
That point was, of course, in service of the larger point:
With that in mind, your quote-mine becomes even more dishonest. I was addressing PZ’s claim that any significant number of liberals believe right-wing lies about Clinton. In order to address this claim, I pointed to the lack of overlap between liberal criticisms and right-wing lies. That all legitimate criticisms of Clinton from the right originated on the left in the first place does not support the claim that the left is promoting false criticisms of Clinton which originated on the right.
And he won. There’s a lesson there.
Now we find ourselves in the awkward position of having to say: “The TPP would have been a disaster, but thankfully the Republicans prevented it.”
Harban wrote @43:
FTFY, speak for yourself.
Quite a strawman you’ve painted there.
As much as I’d dislike the TPP and call it a disaster, Clinton would have worked to address many other hardships humanists are working to address.
I’m aware that, even preventing TPP, everything Drumph will provide is far more disastrous than TPP. So he and his “party” will never get anything close to “thanks for preventing TPP”.
just reAcronymize TPP to Trump Proliferates Pollution.