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Re: TOPIC RESET: ......Question about Fairness doctrine AND Technical Communication
Subject:Re: TOPIC RESET: ......Question about Fairness doctrine AND Technical Communication From:Ned Bedinger <doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Sat, 23 Aug 2008 14:03:44 -0700
Butler, Darren J CTR USAF AFMC 584 CBSS/GBHAC wrote:
>
> Many people on this list write for the scientific community, which is
> becoming more politicized every year (e.g. Global Warming). Federal
> policies such as these can greatly affect how/what they write.
No. Politics is becoming more politicized every year. Science has become
more of a target for political manipulations, but that is fundamentally
different from your proposition (science becoming more politicized).
If science had become more politicized, you'd see scientists trying to
influence policy and governance, sort of like "activist" judicial
roleplayers (e.g., judges) who exert their personal and political
beliefs when making legal judgements. Peer reviewed science doesn't have
any place for that, not even in political science. What you're seeing is
probably just a case where scientists get beat on by political
operatives for producing objective data that happens to favor one or
another political objective.
Your example of global warming is a good example of longterm objective
interdisciplnary data collection and study leading to thoroughly
reasoned and supported interpretations. That is not the political
process. Politics seems to me to start with a judgement about desireable
outcomes and then proceed to fold/spindle/mutilate everything (esp the
domain of facts) in an attempt to engineer a system in which the desired
outcome is more likely. If science were politicized, the preferred
conclusion would dictate what evidence is collected and studied.
You've pointed out that politics can control what conclusions government
science is allowed to publish. Yes, and *a* government, with
government-controlled media, can bury an awful lot of good peer-reviewed
science if conclusions go against political goals. But controls will
have to become another order of magnitude worse to politicize
peer-reviewed science, which is a global, distributed thing.
Good luck,
Ned Bedinger
doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com
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