HHS Secretary RFK Jr is proposing banning NIH-funded researchers from publishing in top-tier journals, including JAMA and Lancet.
This is bonkers for all sorts of reasons, but let me just mention one. He points out that Lancet has retracted articles. This is factually correct, but it's a reason these journals are *more* trustworthy, not less.
Journals and peer review don't guarantee that what's published is "correct". It's merely the best process we have to get closer to finding the truth.
A nice bit in Neal Stephenson's SF novel Anathem:
"What would happen if one of your colleagues proved the existence of god?"
We'd say "Nice proof Frar, and get on with believing in it."
@mattblaze There was, of all things, a FRIENDS episode where Lisa tries and tries to get Ross the paleontologist to admit that evolution might be wrong and she finally got him to admit that, yes, maybe it could be wrong.
It would have been a very short episode if he said. “Yeah, it’s a *theory*, of course it could be wrong, that’s how science works.”
@debcha
In science the terms are often historical.
Newton's hypotheses on motion were called laws because it withstood a lot of testing at the time, but we now know it fails to hold at relativistic speeds. They remain useful so we still call them Laws of Motion.
Darwin's hypothesis on evolution was called a theory because he only tested it against a tiny fraction of life on Earth. It has been tested against all manner of life we've discovered since and we've yet to find an exception to it. However it retains the name Theory of Evolution.
@mattblaze
@petes_bread_eqn_xls @mattblaze
Ptolemy said it!
I believe it!
'Nuff said!
Don't you just love the their definition of "free speech" where the only speech that can be published has to go into journals with party approved censors installed?
If anyone in this thread is interested, I submitted a complaint about this topic to my rep, shared here
Content warning: letter to representative about RFK. Jr. attempting to censor NIH scientists.
@mattblaze as a society we have a deep seated problem around acknowledging errors and mistakes. We have somehow created a culture where for a whole lot of people making a mistake and owning up to it is seen as somehow an existentially hard thing to do that they refuse to do at any cost.
This seems absurd to a whole lot of us who recognize that it is a sign of strength not weakness to acknowledge your errors and mistakes, to learn from them, to retract them, to make amends and fix them
@Rycaut okay but you have to keep in mind that we have been trained to view empathy as a disadvantage, and thus humility as a weakness. it could interfere with individually beneficial transactional interaction which, be it social, cultural or economic, has been inculcated as Fundamental Human Nature.
we have a few pretty solid broadly applied base level assumptions that are going to have to be chipped away at. as individuals, it's easy to recognise that this is bad, but when schools, governments, public services, research projects, hospitals and churches are all expected to turn a profit first and foremost, mistakes are costly, admitting to them are even more so.
Matt Blaze
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