351
votes
Accepted
Why is the Trump Administration often labeled as anti-science?
Evidence That Trump Is Anti-Science
There is plenty of evidence that the Trump administration is anti-science. For example:
One of his first acts in office was to place a gag order on federal ...
- 73.4k
84
votes
Accepted
Why is there such a partisan divide on confidence in science in the US?
A good explanation might be confirmation bias. Confirmation bias in a nutshell is the psychological phenomenon that people generally tend to trust information which supports their views and distrusts ...
- 74.8k
54
votes
How does the USA know that the balloon they shot down was Chinese?
China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has released several statements saying that it's from China, they know its capabilities and purpose, and that they regret letting it enter US airspace. All in all, ...
- 10.2k
31
votes
Accepted
Do wrong beliefs threaten democracy?
Yes and no.
A democracy is merely a memetic system: it's a set of ideas codified into formal laws and informal ideology and norms.
As such, specific beliefs can objectively undermine this memetic ...
- 91.8k
24
votes
Do wrong beliefs threaten democracy?
I think most of the replies are misunderstanding what Tyson is saying, note that he says "end of our informed democracy" not merely "end of our democracy". The point here is that widespread belief in ...
- 747
24
votes
Accepted
Has the US government provided details on plans to deal with AIDS and childhood cancer?
AIDS
Trump Administration Secures Historic Donation of Billions of Dollars in HIV Prevention Drugs.
The agreement between the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Gilead will last ...
- 89.3k
22
votes
Why is there such a partisan divide on confidence in science in the US?
To understand the modern partisan divide over science, we need to go back to the origins of the Christian Fundamentalist movement in the late 19th century. There's an article on it in Brittanica that'...
- 67.7k
20
votes
Accepted
Why did the EU Council also suggest homeopathic products to treat animals beside conventional drugs?
The current regulation 2018/848 has:
1.5.2.1. Where animals become sick or injured despite preventive measures to ensure animal health, they shall be treated immediately.
1.5.2.2. Disease shall ...
- 115k
18
votes
Why is there such a partisan divide on confidence in science in the US?
The question as titled comprises two related but distinct issues.
What is the quality of scientific data?
Unfortunately, "science" is an unhelpfully broad category here, and "the scientific method", ...
18
votes
Is there a way to measure how technologically and economically independent a country is?
No, or at least not easily.
Dependency could be dependency on a source of imports, dependency on a market for exports, dependency on transshipment, dependency on foreign investment or experts, or more....
- 106k
14
votes
Why did the EU Council also suggest homeopathic products to treat animals beside conventional drugs?
Homeopathic products are essentially water (or some other solvent). While they don’t do anything useful beyond a possible placebo effect (which may or may not exist for animals), they aren’t directly ...
- 5,782
12
votes
Is there a scientific political ideology?
A political philosophy that is based only upon science is impossible because politics necessarily involves value-based judgements that are not falsifiable or empirical in nature
You can run ...
- 15.6k
12
votes
How does the USA know that the balloon they shot down was Chinese?
The existing answers give good background, but no information on how, without China's admission, the US would know to accuse China. Hopefully the below fills in the gap.
Assuming the balloon has no ...
- 2,824
11
votes
What is it that "97% of climate scientists" actually believe about global warming?
At SkepticalScience.com, we see this infographic:
With regard to the National Council on Public Polls guidelines outlining the 20 questions that journalists ought to ask when reporting on polls, I ...
- 3,762
10
votes
Why should people other than political scientists become or be allowed to be politicians?
There's a set of implicit questions and assumptions in your question.
Why should people other than political scientists be allowed to be a politician
Well, for starters, the main reason is that ...
- 91.8k
10
votes
Why is denying global warming associated with conservatives?
Conservatives believe that government should do less. The scientists who say "the earth is heating up" always seem to say "...and that means that government should do more to prevent heat-related ...
- 3,762
10
votes
Accepted
Do two-thirds of Americans believe that Congress needs to act on a climate crisis?
For at least the first two points, it's possible to find supporting polling data. An IPSOS poll for the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (climatecommunication.yale.edu) and the George ...
- 21.1k
8
votes
Is there a scientific political ideology?
The only ideology I know where the original founders explicitly state that it is based on scientific principles and adheres to scientific standards, is Marxism.
From Wikipedia: "Scientific socialism ...
- 325
8
votes
How does the USA know that the balloon they shot down was Chinese?
U.S. intelligence agencies tracked the Chinese spy balloon from its launch in China according to this news article.
U.S. intelligence agencies tracked the Chinese spy balloon from its launch in China ...
- 197
7
votes
Do wrong beliefs threaten democracy?
there are wrong facts, for example the repeatedly-debunked idea that vaccines cause autism. People mistakenly believe this despite the evidence against it, which leads to bad policies. More broadly, ...
- 4,820
7
votes
Is there a way to measure how technologically and economically independent a country is?
Dependency between countries is a tricky thing to quantify, or even to fully characterise.
One complication is that dependency is not just about the current facts of the matter, but about how the ...
- 4,760
6
votes
Do wrong beliefs threaten democracy?
1) People can have the same facts and come to very different conclusions. The importance is to minimize false facts, but not "false conclusions". Beliefs are built based on the conclusions. People can ...
6
votes
Is there a scientific political ideology?
Scientocracy is a government based around basing public policies on science. One proponent of scientocracy is American physician Peter A. Ubel, who describes it like this:
"Scientocracy: Policy ...
- 6,264
6
votes
Why is there a disconnect between innovation index and Nobel prizes won?
There are a number of factors.
Orthogonality, part I. The categories covered by the Nobel Prizes are a bit orthogonal to the concerns covered by the Innovation Index. The Nobel Peace Prize and the ...
- 12.6k
6
votes
What is the logic of allowing animal testing for cosmetics regarding the safety of workers but not the safety of customers?
It seems clear that the idea was to improve animal welfare by preventing animal testing being carried out in the development of cosmetics.
Indeed but it is equally important that the people working ...
- 1,340
5
votes
Are many laws adopted with unscientific (pseudoscientific or untested) foundations?
Do lawmakers take scientific advice, or have groups of scientists to consult.
Yes, for example in the UK there is the "Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs", you can see the members, and their ...
- 115k
5
votes
Why is there such a partisan divide on confidence in science in the US?
This Q. is an abstraction of previous Q.s about why conservatives in 2020 aren't conservationists like:
Why is denying global warming associated with conservatives?
What caused the tendency for ...
- 12.8k
5
votes
What is the logic of allowing animal testing for cosmetics regarding the safety of workers but not the safety of customers?
Clearly the rights granted to animals have to be balanced with the rights granted to people - if not for a principled reason, then simply for the reason that people have political power in human ...
- 4,760
4
votes
Why should people other than political scientists become or be allowed to be politicians?
Why political scientists? Why not lawyers? After all, in most governments elected represenatives are responsible for the passage of legislation - i.e laws. Given that their entire profession is about ...
- 343
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible