Proof that Ideological Capture of Our Scientific Institutions Kills Innovation
There are so many reasons for the decline of “disruptive science”, but the redirecting of research from a quest for new knowledge to the support of political narratives is the most important one.
Over the past few months, I have been exploring the ideological capture of our scientific institutions.
I have reviewed the mainstream media’s roll is strangling rigorous scientific debate. I have explored how government agencies block access to important taxpayer-funded databases if they assert a scientist’s research may enter “forbidden” territory.
I, along with many others, have warned that the commandeering of science to push social, environmental, and corporate agendas would have a tsunami of unintended consequences. The scientific journal Nature has noted one of the most significant repercussions of ideological capture: The death of scientific innovation.
The journal recently published an analysis of a report that showed the proportion of publications that send a field in a new direction (i.e., innovation) has plummeted over the past half-century.
Data from millions of manuscripts show that, compared with the mid-twentieth century, research done in the 2000s was much more likely to incrementally push science forward than to veer off in a new direction and render previous work obsolete. Analysis of patents from 1976 to 2010 showed the same trend.
“The data suggest something is changing,” says Russell Funk, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and a co-author of the analysis, which was published on 4 January in Nature. “You don’t have quite the same intensity of breakthrough discoveries you once had.”
I have degrees in geology and chemistry. My son is getting a degree in physics. So, for me, the graph charting the absolute plunge in physical science “disruption” is chilling.
The authors cite a variety for the reasons for the plunge. They say there are fewer researchers, for example, or that scientific progress has become more incremental.
However, a look at recent posts here and on other news analysis sites are rich in examples of how narrative science is pushed and promoted, and those whose have data and explanations that do not conform to the prevailing (and largely unscientific) narrative are maligned, demonized, and their further research is censored and unfunded.
Meanwhile, in the world of life sciences and biology, after Dr. Jay Bhattacharya argued that covid lockdowns would harm children (a claim for which there is now ample proof), Twitter secretly placed him on a “Trends Blacklist,” which prevented his tweets from trending. This censorship of scientific research silenced a critical challenge to restrictive pandemic policies.
Additionally, the most recent release of Twitterfiles revealed that Twitter worked with government officials to silence dissenting medical views related to Covid, and one of the victims was Dr. Andrew Bostom ( a Rhode Island physician and researcher with in impressive CV ).
Bostom who was permanently suspended even though Twitter found four of his five flagged tweets not to be misinformation and the fifth flagged tweet in fact was accurate. I mentioned Dr.Bostom’s tweet in my post, Twitter Files COVID Edition: How Twitter Rigged the Covid Debate With Help From the White House:
Dr. Andrew Bostom, a Rhode Island physician, was permanently suspended from Twitter after receiving multiple strikes for “misinformation.” The suspension is an example of the free-speech-destroying level of bias in the covid review process on the platform.
32. That this tweet was not only flagged by a bot, but its violation manually affirmed by a staff member is telling of both the algorithmic and human bias at play. Bostom’s account was suspended for months and was finally restored on Christmas Day.
— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 26, 2022
Real climate science is being hurt by an all-encompassing focus on life-essential carbon dioxide, the smearing of fossil fuels, and the total neglect of research of the impact of the oceans, volcanoes, and the Sun on the atmosphere.
The community is getting little benefit from much atmospheric research and most climate modelling, and that money should be redirected to more productive areas.
Half of “climate research” money should be spent on improving the ability of public infrastructure to survive natural disasters.
The remaining funds should be spent on real climate research – mapping the floor of the oceans, with particular reference to locating active volcanoes; and investigating how volcanism, solar variations and cycles of the sun, moon, planets and solar system impact long-term weather forecasts and future climate. This work should preferably be done by contracting private operators; and the climate models in public hands should be handed over to practising meteorologists to see if they are useful for short-term weather forecasting.
Nature is part of the problem, for promoting race-based malarkey such as articles that include statements that allow research to be nixed and information to be axed based on whether it aligns with the current social justice agenda.
[R]esearch may — inadvertently — stigmatize individuals or human groups. It may be discriminatory, racist, sexist, ableist or homophobic. It may provide justification for undermining the human rights of specific groups, simply because of their social characteristics.
This race-based inanity leads to the approval of ludicrous “science” projects (Observing Whiteness in Physics) and the diversion of millions of research dollars to studies such as “Deconstructing Whiteness in Physics.”
I must acknowledge there may be many other reasons for the decline in scientific innovation.
I suspect this may be part of the cause:https://t.co/0t3VqDX51B
— neke (@neke2021506) January 5, 2023
I think everyone in academia knows why… for example the incentive structure promotes doing work confirming a previous well accepted hypothesis. As reviewers, not many want to fund a grant in their field that challenges their theory giving them $$ or accept the paper.
— Eric Brown (@ericmichbrown) January 4, 2023
Academia's become a make-work program for the credential oversupply from Universities pivoting into hedge funds to farm student loan subsidies. And now has taken the final step becoming purely a political utility.
New knowledge requires challenging orthodoxy. Good luck w that.
— satstream (@rootstrikebtc) January 6, 2023
There are so many reasons for the decline of “disruptive science,” but the redirecting of research from a quest for new knowledge to the support of political narratives is the most important—and most meaningful—one.
Question: Why is scientific innovation dying?
Answer: pic.twitter.com/a4lMZU7D4g— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) January 7, 2023
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Comments
I’m sorry, I know there are brilliant Black people like Ben Carson and, Eli Whitney,Thomas Sowell , Marie M. Daly , Charles Richard Drew
But all in all…..
These proponents of racist white scientists are crazy black women and militant black men and women and the fact that any scientific community is giving them the time of day
Well, it speaks volumes to where we are…
I’m in the field. You’re wrong. The rich, white progressives put black faces in the forefront to push their agenda with a meatshield against criticism and to convince the minority masses that the cause is just. There are puppets and puppeteers. The puppets are just the few true
minority disciples who got pushed through science the way people are pushing kids through “gender transitions” now (with lots of money, exorbitant positivity, and the soft bigotry of low expectations).
Oh and the puppets are often unaware of their strings. They’ve become too arrogant from all of the aforementioned unearned positivity and ego fluffing.
Thank you for bringing light to this, and I hope it gets more traction. I seriously doubt it, though, sadly.
You are right that there are more factors involved, but this is definitely one of the latest to cause the same problem. The symptoms first appeared when titans of the sectors refused to allow anyone to challenge their published dogmas. This coincides with renowned scientists who were absolutely dickheads as people (think Watson and Crick of DNA fame). Watson and Crick were amazing and right most of the time, but their attitudes towards anyone challenging their ideas and even stealing the work of others led to a feudal system in research circles. The lords were the established researchers whose word was gold and whose funding was virtually guaranteed. The vassals were the new researchers who wanted to bring disruptive ideas but were held under thumb and didn’t dare challenge their liege. The non-science citizenry comprise the serfs, who aren’t allowed to think for themselves and be taken seriously by either the lords or their vassals. This model continues today, and you can certainly see how there was an easy niche for DIE initiatives and climatology religion to jump right in and take over once given political position.
I am still in mourning over Mars killing Uncle Ben.
Mars’ Legree killed Uncle Tom… and history always rhymes.
The Correct killed of Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, the Land O Lakes Indian woman.
The sweet irony: the last remain caricature is the very white Quaker of oats fame.
Peer review in all fields that publish has been broken since the 50’s. In 1968 we would sneak into T. Harry Williams history lectures at LSU. We had to sneak as you could not get in his class due to popularity. He said peer review was gone in his field. He hated Lincoln, and thought him to be despicable. But he had to write positively about him to get published. And he had to be published to have his standing.
Then in my field, medicine. You can not believe half the papers that we read in journals. I researched cholesterol for a trial, as an expert witness. I went back to the 50’s and found that cholesterol does nothing bad for the body and is a major building block. I found that statins basically do not work and that diets are a joke except for losing weight. But, you will not hear a thing like that in the literature.
Absolutely true. Whatever will be funded and lead to more funding is published, not necessarily whatever is true.
The founders (thought they) created a federal government with strictly limited powers.
They explicitly did not put the federal government in charge of education, or medicine, or law enforcement, or banking, or gun regulation, or road building, or drug prohibition, or housing, or border enforcement, or poverty, or scientific progress, or disinformation control.
We did all that… because we were too fucking stupid to understand the founders’ vision.
Not enough boys left to do what boys do.
The incrementalists do not want radical changes of direction, no matter how strong the evidence might be.
Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.
It’s human nature to protect one’s past work and to ensure funding for the future.
I speak from 25 years of personal experience. My idea attacked the very assumptions of incrementalists in several different disciplines.
When my studies proved powerful, I found it impossible to gain further funding.
I should have added this quote from Heinline:
——————————–
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people.
Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
“Reliance on hi-tech solutions to climate crisis perpetuates racism, says UN official”
Astonishingly, and against all probability and my initial reaction (and undoubtedly yours), this statement is undeniably true! Even though The Guardian likes it!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/27/reliance-on-high-tech-solutions-to-climate-crisis-perpetuates-racism-says-un-official
It is true that idiotic hi-tech “solutions” such as wind, solar, and electric vehicles depend on the mining of elements by the exploitation of black children in Africa. However, her “solutions” to this are predictably nuts. After all, she’s a professor of law at UCLA.
Mediocre minds, when allowed to attain positions of authority over those smarter and more innovative than themselves, make it their business to ensure that none of their brilliance ever sees the light of day, because that would expose how shallow their own intelligence and ability is.
Fauci is the absolute EPITOME of this.
When research is all geared from the same dubious premise nothing new will be discovered
[Quote] When research is all geared from the same dubious premise nothing new will be discovered. [/Quote]
Yes. Absolutely.
Brian; the tag you want is
Gads! It worked even with spaces. Grr!
You probably heard that Fauci was the highest paid Fed employee, but do you know why his name is on the patents? Fauci could control which drugs or treatments were approved. In some cases, he would only approve if the drug company put his name on the patents. Then the NIH would get half the profits. The NIH made $125 billion in one year on one “vaccine”, because they are the gate keepers (not innovators).
These kids are having heart attacks like it’s mono and no one will connect the dots, or shall I say shots
https://redstate.com/brutalbrittany/2023/01/07/the-second-fatality-this-week-for-suddenly-collapsing-las-vegas-high-schoolers-n685239
If the “CD index” varies from -1 to 1 then why does the graph range from 0 to 0.5? This creates the visual perception, especially for anyone who didn’t carefully read the explanation, that disruptiveness is falling from a high level to absolute zero.
All else being equal I would expect disruptiveness to fall as a field of study matures. We should require more evidence that there is a problem than this.