… they bust down part of the wall to let the Trojan Horse in:
Earlier this month, Science, one of the most prestigious scientific journals in the world, published an editorial that could have appeared in the Nation or Washington Post on . . . how to fix the United States Supreme Court that has grown too conservative. From “Save the Supreme Court and Democracy,” by Maya Sen — a Harvard social scientist, meaning not a “scientist” at all:
“The US Supreme Court has been busy. It recently overturned a nearly 50-year-old precedent protecting abortion rights, upheld the right to carry guns outside the home, and hamstrung the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate emissions—all while signaling an aversion to contemporary empirical evidence and instead favoring “history and tradition.” Although the majority of Americans disagree with many of these decisions, the court has only just begun to reshape the country. When it resumes in October, the court will be poised to outlaw affirmative action, undercut federal regulations regarding clean water, and possibly allow state legislatures to restrict voting rights without oversight by state courts.”
With the exception of environmental regulation, none of that has anything to do with actual science. Science isn’t about politics, opinion polls, or subjective opinions. It is supposed to be about adducing facts about the natural world and applying them. Whether to permit, outlaw, or regulate abortion isn’t a question that science can answer. That issue belongs to the realms of morality, ethics, and politics. Ditto gun policy.
Wesley J. Smith, “Progressivism Colonizes the Science Journals” at National Review (August 31, 2022)
“Prestige” is gradually coming to mean “prestigious because of its prestigiousness,” not because of its content. Maybe they’ll get round to the war on math before long.
You may also wish to read: Which side will atheists choose in the war on science? They need to re-evaluate their alliance with progressivism, which is doing science no favours.