The Nature of Taking Sides
Higher Education Controversy! Corrupting the Youth!! TRIPLE DOG DARING the Editorial Board of Nature Magazine!!! Are you not entertained?!?!
Greetings and Salutations! Lee Jussim has asked me to do a Substack on Nature magazine’s choice to take sides in a political debate to endorse then candidate Joe Biden over Donald Trump. Subsequently, they have published a paper (Zhang 2023) showing that while it cost them credibility and gained their preferred presidential candidate virtually no support he wouldn’t have already had, they have publicly defended their decision. To examine this issue we look at four steelmanned arguments over their decision and future choices.
I’ve invited an undergraduate student to co-author this piece (all work is outside of class and for no credit or compensation).
Paige’s Bio:
My name is Paige Shea, and I am guest authoring this article and being overseen by my Professor, Dr. Nathanial Bork. As an undergraduate student in Political Science, I have seen with my own eyes the fear that strikes the hearts of my fellow classmates when discussing topics of conversation that once were considered fair-game. This devolution of discourse among young, knowledgeable, passionate students is particularly disturbing to me, as an advocate of free speech and frequent participant in friendly debate. I’m hoping we can progress to a place where partisan hive-mindedness gets kicked to the curb. Speaking your mind should not be met with bullying and intimidation. Students deserve better. Universities are no place for fear.
Together, we Triple Dog Dare Nature to return to their original mission of being the top scientific publication in the world.
1. Nature is right that it should have endorsed Biden
Nature took a political stand in 2020 when they endorsed then-candidate Joe Biden, stating that he is “the only choice in the US election”. This might have thrown many readers for a loop upon seeing this headline, but rest assured, Nature released an editorial statement arguing that it was well within their right to make these claims and hold this position.
Nature does have a point that different administrations are going to have different budget and policy priorities, and Nature could be correct that the scientific community was going to thrive more under Biden than they would have under four more years of Trump. They may also be right that Trump’s skepticism of scientific topics, and his general disdain for academic elites, were legitimate areas of concern for scientists such that scientists were going to be dragged into politics against their will, forcing Nature to take a stand.
Nature argues that they were using their large platform in the best possible way, and they show no signs of stopping. They insist that they have a moral obligation to be the defender-of-all-things-scientific, even if that means sticking to their guns and sacrificing the credibility of American scientists.
Besides their arguments about wanting to get a president who has the best intentions pertaining to science policy elected, the bigger point here is that this is America, and publications like Nature do have the right to post whatever they want. Whether or not people agree with their stance is beside the point.
It’s true! Nature is its own autonomous institution, and that means that they can release whatever information they damn well please. This is America, damn it!
Further, it certainly does take some dedication (and balls) to do something that pisses so many people off, and then doubling down with, “Should Nature endorse political candidates? Yes — when the occasion demands it.”
It is understandable that a scientific publication such as Nature would feel an obligation to defend the sanctity of science through whatever means necessary. If their gambit turns out to be true, and science ends up flourishing under Biden, it could do wonders for the popularity of their publication. Because not only were they willing to put their credibility on the line for the sake of science, they did enough research to decide which candidate they thought would do the best job at upholding scientific trustworthiness.
2. Nature was wrong and they should stay out of politics
What happens when no place provides sanctuary from the shitshow that is American politics? What once was a pleasant gathering place for Physics and Biology nerds is now tainted with political endorsements.
Where are the nerds supposed to congregate now, Nature?
It is going to be incredibly difficult for Nature to (1) gain back the respect and credibility that it lost as a scientific publication, and (2) forever appease those who it has just shown its support for. We personally cannot wait to read the next articles on Ukraine, immigration, TikTok, etc.; especially from a mandatory Leftwing perspective. It’s not like that same exact content exists anywhere else in academia or pop culture.
But what if it should turn out that Joe Biden is wrong on a political issue, or he enacts policies that cause real damage? Because Nature endorsed Biden, any errors, mistakes, or political problems within the Biden administration now cast a shadow over them as well.
It’s not surprising that cross-partisan confidence in American scientists is dropping, especially when looking at this situation with Nature, wading way beyond empirical waters deep into divisive, normative political debates.
In 2020 Pew reported, “left-leaning adults tend to trust science more than those on the right” and that, “two-thirds of liberal Democrats have a lot of trust in scientists to do what is right for the country, compared with just 17% of conservative Republicans.” There is no sign that this divide in trust among the political parties is going to slow or stop anytime soon.
Confidence in American scientists was already dropping before 2020. Nature’s decision likely exacerbated this larger trend. Specifically, “the endorsement message caused large reductions in stated trust in Nature among Trump supporters,” This is a huge problem, because we all need to be able to trust scientists. Driving people further apart, causing Rightwing backlash, and whittling down trust in scientists should not be the goal of publications like Nature.
Political endorsements will not do Nature any good, and in fact it will most likely accomplish quite the opposite. As if publishing credible and reputable information wasn’t hard enough already, Nature has gotten itself entangled in territory it does not want to be involved in. Not only was the choice to politicize science going to burden Nature with the responsibility of reporting on a wide range of politics and politicians, but any future deviance from Leftwing politics will likely be met with furious hordes of betrayed partisans demanding resignations. It will be particularly onerous to have to appease both the Richard Dawkinses and the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezes of the world from now on.
Whatever happened to presenting the facts and letting people decide the best course of action for themselves, rather than being spoon fed a ready-made opinion?
Skepticism of science is real and serious, and it needs to be addressed, because it certainly isn’t facilitating cross-partisan cooperation. In fact, it is very much doing the opposite. Dismissal of media and academic skepticism has been used to belittle the (mostly) legitimate concerns of those who are Right-leaning. It seems as though MAGA hats are the new tin foil hats.
Speaking of the environment, tin foil is one of the most valuable resources you can recycle! How about that for sustainability? This guy is rocking his hat, if you ask us.
3. Nature should have gotten into politics, but stayed neutral, either by making the case for both candidates and/or hosting a debate.
It seems probable that not a single person on Nature’s Editorial Board was strutting around the office rocking a MAGA cap in 2020, let alone a huge cowboy hat, like this gentleman:
If I’m wrong, and there is actually someone on the Board who ideologically aligns with 🎵Mr. Bryson Gray, I will pay Nature cash money to arrange a Zoom meeting with them.
But If I’m right, then either they needed to hire someone who can steelman different positions (I accept contract jobs, btw), or find a pro-Trump academic willing to represent that side of the debate.
It’s no secret that academia leans heavily left. Not just in the liberal to conservative ratio, but it’s vastly overpopulated by progressive, far left academics, relative to the general population. This means that they’re an overabundance of Leftwing intellectuals who would gladly endorse Biden and/or denounce Trump.
MAGAdemics, who must have been courageous to the point of stupidity (a stone I toss from my own glass house) to say so in public, did exist in 2016 and 2020, and presumably still do. The LA Times covered the Swartz (2020) list of 177 people who signed the “Scholars and Writers for America: Statement of Unity” in support of Trump in their article, “Authors in support of Donald Trump are conservative thinkers and academics; plus one radical Marxist” (archived here).
The radical Marxist on the list? The one and only Slavoj Žižek, pictured here in his infamous debate with controversial Canadian Psychologist/Lobster King/1950s Dad/Magical Super Nazi, Jordan Peterson:
Žižek, or any of the 177 signers, could have been brought in to argue against a Leftwing academic, letting Nature remain outside the fray. The pro-Biden academics could have made the same point as Nature, sparing them the loss of prestige, and prevented Nature and higher education from further being seen as ‘captured’ institutions.
And let’s assume that the pro-Biden scholar came out on top and crushed his MAGA opponent. Nature could have not only crowed over their victory, but they could have say that they really did hear out and examine the best possible steelmanned arguments of the pro-Trump side and found them wanting, with explicit reasons. Without a victory over a worthy opponent, Nature just beat up on strawdemics who weren’t around to defend themselves. Can Nature really even say that they took the issue seriously enough to consider the possibility that their position might be wrong? If not, how are they any different than narrative-committed partisans like Rachel Maddow or Tucker Carlson or Alex Jones?
Note - I swear to my readers, God, and all that is Holy, that I will never, ever not use this image wherever and whenever possible. Because this is the sponge who absorbs every last atom of credibility our institutions shed when they abandon neutrality for Leftwing politics. LOOK. AT. HIM… and think about what you’ve done.
4. Nature should learn from this either host a debate between credentialed academics, or create a research study for 2024 where they send out different copies of their magazines with endorsements for both candidates, pitched at different audiences, and measure the resulting reactions.
A debate would give Nature all of the advantages listed above and re-establish itself as an organization dedicated to science and objectivity over partisan advocacy.
It could even become a model of how to scientifically handle political controversies and fill the void left by now distrusted publications like Perspectives on Psychological Science (Jussim 2023). I consider myself a Philosopher and a Habermasian, and I think this would be an excellent model to build and work from.
Should Nature decide to do actual science, then we offer the following plea:
Dear Nature,
Should Trump run again in 2024, we implore you to run a study on what happens if you endorse Trump, the Democratic nominee, and run a neutral headline. We’d even be willing to run it for you, using Zhang’s basic methodology and our own network of researchers, or to work with Zhang, as well as any Leftwing organizations who might object.
Let’s see if academics have the freedom to ever disagree with the Leftwing establishment, even for a moment. After all, many of us in academia and the broader public have come to believe that academic freedom or freedom of speech no longer exists on campus.
In fact, we’re afraid that we must insist and DARE you to do it. There’s a pressing urge to find out just how free or not we academics actually are. Are we noble souls in pursuit of truth, no matter the cost? Or is James Lindsay right, and we’re all just Maoist apparatchiks reciting the scripts we’re handed out of fear of being called mean names by outrage mobs? But we don’t just DARE you to do it…
…We hereby formally and most solemnly lay down the deepest and most meaningful of all possible dares…
The TRIPLE. DOG. DARE.
Put your money where your mouth is and do actual science. Break the trend and go looking for Truth. Accept the results whether or not you like them. In the words of Joe Biden, whom you endorsed,
Or are you too yellow to present and steelman both sides, or to even see what happens if you risk offending your partisan in-group?
Prove us wrong. Prove that you deserve your previously held top reputation. Prove that you’re brave enough to raise above the fray of partisan culture wars. Prove that we should ALL trust you, regardless of our political beliefs and commitments.
We TRIPLE DOG DARE you.
> Skepticism of science is real and serious, and it needs to be addressed
As Feynman said "science is the belief in the ignorance of experts", skepticism of science is a good thing.