Science is only objective. But scientists are subjective and biased. The paper is not speaking about how people feel, they are speaking on the subjectiveness of scientists leading to the harm of minority people.
Politicians and populists pushed out false information, and then squashed anyone that tried to argue against the state as "radical", "harmful" and "against progress and science" at the point of a gun, refused to let people ask questions or have dissenting views which led them to the next step of being allowed to exterminate undesirables because no one was allowed to argue because "The Science was settled"
We could of course also talk about how the centralized control of the science of genetics in the Soviet Union led to mass famines that killed millions and anyone who disagreed was put to death.
It seems to me the problem isn't and never has been science, it is when a single institution, society, or government gets to dictate what "truth" is and "the science is settled" at the point of a gun, not that science gives us answers we don't like.
>Politicians and populists pushed out false information, and then squashed anyone that tried to argue against the state as "radical", "harmful" and "against progress and science"
I agree. This was a political problem which the article is actually trying to address.
> It seems to me the problem isn't and never has been science, it is when a single institution, society, or government gets to dictate what "truth" is...
This is not what the article is advocating.
This seems very rational to me, for example:
"Authors should use the terms sex (biological attribute) and gender (shaped by social and cultural circumstances) carefully in order to avoid confusing both terms. "
Human-created science carries human biases and so does engineering and even math which is supposed to be pure and objective.
James Burke presented this idea really well in episode 10 of The Day The Universe Changed. Biases sneak in when you decide what you're studying, how you're studying it, how you collect data, how you interpret the data, etc.
The process itself might be unbiased, but that doesn't mean the application of that process is devoid of bias. Anyone remember the stanford prison experiment, the machine learning chatbot that 4chan turned to racism, or however many AIs people have designed that have looked at data and drawn racist conclusions?
Are these things racist because racial stereotypes are objective immutable facts, or because the bots don't understand the context of those stereotypes?
It's probably prudent to figure out the answer to that question before publishing. At least present a few hypotheses to explain the results.
Certain lanes of inquiry that Nazi scientists engaged in were engaged in by many non-Nazi scientists. For example, craniometrics, despite it being now pretty conclusively shown to make no difference, was pursued as a science in both Germany and everywhere else. Just because its claims were untrue does not mean that those who honestly pursued it were not scientists. I mean, the hypothesis that head size affects brain size and thus intelligence makes intuitive sense. Those scientists who pursued such lines of inquiry and did so honestly and truthfully, and arrived at the proper conclusions based on the data (which many did), faithfully engaged in 'science'.
Of course, manipulating data for political ends is wrong, and using any evidence you collect to advocate for the slaughter or imprisonment of innocent people is also wrong, but these are philosophical, ethical, moral, and religious questions, not scientific ones.
There is a place for ethics in science... namely in the means in which one applies the scientific method (especially when experiments concern humans or animals). However, the data generated by the scientific method, if examined without bias, even if they're unpleasant, do not cause harm. The question of what to do with any unsavory facts is a question for ethics, philosophy, and religion.
Maybe, but how much does that matter? If the bias of these scientists is leading them to publish incorrect or low quality research, then Nature should reject it on the grounds that it's bad science. The fact that Nature feels the need to publish this is basically an admission that the political ideology of their leadership is not able to stand up to scientific scrutiny.
> What do you think happened in Nazi Germany?
Probably something a lot like this: Powerful institutions sacrificing objectivity to push propaganda and ideology
Science should not care one whit about humans or what we want/think/feel.
We should respect people, there's a huge difference.
As far as I'm concerned, this is the final nail in the coffin for nature magazine or whatever they call themselves now.
This entire blog post is them contradicting themselves repeatedly.