[PopSci] Why We're Shutting Off Our Comments [Debate is bad for science] (barf)

Popular Science ^ | 9/24/2013 | Suzanne LaBarre

[markomalley]

Comments can be bad for science. That's why, here at PopularScience.com, we're shutting them off.

It wasn't a decision we made lightly. As the news arm of a 141-year-old science and technology magazine, we are as committed to fostering lively, intellectual debate as we are to spreading the word of science far and wide. The problem is when trolls and spambots overwhelm the former, diminishing our ability to do the latter.

That is not to suggest that we are the only website in the world that attracts vexing commenters. Far from it. Nor is it to suggest that all, or even close to all, of our commenters are shrill, boorish specimens of the lower internet phyla. We have many delightful, thought-provoking commenters.

But even a fractious minority wields enough power to skew a reader's perception of a story, recent research suggests. In one study led by University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Dominique Brossard, 1,183 Americans read a fake blog post on nanotechnology and revealed in survey questions how they felt about the subject (are they wary of the benefits or supportive?). Then, through a randomly assigned condition, they read either epithet- and insult-laden comments ("If you don't see the benefits of using nanotechnology in these kinds of products, you're an idiot" ) or civil comments. The results, as Brossard and coauthor Dietram A. Scheufele wrote in a New York Times op-ed:

Uncivil comments not only polarized readers, but they often changed a participant's interpretation of the news story itself.

In the civil group, those who initially did or did not support the technology — whom we identified with preliminary survey questions — continued to feel the same way after reading the comments. Those exposed to rude comments, however, ended up with a much more polarized understanding of the risks connected with the technology.

Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to make study participants think the downside of the reported technology was greater than they'd previously thought.

Another, similarly designed study found that even just firmly worded (but not uncivil) disagreements between commenters impacted readers' perception of science.

If you carry out those results to their logical end--commenters shape public opinion; public opinion shapes public policy; public policy shapes how and whether and what research gets funded--you start to see why we feel compelled to hit the "off" switch.

A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics. Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. Scientific certainty is just another thing for two people to "debate" on television. And because comments sections tend to be a grotesque reflection of the media culture surrounding them, the cynical work of undermining bedrock scientific doctrine is now being done beneath our own stories, within a website devoted to championing science.

There are plenty of other ways to talk back to us, and to each other: through Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, livechats, email, and more. We also plan to open the comments section on select articles that lend themselves to vigorous and intelligent discussion. We hope you'll chime in with your brightest thoughts. Don't do it for us. Do it for science.

[a fool in paradise]

La Bare was the name of a strip joint where women went to see men take it off.

[a fool in paradise]

Maybe abortion (is a fetus “alive”, does it “feel pain”, etc.).

Any issue the libs are losing could be under “anything”.

Add “genetic origins of homosexuality” to that list...

[GeronL]

Global Warming is a hoax and the evidence is now clearer than ever. Time to shut down debate since they are losing.

[a fool in paradise]

I liked Pop-Sci better when they were advocating tiger steak as the cure all.

[a fool in paradise]

If we don't get some rational gun control out there, soon 'mericans may be faced with THIS!

[GeronL]

lol

[servo1969]

“is mistakenly up for grabs again.”

I’m sorry to yell but EVERYTHING IN SCIENCE IS ALWAYS UP FOR GRABS!
Nothing in science is permanent. That’s not how science works.
Even the Law of Gravity is up for grabs if you can disprove it.
Once you decide something can never be disproven it ceases to be science and becomes faith. You believe it is absolutely true and no further discussion is necessary.

This may sound silly but Popular Science has literally turned to the dark side with this decision.

Popular Science:
We are the arbiters of truth.
People who question our positions are naught but trolls.
No unapproved ideas shall be distributed.
Shut off the light of truth.
“lively, intellectual debate” means discussing all the ways in which we are correct.

That’s not called science; It’s called Fascism.

[Boogieman]

True, but in those cases, it is the lefties who are arguing against the “scientific consensus”, so they surely don’t want to mention that.

[BroJoeK]

freedom462: "Eventually people are going to realize that the issue with evolution is that believing in the whole of it requires you to believe G-d does not exist at all..."

For nearly 100 years the Catholic Church avoided officially condemning evolution theory.
In 1950 Pope Pius XII declared "research and discussions" OK:

"The Church does not forbid that ... research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter."

In 1996, Pope John Paul II said:

"Today... some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than a hypothesis.
In fact it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines.
The convergence in the results of these independent studies—which was neither planned nor sought—constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory."

In 2004 a commission headed by Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) reported:

"While there is little consensus among scientists about how the origin of this first microscopic life is to be explained, there is general agreement among them that the first organism dwelt on this planet about 3.5–4 billion years ago.
Since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on earth are genetically related, it is virtually certain that all living organisms have descended from this first organism.
Converging evidence from many studies in the physical and biological sciences furnishes mounting support for some theory of evolution to account for the development and diversification of life on earth, while controversy continues over the pace and mechanisms of evolution"

The Church's stance is that any such gradual appearance must have been guided in some way by God.
The Church also insists that God directly created the human soul.

freedom462: "Einstein was not an evolutionist."

There are no famous quotes from Einstein regarding evolution itself, but there are quotes where he relegates Biblical creation stories to the status of fairy tales.
So, as a scientist, Einstein may have considered evolution theory tentative and even perhaps inadequate, but would certainly not have rejected it in favor of certain literal biblical interpretations.

[freedom462]

It may be true what Einstein said about the Bible, but he also said he cannot fathom why anyone would believe that the world and the universe came to be what it is entirely through chance and without any sort of divine presence at all, which is what the full theory of evolution requires one to believe. He considered science to in a sense be the understanding of how G-d went about creating the world and how G-d goes about keeping the world and the universe together. Remember, believing in the entirely bibliical viewpoint and believing in the theory of evolution in its entirety are not the only two possible options.

And I would have to do more research on this, but I think his views on Christian beliefs may have drastically changed as he got older, especially in the aftermath of WW2.

[BroJoeK]

freedom462: "It may be true what Einstein said about the Bible, but he also said he cannot fathom why anyone would believe that the world and the universe came to be what it is entirely through chance and without any sort of divine presence at all..."

Thank you for acknowledging and defending Einstein's Spinoza-inspired deism.
Einstein was, of course, Jewish and escaped from Nazi persecution only because he was well known and highly respected outside Germany.

I'll repeat: there are no famous quotes from Einstein on evolution itself, though he is well known for opposition to the idea that "G*d plays dice with the world", which might be said to describe evolution's "random" mutations and natural selection.

My personal opinion is that while G*d likely does not "play dice", because of the unsavory crowd there, if you go to many church basements on some evenings, there can be no doubt whatever that G*d loves Bingo!

;-)

[freedom462]

You are right that I should have reiterated that there are no direct quotations from Einstein on evolution, but rather quotations about G-d and the universe and random chance from which one could possibly (likely in my opinion) infer that he was talking at least in part about evolution. Actually find it interesting that Einstein never did talk about evolution explicitly; maybe the debate over it was too politicized for his tastes even back then?

[BroJoeK]

I think, if we remember that Einstein grew up in a Newtonian world, where simple scientific formulas could describe many natural processes, then we can imagine what a leap of understanding Einstein's own Relativity theory was to Einstein himself.

So, add to Relativity, Max Planck's Quantum Mechanics, plus Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, and even a genius like Einstein could struggle the rest of his life to find a unifying principle, without success.

Today, on top of Relativity and Uncertainty, we add in Chaos Theory, with its "butterfly effects" and "strange attractors", and physics itself descending into multiple new dimensions with strings, soups, loops, branes and multi-verses...

"Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." -- Heisenberg

To which I might add: Not only is its Creator greater than we imagine, He is greater than we can imagine.

(Bohemian Gravity)