Re:Science is political, and that's a bad thing
by zozbot234 on Saturday September 03, 2022 @02:57AM
(#32699440)
> ... If someone is publishing research on a topic that is hotly contested in our society, being ignorant or indifferent to the impact that their publication might have is not a virtue.
If a topic is hotly contested in our society, publishing plenty of high-quality, reliable scholarship about it is one of the best available ways of gradually turning it into a less-hotly contested topic. This applies even to things like climate science, where people sometimes like to remark that "the science is settled". So yes, we should always be mindful of impact but undervaluing the benefits of that impact would be just as wrong.
If a topic is hotly contested in our society, publishing plenty of high-quality, reliable scholarship about it is one of the best available ways of gradually turning it into a less-hotly contested topic. This applies even to things like climate science, where people sometimes like to remark that "the science is settled". So yes, we should always be mindful of impact but undervaluing the benefits of that impact would be just as wrong.