How the GOP Could Use Science’s Reform Movement Against It - The Atlantic

lterrat's bookmarks 2017-04-05

Summary:

"Both the reproducibility and open-science movements have built up a lot of steam. But both have matured during an auspicious time for American science—a time that many sense has come to an end with the election of Donald Trump to the presidency.

President Trump and members of his administration have repeatedly denied the reality of human-made climate change and are attempting to roll back measures to curb it. They have questioned the repeatedly proven safety of vaccinesgagged federal researchers, and proposed huge funding cuts that would hamstring the nation’s scientific infrastructure. In this environment, many are concerned that attempts to improve science could be judo-flipped into ways of decrying or defunding it. 'It’s been on our minds since the first week of November,' says Stuart Buck, Vice President of Research Integrity at the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, which funds attempts to improve reproducibility.

The worry is that policy-makers might ask why so much money should be poured into science if so many studies are weak or wrong? Or why should studies be allowed into the policy-making process if they're inaccessible to public scrutiny? At a recent conference on reproducibility run by the National Academies of Sciences, clinical epidemiologist Hilda Bastian says that she and other speakers were told to consider these dangers when preparing their talks."

Link:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/04/reproducibility-science-open-judoflip/521952/?utm_source=atlgp&_utm_source=1-2-2

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Tags:

oa.stem

Date tagged:

04/05/2017, 22:32

Date published:

04/05/2017, 18:32