https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/09/leading-science-journal-will-now-reject-inconvenient-scientific-truths/
I see "Social Justice" as the new eugenics, an overtly racist ideology marketed as "anti-racist". With the decline in acceptance of a Christian worldview, I wonder if our society will be capable of withstanding the assault. The suppression of truth in support of an ideological narrative is a hallmark of the rise of many evil regimes. We need to prepare ourselves for another ugly struggle to overcome this new racist ideology.
My brief exposure to the history of eugenics in America led to the realization that "science" justified the movement at all the "elite" universities here in the US and even in Europe. It was a worldwide scourge on humanity that was very fashionable and included converts in critical political positions. In retrospect, it's astonishing to think such an evil ideology could become so fashionable. Ultimately, the Christian worldview overcame that ideology.Quote:
First published in 1869, Nature bills itself as "the world's leading multidisciplinary science journal." It is certainly among the most read, cited, and prestigious academic journals, which makes its apparent fall to the lows of "woke" gatekeeping and outright advocacy demanding that science be compatible with an ideologically fashionable worldview all the more distressing.
"Science has for too long been complicit in perpetuating structural inequalities and discrimination in society," the recent issue of Nature Human Behavior continues. Nature's editors have now made "woke" identity politics an essential element of editorial policy, explicitly stating that they will reject, retract, and repudiate any research that "promotes privileged, exclusionary perspectives." This description can be made to fit anything that left-wing institutions might consider offensive, helpful to their political adversaries, or otherwise inconvenient to their worldview regardless of its truth. As social psychologist Bo Winegard points out in Quillette, "These new guidelines have been designed to reject any article deemed to pose a threat to disadvantaged groups, irrespective of whether or not its central claims are true, or at least well-supported."
This isn't the first time the Left has openly attempted to ban scientific thought.
"Science was not spared from this strict ideological control," Anna Krylov, a professor of chemistry at the University of Southern California, noted in a letter to the Journal of Physical Chemistry that described scientists' experience in the Soviet Union. "Entire disciplines were declared ideologically impure, reactionary, and hostile to the cause of working-class dominance and the World Revolution. Notable examples of 'bourgeois pseudo-science' included genetics and cybernetics. Quantum mechanics and general relativity were also criticized for insufficient alignment with dialectic materialism." In Krylov's view, the Left is politicizing science, even "hard science" fields such as chemistry, to pursue an agenda based on what feels good rather than what's true, fundamentally undermining scientific knowledge. She fears this could potentially trigger a slide toward a pseudoscientific dark age akin to the quasi-religious Lysenkoism once promoted by the Soviet Union, from which Russian biology has yet to fully recover:Quote:
The Cold War is a distant memory and the country shown on my birth certificate and school and university diplomas, the USSR, is no longer on the map. . . . But I find myself experiencing its legacy some thousands of miles to the west, as if I am living in an Orwellian twilight zone. I witness ever-increasing attempts to subject science and education to ideological control and censorship. Just as in Soviet times, the censorship is being justified by the greater good. Whereas in 1950, the greater good was advancing the World Revolution (in the USSR; in the USA the greater good meant fighting Communism), in 2021 the greater good is 'Social Justice' (the capitalization is important: 'Social Justice' is a specific ideology, with goals that have little in common with what lower-case "social justice" means in plain English). As in the USSR, the censorship is enthusiastically imposed also from the bottom, by members of the scientific community, whose motives vary from nave idealism to cynical power-grabbing.
I see "Social Justice" as the new eugenics, an overtly racist ideology marketed as "anti-racist". With the decline in acceptance of a Christian worldview, I wonder if our society will be capable of withstanding the assault. The suppression of truth in support of an ideological narrative is a hallmark of the rise of many evil regimes. We need to prepare ourselves for another ugly struggle to overcome this new racist ideology.
