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0 pointsleereeves9mo ago0 comments

That's rarely the case with science reporting. The subjects that are sufficiently rigorous to allow no reasonable debate (the physical sciences) are rarely political enough to inspire unreasonable debate.

On the other hand, the subjects that are politically contentious are not rigorous and leave plenty of room for reasonable debate.

If anything, science reporting tends to err the other way, uncritically reporting sensational results that contradict one other, have not been confirmed, or fail to replicate.

I rarely see a popular science article that doesn't report the results of a single experiment as if they were instantly established fact.

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const_cast9mo ago

I agree with what you say about sensationalist science reporting. It's very common to take one study and then have dummies who aren't scientists report on it as if we've just found out how to live forever. Science is very tricky because it's complicated and the barrier to entry is high - you can't just extrapolate things out like that.

However, there's also the other side of things, which is mostly established science. Which, you're right, don't typically spark political debate... but they do sometimes. Vaccines, climate change, cholesterol, seed oils. The RFK Jr faction of anti-science is rife these days.

leereevesOP9mo ago

I'm not familiar with all the details of RFK Jr's position, the public debate about it, nor how many of the things reported in the news are accurate (truth being the first casualty of politics).

But I just looked for those topics in the official Make America Healthy Again report [1].

The positions in that report on those topics were not so unreasonable. It says seed oils are a concern because they are ultra-processed fats, only mentions cholesterol in the context of PFAS, and says "vaccines benefit children by protecting them from infectious diseases" but we may not need to give children nearly 30 doses of them.[2]

I do think his general position that processed food is unhealthy is not only reasonable, it generally matches conventional modern medical thinking, even if he is wrong about a few details.

And of course people looking for political ammunition only look for details they can use against him.

1: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/MAHA-R...

2: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/imz-schedules/index.html

rickydroll9mo ago

> even if he is wrong about a few details.

https://www.notus.org/health-science/make-america-healthy-ag...

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