Why ‘the Science’ Doesn’t Dictate That You Should Vote For Kamala Harris
In my Spectator column this week, I’ve taken issue with the editorial in the latest issue of Scientific American urging its readers to vote for Kamala Harris. This is how it begins:
The latest issue of Scientific American, a popular science monthly published by Springer Nature, contains an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris. She is the candidate that anyone who cares about science should vote for, apparently. Her positions on issues such as “the climate crisis”, “public health” and “reproductive rights” are “lit by rationality” and based on “reality”, “science” and “solid evidence”, while her opponent “rejects evidence” in favour of “nonsensical conspiracy fantasies”.
On the face of it, there’s something a bit odd about a storied science magazine getting embroiled in the grubby world of politics. Indeed, the editorial acknowledges how unusual this is, suggesting that’s all the more reason we should take the recommendation seriously. The editors have descended from Mount Olympus because the fate of America – nay, the world – is at stake: “That is why, for only the second time in our magazine’s 179-year history, the editors of Scientific American are endorsing a candidate for president.” True, the previous occasion was only four years ago when it endorsed Joe Biden, but the editors have a point. It is rather unorthodox.
So how can science tell us how to vote? My admittedly primitive understanding of the history of science is that it only really began to transform our understanding of the world when a firm distinction emerged between fact and value – between descriptive propositions, which depict the world as it is, and prescriptive ones, which tell us how it ought to be. That is, the Scientific Revolution occurred when students of nature eschewed politics and religion and embraced reason and empiricism. In that context, the editors of Scientific American, in seeking to muddy those waters again, seem to want to return to an era in which the evidence of our senses – “reality”, as they put it – tells us how to behave. In defiance of the naturalistic fallacy, they are smashing the ‘is’ and the ‘ought’ back together.
Worth reading in full.
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If Americans want to vote for laughing, smiling, cuddling and waving then they should vote for Harris, because that is all they are going to get. But while all the smiling and laughing is going on, this communist will be stripping the wealth out of the people’s wallets and redistributing it all over the world to “save the children and grandchildren” from the manufactured “climate crisis” that was designed specifically for this purpose.
Scientific American = Scientism = Metaphysics = Philosophy = Nonsense.
When some idiot tells me that anti-science (choose any from the list in the article above) = ‘reason’ whatever that is, or that poison = safe and effective, my ‘lit rationality’ will tell me to do the bloody opposite, like for example, never reading the diarrhea that suffuses unScientific American.
The woman is atrocious, fake as anything and always sounds like she’s been smoking spliff before she takes to the stage. It’s no wonder she needed all the help she could get at the debate with Trump. ”It has become clear throughout the whirlwind career of Kamala Harris as a presidential candidate: the less she says, the better. As the Democrat propaganda machine has labored to transform her from a failed and unpopular vice president into the confident, capable, and cool candidate of joy, her handlers know that the illusion of a competent Kamala depends upon her keeping her mouth shut. A silent Harris creates new problems, however, as the PR campaign became a little too obvious. We were being asked to believe in Wonder Kamala without being allowed to receive her wisdom. Well, we’re getting it now, and far-left strategists must be tearing their blue hair out. When she isn’t retailing ridiculous redundancies, Harris tends to speak as if she is a third-grade teacher or a not particularly apt third-grade student. She said this about skyrocketing inflation rates: “Prices have gone up. And families and individuals are dealing with the realities of that bread costs more, that gas costs more.” And… Read more »
“reproductive rights” are “lit by rationality”
This shows how increasingly mad the madleft is becoming. “Reproductive rights” means in modern practice the killing of unborn children. In what sense is the killing of entirely innocent people “lit by rationality”?
You make the subject sound so black and white, but it absolutely is not. As much as I abhor the Democrats I think any civilized society should offer the ability for girls and women to terminate their unwanted pregnancies *in the early stages*, in a safe and dignified manner. To outlaw abortion is like going back in time to when females had to go have a ‘back street abortion’, incurring possible death or life-changing injuries, drink bleach or throw themselves down the stairs. Every female’s story and circumstance is different, and that needs to be respected with zero judgment. To expect a girl/woman to continue with a pregnancy she doesn’t want and/or didn’t consent to, or severe abnormalities have been detected with the foetus, is barbaric and totally unethical. But the time limit is the crux for me and I feel it should be lowered significantly. I don’t know a single woman who didn’t know she was pregnant in the early stages, certainly anyone who knows their body’s basic physiological functions would know this, let alone the other changes that come about to signal the fact you’re pregnant. So I also think all of this late stages abortion stuff is… Read more »
I agree it’s not black and white. And of course without access to safe abortions some women will resort to unsafe ones which may kill them. But for the Left abortion is also an ideological device to “liberate” women form being women.
Why back down? Your original comment was spot on.
Abortion = murder. That is it what it is
I had a long discussion with a 17 yr old girl born out of a rape. She assured me she was quite happy to be alive.
So let’s lose the bullshit about ‘exceptions’.
I have noticed that the abortion nazis were all….born.
”But for the Left abortion is also an ideological device to “liberate” women form being women.”
To be fair, if that’s any woman’s idea of liberation then they may as well go the whole hog and get a hysterectomy. It’ll resolve the other pesky aspect of being a woman and liberate them from having periods at the same time. But isn’t it the very same people who are encouraging men larping as women to access female single-sex spaces and infiltrate their sports? The tragedy being that many of these woketards are in fact women themselves, which I really can’t get my head around to be honest, but I think there’s always been women who’ve hated and betrayed other women, just like there’s been Jews that do the same to fellow Jews and white people who are all too happy to betray their own race, such as with all of this ‘white guilt’ nonsense, and subordinating themselves to other ethnicities. There’s just a whole lot of treachery going on in society, it seems…
Anyway, try as I might, there’s not a single thing I can think of that I agree with the Leftards on.
There are several ‘science’ magazines, including Scientific American, that appear to have pivoted from reporting scientific facts to promoting social justice aims.
I guess if you march through the institutions long enough the radicals get to the front of the march exposing their views for all to see.
Perhaps that is why free speech is under such pressure… the activists don’t want their views examined. Who knows, the long march may end in a big pileup.
It surely must, the question is how long and how much damage in the meantime?
She looks awfully scared behind that mask, that Kamala Harris.
Harris’s ‘profound’ utterances put me in mind of Peter Sellers’ character: Chauncey Gardener in the excellent film ‘Being There’.
Excellent choice of picture. Any picture of a public figure should ideally be from the face nappy era, lest we forget what spineless tossers they all were/are.
Well done to Toby Young for drawing attention to this bizarre new idea that an internationally respected science publication can tell people how to vote!
Ethnic Indian Kamala Harris’s “scientific” views on covid jabs and lockdowns were supported by her fellow Ethnic Indian Jay Varma, oddly chosen as “Covid Czar” for New York City:
Ex-NYC Covid Czar Admits To Secret Drug-Fueled Orgies During Pandemic In Undercover Video (infowars.com)
Easiest way out for ‘Scientific American ‘ is to rename itself ‘Unscientific American’ – that’s job done.
Her positions on issues such as… “public health” are “lit by rationality” and based on “reality”, “science” and “solid evidence”, while her opponent “rejects evidence” in favour of “nonsensical conspiracy fantasies”.
Maybe they have a point. The lockdowns happened under Trump. It was Trump who championed the vaccines and “Operation Warp Speed”. And it was Trump’s administration that removed the legal ban on gain of function research!
Living in this completely dystopian world is becoming difficult, and making my brain hurt. I do like the cartoon, it is so close to the truth that it must be about to be banned. I have already been cancelled for telling the truth. Probablly killed next!
Science doesn’t tell us what is right or wrong. Science can, given enough inputs, answer specific but narrow questions. Science cannot answer the question “should I be vaccinated” because that is not a scientific question. Maybe, and just maybe, it can answer the question, “if I desire the outcome X, can the action A achieve that?”