which plants though? are you making shit up?
this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2025
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Wasn't this more about taking away the names from a bunch of people who in hindsight were terrible people? I remember something awhile back about people getting upset because some groups had decided that if you had a shred of negativity in your past, you weren't allowed to discover and name things. I believe they were trying to change a bunch of names "to not honor the original person".
That didn't feel like science so much as politics and I get why some would be against that.
That didn’t feel like science so much as politics and I get why some would be against that.
Respectfully, this is a weak sauce excuse, and a completely unscientific attitude. Scientists do not establish arbitrary barriers between different fields.
These kinds of statements 99% of the time come from people who don't even do science, and whose understanding of science consists of "take down data points, analyse data points, be neutral" (paraphrasing your comment).
In reality, scientific names are usually given to honor specific people. The idea that the community just gives names to people who discovered things is simply ignorant of history. There are literally cases of people purchasing name recognition. There are also cases of people being honored by having their name on a phenomena they didn't even discover, or a unit they did not create (typical for units, which are standardised by committees and not named after people in the standardisation committee)
Science is a highly political process.
The real actual science, just ask petroleum, cigarettes, sugar, mosanto glyphosate, lysenkoism, grant allocation, DDT, lead gasoline and paint, amiante, IQ, operation paperclip, nuclear testing, SSRIs, opioid crisis, covid 19, gain-of-functionr research, psychology replication crisis, trans fats, usda food pyramid, even cold fusion and the latest entry in this list PFOA/PFAS.
Scientific truths and regulatory actions often "become allowed" only when they are no longer economically threatening to the incumbents.
Some of the examples are not shown to work. They are however still good examples since going down a dead end can be a good example. Deciding where to explore is deeply political.
Edit: you could delineate them clearer to make sure nobody thinks of you as a conspiracy nutjob, but you do you.
For e.g. cold fusion there was to the best of my knowledge not a single clear cut case where it could be replicated without doubt or at all. Errors just add up.
Here is an excellent retelling of the cold fusion saga
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn92eWhGG14 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbfJFPVApu8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWlBZT7L1qM
Basically, as soon as the scientist had one anomalous reading, the political and academic machine got into overdrive, huge money started getting thrown around and the scientists got under huge amount of pressure and paranoia.
I think you're confusing "politics injected into science" with science. Science is data and analyzing it. Pretending someone didn't invent something is removing data points and I'm pretty sure science calls that fraud, just like we call the studies that found cigarettes healthy to be frauds, or the oil companies to be frauds. 2 wrongs don't make a right.
"No True Scientist" would say cigarettes don't cause cancer or co2 emission don't cause global warming, or glyphosate isn't bad for the environment. Yet, it did, for multiple decades.
You have to consider "actually existing science" with it's political and financially directed function, choosing what questions get asked and who will answer them. You can say "oh that wasn't science it was fraud" which is all well and good now but it wasn't for those decades when they served to obscure or bury the truth rather than discover it.
Actually existing science is a really troubled institution and ultimately there is no such thing as science outside of politics, science is part of the political process and cannot escape or be independent of it.
Yes, and I'm here criticizing "actually existing science". That's exactly my point. It's not "real science" when it's injected with politics and emotions like that. It's biased in a way science shouldn't be.
Most science isn't real science in that view, the problem is that most science is funded by ulterior motives, very little science is the basic, primary science of exploration. That creates both huges gaps where the political and financial establishment fails to imagine value (climate science) and also fake science where something should be true for the power that be, but isn't (glysophate, cigarettes safety).
We should always imagine as a flawed, politically and financially motivated enterprise, a tool in the grip of institutions that need to survive first and science second. Pure science is a rare thing and it shouldn't be assumed be the case whenever things are happening under the name of science.
This is the framework to avoid being surprised by scientific failures and to compensate for them.
You are confusing science (the process of discovering understanding of reality) with truth (how the world "really" is).
"Real science" like you describe can almost by definition not exist. Science is costly, both in time and in money. People don't just spend lots of time and money just because. For that kind of investment you need some kind of motive, some reason. And as soon as you have that, you are into politics and emotions.
Biased, politicised science is real science. Not the platonic ideal you have in your head.
Have you ever been to a niche scientific community conference? It's always been 90% politics.
The Magellanic Cloud community collectively decided that they didn't want to study objects named after someone who had subjugated the ancestors of the communities studying it, so they agreed to call them the Milky Clouds. A pop science article went out about it and people complained that it wasn't science, it was politics. But unless you're a part of that community, you don't get to decide on the names of the objects that these people understand better than literally anyone else alive or dead. They're doing more science regarding these objects than anyone else has ever tried, they get to decide what's best, even if it appears political.
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From henceforth "trees" shall now be called "tall wavy bois" and "flowers" shall be known as "colorful stemmy bennies."
I will not be taking questions.
But what will the tree community be about then?
!trees@lemmy.world mentioned
Weed. Like it’s always been.
I'm Jewish and I'm upset whenever someone calls Jew Harp (an instrument) or Jew Ears (an edible mushroom) with another name.
come on, why can't we be associated with yummy mushrooms or cool cowboy instruments?
if you call it Jaw harp i want to break your jaw,
at least the Latin name for jew ear still says jew ear
NPC wojak: "I love science."
"Science says sex and gender are two different things."
NPC wojak gets angry: "Science was corrupted by the Jewish cabal! See: John Money*!"
* John Money is not Jewish, but is pushed by transphobes with the hope you'll accuse him being one.
forget about John Money
look into Magnus Hirschfeld, had the first gender clinic and did research and surveys on gender, he pioneer gender treatments and helped transsexual people (that's was the name back then)
he was Jewish and was targeted by the Nazis exactly how you said.
The famous book burnings started out when they raided his institute and burned all his research.
what are the changes and why?
can't post this and expect us to carry on
This sort of thing happens all the time, and it's usually subject to some level of debate. Just look at the ponderosa pine (pinus ponderosa. Some say there is one species with multiple subspecies, some say they are just different varieties, some say that they are different species, or some are and some arent, etc.
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