These days, scientific and medical journals are seemingly as much ideological — on the left — as scientific.
Here we go again. Nature — perhaps the preeminent science journal in the world — has posted a piece swooning over Vice President Kamala Harris as a “historic” presumptive presidential nominee stirring “optimism” among scientists. Why? The article assumes that progressive political positions are good for science. From “What Kamala Harris’s Historic Bid for the U.S. Presidency Means for Science”:
Health and science have been a part of Harris’s life since an early age: her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, who Harris cites as a major influence, was a leading breast-cancer researcher who died of cancer . . .
As senator, Harris co-sponsored efforts to improve the diversity of the science, technology, engineering and medicine (STEM) workforce. She introduced legislation to aid students from underrepresented populations to obtain jobs and work experience in STEM fields.
That’s nice. What else? Liberal health policies:
During the 2020 Democratic primary race, Harris was to Biden’s left on healthcare policy. For one, she endorsed a universal single-payer national health insurance system — which still included a role for private insurance companies — while Biden preferred tweaking the existing system, which he had helped to engineer as vice-president.
It is still unknown whether she will embrace these kinds of progressive health policies or choose a path that might be more appealing to independent and centrist voters, says Alina Salganicoff, director for women’s health policy at the health-policy research organization KFF, based in San Francisco, California. “I anticipate she’s going to be a staunch defender of maintaining and supporting the Affordable Care Act, which has also been a priority for the Biden campaign,” she says…
The Biden-Harris administration has also made drug pricing a key priority by creating a cap for the price of insulin and by endorsing the use of ‘march-in rights’, in which the government could intervene to set the price of innovations created using public funds. In 2019, Harris co-sponsored legislation that would have created an independent agency to determine appropriate drug prices.
From the perspective of the article, she’s also great on — ta-da — abortion:
Harris has been more vocal than Biden on abortion rights. Last December, she launched a nationwide reproductive freedoms tour, in which she became the first US vice-president to ever visit an abortion provider.
And we can’t forget climate change:
Harris has long promoted action on climate as well as environmental justice, says Leah Stokes, a climate-policy researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara. As a district attorney in San Francisco and then attorney general for the state of California, Harris became a champion for communities on the front lines of fossil fuel pollution, Stokes says. Harris followed a similar path with work on public health and the environment as a senator from 2017-2021 . . .
“Harris and Biden are in lockstep on climate, and that’s exactly what we need,” says Stokes. “Our 2030 goals are right around the corner, and we can’t afford to roll back progress for four more years.”
Even though many scientists might disagree with Harris’s progressive politics, there are no voices with different perspectives presented — which makes it seem as if “science” and liberal politics are conjoined at the hip. And indeed, Nature endorsed Biden in 2020.
Science journals do the sector no favors by becoming so overtly political. If “science” is perceived by the public as being monolithically on one side of our great national political and cultural divides — and then, the “wrong” side wins — the sector will not, shall we say, benefit. Moreover, becoming overtly progressively political destroys trust in the science sector among those who are not fellow political travelers. Indeed, earlier this year, a Cambridge professor recently warned that “science” and “activism” are being conflated around the issue of climate change — published, in of all places, Nature.
Apparently, Nature’s editors forgot to read it. Too bad. Swooning over Harris’s candidacy as a cause for optimism among scientists doesn’t benefit science and could add to the widespread public distrust that has afflicted the sector in recent years.