This touches on two frustrating beliefs that I hold about our current society.
The first is whores in lab coats: that researchers have strong motivations to tailor the outcome of their studies due to financial motivations, including personal gain and continued funding, as well as social gain, like prominence in their field and furthering personal beliefs or biases. It may have always been this way, but modern science more obviously spends time back arched, legs spread, begging for funding while promising a good outcome.
The second belief is why the first has become more prominent: it is not why would she lie, but why would she not lie? We are all familiar with the surge in victim culture and the subsidization of bad behavior for social/political/financial gain. My first serious introduction to this kind of malarkey was after reading the infamous Rolling Stone article and hearing about the antics of mattress girl. Both cases seemed a bit off to me and were false in the end, but there were no large retractions or public displays of humility or criminal punishments for those who lied to destroy others, only a loud doubling or tripling down with quietly (if at all) acknowledged multimillion dollar settlements. This attitude has spilled into everything, including science, an attitude that the truth and honesty are not strong enough to bring about the desired outcome, so lies and manipulation must be leveraged to "start a conversation" or "be on the right side of history", regardless of whom or what is crushed and trampled in the process.
TL;DR A fib every day keeps the alt-right fascists at bay, so tell one for the glorious utopian future!
This touches on two frustrating beliefs that I hold about our current society.
The first is whores in lab coats: that researchers have strong motivations to tailor the outcome of their studies due to financial motivations, including personal gain and continued funding, as well as social gain, like prominence in their field and furthering personal beliefs or biases. It may have always been this way, but modern science more obviously spends time back arched, legs spread, begging for funding while promising a good outcome.
The second belief is why the first has become more prominent: it is not why would she lie, but why would she not lie? We are all familiar with the surge in victim culture and the subsidization of bad behavior for social/political/financial gain. My first serious introduction to this kind of malarkey was after reading the infamous Rolling Stone article and hearing about the antics of mattress girl. Both cases seemed a bit off to me and were false in the end, but there were no large retractions or public displays of humility or criminal punishments for those who lied to destroy others, only a loud doubling or tripling down with quietly (if at all) acknowledged multimillion dollar settlements. This attitude has spilled into everything, including science, an attitude that the truth and honesty are not strong enough to bring about the desired outcome, so lies and manipulation must be leveraged to "start a conversation" or "be on the right side of history", regardless of whom or what is crushed and trampled in the process.
TL;DR A fib every day keeps the alt-right fascists at bay, so tell one for the glorious utopian future!