I understand the Zack Beauchamps out there apply a national politics filter to almost everything they write. I get why they spend time on climate change and stem cells rather than space physics. I accept my thesis really wasn’t very interesting. But can we please stop pretending that science begins and ends with climate change? Can we stop equating a position on two or three hot-button issues with “science?” The U.S. spends some $400 billion on R&D every year. In 2006 over 1 million papers were published in 23,000-odd peer-reviewed journals. Are we going to reduce all of this to nothing more than the latest IPCC report?
I assure you I too want to stop global warming. But come on. Most research has absolutely nothing to do with politics at any scale. It cheapens the whole experience to brand me as pro or anti-science based on a single issue. It is possible to engage with and care about science without giving a damn about cap-and-trade.
You may not know this from reading the political blogosphere, but there is in fact more to science than climate change.
Well, there’s also the stupefying re-emergence of the damn shrimp on a treadmill story. And the science blogosphere’s obsessions with politics and climate change. In short, some of this we bring on ourselves.
Ha! The damn shrimp story is quite amusing. I agree we bring this on ourselves, and I definitely deserve some blame myself!
Hear, hear. Here.