# A debate on where America was before Trump. Were we really in decline? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 22, 2020, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648 "2020-12-22T14:56:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2021, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/181 "2021-01-03T11:24:58Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > The actual argument is that journals, academics and institutions are as sensitive to good and bad publicity as anyone else, so most avoid investigating contentious topics and the few who do suffer damage to their reputations, loose jobs or don’t have their contracts renewed, have trouble finding publishers, etc. I am not sure if this is your actual position, or you are just summarizing someone else’s position, but my response would be thus: Science itself is not political. Investigating something like, say, race, doesn’t not inherently come with any political narrative. So why few papers on race realism? Well, because there is a bias against topics that have 1) been thoroughly debunked, 2) have been shown to be part of motivated reasoning in the past (and we’re talking _centuries_ of pseudoscience), and that 3) fly in the face of established science like human genetics and anthropology. You can still publish somewhere on race realism but it’s understandable that many journals would give you a similar reception to a paper on the luminiferous ether. And similarly you can publish data suggesting that climate change is caused by something other than the increased CO2. Indeed, plenty of such papers exist, but they generally suggest that some other factor has a smaller effect _alongside_ the larger effect of CO2. But sure if someone found good data suggesting a primary cause larger than CO2, every climatologist would want to see that data. And it would be the lead story of every pop sci webpage. (not to mention all the companies falling over themselves to fund this research). The papers don’t exist because the data doesn’t seem to exist. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2021, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/182 "2021-01-03T12:56:42Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > The actual argument is that journals, academics and institutions are as sensitive to good and bad publicity as anyone else, so most avoid investigating contentious topics Cite? ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2021, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/183 "2021-01-03T13:03:02Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > But that’s not usually the main (or only) reason cited by proponents. It’s usually more about fairness, the economy and government (not) needing to pick up the tab for insufficiently compensated workers. All arguments I will gladly discuss if you actually make them. This probably isn’t the thread though. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2021, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/184 "2021-01-03T13:13:18Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > The actual argument is that journals, academics and institutions are as sensitive to good and bad publicity as anyone else, so most avoid investigating contentious topics and the few who do suffer damage to their reputations, loose jobs or don’t have their contracts renewed, have trouble finding publishers, etc. You may suffer a damaged reputation if you publish a contentious paper on room-temperature nuclear fusion. You won’t loose[sic] your job if you have tenure, so long as you didn’t make up the results or something. But you _will_ get the article published, no doubt about that. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2021, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/185 "2021-01-03T13:25:18Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > I am not sure if this is your actual position, or you are just summarizing someone else’s position It’s someone else’s position I’m summarising, but it seems very plausible to me. Here are a couple of examples from this year: > **[Paper Recommends Women Avoid Female Mentors, Drawing Outrage](https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/paper-recommends-women-avoid-female-mentors-drawing-outrage-68185)** > > A study makes policy recommendations to optimize citations, but critics say it fails to acknowledge that citations are a biased and narrow measure of scientific success. > **[Med school professor removed by UPMC as fellowship director over white paper](https://www.utimes.pitt.edu/news/med-school-professor)** > > Norman Wang’s paper in JAHA argued against affirmative action in medicine. Now maybe those papers did have flaws. But they went through the normal review process and were published in the usual way - until social media got involved. How many other papers are similarly flawed, but never get that extra scrutiny because they don’t challenge fashionable opinions? If I understood @Ruken’s comment correctly, it might be pretty common. If you’re an academic, why take the risk when you could write about something politically safe instead? ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2021, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/186 "2021-01-03T13:51:21Z")
From your first link, one (of many) scientists challenging the conclusion said: > [@](#): > > Astudy published in [_Nature Communications_](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19723-8) November 17 has caused an eruption of outrage among scientists. The study of 3 million mentor-protégé pairs in STEM found that women trainees who coauthored papers with senior women scientists received fewer citations after they became principal investigators than did women trainees who coauthored with senior men. That gendered pattern is consistent with previous research documenting citation biases in science. But what caused a firehose of criticism was the conclusion of the paper, in which the authors suggest that the solution to this disparity is that women should avoid female mentors, thus perpetuating an existing bias. > > “Instead of coming to the conclusion that their data shows the system is biased, they come to the conclusion that women shouldn’t be mentors, which is blaming individuals as opposed to blaming a broken system. That’s why I think it’s so harmful,” says Rebecca Barnes, a geoscientist at Colorado College and co-PI of a National Science Foundation grant that supports a mentoring program for women in her field. Barnes and her colleagues published a 2020 [study](https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-020-0005-y.pdf?origin=ppub) showing that exposure to women role models increases the likelihood that women trainees will be retained in geosciences. The words “social media” are not mentioned in the article at all. The only instances of Facebook or Twitter are links to the website’s own Social Media page. In fact, the authors retracted after having issues in their logic pointed out to them by other researchers. As for the second paper - that wasn’t a scientific study. It was a white paper. Do you know what a white paper is in this context? [https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject\_specific\_writing/professional\_technical\_writing/white\_papers/index.html](https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/professional_technical_writing/white_papers/index.html) > [@](#): > > Originally, the term white paper was used as shorthand to refer to an official government report, indicating that the document is authoritative and informative in nature. Writers typically use this genre when they argue a specific position or propose a solution to a problem, addressing the audience outside of their organization. Today, white papers have become popular marketing tools for corporations especially on the Internet since many potential customers search for information on the Web. Corporations use white papers to sell information or new products as solutions that would serve their customers’ needs. This was not a study where he crunched some numbers and discovered a horrible truth: affirmative action doesn’t work! Blacks don’t make good doctors! Instead, this paper is an argument as to policy. By publishing a white paper (as opposed to a study) there is an implicit endorsement of the views espoused in the paper. So when the UPMC and JAHA realized that the white paper they published planted them in opposition to Affirmative Action, they retracted the paper. Now, note that just because they retracted the paper doesn’t mean they burned all copies of it. In fact, I downloaded the full PDF from the JAHA site. They simply said, “we erroneously published this white paper despite the fact that we do not hold the views it argues for”. But your argument seems to be that such research cannot be done. Clearly, it CAN be. While Norman Wang’s white paper was NOT a scientific study, he cited the results of numerous studies. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2021, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/187 "2021-01-03T13:56:02Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > Now maybe those papers did have flaws. The first was an actual scientific study, which the authors retracted due to its flaws. [This happens all the time](https://retractionwatch.com/), often triggered by readers noticing problems the authors, editors, and reviewers did not. The second is a far more unusual case, and we’ll see how the lawsuits play out. But this wasn’t really a scientific study; it’s more of an op-ed. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2021, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/188 "2021-01-03T13:58:11Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > The second is a far more unusual case, and we’ll see how the lawsuits play out. But this wasn’t really a scientific study; it’s more of an op-ed. For anyone who wants to read the full text of the white paper, it’s pretty short (and definitely reads like an Op Ed): Warning, PDF link [https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1161/JAHA.120.015959](https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1161/JAHA.120.015959) ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2021, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/189 "2021-01-03T14:06:32Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > we’ll see how the lawsuits play out After some research, I see that the Center for Individual Rights (Fighting Against Affirmative Action since 1997) took up the case. I can find a ton of info on who is funding them (cough Koch cough) but not on their track record. It looks like they had a few high profile failures challenging AA, any great successes? ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2021, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/190 "2021-01-03T14:12:22Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > Now, note that just because they retracted the paper doesn’t mean they burned all copies of it. In fact, I downloaded the full PDF from the JAHA site. They simply said, “we erroneously published this white paper despite the fact that we do not hold the views it argues for”. I know, I downloaded it myself. > [@Babale](#): > > But your argument seems to be that such research cannot be done. Clearly, it CAN be. While Norman Wang’s white paper was NOT a scientific study, he cited the results of numerous studies. No, that is not my argument. My argument is that most people will choose not to risk doing research that draws this kind of outraged reaction, and they will choose not to publish opinions that are likely to get them fired. I don’t think that is particularly contentious. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2021, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/191 "2021-01-03T14:13:15Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > No, that is not my argument. My argument is that most people will choose not to risk doing research that draws this kind of outraged reaction, and they will choose not to publish opinions that are likely to get them fired. I don’t think that is particularly contentious. I ask again, do you have a cite for this? ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2021, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/192 "2021-01-03T14:13:48Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > I can find a ton of info on who is funding them (cough Koch cough) but not on their track record. It looks like they had a few high profile failures challenging AA, any great successes? Checking the news on this article was the first I’d heard of them, so I can’t speak to the topic further. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2021, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/193 "2021-01-03T14:14:19Z")
For what exactly? That people don’t want to lose their jobs? ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2021, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/194 "2021-01-03T14:16:49Z")
You haven’t linked any cite of someone who did their research, used valid data to destroy the scientific consensus, and was then fired by the HiveMind and their results covered up. All you’ve shown are people making unscientific claims, being called out on those claims, and either recanting (first study) or throwing a Koch sponsored tantrum (second ‘study’). ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2021, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/195 "2021-01-03T14:22:51Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > For what exactly? That people don’t want to lose their jobs? You made this claim: > [@DemonTree](#): > > My argument is that most people will choose not to risk doing research that draws this kind of outraged reaction, and they will choose not to publish opinions that are likely to get them fired. You have not shown any evidence that a study that goes against scientific consensus, if it is backed by solid data and well reasoned analysis, would be met with “this kind of outraged reaction”. You HAVE shown that when people make regressive claims based on poor science, other scientists complain. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2021, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/196 "2021-01-03T14:23:58Z")
And if it turns out that scientists are afraid to publish pseudoscience because they know that their universities and journals won’t publish such rubbish, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! But in fact there is plenty of pseudoscience being published ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2021, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/197 "2021-01-03T14:51:40Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > they know that their universities and journals won’t publish such rubbish, I will nitpick here; the universities usually aren’t doing the publishing. And I assure you, you can get rubbish published somewhere. Just maybe not in _Science_, although they do have a very high retraction rate. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2021, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/198 "2021-01-03T15:01:50Z")
Fair point- What I tried to get at (in fewer words which confused my message) is that they know that if they publish pseudoscience they will suffer consequences at their university. And agreed - plenty of crap gets published anyhow, so this idea that you can’t publish anything that goes against consensus is ridiculous. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2021, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/199 "2021-01-03T15:03:16Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > I’ve noticed a sharp _increase_ in the average person’s cultural inputs and outputs, Where does one observe this phenomenon? ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2021, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/200 "2021-01-03T15:07:48Z")
YouTube, for one. Small content creators making videos in their office or garage often make crap; but some portion of them does create very high quality content. For example, I’m into the Science and History videos, and I am very confident when I say, scientific and historical programming has far surpassed in quality AND quantity the programming of channels like History or Discovery in their prime (IE before Ancient Aliens!) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648.md?page=11)