Let me begin by stating what I’m actually suggesting. It has nothing to do with the number of people offended, and in fact has nothing to do with offense. The matter of offense was raised by someone else — as was the matter of factual correctness, the matter of broad appeal, the matter of editorial license, the matter of private property, the matter of special audience, and the matter of refunds. My posts on those matters were responses. No one (other than Chronos tangentially) addressed the issue I did raise, which was that I believe science and politics are a bad mix. Not science and humor. Science and politics.
I think it is enough that government is infested with politics, religion is infested with politics, business is infested with politics, and the arts are infested with politics. Here at Straight Dope, there are people who take up their rhetorical arms and defend science as the uber-epistemology, the pure and dependable method for scratching at truth. They rightfully tout its fallability and malleability as assets; it gets at the truth by admitting error, tossing out misconceptions, and starting over. There is, in fact, an ongoing debate (at least one) in which Voyager is defending the nobility of science on the basis that it is not tainted with the alleged fallacies and foibles of religion. Science will need God if politics wedges its way in.
Now, the point was made that not all articles are about science, at least per se. But this one was. It was extremely informative and well written. I was not offended by the quip about WMDs; rather, I was startled that there was a quip about WMDs. Even the seque itself was rough and sudden. A new paragraph (and the last paragraph at that) slammed my brain with something so irrelevant that it took me a moment to understand that it even was a joke. Naturally, all people who have delighted in riding the “no WMDs were found” train likely caught it first time through. But I have been far more fixated on Bush’s tyranny than on his incompetence, and so I had to invoke my frontal lobe in order to parse the end of the article.
As I said there, I didn’t see it as a hill to die on, but regiments charged the hill nonetheless, and so I defended myself as best I could until Zakalwe’s thoughtful suggestion of opening this thread. I responded to the hundred-reasons-why-it’s-okay posts, but I do hope that here, we can deal with the issue of whether people want science to be politicized. Because, make no mistake, if you set the precedent that it’s okay, or if you refuse to resist the temptation of doing it because you perceive that others do it too, then you open the door to it being done to your own detriment in situations where your own view is not the popular one. Issues like teaching Creationism in schools comes to mind. If you’ve made it fair game to bring politics into science, then you must shut up when politicians meddle in it. Otherwise, they can point to your own example: good for the goose, good for the gander, and what-not.
Whoever decided to prohibit politics in General Questions was wise, and that forum is better for it. And there still are funny quips from time to time all the same. I made the analogy of separating politcs and science the way government (ostensibly) separates politics and religion. It was dismissed as though I were establishing government and this board as identical entities. But quite obviously, I was making the point that the reasoning is sound for both. They just don’t belong together.
) and wanted to keep the conversation civilized. I guess I don’t see Una’s (or Ed’s) comment as political (and that could be the ultimate resolution, reasonable people can agree to disagree on something like that). At this point, it’s almost historical. It’s like someone saying “If something good can come from the New Deal, it can come from a black hole.” Obviously, the New Deal was a hugely political (and controversial) issue, in it’s day. But that it happened and that some good (and some bad) came of it have reached the level of fact (as much as political events can ever be said to be factual).