In my Spectator column this week, I’ve taken issue with the editorial in the latest issue of Scientific American urging its readers to vote for Kamala Harris. This is how it begins:
The latest issue of Scientific American, a popular science monthly published by Springer Nature, contains an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris. She is the candidate that anyone who cares about science should vote for, apparently. Her positions on issues such as “the climate crisis”, “public health” and “reproductive rights” are “lit by rationality” and based on “reality”, “science” and “solid evidence”, while her opponent “rejects evidence” in favour of “nonsensical conspiracy fantasies”.
On the face of it, there’s something a bit odd about a storied science magazine getting embroiled in the grubby world of politics. Indeed, the editorial acknowledges how unusual this is, suggesting that’s all the more reason we should take the recommendation seriously. The editors have descended from Mount Olympus because the fate of America – nay, the world – is at stake: “That is why, for only the second time in our magazine’s 179-year history, the editors of Scientific American are endorsing a candidate for president.” True, the previous occasion was only four years ago when it endorsed Joe Biden, but the editors have a point. It is rather unorthodox.
So how can science tell us how to vote? My admittedly primitive understanding of the history of science is that it only really began to transform our understanding of the world when a firm distinction emerged between fact and value – between descriptive propositions, which depict the world as it is, and prescriptive ones, which tell us how it ought to be. That is, the Scientific Revolution occurred when students of nature eschewed politics and religion and embraced reason and empiricism. In that context, the editors of Scientific American, in seeking to muddy those waters again, seem to want to return to an era in which the evidence of our senses – “reality”, as they put it – tells us how to behave. In defiance of the naturalistic fallacy, they are smashing the ‘is’ and the ‘ought’ back together.
Worth reading in full.
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Common Sense was looking out the window in March 2020 and seeing no pandemic.
What did the lovely Esther say then, I wonder?!
Don’t know be she gave the health fascist Hunt a second chance, so I don’t trust her judgement.
It’s all in the word ‘unless’.
Ms McVey might as well be a minister for gardening. She is pruning the woke undergrowth; raising the canopy of the woke forest; culling the surfeit of strange beasts that scurry in the woke wilderness. As long as whatever is woke ‘delivers’ ‘value’, floreat florebit.
As all gardeners will know, pruning makes a tree or shrub grow better; have a more attractive shape; produce more or fuller fruit.
When there has to be a minister for common sense it can be certain that all common sense has been lost. If you have freedom of speech, there’s no necessity for a minister of freedom of speech.
Has she got enough time to even start the job before Labour sweep back in a reinstate all the woke rubbish in spades.
This strikes me as more election window dressing.
The only way of cutting the state is with the blunt tool of spending cuts, e.g. 30% reduction in headcount. The minute you start trying to micromanage, the civil service starts running circles around you. Any serious conservative minister needs to view the civil service as the enemy and take actions to directly harm their interests.
I was hoping the headline read “‘Common Sense’ Minister to Scrap Civil Service”
30% reduction in headcount will mean the HR and EDI types will arrange for everyone doing anything actually productive to be fired to “cut costs”. McVey’s approach – to which degree it’ll work out remains to be seen – of identifying and than attacking actual problems is much more sensible.
won’t work. too slow
Mcvey, Mogg, Davis, Davies, Baker, Patel, Braverman, Davies, Badenoch, Jenrick, Redwood and others who position themselves on the Right of the a party have no influence whatsoever in the fake Tory party. But they have carved themselves a comfortable niche in the Party in playing to, and keeping onside the centre right vote. Hopefully this year the general public will see these actors for what they really are and they too are rejected in the GE.
The Conservative party has a serious credibility problem. Even if they go to the general election with a manifesto that takes an ultra hard line on immigration and wokery, they simply can’t be trusted.
They won’t even leave the ECHR – I mean, what is the benefit of being a member? The MPs just don’t want to upset their leftists friends. Leaving the ECHR should be the easiest decision in the world and they might even be able to get it without a vote.
At this stage, even Rishi personally machine gunning down the small boats won’t rescue the Tories.
As I watched the McVey Speech on GB news I switched over to SKY and BBC for a minute to see if they were showing it ——As I expected …No chance.
Lip service.
If they meant business they’d cut the funding for every DEI post in the public sector.
All they want is a few headlines.
Also what are they doing about Debanking, not a lot!
“Lip service”. Spot on!
Isn’t it amazing how the Fake Conservative Party is suddenly changing direction to please the voters before an election?
First we have Sunak the Smarmy raising the spectre of Nuclear War that he says only he is capable of preventing (???), so don’t vote for Kneeler.
Then we have Irish Maryolater McVey suddenly popping up to take action against the hated diversity, equality, inclusion rubbish in the civil service, after half a year in her post.
What next, I wonder? As Jon Mors said above, not even Sunak machine-gunning the dinghies will save the Tories now.
Another said,
“Representative democracy has failed in the UK.. Neither main party represent anything like the majority views in the UK.. Time for direct democracy through referendums held regularly on all matters.. Politicians should be just administrators of what the people decided. The most democratic country in the world has to be the Swiss and they have this as their system. Works very well and they never get involved in other countries wars.”
I think that is why Tommy Robinson is treated so harshly, because large swathes of British citizens agree with him.
I call it political poker ——-“I will go 50 million on stopping the boats” —–“I will see your 50 million and raise you another 40 million on tackling human traffickers”. ———“I will tackle the human traffickers and send the migrants back where they came from”——–“No you won’t because it is illegal”———“Well if it is illegal I will get rid of the court”——–and on and on and on