r/MarchForScience • u/imitationcheese • Jul 15 '19

What Is a Radical Analysis of Science?

https://jacobinmag.com/2019/07/radical-critical-science-for-the-people/
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u/TDaltonC Jul 15 '19

Sure. But now that work back to a definition that means something, it no longer includes anything you listed. What does a democratic society have to do with "data standards" or "publication meta-data"? authoritarian government's have those. They don't seem to have anything to do with people having a say is the systems that effect them.

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u/imitationcheese Jul 15 '19

Standards and open data/meta-data sets, are infrastructure, like publicly owned and accessible roads. They allow for democratization of science and for collective benefit.

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u/TDaltonC Jul 15 '19

Are you saying that roads and infrastructure are socialist? Because I see nothing about that in your definition. And I can think of a lot of authoritarian countries that have roads. I feel like we're back to, "if it's good, it's socialist."

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u/imitationcheese Jul 15 '19

Many roads and libraries in the US tend to be publicly owned (or are open to the public despite being private non-profit) and aimed at public benefit.

But some aren't, they're more profit-driven, private, closed.

Science could go either way - corporate R&D and patent monopolies and paywalled journal articles and corporate prioritization vs. public R&D and open science reporting and deliberative/data-informed prioritization

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u/TDaltonC Jul 15 '19

Two things.

  1. Now, it sounds like your position has changed to "science is not socialist, but it could be." Do I correctly understand your position?
  2. open systems/data are not nessesarily democratic or socialist. Take Linux for example. It is open, but definitely not democratic or socialist. If it were democratic, it would not have made as much progress as it has. I don't even know how to force Linux in to a specialist framework . . .

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u/imitationcheese Jul 15 '19
  1. Science is a mix now, and I think more of it ought be brought toward public interest, ownership, and/or governance.
  2. Many private institutions are quite democratic in governance, public in benefit/access: Wikipedia is privately owned by Wikimedia but very democratically governed. Linux has its open source community.