Thread by @lindsaypcohn

Tl;dr: Repubs are much more skeptical of climate science than of medical or nutrition science (both significantly more influenced by $$ and less substantiated than climate science). Big problem is lack of general understanding of how science works.
1/ wired.com/story/american…

So here’s my contribution to the general understanding:
1) scientists/academics don’t get paid to publish in academic journals. At all. Zero.

2) Some ppl might get paid to publish in industry or interest group pubs, so always check the publication venue.
2/

3) there are different types of grants. Some have specific agendas behind them, others are designed to support the kind of who-knows-what-will-happen exploratory research that moves us forward. Not all grants imply pressure to find specific findings.
3/

4) while the peer-review system has its problems, its general bias is against publishing - at the top journals in any field, they’re probably rejecting >90% of submissions; this means *most* of the crap and some of the good stuff is being filtered out.
4/

5) the really problematic bias in academic publishing is for novelty/against (boring) replication. So most replication gets done in the context of studies that are also looking at sthng else, OR the study needs to do internal rep (huge sample sizes, multi-method approach, etc)
5/

6) The article mentions “production” and “impact” science; in general (though NOT always), production science will attract much more industry/interest group $$.
Sidebar: much science produces primarily public goods, which is why public funding is so critical.
6/

7) yes, scientists also have biases, and there’s no such thing as a purely objective human. Sometimes our biases adversely affect our work. But the vast majority of scientists got into it bc of curiosity. We really want to know how stuff works.
7/

Being dishonest with the evidence for the sake of $$ is sthng some scientists do, and that’s bad. But most of us went through yrs of methodological training designed to help us collect/treat evidence appropriately, and we try to hold our colleagues to that std at conferences, etc

Anyway. It just makes me sad when ppl think my main motivation is $$ and that I’ll make up any findings I want either for $$ or to support my unbound-to-reality beliefs in an arg. What would be the point of science at all? Why have ANY trust in it, if that’s what you think we do?