[fzeroracer]

Let's discuss climate change then, because despite that being a field reinforced by science it is also one that is considered highly political in today's environment. Can you claim you're politically neutral if you are not willing to listen to people who deny climate change?

The problem with attempting to force a politically neutral stance is that it allows politics to invade where it shouldn't. Your logic is fundamentally flawed.

[axlprose]

> Can you claim you're politically neutral if you are not willing to listen to people who deny climate change?

If you're literally not willing to listen to any arguments for/against a hypothesis at all, then sure, you're likely more invested in the political aspect than the science itself. But if you're just arguing in favor of what the majority of the established literature suggests, then no, because being pro-science is orthogonal to politics, and arguing in favor of research doesn't make one political. Just because one particular subset of science gets latched onto by politicians, doesn't make it an inherently political subject any more than people who argue that the moon landing is fake make video/image editing an inherently conspiratorial subject. I also wouldn't be accusing others of flawed logic when making an argument that relies on guilt-by-association.

[fzeroracer]

You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the debate works. We're not talking about two rational individuals forming a debate in good faith where they're able to change each other's opinion.

We're talking about people latching themselves to an anti-empirical evidence, anti-scientific approach to things such as climate change or vaccinations. The debate becomes political when there's enough people and policymakers believing in something, scientific process be damned, to actively affect law.

The debate about vaccinations causing autism for example is a absolutely political one, enough that we see people eschewing scientific fact in a way that endangers large portions of our society. Yet when we talk about an environment needing to be politically neutral, then their opinion must be treated with equal weight. We've seen this occur with people who are anti-evolution as well, where they demand their opinions be taken seriously and allowed into the greater debate. And it shows with our current society.

[axlprose]

> Yet when we talk about an environment needing to be politically neutral, then their opinion must be treated with equal weight.

No, that is absolutely not how science works. There's a reason why scientists undergo a peer review process to publish papers, and why journals have an "impact factor" score: it's because they're not all equal, and it takes an incredibly long time to become established as credible inside of academia.

If you're referring to the casual layman bickering that happens in the peanut gallery surrounding certain scientific results, then sure, all kinds of people with ulterior motives jump on those kinds of bandwagons and flamewars. But the scientific process itself does not (or at least tries not to) work that way, thus serving as a counterpoint to the idea that "everything is political".

[fzeroracer]

This topic had never been about ensuring political neutrality in sciences and the scientific process but rather political neutrality in the layman's workplace. You're attempting to drag this argument to somewhere it's not.

And even then to counter your opinion: Who do you think helps fund and provides resources for said scientific research? This is part of the claims made by laymen that connects politics to the scientific process.