[beachy]

The thinking behind their stance is well laid out in a previous editorial:

> The principle that the state will respect scholarly independence is one of the foundations underpinning modern research, and its erosion carries grave risks for standards of quality and integrity in research and policymaking. When politicians break that covenant, they endanger the health of people, the environment and societies.

This is why Nature’s news correspondents will redouble their efforts to watch and report on what is happening in politics and research worldwide. It is why authors of our expert commentaries will continue to assess and critique developments; and why the journal is looking to publish more primary research in political science.

[belorn]

Will they assess and critique developments if they are beneficial to Joe Biden political message and campaign? Will the public trust it?

The purpose of their stance is clear, but from this point on anything nature publish will have to be taken in the context of a political objective to get Joe Biden votes, with the side effect of benefiting scholarly independence once he is elected. That carries grave risks that people trust in the science decrease because the motives behind publications will be questioned based on political alignment rather than scientific evidence.

[thu2111]

Ah, "political science". Doesn't get more natural than that.

That's not a very clever stance. The overwhelming leftism of academia is a matter that academics have themselves studied. It's not a secret. What this position boils down to is:

"Having successfully got rid of most conservative academics, we're going to push left wing narratives. The priorities of the people paying for it shouldn't matter. Anyone who isn't as leftist as us is from now on 'anti-science'."

I've been reading more papers from Nature, Science and The Lancet this year, due to COVID. They are politicised trash. The editor of the Lancet routinely goes on major anti-Trump rants on Twitter, so it was no surprise when he published the Surgisphere paper which took about 24 hours before an actual journalist (at the Guardian no less) noticed it was completely fake. Other papers push ideological positions using all the tricks of bad science.

The fact that academics consider these outlets respectable is very telling. They publish soo many bad papers.

Science magazine published a blog post where they pondered suppressing papers that had anti-lockdown conclusions or data because it might encourage people to be less afraid. Other scientists have reported their papers indeed being rejected for that given reason - not the quality of the science but the fact that it wouldn't support social policies popular on the left.

Social science is famously poor quality.

https://fantasticanachronism.com/2020/09/11/whats-wrong-with...

It's very sad that the natural sciences are so publicly hitching their reputation to it.