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+--- Thread: Article ‘It’s a form of apocalypticism applied to science policy’ (/thread-21660.html)
‘It’s a form of apocalypticism applied to science policy’ - C C - Oct 23, 2026
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/a-form-of-apocalypticism-applied-to-science-policy
EXCERPTS: The American research enterprise is broken and in ways that not only hamper scientific progress but also harm the institutions that have grown dependent on the current system. The classic things to point to here would include the replication crisis as well as more general concerns about shoddy research practices, misuse of statistics, hype, and even outright fraud — problems that are more acute in some domains of research than others, including those, such as biomedical research, that directly impact the real world through drug development, clinical medicine, and public policy.
[...] The system dates back to World War II, after which there was a political debate [...] about what role the government was going to have in science during peacetime. [...] Such concerns intensified as federal funding soared in the post-war decades and became central to the financial model of the research university.
[...] But then beginning in the 1960s, you also had the environmental, anti-nuclear, anti-war, and student movements, growing concerns about automation and the pace of technological change — a general sense that technology was outstripping human control. ... Students called on scientists to divest from the “military-industrial complex”; the New Left urged more direct democratic control of science and technology.
[...] Starting in 1980 or so, private industry began to eclipse government as the primary research funder. The so-called Golden Age of science was over. But federal funding has nevertheless continued to grow and remain vital to academic science.
[...] So far, I’ve been sketching a fairly nonpartisan version of the “science is broken” narrative. That’s deliberate, to draw attention to the fact that the diagnosis is hardly unique to those on the right. But we’re talking about the Trump administration, and so the story isn’t complete without adding — and of course most on the right would lead with this — the charge that the current system enables, incentivizes, or fails to prevent gross politicization of science and the corruption of scientific research by “wokeism,” “radical environmentalism,” “reproductive justice,” or other ideological projects. These kinds of concerns are also longstanding but kicked into overdrive during the Great Awokening and the Covid-19 pandemic, when science was widely — and not without reason — seen by many on the right as becoming highly politicized... (MORE - details)