I'd like to comment here that this is primarily about chronic fatigue syndrome. There are other handwaving statements towards vaccines, global warming, and GMO, but none of those statements have a clear factual outlay. It's particularly interesting to me that it was implied that the activism against physical exercise/CBT to treat (not cure) chronic fatigue had done damage to the motivations of scientists to perform further research into the treatment of chronic fatigue.
This was distinctly not about common controversies around identities such as the existence or non existence of biological/cognitive differences of race, sexuality, and gender, even though those would be IMO the most pertinent subjects to cover about how(and if) science is affected by activism (as they have the most significant activists for all possible political opinions). I find that this exclusion particularly fascinating, or is it perhaps I am personally biased to assume they're more common and more obvious journalistic study due to my existence in tech, where the gender and racial gaps are talked about by all of the leading industry employers?
EDIT: I should clarify I do not know if science is affected by activism, but anecdotally I hear a lot about how such-and-such field of study (particularly about race, gender, and sexuality) is being limited because of activism. I've never seen actual evidence of this limiting, and the fact that this article explicitly excludes all three may be a 'absence of evidence is evidence of absence' scenario. Or again, it may be that I am personally more aware of those specific discussions due to my presence in tech where those positions are taken far more than chronic fatigue syndrome is discussed.
> There are other handwaving statements towards vaccines, global warming, and GMO
It's not entirely clear from the layout, but that bit of content is a kind of "info box", a bit of extra information that in a printed magazine you'd find in a box alongside the main article, meant more as context than as a substantial article on its own. That explains why it merely points out these other cases where activism might clash with science and doesn't go into detail.
> This was distinctly not about common controversies around identities such as the existence or non existence of biological/cognitive differences of race, sexuality, and gender, even though those would be IMO the most pertinent subjects to cover about how(and if) science is affected by activism
It would be a different article then wouldn't it :-)
1. Yes, the extra information provides context, but not a solid and deep exploration.
2. Yes, it would be different and I think it's very interesting that the broad journalistic investigation "is research influenced by activism?" does not reach to the most prominent topics that come to mind of "topics that have a lot of controversy, for which there are claims that research in this sphere is influenced by activism". The fact it covers CE as an example, and not race or gender could imply that there isn't research that states differently than activism, whereas CE does have this split.
EDIT: The claims that I'm mentioning have already been populated in this discussion thread as a whole, so I'm pointing out that there doesn't appear to be evidence in this article that politically "leftist" politics is suppressing academic research, but is focused quite specfifically on CE/CFS, which doesn't appear to fall into a clear leftist/rightist deliniation of beliefs.
I don't think you should draw conclusions about any other areas of research from this piece. I didn't get the impression the article was trying to make any broader statement about activism vs research. The piece gives one example of that tension, but that tension is not the focus of the piece.
The article was a specific investigation into the dynamics between vocal CFS activists and researchers pursuing a particular path of treatment.
In short, the conclusions you are trying to draw are completely out of scope for this article.
The conclusion I'm drawing is that this article isn't about a more controversial subject that this article is now being used to justify positions of the controversial subject in this very thread.
This was distinctly not about common controversies around identities such as the existence or non existence of biological/cognitive differences of race, sexuality, and gender, even though those would be IMO the most pertinent subjects to cover about how(and if) science is affected by activism (as they have the most significant activists for all possible political opinions). I find that this exclusion particularly fascinating, or is it perhaps I am personally biased to assume they're more common and more obvious journalistic study due to my existence in tech, where the gender and racial gaps are talked about by all of the leading industry employers?
EDIT: I should clarify I do not know if science is affected by activism, but anecdotally I hear a lot about how such-and-such field of study (particularly about race, gender, and sexuality) is being limited because of activism. I've never seen actual evidence of this limiting, and the fact that this article explicitly excludes all three may be a 'absence of evidence is evidence of absence' scenario. Or again, it may be that I am personally more aware of those specific discussions due to my presence in tech where those positions are taken far more than chronic fatigue syndrome is discussed.