Three prominent researchers warn about the current existential threat in the United States
Helmut Schwarz has been reading about what happened to science during the rise of Adolf Hitler, almost a century ago.
The German chemist just received the Frontiers of Knowledge Award from the BBVA Foundation in Spain, due to his contributions to the field of catalysis. For him, there are parallels between the situation in Nazi Germany and Trump’s United States.
“From 1900 to 1932, a third of all Nobel Prizes went to Germany, more than to the U.S. and the U.K. combined,” he tells EL PAÍS. He and two other scientists sat down with EL PAÍS in Bilbao, where they received their awards.
“When Hitler came to power,” he continues, “German science — which led the world — completely disintegrated. But Hitler thought that wouldn’t be a problem,” he continues. Now, Donald Trump’s administration views universities — supposed hotbeds of progressive ideology — as the enemy. He wants to bring them under his control. “In my opinion, the threat isn’t immediate, but it’s very important in the long term,” Schwarz adds.
This has been the longest and most tiring 6 months I’ve ever experienced
Amen, my friend. My spouse keeps telling me to have patience wait for the consequences to hit these clowns. I am just very impatient because I don’t want them to succeed in ruining more things for other people before they get what’s coming to them.
Good on you for marrying someone so optimistic
If he were to reply to your comment I know he would say “I’m not optimistic. I’m realistic.” Haha He’s great. Genuinely one of the best people I have ever met. Everywhere he goes he makes friends, inspires people and helps them improve themselves. So effortlessly kind and accepting of others. And he always believes things will be made right even if a situation is bleak. The shit he deals with on the daily in his job has broken most people, but not him. His psyche is made of titanium, I swear. No matter what type of day he has had or what he is carrying in silence, he always has emotional bandwidth to be there for others. I love him so much.
It takes a lot longer to rebuild the town than it took to burn it down. It’s sad that the consequences will take decades to fix if the course is corrected. The US has at this point suffered a lethal dose of radiation, it’s dead, but doesn’t know it quite yet.
There’s no fixing it, we are done as a unified nation
Go ahead tell me I’m wrong like all the other times I wasn’t.
If you’re too stupid to understand basic science and too proud to admit it, then this is the course of action that you follow.
Are these guys just now figuring this out?
I’m not sure I’ve detected an ideology on the right. They seem to be the most idealess people to have ever been pussyshat.
Hate and fear, fear of not enough, and hate for everyone else who may take it.
It’s literally that simple
Their ideology: man is boss. Woman is kitchen. God is science. Money is God.
There are a couple as I see it. You have the religious fundamentalists, I think this is mainly seen in the rules and court cases allowing people to be asses backed by religion. They also are trying to push their ideas nationwide, this is at odds sometimes with the next group. You have the anti-federalists, to them anything the federal government does is evil (especially if its not their rules). This is the ripping out of all the federal departments. They don’t see any good coming from them. Any tax is theft, and any money spent is wasted. (military excluded). The third group is similar to group 2, but they are just anti-regulation. “the free market will figure it out”. Now I don’t think any of these groups have good ideas, but the only reason they are doing what they are doing is because they have ideas and have been working on it for a long time.
Stupid reality not saying “yes” when some fat wheezing whining dumbass says wrong shit constantly.
Adrian Tchaikovsky is famous for being a prolific science fiction author.
He should also be known for his disturbingly accurate prediction of current events. I keep reading his work then finding the backstories becoming more realistic (and not in a good way).
Which books? Ive read children of time and ruin, loved them. Couldn’t get into shadows of the apt though.
Alien Clay is particularly relevant to this thread.
Also his Terrible Worlds novella set, particularly Firewalkers and Ogres.
Luckily the reality that science attempts to measure doesn’t care about politics and will still exist no matter what he says. What it does mean is that it’ll be discovered in another country and the US will grow more and more isolated
Unfortunatly science is influenced by politics and ideology. Scientific research rely on funding by political and ideological funders
yea, i have read on other platforms that when applying for grants, researchers after to be careful around global warming, like “who is to blame” if they point it as a human cause they are unlikely to get funded(the backers are often billionaire groups who are part of the problem" it would have to be labeled as something abstract to even be considered for funding. but its probably not as hard for every grant though. and i think many people in the PHD field hate doing grant writing , and thats another whole can of worms.
Then, a few years from now they will continue to ask why they need to continue to import their scientists from other countries.
Has someone told them about Lysenkoism?
I say let them.
Iran was a progressive country once too and look how it is now. Also look at it’s power nowadays. The US wants to be Gillead from the handmaid’s tale? Then go ahead. You’ll be a third world country, unable to feed your own population, within a few years.
Good luck
it was progressive, until the USA backed the shah of iran, which turned into islamic state because of the USA meddling.
Well that’s maybe the cuntiest comment on here so far today.
Those of you that paid attention during the evolution and creationism (the round 2) fiasco should be familiar with what’s going on right now.
we were there with intelligent design as well.
I remember during the GWBush years they tried this whole “put the 10 commandments in classrooms” thing, and they quietly pulled them after students started applying those 10 commandments to their teachers, religious leaders, parents, politicians…
They don’t ACTUALLY want these kids learning the Bible because the Bible teaches love and generosity.
So, literally exactly what was promised. In excruciating detail.
It’s mind boggling how Trumps policy is twisted positively so relentlessly. There’s so much deciphering of “oh he really means this writes an essay.” No, his platform means what it says.
Then people are shocked when it happens!
Nobody took Mein Kampf seriously either.
Every platform I have warned about the alt-right rise since 2014 has absolutely buried me in downvotes, bans, and months of harassment
You fuckers get what you deserve, next time listen
good, nothing would destroy the USA harder in the long term
Lysenkoism
Care to explain for the layperson?
Other comment made some good points but it’s a much more direct comparison with the government dictating science rather than science guiding government.
Lysenko was a soviet scientist who denied genetics and (with backing from Stalin) designed their agricultural system around that obviously flawed belief. It effectively became the state “science” by force; soviet scientists in favor of genetics and natural selection were round up and imprisoned or executed. So they lost entire generations of biologists which set their biological sciences back decades.
Other communist countries also took up the idea (including china) and all their agriculture suffered greatly for it. Millions and millions of people died from malnutrition or starvation.
Thank you for clarifying. I’m sorry if I jumped in with my interpretation. I know who Lysenko was. But not much more than that he was a biologist who kept denying science in behalf of the state. So I didn’t know if that was what you meant and that is why I apologised in the advance if I was misinterpreting it.
But yeah, state dictating science. And the U.S. really seems to be headed to that level of catastrophes you described. I need to read more about Lysenkoism. Like I said, I didn’t know much about Lysenko other than he was a scientist betraying science for the state propaganda. I don’t even know if he believed the nonsense he was spreading. But then again, I don’t even know if the ones doing the same now do either. And I have a hard time reading up on people like that. Makes my stomach turn in revolt.
But as a permaculture enthusiastic and someone who has a project with his girlfriend that uses syntropic theory, I’m very curious to read about what kind of nonsense were they applying to farming back then. Do you have any suggestions to read? Like a book or an article? Or should I just put Lysenkoism in a search engine and eventually find the farming part? Would love to know more about this, so if you have some pointers, I would much appreciate to learn more about this.
But then again, I don’t even know if the ones doing the same now do either.
RFK Jr defintiely does.
yeah i don’t have any official recommendations on Lysenkosim reading, but wikipedia’s article seems to do a good job. He just had terribly wrong ideas about gene transfer, grafting, etc. all based on Lamarckism, which he believed to be more compatible with communist ideology.
Yeah, RFK does sound like he believes the craziness he’s spewing. He’s gonna get a lot of people killed, that’s for sure. He already has. But the people who believe that he’s only gonna get the dumb side of Americans who believe him killed are so wrong. That’s not how this works. I get a lot of Americans on vacation where I live in Portugal. And it’s also true all over Europe and the rest of the world. And it is terrifying to think of the very probable outbreaks and who knows what else to come.
And thanks, I’ll use Wikipedia to read more about Lysenkoism over the weekend.
Thank you for the reply.
Portugal looks like a beautiful country and I’d love to visit sometime.
I think it is comparing the Soviet’s movement spearheaded by a biologist named Trofim Lysenko to the the current lobbying to destroy science’s credibility. It was akin to the current lobbying against scientific integrity that started in the U.S. and bled everywhere else. People will immediately think of the hacks that move through the podcasts these days, I’m sure you can think of a few too. It’s using a veil of pseudoscience to confuse the layman and advance the purpose of a few under another veil, one of an ideology. Lysenko was very much like the figures of today like that kermit the frog imitation that passes for scientific expert on the “dumbtube”. I don’t want to name these horrific hacks. They’re already taking too much of the bandwidth as it is and for far too long. And I hate that most people that think they’re too smart to fall for their crap, fall right into the next trap, which is to go argue and generate more visibility for them. These people never learned the old online code “Do Not Feed The Troll”. We spotted them and let them starve. But I compared them more to Gremlins, because they multiply. The grifers spot the grift and chime in for the take.
I hope I didn’t misinterpreted the comment you asked about. But Lysenkoism is a great shorthand to describe it all indeed.
