Big Tech’s Censors Come for Science
When we allow private organizations like Facebook, Google, and Twitter to police scientific discourse, we abdicate our commitment to free scientific inquiry.
Pankaj Mehta is associate professor of physics at Boston University and a member of Scientists for Bernie and the Boston chapter of Science for the People.
When we allow private organizations like Facebook, Google, and Twitter to police scientific discourse, we abdicate our commitment to free scientific inquiry.
Science can be a liberatory force that frees people from drudgery and fosters human freedom and flourishing. But to unleash that potential, we need a radical new science policy that promotes human needs over corporate profits.
The military sets the agenda for scientific research, so it’s still much easier to get funding to develop new bombs than to get the resources to develop new, potentially life-saving antibiotics.
For the first time in human history, we have the tools to reprogram life itself. That could be a recipe for dystopia — unless we create a scientific commons that values the public good over private profit.
Richard Levins was a profound thinker who devoted his life to an emancipatory vision of science.
Today, big data is used to boost profits and spy on civilians. But what if it was harnessed for the social good?
History is littered with horrifying examples of the misuse of evolutionary theory to justify power and inequality. Welcome to a new age of biological determinism.