Dear Dragan Pavlovic,

You raised a very sharp topic that many of us care about. In my opinion, only mathematics is objective from all sciences on this earth, all other sciences are subjective, although it is recognized that mathematics is not a science, but only a universal language. Thus, everything on this earth is subjective, because any facts can be interpreted in different ways. Interpreting the facts is where the main difficulty lies. And if this is so, there will always be methods and ways to interpret the same facts in favor of those or other interested persons. Sometimes this process is called falsification, and this is especially demonstrated in the science "History", where the same events are described in such a way that "White" becomes "Black" and vice versa. You ask "How to protect science from politics?". This is the same as asking "How to protect the sport from politics?" or "How to protect art from politics?". As is well known, sport and art are now very politicized, because they reflect the advantages or disadvantages of social structures. My answer will be pessimistic: Politics has always been interfering and will interfere in science, sports and art and It is impossible to defend against this. So, the main method is a free interpretation of events. Why is this happening? Because very often there are not enough facts or these facts exist, however they are stored in archives and are unavailable yet. And this circumstance gives rise to a huge food for any interpretations that as a rule always will be politicized.

Interesting questions.

1. I don't think science can be completely free from the politics because science and politics are generally inseparable. For example, political science.

2. Scientists also live in the human society. Hence, they are also influenced by political opinions from the outside. The verb "infiltrate" conveys the problem. Without an independent opinion in the society, it is very hard to hold own opinion.

3. To influence scientists, politics can define studies and pay for purposes that are predefined by political wishes. For example, there are movies about Nazi-time, where some scientists say, they are scientists and are not interested in politics at the beginning of the movie but later they are confronted with politics and have to make their decisions that conform to the ideas they rejected before.

4. To explore methods of influence by politics, I would study historical books that explore a particular sinister time or contact historians -- maybe, they already have findings on the issues you are interested in.

Excellent comments, so let me restate the question a bit.

Scientific theories project beyond empirical evidence and if the empirical evidence does not suggest one single theory that explains them, we have competing scientific theories. The decision which one we would accept may be political i.e. may depend on unrelated “political” interests. We call such preferential theoretical frameworks “scientific paradigms”. Yet, no doubt, the decision which paradigm to accept may be political.

But the political influences may be more trivial and go even to the trivialization of the war crimes.

Whether plagiarism of German minister of defense Zu Guttenberg was to be handled as “plagiarism” or not – depended on political opinions. German canceller ignored the accusations while after the immense public pressures, the PhD thesis was proclaimed plagiarism. Politics?

Serbian professor Mlca Jovanovic and politician Nebojsa Stefanovic were accused of fake PhD claims (Jovanovic), or plagiarism (Stefanovic) by 3 persons from London (Dr Marko Milanović , and dr Uglješa Grušić and dr Branislav Radeljić, who, by the same occasion, also produced their own credentials that were fake - claims to be “”Docents or University Professors”, what they were not. In the media the accusations were treated as justified while the fake academic positions of British researchers were taken as trivialities. Political influences?

Finally, we all remember, Saddam Hussein was bombed on insufficient evidence – whether he possessed the chemical warfare or not was – irrelevant. Politics again?

Therefore, the essential point is that since politics is often blind for the facts, the question is how deep politics reaches into science?

Dear Dragan Pavlovic,

I'd lile to comment your key phrase

"Finally, we all remember, Saddam Hussein was bombed on insufficient evidence – whether he possessed the chemical warfare or not was – irrelevant. Politics again?

Therefore, the essential point is that since politics is often blind for the facts, the question is how deep politics reaches into science?"

When Colin Powell was told that Saddam Hussein did not have chemical and bacteriological weapons and the US was wrongly accused of it, Powell replied: "It does not matter, because Saddam Hussein must be overthrown and he will be overthrown." When Powell shook the test-tube with the washing powder in the UN Security Council and assured the whole world that this was a bacteriological weapon, no one began to check the composition of this powder and they belived to his word for it . As a result, a bloody war began in Iraq with a million dead civilians, not to mention chaos and numerous destruction. Here is a policy that opposes the facts. Now a fresh example would be "the so-called poisoning of Skripal in London." Evidence has not been presented yet, but more than 150 diplomats have already been expelled. Until now, there is no press conference that was promised for a long time, despite the fact that Julia Skripal made a short statement, which most likely was written and voiced not personally by her. This is evidenced by numerous inconsistencies and, above all, the nature of the Russian language which is not spoken so in Russia and it is most likely a literal translation from English. And the last comical and tragic case - it is the murder of Arkady Babchenko in Kiev on May 29, 2018, which suddenly rose from the dead the next day. However, before this resurrection, all the leading Western media have already managed to blame Russia for the impudent and brutal murder of their journalist. This is the very case when politics is absolutely incompatible with facts. I suggested introducing the subject "Mathematical History" in the discussion https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_Democracy_the_best_form_of_government_in_a_Federating_State/1 for the purpose of more adequate interpretation of events. For example, my personal discussions with opponents on political topics clearly show that often the conversation goes on as a deaf-mute with the blind, that is, we see a subjective understanding of the same historical events without any attempts to understand someone else's point of view. Why is this happening? This is already a great merit of the media and nothing can be done with this fact .

Here I duplicate one of my answers from this discussion:

"I want to understand clearly one thing: Is history a science or not? Why am I raising this issue. You yourself are witnessing a heated discussion about the same moments of history. There are historical facts and there are interpretations of these facts. There are historical documents and there is also an understanding that some of these documents are fake. Many books on the same historical issues have been written. All authors claim that they relied on documents, but in most cases these were interpretations as analytical reflections. These authors often state that many documents are not yet available under the stamp of secrecy. This defect they compensate by their interpretations like "it's very possible that it could happen". However, science is built on rigorous evidence and not on free interpretations. Now in our time, former historians have become political analysts. Now we watch a lot of various analytical television programs where political scientists with a clever kind tell the versions on the same events. And to each of these political scientists the spectators in the hall are stormy applauding. However, there can be only one truth. How to be? I want to ask: Is it time to create a science that would sanctify historical events according to the same rules for everyone without exception? For example, mathematics does not arouse anybody's censure, as it builds its reasoning on rigorous evidence. It may be time to create a subject as a "Mathematical History", where all conclusions are strictly proven and do not allow any interpretations".

Yes, interesting issues. You can talk about deep politics -- I would say, corruption.

Concerning Zu Guttenberg. I think the background is more trivial and has something to do with societal justice -- the person is baron. Such people are used to have everything in this world. Also scientific titles. While preparing his PhD thesis, he was so impudent that he used the information service of the German parliament to write his PhD.

I don't know other people you mention, but I think they submitted their PhD to get societal acceptance and more money. There are many of them in Russia.

The only person where I agree with your opinion is Saddam Hussein. There are so many dictators and sinister persons in the world, but only Hussein was removed from his position by a political wish.

@Dragan

5. Other issue that might help to shed light on your matters is terrorism and radicalization (hopefully, it is not too far-fetched). I'll try to explain by asking the question: How one becomes unnoticed a terrorist where his life was so successful? Or in your terms: How a scientist becomes unnoticed somebody who has a particular political opinion where his scientific life was so successful? There should be much materials on the terrorism on the Internet and how it can be considered for transformation "person-terrorist" resp. "scientist-apologist".

Alexander, Gennady

Thanks for the comments. You used my extreme examples of pure politics. And you are right. Indeed the examples belong also to history – which is also science, but the influence of politics there is too obvious. In the example of Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, you (Alexander) are stressing the motives, but the essence was the discrepancy between facts (massive plagiarism) and interpretation of that fact (they were taken to be unimportant triviality by the canceller Merkel!).

Therefore let us examine how it is in other fields of science. And I would like to insist: I wanted that we clearly see the discrepancy between facts and the interpretation of the facts in science. History is one extreme that is close to politics; mathematics would be the other extreme with probably little involvement of politics - and I wonder whether we have some examples there too.

One method.

I can introduce political bias in a scientific community easily, but have to put at work some specific methods.

This example will concern not opposing some scientific concept by using political action but inverse: the opposing some political orientation by using fallacious scientific methods. Using science is very effective to persuade the masses and can be easily dissimulated. The important aspect of the propaganda method is to imply the conclusions and to avoid establishing links with the discussed facts. Here is what I mean.

Imagine I belong to a community of political orientation A and we strongly oppose the community that has adopted the political orientation B. To persuade the scientific community to support our A-ideas, I will ask a question on RG which answer could discredit some personality from the B-community. Here is how.

In France a suitable the question would be to elucidate some aspects of racism and as an example, of whether some elements from the political program of Mr. François (imagined name) imply that the program may have some racist elements. Every political program is susceptible that some elements of it may imply racism, so the question will certainly bring some fruits. The answers should, to be scientific, limit on discussing the elements of racism and the facts, i.e. the definition of racism, various forms of racism, sociological or even philosophical aspect etc, etc. However, I, as the initiator, will then bring the person of Mr. Francois as an example, and ignoring sociological, psychological, semantic, historical elements, I will promote the discussion that decidedly involves the personality of Mr. Francois. In cases when the commentators would insist on facts and the elements of racism in principle, I will discourage that line of discussion.

If the community would be sufficiently permissive and passive, I will succeed in my efforts to damage Mr. Francois and will almost certainly disregard proclaimed objectives – to elucidate some aspects of racism in principle. Certainly, if my initial objective was to damage Mr. Francois, my objective will be attained.

As far as I know, we had on RG at least 2 such threads: during the last elections in the US (trying to discredit Donald Trump), and one recent and still running - on plagiarism (trying to damage certain Serbian politicians). There are certainly some others of which I am not aware.

The common feature of such attempts is to focus the discussion on some personality and to avoid clarification of the facts and insist on some more general aspects, structural or contextual aspects, persuasions or general principle without establishing the links with the discussed facts. Number of logical fallacies are used and none of them is specific for those discussions.

There is one aspect of Wikipedia which I did not want to bring on the thread below:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Do_free_access_to_knowledge_and_or_pseudo_knowledge_googwik_science_have_damaging_effects_on_society_and_science2

This is Wikipedia as a propaganda platform.

Indeed manipulated information belongs to pseudo knowledge and pseudo science which are the aspects discussed here.On Wikipedia, propaganda concerns particularly the issues that are politically of interest. However, the propaganda side of Wikipedia is not only extremely large but it reaches far beyond apolitical issues. This means some discussions on linguistics, biology or mathematics may also not remain “healthy”. However the issues that may have political implications, are more or less systematically manipulated by the interested commentators and administrators. It is enough that a group of people (secret service or not) operating from different locations or virtual different locations edit some texts on Wikipedia, “freely” discuss the issues and take decisions about what will be posted on the site or what will be removed from it. This is so massive that those issues may sometimes become useless. Indeed, the normal reader will not know how much information is distorted. In my opinion Wikipedia is a platform of extreme importance for the propaganda wars today.

If some of you read German, I suggest examining this text and the links given at the end.

https://www.rubikon.news/artikel/angriffe-aus-der-dunkelheit

Dear Dragan,

I think that political propaganda in science may come from the scientists themselves rather than from politicians. I will give an example from the past, which may lighten our answers to the important point you are raising.

I will speak about Francis Galton (1822-1911), who had been an important figure in the history of statistics (see the chapter 8 of the book from Stigler: The English breakthrough: Galton). However he developed and fought for eugenics from 1883 to the end of his life, whose intention was to touch on various topics with that of the cultivation of race, or as we may call it “eugenic” questions … He tried during the last ten years of his life to impose his view on this topic and during the first half of the twentieth century this notion had been taken by many fascists and Nazi politicians, as Mussolini and Hitler, whose racist policies lead to extremist actions.

This example may lead us to think that even notions introduced by scientists may be politically disastrous.

References

Stigler, S.M. (1986).The history of statistics. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press: Cambridge, London.

Dear Dragan,

Last year I supervised a BA thesis on propaganda in contemporary Polish political discourse. My student easily found a significant number of examples of the use of various forms of propaganda in the public space, but I could not admit the paper to the final exam. The rationale? Instead of analyzing reality objectively, the author focused exclusively on examples from right-wing milieus, which led her to completely false conclusions as if only the right-wing used propaganda. Meanwhile, I proved to her empirically that all political parties use some propaganda methods.

The problem in this case was the (lack of) objectivity of the researcher. The fact that she locked herself in her information bubble and failed to objectively analyze the broader context. Thus, in my perspective, as a political communication researcher, the most important tenets are (1) distancing; (2) objectivity; (3) the use of statistical methods (Corpus Lingusitics Methods) instead of - or along with - the currently trending qualitative methods based solely on the researcher's biases.