This comes after blatant science denial (this is a link to another one of Farina’s videos because it can’t be summarized by just one video of Sabine’s), attributing academia to “communism” as a fear mongering tactic (her whole point on this was that academia is a form of planned economy or something), and making a video in support of capitalism.
Well I guess she looked too long into the abyss. Sad to see.
I had appreciated her having a different perspective than my own, still rooted in scientific thinking. Then I started noticing her commenting on things authoritatively, where she had no expertise here and there (especially outside of STEM, where my special interests lie).
And then I stopped watching her after I had noticed more and more hints of that, where she seemingly acted like a high IQ and knowledge in her own field means she is qualified to disregard other perspectives outside her field. I am sad it got that bad, but I am not too surprised.
In a weird way, I appreciate her. I’m a scientist who has been drifting ever closer to science communication. I enjoy situations where I’m able to be in the role of a scientist who is able to “translate” dense scientific ideas so that other people can share in my enthusiasm. I feel pretty capable at situating my perspective within the wider sciences and making it clear when I’m talking about cool science stuff outside of my field. However, the more that I find myself nerding out in this manner, the more nervous I feel about being opinionated on non-science things; being a scientist gives me a weird kind of epistemic privilege because of how science is disproportionately valued by society, and I don’t want to inappropriately exploit that (even unintentionally). However, it’s not reasonable to expect scientists to just not hold and/or share their opinions on stuff like politics or history.
I concluded that I just need to make sure I continue to do what I already do when I (a biochemist) talk about physics stuff adjacent to my stuff — just to a much greater degree. Sabine Hossenfelder is a great example of what not to do in this respect. I don’t believe that people should be forced to “stay in their lane”, but if you’re going to go wading into waters that are not your own, you gotta stay humble.