Micheal ... I guess I do not see anything partisan in those bio's ... but for argument sake let say they are (everyone leans politically one way or the other.... see Good Science below), it would not mean the FAS is partisan ... actually, I think the FAS bends over backwards to be non-partisan. Their mandate is to apply science to help world policies. To keep national security on a scientific, evidence based, footing.
One of the main ways of vetting an organization is to look at who's backing them ... if it's not on the website, is vague, or is missing the major donors then it's a red flag ... in this case click on about and scroll down to
Financials and Funding. You find such sponsors like the U.S. Department of State, the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corp of NY, the National Science Foundation ... and others organizations for which science supports their efforts (left, right or otherwise
)
Good Science is about showing a strong evidence on a subject and eliminating any other influences which might prove otherwise. There is no room for political leanings. It's when bad sudo science gets applied to prove a belief that leanings come into play. This is why scientists publish papers containing their data and how they came to the conclusions they did. It's so others can verify it. They put their name on the line and the last thing they want is for any bias to be found.
The articles published by the FAS attempt to take research and make it more accessible to non-scientists . Some like this one lack strong references but it does describe how they went about discovering the Bot activity and coming up with their numbers. Others have better citations like
The role of bot squads in the political propaganda on Twitter which is probably even a stronger article on this topic. It has about 75 references many about Bots swaying opinion.
You might have missed it when I asked you to ignore the issue presented and zero in on "the bots" ...
My post was really about the high level of bot activity, how they amplify our political divide, and who's might be behind them. I only referenced this article because it was the one I remembered when I started thinking about how Russia would benefit by keeping us unstable.
Is that a very "left" thought?
