Why We're Shutting Off Our Comments

An excerpt from the Popular Science article in which they laid out their reasoning behind turning comments off. As John Gruber said, it’s hard to believe it took them this long.

“A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics. Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. Scientific certainty is just another thing for two people to ‘debate’ on television. And because comments sections tend to be a grotesque reflection of the media culture surrounding them, the cynical work of undermining bedrock scientific doctrine is now being done beneath our own stories, within a website devoted to championing science.”

This is the point where I pick up my weary banner and resume railing against faux-feminists, for I see a strong resemblance in the difficulty Popular Science faces in maintaining intelligent discourse and the apparent inability for the vast majority of those wanting to challenge misogynistic behavior to do so either appropriately or intelligently, much less both. Popular Science faces a highly politicized discussion in a field that should, ideally, operate without such ponderous constraints, much like the discussions around misogyny has devolved into an unproductive, highly-emotional flame war. Popular Science could turn off its comments and at the very least curb this behavior in their small corner of the internet; unfortunately, we have no such remedy for the writings of faux-feminists.