You might be confusing activists with volunteers. Those who donate their time and money are not necessarily vocal about their pet projects. I'm part of the latter and do not consider myself an activist.
Absolutely not. A scientist is expected to change their mind when new, counterfactual evidence is presented. Activists push for positions regardless of whether any evidence exists to support their position, and seem to maintain their position even when presented with counterfactual evidence. That is not science. We have a name for it: dogma.
Wait a second, if you’re saying that this is not a feature of good activism, are you implying you are more convinced by activists who practice dogma over objective thinking?
What is a scientist to do when they discover a vaccine or cure for something; say fuck it who cares if we change behavior? Are you saying a good vaccine advocate is someone who ignores the underlying science and acts dogmatically?
It just feels like you want to demonize this action of activism for… why? Just because there are lots of bad activists? There are a lot of bad scientists as well, to be honest the view of “good scientist” and “bad activist” feels dogmatic.
I have yet to observe an activist practice objective thinking. That was the root of the argument. Activists sometimes do back the correct argument, but not because they are practising scientific reasoning. Most activists are swayed by rhetoric, a good story. That's an emotional response, not a logical one.
To answer your second point, science has a process for disseminating new findings. It's not perfect, but it works. Organizations that scientists work for do pay attention to those sources, discoveries do get patented and productionized. I encourage you to conduct some research: See how many people were talking about mRNA vaccines and gain-of-function research on social media before COVID vs after. The lack of social media coverage didn't affect the science or the scientists, who had spent the past decade conducting research on the subject.
I will maintain that Twitter/X/Bluesky are not part of the scientific process, nor should they be. These platforms do not encourage objective thought or reasoned arguments.
Maybe the problem is with our funding model. Necessarily the whole grant system is based on being able to argue a narrative as to why your scientific inquiry deserves money. Combine that with a system that includes incentives towards or away from social values, and scientists are necessarily activists.
And then that’s just to get money in your specific direction, getting money in your general direction requires more broad activism.
