Has an uncomfortable truth been suppressed? • Hacker News Board

Re: Has an uncomfortable truth been suppressed?

#201

Post by kgwgk » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 1:15 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #200

kgwgk wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the whole peer review committee What do you mean? Do you expect the whole editorial board to review every paper? I think it’s usual for acceptance to be decided by one editor, based on the report from referees (in the case of the NYJM, one referee). Peer review is provided by the external referee(s), not by the journal editors (but they can also act as reviewers for submissions handled by another editor, I guess it…

I've been a part of the program committees for a couple scholarly journal editions over the past two decades and in none of them were individual reviewers given the ability to accept or decline papers. At Usenix a few years ago, the practice was that everybody reviewed everything , and the program chairs (I was one) essentially counted votes and managed discussions. That was also the impression I got doing this for a…

See for example https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2016.131

Re: Has an uncomfortable truth been suppressed?

#202

Post by tptacek » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 1:22 AM UTC

kgwgk wrote: post #201

tptacek wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been a part of the program committees for a couple scholarly journal editions over the past two decades and in none of them were individual reviewers given the ability to accept or decline papers. At Usenix a few years ago, the practice was that everybody reviewed everything , and the program chairs (I was one) essentially counted votes and managed discussions. That was also the impression I got doing this for a…

See for example https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2016.131

From that article:

Editors normally invite more than one reviewer to evaluate a scientific manuscript.

Re: Has an uncomfortable truth been suppressed?

#203

Post by SamReidHughes » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 1:38 AM UTC

Arnt wrote: post #28

frebord wrote: post #6

Honest question, the general physical differences between the sexes or even races are undeniable, so why is it so taboo to talk about the differences that almost certainly exist in our minds?

Because the differences are small. Insignificant. If you take some group of 1000 people which has been selected in some way that skews towards intelligence, you might find that the men have IQ 105.14 on average and the women 105.13. Like, wow. You can find groups with bigger differences if you're willing to pick an obscure group, but then you have a bigger but more obscure difference. If you talk about that you risk…

The differences are huge. Getting 800 on the math SAT (circa some years ago) is like a 2:1 gender ratio, and qualifying for the USAMO is maybe 10:1.

Re: Has an uncomfortable truth been suppressed?

#204

Post by kgwgk » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 2:01 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #202

kgwgk wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See for example https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2016.131

From that article: Editors normally invite more than one reviewer to evaluate a scientific manuscript.

As I said, it may be one of the members of the editorial board that acts as editor, sends the paper to the peer reviewers (only one in the case of the NYJM) and decides to accept or reject the paper (or ask for revisions) based on their report.

Even if there were two referees instead of one, they are usually external and not members of the editorial board. And you could still believe that no peer review was done or suspect that both referees were the handling editor himself.

Apparently in this case the final decision is taken by the editor-in-chief. Other academic journals may have other policies and maybe in some cases the whole editorial board is involved in every publication but I don’t think it’s usual.

Re: Has an uncomfortable truth been suppressed?

#205

Post by tomhoward » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 2:03 AM UTC

_dps wrote: post #182

tomhoward wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that it's not fair or accurate to call describe it as "highly partisan libertarian-right". I'm with you on the axe-grindiness of Quillette, and since you mention it, that's probably why I don't read it much anymore. "Libertarian" can mean all kinds of things these days, but in the comment to which I was replying, the description connotes associations with things like: extreme positions against state welfa…

I broadly agree with your characterization of Quillette, but I'm curious (genuinely, not in a gotcha way) if you see publications like HuffPo or Vox as similarly having an axe to grind? The thing that makes Quillette stand out IMO is that among many venues with an axe to grind, they get called out for it a lot while publications with equal or worse histories of partisan priorities get a pass as "mainstream web media"…

Yeah I think that's fair.

Re: Has an uncomfortable truth been suppressed?

#206

Post by kgwgk » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 6:09 AM UTC

rubatuga wrote: post #199

kgwgk wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Animal taxonomy is also a social construct: phylum, class, order, family, genus, species are all labels that we have created and not an intrinsic property of animals.

That last bit isn’t true, species are not a social construct.

They are to some extent: there are hybrids, rings, and other edge cases.

Re: Has an uncomfortable truth been suppressed?

#207

Post by hef19898 » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 7:14 AM UTC

quotemstr wrote: post #173

hef19898 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your error margin is still bigger the scale of what you want to measure... But I wasn't aaware of that development, so thanks for pointing it out!

Plenty of instruments extract useful signals from below the noise floor. (See deep space communication with Voyager.) The idea that you can't do anything of "your error margin is...bigger than the scale of what you want to measure" is mathematical nonsense.

Agreed. But that is relevant to measuring the IQ using MRT-Scans how?

Re: Has an uncomfortable truth been suppressed?

#208

Post by kaitai » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 1:02 PM UTC

hackinthebochs wrote: post #180

kaitai wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's so unusual about Muslim countries? or countries with high inequity? They seem to collectively have a pretty big share of human population. Don't fall into the WEIRD trap (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic).

Because these countries also have very unusual patterns regarding education. Some examples mentioned in the study were non-normal distributions of scores, and a large percentage of religion-focused schooling. If we're trying to draw conclusions about innate differences operationalized as distribution test scores, any kind of biased schooling undermines the ability to draw conclusions from that population.

But schooling in the US is biased in all sorts of ways, and trying to draw conclusions from that is being encouraged in this discussion.

Re: Has an uncomfortable truth been suppressed?

#209

Post by reversecs » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 2:14 PM UTC

Arnt wrote: post #158

collyw wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think height differences between men and women are insignificant? They seem pretty obvious despite many exceptions.

If significant, then it should have effects noticeable in daily life, right? Otherwise you'd have a significant difference that signifies little or nothing. After almost 20 years of living with a woman 30cm smaller than myself, I can't make a long list of such effects. I easily reach some high shelves that my wife can't, I can see over most parked cars before crossing the street so I have a better view of the traffic…

If you are or know a very tall man, 6 6 or something, you might see this occur.

When the man walks into a room and finds there is someone of his height, or someone even taller present, the man begins to feel a sense of insecurity about this challenger. Suddenly he isn't the tallest guy in the room. It feels like a threat, it feels like competition.

I know this is a general feeling for certain. These men don't walk around thinking they are better than everyone else because they are taller but when they finally encounter someone of their height they are really sensitive to their presence.

I can't imagine women feel the same way. I've actually heard that women have insecurity about being too tall. If ones security about they masculinity and femininity can be shaken by their height, but in totally different ways, there might be something real about it. I do know that a lot of guys are excluded from the saying pool because of their height, and I know a lot of women value height in attraction.

The correlation of testosterone, power, and height in men are all in alignment. It's part of a male concept.

The infamous David Reimer case is a great example of how boys and girls are just different. David adopted all of the male stereotypes even though he was being raised as a girl with hormone therapy, psychological reinforcements (to try to teach and convince him he was a girl) from toddler through primary School. He still wouldn't conform and his brother knew something was wrong. When they found out it was an experiment the brother killed himself and David began to identify as a man again, he even went on to marry a woman. He killed himself in his 40s I believe.

The idea of a convenient truth and inconvenient truth need to be considered. I see it so much today that people are willing to twist facts and blow up supporting minutia to convince themselves that men and women have equal capabilities and have equal values as human beings (atleast evolutionarily).

Re: Has an uncomfortable truth been suppressed?

#210

Post by cimmanom » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 2:23 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #87

Arnt wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the differences are small. Insignificant. If you take some group of 1000 people which has been selected in some way that skews towards intelligence, you might find that the men have IQ 105.14 on average and the women 105.13. Like, wow. You can find groups with bigger differences if you're willing to pick an obscure group, but then you have a bigger but more obscure difference. If you talk about that you risk…

Do you think height differences between men and women are insignificant? They seem pretty obvious despite many exceptions.

That’s an example where there is huge overlap between the distributions. Yes, men are taller than women on average. No, for the most part you can’t tell a person’s gender from their height, especially within 2 standard deviations of the median for either gender.