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Online activists are silencing us, scientists say

reuters.com

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Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say

#171

Post by onion2k »

triplewipeass wrote: post #58
onion2k wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately we have some people who put their beliefs and politics above science and will actively act against investigation only because a line of inquiry could result in evidence against their view. You say that's people putting beliefs and politics above science, but while that's a rational thing to suggest there are two problems with it. Firstly, a lot of issues don't and can't have any scientific rationale beh…

In a capitalist society, I will see in a negative light any statement or action that negatively impacts my livelihood. I don’t care if the most vocal activists think that it’s “right” in an absolute sense to enact a policy of reverse discrimination. Anything that detracts from my ability to provide for my family is bullshit.

Just to clarify, you're saying that being on a team that isn't diverse and consequently makes provably worse decisions means you're likely to earn less than the amount you'd earn on a diverse team making better decisions, so you're absolutely in favor of maximizing your earnings by enforcing diversity through positive discrimination, right?

Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say

#172

Post by kaybe »

dexen wrote: post #97
onion2k wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately we have some people who put their beliefs and politics above science and will actively act against investigation only because a line of inquiry could result in evidence against their view. You say that's people putting beliefs and politics above science, but while that's a rational thing to suggest there are two problems with it. Firstly, a lot of issues don't and can't have any scientific rationale beh…

>people don't always believe evidence even if it's there. I frankly admit some of the "facts" [0] known to me are wrong [1]. I know that for certain, as some of the "facts" are conflicting with each other, however that alone doesn't help with telling which is the wrong one, and which ones to base decisions & judgements off of. This causes various headaches ; I end up resorting to fallible heuristics to try to sort ou…

Someone once told me that facts are political, that maybe we shouldn't evaluate all facts based on what's true but whether believing in them or not will create a better society and world to live in.

In many cases this will overlap, but in some it won't, and that means those facts that create a worse world if everyone believes them to be true should be considered as false no matter the actual truth.

My first feeling is that this might create severe trouble down the line at some point, but it might be less trouble than the alternative? An idea to ponder.

edit: The ideas in question touched worth of people, for example. We tie worth to things like earning power, intelligence and beauty. Changing how society views these things changes society. This is on the surface, but some aspects can go much deeper into who we are as a people, since we're storytellers.

Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say

#173

Post by pjc50 »

jmcqk6 wrote: post #160
pjc50 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> psychosomatic and mental illness are no real illnesses This is what people are told by medical professionals who are refusing to help them.

I'm not sure I'm following, so I want to make sure I've got this right. You are claiming that there are medical professionals are telling their patients that psychosomatic and mental illnesses are not real illnesses?

There are certainly people going to their doctors complaining of various sorts of chronic pain and/or tiredness, who may be given some tests and test negative, who are then told "it's all in your head" and not offered further treatment.

(It's bad enough with physical-but-hard-to-diagnose problems like endometriosis; I know someone who's only just got a diagnosis after several years.)

The level of treatment you receive and how seriously you are taken will depend on which country you're in, how good your insurance is (where applicable), and how you appear to the doctors.

Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say

#174

Post by pjc50 »

Nasrudith wrote: post #169
pjc50 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> psychosomatic and mental illness are no real illnesses This is what people are told by medical professionals who are refusing to help them.

They are receiving help - it just isn't the kind they want. (To be fair it may or may not work in their case but they acknowledge it - regardless of assumptions and their correctness.)

In some cases it's a fairly clear "you're making this up, go away."

Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say

#175

Post by pjc50 »

mcv wrote: post #95
nateberkopec wrote: post #10

Over the next 20 or so years, expect a lot of syndromes/conditions to be reclassified, as Michael Sharpe puts in the article, as "biological condition[s] that can be perpetuated by social and psychological factors.". I struggled with RSI for a couple of years until I read John Sarno's "The Mind-Body Connection" on the recommendation of someone from HN. Sarno's thesis is that many chronic pain conditions (those withou…

> those without a clear physical mechanism, such as RSI or chronic back pain But RSI has a clear physical mechanism. I don't know as much about chronic back pain, but considering how much physical stuff there is in our back, I'd assume it's similar. Or does "physical mechanism" mean something other than it seems to mean?

In practical terms, "physical mechanism" means something a GP can see or test for, rather than relying on asking the patient whether it hurts.

Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say

#176

Post by nathan_long »

Maximus9000 wrote: post #163
nathan_long wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, genetically, is a race?

An ethnic grouping (not necessarily skin color). There was a movement in the 90s to get rid of the word "race" because scientists said all humans are basically the same. However, that movement has dwindled because we are discovering some important differences between ethnic groups. Such as: * Blacks are more sensitive to salt * Blacks are at a greater risk of glaucoma * etc

I have also heard of medical examples like that. However, this article argues that generalizations based on apparent racial characteristics are medically unreliable.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/race-is-a-social-...

> Yudell said that modern genetics research is operating in a paradox, which is that race is understood to be a useful tool to elucidate human genetic diversity, but on the other hand, race is also understood to be a poorly defined marker of that diversity and an imprecise proxy for the relationship between ancestry and genetics.

> ...

> "What the study of complete genomes from different parts of the world has shown is that even between Africa and Europe, for example, there is not a single absolute genetic difference, meaning no single variant where all Africans have one variant and all Europeans another one, even when recent migration is disregarded," Pääbo told Live Science. "It is all a question of differences in how frequent different variants are on different continents and in different regions."

> In one example that demonstrated genetic differences were not fixed along racial lines, the full genomes of James Watson and Craig Venter, two famous American scientists of European ancestry, were compared to that of a Korean scientist, Seong-Jin Kim. It turned out that Watson (who, ironically, became ostracized in the scientific community after making racist remarks) and Venter shared fewer variations in their genetic sequences than they each shared with Kim.

> ...

> "If you make clinical predictions based on somebody's race, you're going to be wrong a good chunk of the time," Yudell told Live Science. In the paper, he and his colleagues used the example of cystic fibrosis, which is underdiagnosed in people of African ancestry because it is thought of as a "white" disease.

Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say

#177

Post by llamaz »

alexandercrohde wrote: post #105
dragonwriter wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As we decode and understand more of the genome, it is possible that our genes affect more of our behavior than what the partisans of the tabula rasa hold for truth What “partisans of the tabula rasa”? Activists of both the left and right seem more likely to be partisans of genetic determinism, though of which aspects of intellect, identity, and behavior varies between them.

There are huge proponents of tabula rasa. Consider, fore example, I do research and realize trait X correlates with IQ. Also suppose trait X is highly visible so that I can easily identify who has it (just for concreteness, let's say it's black eyebrows, and 20 IQ points). This would drive the internet batty. The same is true if any such correlations are found for a number of other traits.

The purpose of your circumlocution is to remain ambiguous enough to fall back to a less controversial position when called out. Just say what mean, which is that skin colour correlates with IQ.

I hate it when your ilk make race vs IQ seem like an edgy new opinion that is being suppressed. It used to be mainstream globally, but we moved past that through dialectics. When the "bell curve" book was published, we resurrected the debate, then we moved passed it.

It seems to me that you have to go out of your way to bring up race and IQ. That's why, whenever the debate is brought up, one of the parties is accused of having an agenda.

Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say

#178

Post by erentz »

Angostura wrote: post #60
rtp wrote: post #42

I think that ME/CFS will go the same way as MS. Once upon a time, not long ago, MS sufferers were deemed "hysteric", "crazy" etc, until there was technology that could show physical evidence of the damage caused by MS.

Except, of course that no-one sensible is calling these suffers 'hysteric' or 'crazy' are they? Certainly not this researchers. They are simply saying that their symptoms may have a psychological component. Which should not be controversial, if evidence-based.

Problem is it’s not evidence based and we know there’s not a psychological component. The PACE trial and work of Sharpe are pretty widely debunked which is why they complain of being under attack. (See links elsewhere.) Meanwhile if you go watch some videos by the scientists at OMF and Stanford and elsewhere you’ll see they’re uncovering big differences in the bodies and blood of people with ME/CFS. It’s looking like it’s probably going to turn out to be an pretty complex autoimmune disease.

So when Sharpe and his friends continue to point fingers and say it’s in your head to these patients, and continue to push their exercise therapy, and continue to sow confusion, it’s really easy to see how they cause offense. Because they’re doing real harm to sick people by doing that. All because their egos are more important than hard science.

Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say

#179

Post by reitanqild »

Delmania wrote: post #67
gerbilly wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that the pain is real, it's just caused by processes in your brain, not the rest of your body. I was also helped by Dr Sarno's book, and for me the news that it was "all in my head" was encouraging. I can control my mind[1], and if my mind is the source of the problem, it's a lot easier for me to fix it that if I required surgery or medicine. [1] At least partially, the mind is a slippery thing too.

The more I learned the more terrifying that statement has become. The mind exerts incredible power of the body (and vice versa) and it's much harder to get rid of pain caused by a something in your brain than a cut or a broken leg.

Agree. This is kind of embarrasing as a grown up, an engineer and a soldier, but the brain can really prank some of us. (Edit: I guess it might be even worse as a doctor or nurse. My point is only that I consider myself a reasonable adult, not too easily scared.)

My brain used to have my body act up when I took a certain medication.

I was lucky: Once it got a little ahead of itself and my body started acting funny before I'd even taken the medication.

At that point I knew it was all in my head and never had any more problems with that medicine after that.

Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say

#180

Post by tomp »

Nasrudith wrote: post #148
cm2187 wrote: post #31

Another field where science is on a collision course with online (and offline) activists is genetics. As we decode and understand more of the genome, it is possible that our genes affect more of our behavior than what the partisans of tabula rasa hold for truth. And unless the political climate evolves, in a power struggle between activists and science, I wouldn't bet on the scientists.

Behavioral genetics is perfectly safe - if they deal with actual genes instead of the utterly unscientific proxies of race that have been long discredited. There has been no public stir over say ADHD or psychiatric prevalence, hell theories in either direction for "gay genes" failed to move the needle. The Warrior gene" research ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoamine_oxidase_A ) didn't despite a crime link and t…

> utterly unscientific proxies of race

I cannot but laugh every time someone mentions this.

It's very simple: can you measure it? (Yes.) Is the measurement persistent? (Yes.) Then it doesn't really matter whether it's "scientific" or "unscientific" or "mezo-scientific" or whatever, it's a valid concept.

Then people say that it's "socially defined" (yeah, all words/concepts are) or that categories are not clearly separated (e.g. mixed race people), but then again, same goes for the concepts of "day" and "night". Now, are you going to claim that "day" and "night" are unscientific?

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