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'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

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Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#121

Post by dragonwriter »

dtoma wrote: post #86
ratsmack wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about a correlation between IQ and race. It seems that no one will touch the subject out of fear the it would end their career.

What's the use about a study on _correlation_ between these two things? You could also have a study on correlation between IQ and poverty, IQ and access to education... Not to mention, what's the point of IQ anyway? Maybe no one is picking up the subject because it would be a waste of time?

> What's the use about a study on _correlation_ between these two things?

Understanding correlation is the first step to understanding causation, and a statistically significant correlation, by definition, implies that it is unlikely that there is not a causal relationship, though the cause may not be directly between the two studied variables.

> You could also have a study on correlation between IQ and poverty, IQ and access to education...

You could and you do. Or (to pick a real example that came up near the top, by recency, of a Google Scholar search for race and IQ) of the correlations between IQ, sex, and maternal obesity, controlling for (among other factors), race differences in IQ, which requires first having studied the correlation between race and IQ.

> Maybe no one is picking up the subject because it would be a waste of time?

Maybe the story that no one is picking up the subject is just a lie easily refuted by searching Google Scholar.

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#122

Post by shard972 »

Fishysoup wrote: post #108
allovernow wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell, look at the insane , wholly unscientific public crucification of James Watson for commenting, totally reasonably, on this very subject. Stripped of a Nobel prize for suggesting that two and two may equal four. Find me one credible media outlet which even questioned such treatment! Edit: sorry, I misread a headline about him losing the prize, it read stripped of "honors". Point still stands.

"Two and two may equal four" being a bunch of nonsensical racist slandering based on no evidence. Every result ever has pointed that all races and genders are equally "intelligent" and well-suited to the same tasks. And trust me, there's been no lack of racist scientists. It's just that bullshit doesn't stick.

Oh here comes the racist brigade to yell down moral proclamation upon the unwashed masses.

You know what, who cares if Watson was a flaming racist? He has done more than almost any other person to save the lives of millions of Africans but he makes one opinion about intelligence and hes slagged off and completely discredited?

Cancel culture has been in science a lot longer than people know.

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#123

Post by freepor »

barry-cotter wrote: post #99
dtoma wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the use about a study on _correlation_ between these two things? You could also have a study on correlation between IQ and poverty, IQ and access to education... Not to mention, what's the point of IQ anyway? Maybe no one is picking up the subject because it would be a waste of time?

If we’re not going to find research because it’s useless that’s the humanities gone. All of the topics you mentioned have been done and are being done. The point of IQ research is that it effects real life outcomes that we care about, like health, education, social status, criminal behavior, STI status, having children outside marriage, many others. If two groups are assumed to be identical but they have different ou…

How much of East African marathon dominance is for similar reasons to the cricket dominance of former British colonies?

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#124

Post by gnaritas »

stephencanon wrote: post #120
tenpies wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even race, but just suggesting that evolutionary psychology is a valid scientific field can get you crucified in some circles. Somehow the human brain avoided all sexual selection forces, environmental pressures, and even difference between the sexes; but everything else in our bodies was at the complete mercy of these factors.

But evo psych isn't a valid scientific field; there's no way to go back and conduct experiments to validate hypotheses. It's a bunch of nonsense just-so stories that appeal to people's existing biases. It's horoscopes-and-crystals-woo dressed up in the language of science.

> there's no way to go back and conduct experiments to validate hypotheses.

That's not required to do science. The notion one must be able to go back in time to prove evolution is absurd. Evolution happens, that's a fact. No system in the body, including the brain, is untouched by its processes and consequences.

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#125

Post by deogeo »

Fishysoup wrote: post #108
allovernow wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell, look at the insane , wholly unscientific public crucification of James Watson for commenting, totally reasonably, on this very subject. Stripped of a Nobel prize for suggesting that two and two may equal four. Find me one credible media outlet which even questioned such treatment! Edit: sorry, I misread a headline about him losing the prize, it read stripped of "honors". Point still stands.

"Two and two may equal four" being a bunch of nonsensical racist slandering based on no evidence. Every result ever has pointed that all races and genders are equally "intelligent" and well-suited to the same tasks. And trust me, there's been no lack of racist scientists. It's just that bullshit doesn't stick.

> Every result ever has pointed that all races and genders are equally "intelligent" and well-suited to the same tasks.

Really? The strongest rebuttals I ever saw boiled down to "it has not yet been conclusively proven impossible that all races are equally intelligent". Large meta-analyses certainly always find correlation, this one goes a long way towards showing there is causation as well: https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1467-9280.2006.01803.x

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#126

Post by [deleted] »

catalogia wrote: post #96
allovernow wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We have plenty of evidence already showing the concentration of CO2 in Earth's atmosphere going back many thousands of years Excellent example! I'm no climate scientist, but I am a former geoscientist, and as it happens, all of our estimates for historic atmospheric conditions are based on various proxies which in turn are rooted in assumptions. Let's take a look at ice cores, for example. The theory is that bubbles…

> a very strong assumption is that gas ratios do not change through processes like diffusion It seems to me this should be an easy matter to analyze in detail. Diffusion would blur two distinct bands into each other, right? A sharp change in gas composition would appear more gradual with time, as diffusion blurred the boundary. So, are there sharp changes in the old ice? Lack of sharp changes might not prove anything…

[deleted]

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#127

Post by scythe »

benmmurphy wrote: post #41
scythe wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

># Therefore it is righteous to deplatform them. It's not "deplatforming" when your objection to someone speaking is about what they're saying. An organization pushing climate change denial should not be treated as credible because climate denial is not science . Anyone who has even the faintest experience with physicists -- anyone who has sat in a room full of them -- knows that there are thousands upon thousands of…

Lubos Motls is a theoretical physicist and is probably classified as a denier. Though, I think this definition is applied too liberally. In his latest blog post he claims there is 1-2 deg of warming per century and this from contributions by mankind (he doesn’t break down the proportion). He doesn’t think the warming will be an issue for 200 years. https://motls.blogspot.com/2019/12/rss-amsu-acceleration-of-...

This blog post is unhinged nonsense. Is that your defense?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luboš_Motl

> Since 2006, Motl's has focused less on fundamental physics research and instead on controversial questions in other, related fields. In these related fields, Motl is regarded as something of a crackpot.

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#128

Post by dragonwriter »

roenxi wrote: post #100
dtoma wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the use about a study on _correlation_ between these two things? You could also have a study on correlation between IQ and poverty, IQ and access to education... Not to mention, what's the point of IQ anyway? Maybe no one is picking up the subject because it would be a waste of time?

> What's the use about [a study] It's academics. Whether or not there is a use isn't really an important factor. It is enough to be agglomerating facts.

> It's academics. Whether or not there is a use isn't really an important factor.

It certainly is to many funding sources, and academic research isn't free.

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#129

Post by shard972 »

stephencanon wrote: post #120
tenpies wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even race, but just suggesting that evolutionary psychology is a valid scientific field can get you crucified in some circles. Somehow the human brain avoided all sexual selection forces, environmental pressures, and even difference between the sexes; but everything else in our bodies was at the complete mercy of these factors.

But evo psych isn't a valid scientific field; there's no way to go back and conduct experiments to validate hypotheses. It's a bunch of nonsense just-so stories that appeal to people's existing biases. It's horoscopes-and-crystals-woo dressed up in the language of science.

But we can test people who exist today who evolved independently over millenniums? Why is it nonsense to think that maybe humans who mostly existed in hunter gatherer societies for thousands of years would face different evolutionary pressures than agricultural societies?

Is it really insane to believe the Sentinelese have a difference in genetic ability to engage in abstract thinking compared ashkenazi jews?

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#130

Post by 0xADEADBEE »

barry-cotter wrote: post #112
allovernow wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell, look at the insane , wholly unscientific public crucification of James Watson for commenting, totally reasonably, on this very subject. Stripped of a Nobel prize for suggesting that two and two may equal four. Find me one credible media outlet which even questioned such treatment! Edit: sorry, I misread a headline about him losing the prize, it read stripped of "honors". Point still stands.

You can’t be stripped of a Nobel prize.

Looks like he sold his medal [0] to ameliorate his loss of earnings; perhaps that's to what GP was referring.

[0] - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/11261872/James-Wats...

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