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'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

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Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#181

Post by wesleywt »

ratsmack wrote: post #80
alasdair_ wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm not suggesting choosing between left and right, only pointing out that the bias is pervasive and undeniable. Can you point to specific examples of this where the science is actually robust and well documented but has somehow been blocked from being published or otherwise stopped due to this pervasive bias?

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.

Because using a flawed test to make racist generalisations about Africans, who are the most genetically diverse racial group is not a good idea?

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#182

Post by JamesBarney »

beaner wrote: post #29
triceratops wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who are these people who feel that simply listening to someone speak is equivalent to endorsing them? There are certain topics that are so settled, that to engage with anyone with a contrary view is tantamount to giving them credibility and a platform to reach the uninformed. Some topics simply don't have "both sides" in any meaningful sense. Flat eartherism, Holocaust denial, and antivaxxerism are ones that immedi…

Yeah but climate science is complicated by the fact that it is overwhelmingly political. You could say the same thing about geocentrism, germs [1], fat vs sugars, etc. - which all turned out to be false, given time and scrutiny. Scientists have to learn the science to understand it, and that means encountering it from all perspectives. As new generations of people learn, they all have to go through it all again. To n…

Geocentrism wasn't really a scientific theory, because we didn't really have scientific theories yet. This was just a thing people believed.

Fats vs sugars I don't know what you're referring to, but it hasn't really ever been a scientific theory.

The germs article about a discovery in the 1800's. And if that is a allegory about climate change, the doctor's who denied germ theory are the climate deniers.

> Plus if denialism is wrong, then there should be nothing to worry about anyway. Assuming scientists are scientific, they will consider it, consider other evidence, and come to the correct conclusion.

Scientists have already considered it and come to the correct conclusion. And if climate change denialism is wrong (which pretty much every scientist who has studied the subject believes) and we choose not to act that could cause billions to trillions of dollars in harm and many lost lives.

Also climate change science is pretty simple. If you take a green house and fill it with carbon dioxide it will get hotter. Do the same thing to a planet and it will get hotter. Not to mention the global temperature record has told a very consistent sorry over the last decades of warming.

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#183

Post by soyiuz »

barry-cotter wrote: post #119
Fishysoup wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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. This isn’t true. Ashkenazi Jews and East Asians have higher IQ scores than whites. Male and female scores on IQ tests are identical by construction. They have different scores on the component sub tests. http://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997mainstrea... Mainstream Science on Intelligen…

I suggest going back to school on your basic terms. Skin color taxonomies such as "white" and "black" are weak proxies for genetic diversity. Races are not taught this way anymore. This article in Scientific American puts it well in summarizing that "the mainstream belief among scientists is that race is a social construct without biological meaning."^1 "Ashkenazi Jews ... have higher IQ scores than whites" is a nonsensical statement from that perspective. You are mixing categories of ancestry and skin color. The authors of Bell Curve made the same basic mistake and were rightly skewered for it.

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

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#184

Post by turk73 »

allovernow wrote: post #19

While this explicit cancel culture has been slow to arrive, this is exactly the kind of traditionally left leaning activism which has gradually come to infest almost all of academia (and to a lesser but growing extent, industry). The result is an extremely strong, emergent cultural pressure against certain results and certain questions, which has been holding back a wide range of fields and ensuring pursuit of severe…

A true scientist, a true intellectual, must follow the evidence wherever it takes them, and not the other way around.

It causes me great concern, and my teeth grind, when I hear phrases such as "settled science" of which there is not such thing at all and never was. It is foolish, anti-intellectual drivel, then? Humanity can do better, but we must put these children to bed first. Otherwise our extinction will be sad conclusion.

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#185

Post by soyiuz »

Animats wrote: post #141
nitwit005 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A racial label doesn't tell you much of anything about their underlying ancestry or genetics. Here in the US you can easily find people who identify as white or black who have a mix of European, African and Native American ancestry. There are people looking for genes influencing intelligence, which is a more practical thing to look for.

It's been tried using 23andMe genetic data for over a million people.[1] No one gene seems to have a large effect, “Yet when we analyze the combined effects of many genetic variants, taken together they can predict the length of a person’s formal education as well as demographic factors.” [1] https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/massive-study-on-t...

Or, it might be evidence of systematic racism. Would it surprise you that the genetic bouquet associated with people of color would also correlate with a long history of racism, which includes poverty and denial of education?

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#186

Post by turk73 »

alasdair_ wrote: post #56
allovernow wrote: post #19

While this explicit cancel culture has been slow to arrive, this is exactly the kind of traditionally left leaning activism which has gradually come to infest almost all of academia (and to a lesser but growing extent, industry). The result is an extremely strong, emergent cultural pressure against certain results and certain questions, which has been holding back a wide range of fields and ensuring pursuit of severe…

>I'm not suggesting choosing between left and right, only pointing out that the bias is pervasive and undeniable. Can you point to specific examples of this where the science is actually robust and well documented but has somehow been blocked from being published or otherwise stopped due to this pervasive bias?

I was writing my dissertation on Internet privacy right as 9/11 took place. Talk about a subject suddenly becoming taboo! It basically ruined my academic career because I went through with it despite the warnings from my adviser to tone it down. Everyone was scared of their own shadow back then and couldn't back the statism more if they had to! PATRIOT Act, Know Your Customer, I lost everything. Man that was a hard thing to go through. Screw those damn fools who did this to us and keep doing it even now with their mass surveillance.

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#187

Post by soyiuz »

toasterlovin wrote: post #157
nitwit005 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A racial label doesn't tell you much of anything about their underlying ancestry or genetics. Here in the US you can easily find people who identify as white or black who have a mix of European, African and Native American ancestry. There are people looking for genes influencing intelligence, which is a more practical thing to look for.

> A racial label doesn't tell you much of anything about their underlying ancestry or genetics. It absolutely does, which is why medical practitioners ask for race. Different races have different susceptibility to various medical conditions, for genetic reasons (even if we don’t understand the causal mechanisms yet).

Please review your basic understanding of race as per my comments above. If you still think there are five races or whatever, you are living way in the past century.

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#189

Post by rsj_hn »

ajross wrote: post #173
xyhopguy wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0147-3

tl;dr for those who didn't read: they looked at genes (SNP's really) instead of "race" and found... a 7-10% correlation with cognitive performance (that is, 7-10% of the difference in individuals scores is determined by the differences in the genome subset studied). Yet you look at "race" (a social construct that itself correlates at best with about 50% actual genetics) and see a much larger effect. That by itself sh…

Wow, that's misleading. They found specific 10 SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) which they identified as relevant to intelligence and for these 10, a 7-10% effect. This type of research is very useful for trying to identify specific genes responsible for X but not for the effect of all genes on X.

The generally accepted range for genetic influences is much higher -- say 50% to 2/3 although we know little as to which genes do what when it comes to something like intelligence.

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#190

Post by soyiuz »

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…

"East Africans are crushingly dominant in marathon running." To be more precise, East Africans from East Africa. The effect of biology dissipates in East African communities living abroad.
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