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'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

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Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#201

Post by frogger23127 »

specialist wrote: post #105
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're claiming that Watson's views of IQ, genetics, and race are scientific?

Absolutely. Your negative emotional reaction to scientific research is not a valid refutation of that research. Science is based on logic, not emotions. Facts do not care about your feelings.

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#202

Post by xyhopguy »

rsj_hn wrote: post #189
ajross wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

all genes on X is a meaningless statement unless all genes are involved in X... if you read the paper the authors seemingly put quite a bit of effort into the rigor of their model.

they used multiple validation cohorts, they controlled for environmental factors, they controlled for non-autosomal factors, applied multiple methods to boost the predictive performance of their model. adding more snps typically leads to an overfit and poor performing model on validation cohorts, which is why they use so much rigor and end up with usually 100-400 snps for each of the phenotypes.

in anycase they found a lot more than 10 SNPs, and they did more than one analysis in the paper.

Parent educational status is a significantly better predictor than the polygenic risk score for educational attainment. heritability (also known as r^2) for cognitive performance they estimated at an even lower ~7-10%.

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#203

Post by paganel »

allovernow wrote: post #98
barry-cotter wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re asking people to prove a negative, and also assuming that there’s no chilling effect as people learn that certain topics are not a good idea if you want a career. The premier example of robust, well documented science with vociferous opposition has to be intelligence. Besides scholars with a fiercer attachment to their politics than the truth like Gould you also have introductory psychology textbooks that go o…

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 would have think that him winning a Nobel prize would have made him aware that IQ tests are a scam, apparently he didn’t.

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#204

Post by Retric »

wutbrodo wrote: post #196
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?

You're asking for examples where science is robust and well-documented but has been _blocked_ from being published? You understand that this is effectively an unanswerable question, right? How would anyone here come to know about such findings if they existed, and further know that they well-documented _despite their not being published_? It's fundamentally unknowable how much science is being denied the imprimatur o…

Many academics are more than happy to raise a stink about suppression of other topics outside of traditional channels. Ex: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/23/agriculture-depart... So, it’s reasonable to expect examples of actual suppression.

If nothing else I expect someone to be making that argument on at least one paper somewhere. Though how much merit that’s worth depends on the paper.

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#205

Post by tiles »

wdbbdw wrote: post #145
0xADEADBEE wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

He never actually sold it [0]; a billionaire just paid him some cash instead and Watson got to keep his prize. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/dec/09/russian-bill...

Rather than public crucifixion, it looks like James Watson actually did quite well for himself?

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#206

Post by api »

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 thought conservatives were often sympathetic to taboos, extolling would be reformers to first explain why a taboo (or gate) is there before seeking to remove it.

So why do taboos against topics like race and gender biology exist?

Tell me why the gate is there.

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#207

Post by s_y_n_t_a_x »

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?

Dual Inheritance Theory

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

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#208

Post by s9w »

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?

people would be banned for a truthful answer for flamebaiting

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#209

Post by deogeo »

soyiuz wrote: post #183
barry-cotter wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 nons…

Apply principal component analysis to human DNA, and not only does race pop out, it even coincides with the 'socially constructed' categories [1,2,3]. A 2009 survey of physical anthropologists in Europe by Katarzyna Kaszycka found that 51% (N=123) recognize biological race - 33% in Western Europe, and 70% in Eastern Europe [4]. In a review of China's only biological anthropological journal Acta Anthropologica Sinica, 324 article from the 1982-2001 period that dealt with human variation. The researchers found that "all of the articles used the race concept and none of them questioned its value" [5].

[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Principal_compon...

[2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Individual-level_hum...

[3] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:3D_PCA_plot_of_Xavan...

[4] http://sci-hub.tw/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2009.01076.x

[5] https://lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/on-...

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#210

Post by neekleer »

One problem is that tenure and standing for established scientists no longer afford any of the expected protections. James Watson was not discredited but promptly fired and "disgraced" for stating a well-supported scientific finding in abrupt layman's terms for an interview. The minds of cancel culture would probably say they gave this dinosaur enough chances to fade away, but he wouldn't. If they do want scientists to be free to investigate the genetic and other bases of IQ further in order to find better answers, then it seems like they want scientists to first find a way to talk about it publicly without specifying the categories or where members of a category tend to fall on the scale.

There is a chilling effect on various lines of inquiry. For now, you can claim the information is out there, but any further writings could become more esoteric or limited. In the case of IQ, I don't think certain people want scientific answers as to why. They would rather assume IQ is highly malleable while they run social and economic experiments to find ways to equalize it and other factors that predict success.

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