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'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

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Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#331

Post by deogeo »

wdbbdw wrote: post #327
deogeo wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dr. Francis is either unfamiliar with, or being profoundly misleading of, expert opinion, as surveys show: "In the current study, EQCA experts wereasked what percentage of the US Black-White differences in IQ is, in their view, due to environment or genes. In general, EQCA experts gave a 50–50 (50% genes, 50% environment) response with a slight tilt to the environmental position (51% vs. 49%; Table 3). When EQCA expe…

While the quote you pulled from that survey seems to contradict what Dr. Collins said in his statement, the two sentences before that one seem more problematic for the idea that there's even a difference in IQ that can be attributed to race: "There was little to no support for separate subgroup norms for different racial, ethnic, or social groups or for people with different nationalities (natives vs. immigrants), wi…

> Looking at the SD in the survey responses suggests that the position of the researchers polled in this survey wasn't accurately represented by the quote you posted.

There's one or two charts in the article, showing how many experts believe the IQ gap is 0% genetic, how many believe it's 10%, and so on, up to 100%. There's a large spike at 0%, then a noisy, mostly equal distribution up to 100%, where it drops back down to near zero - i.e. almost no hereditarian believes environment plays no role. So yes, there's no consensus, but the view that IQ is hereditary is well represented among experts - moreso than the opposite.

The Flynn effect disproves nothing, much like the increasing average height doesn't imply height isn't heritable. As I don't believe IQ is 100% determined by genes, there's any number of explanations that are consistent with heritable intelligence - changes in culture, environment, upbringing, nutrition, air quality, levels of athleticism, etc. For example:

"Similarly, researchers have shown that differences in the ways boys and girls spend their time (e.g., playing with Legos) (Bornstein et al., 1999), toy selection (Goldstein, 1994), and computer videogame experience (Quaiser-Pohl et al., 2006) are responsible for differences in their spatial abilities, also loaded on g."

> The example you use to critique the video I posted is also not very generous

The example was to show the video author was being deliberately misleading, going out of his way to hide data that opposes his conclusion. Meaning everything else in the video is probably similarly cherry-picked.

> what is intelligence anyway and how can it be measured, if at all?

I don't see how minor fuzzyness in the definition of intelligence casts any doubt on clearly defined IQ scores, especially when IQ has been shown to be such a useful and important measure - IQ is very predictive for success at other tasks also considered to require intelligence, such as academic achievement - this is referred to as being g-loaded. Moreover, the more g-loaded a test is, the more heritable performance on it is [2].

> Another relevant question is what exactly is the scientific support for "race" as anything other than a meaningless label[0]?

Race is simply how closely related people are, at a very coarse level, where clusters correspond to races. See this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22052174

[1] https://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/11/13/stephen-j-ceci/signi...

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4437459/

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#332

Post by toomim »

fsh wrote: post #230
toomim wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they are part of the National Association of Scholars. It was founded in 1987.

The "real" NAS (National Academy of Sciences) was founded in 1863. Their choice of name is certainly suspicious.

It's not right to say that only one is real. That's biased thinking, and shows that you're trying to push politics rather than find the truth.

Furthermore, the organization you're talking about isn't even NAS -- it's NASEM: the "National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine". [1,2]

[1] https://nationalacademies.org/

[2] https://twitter.com/TheNASEM

This was all described in the article.

Furthermore, there are a bunch of other groups with the acronym NAS:

    Nationaal Arbeids-Secretariaat", a trade union federation in the Netherlands from 1893 to 1940
    National Academy of Songwriters, a music industry association for songwriters
    National Apprenticeship Service, the official UK government body responsible for apprenticeship coordination
    National Archives of Scotland, in Edinburgh, Scotland
    National Association of Scholars, an educational organization based in the United States
    National Association of Schoolmasters, a former trade union representing teachers in the UK
    National Association of Seadogs, a Nigerian confraternity
    National Audubon Society, an American environmental organization dedicated to conservancy
    National Autistic Society, an autism-related charity in the United Kingdom
    National Salvation Front (South Sudan), a South Sudanese militant group
    Nautical Archaeology Society, a British archaeology charity
    Nord Anglia International School Dubai
These are all very real.

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#333

Post by dang »

Nasrudith wrote: post #302
growlist wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'The long march through the institutions (German: der lange Marsch durch die Institutionen) is a slogan coined by student activist Rudi Dutschke to describe his strategy for establishing the conditions for revolution: subverting society by infiltrating institutions such as the professions.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_long_march_through_the_ins...

So the diabolical strategy of living their life, doing good work to their conscious, and the qualified replacing those who die of natural causes? History's greatest monster right there! That is a downright sinister use of moving the goal posts that effectively calls not actively ensuring suppression of all inevitable all succession related mutations an evil. Since how else do they hope to maintain a status quo post-m…

Please don't take HN threads even further into ideological flamewar. That's the wrong way down a one-way street.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#334

Post by dang »

growlist wrote: post #310
Nasrudith wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the diabolical strategy of living their life, doing good work to their conscious, and the qualified replacing those who die of natural causes? History's greatest monster right there! That is a downright sinister use of moving the goal posts that effectively calls not actively ensuring suppression of all inevitable all succession related mutations an evil. Since how else do they hope to maintain a status quo post-m…

[flagged]

Please don't take HN threads even further into ideological flamewar. That's the wrong way down a one-way street.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#335

Post by klyrs »

tgv wrote: post #320
klyrs wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The egregious and apparently deliberate sampling bias, and begging the question, are factors that cannot be ignored in this case. They tip the scales from this being a mistake made in good faith, to this being a politically motivated bad-faith effort. Science makes room for mistakes, retractions and replication efforts. But the paper in question was unscientific to the core. Authors who engage in fraud are regularly…

But it is extremely rare that a university publicly disavows its staff. I mean: let's talk sample bias. So many psychological studies are run with just psychology students as subjects, certainly in cognitive science. There are also quite a few studies using questionable sources like Amazon Turk. Did anybody ever get reprimanded over this from higher up? I've only saw them receiving praise for yet another article publ…

> But it is extremely rare that a university publicly disavows its staff.

And they didn't even do that in this case. They retracted the study because it was flawed. The researcher has had an opportunity to revise the study, which happened; updates in [1]. The retraction spells all this out; here's an excerpt, my emphasis added. You'll note that the researcher didn't lose her job, she just had to do a little more work to address concerns raised. Universities have to do this once and a while, when they publicize faulty research -- retract it, and if the researcher is willing to patch issues, post a revision.

> The University feels it is important to make the following three points about this incident:

> 1. This is not about academic freedom, as some news outlets have made it out to be. This faculty member — and, indeed, all Brown faculty members — have the right to conduct research on topics they choose. This is the case even for research that leads them into politically controversial territory. Brown gives its full support to this faculty member to conduct her research and publish her work.

> 2. This is about academic standards. Brown can publicize only a small subset of the great research conducted by our faculty. As a research institution, we feel we must ensure that work that is featured on the University website conforms to the highest academic standards. Given the concerns raised about research design and methods, the most responsible course of action was to stop publicizing the work published in this particular instance. We would have done this regardless of the topic of the article.

> 3. Academic freedom and inclusion are not mutually exclusive. This paper has attracted wide attention due to its politicized nature. Brown is steadfast in conveying to people who object to the content of the research that we stand by academic freedom, and will not do anything to thwart this (or any) faculty member’s research.

This is the problem with publications like The Federalist and Huffington Post: they mix editorializing and fact without making a clear distinction between the two. They've got agendas, and their primary focus is on reader enragement.

[1] https://news.brown.edu/articles/2018/08/gender

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#337

Post by pochamago »

spicymaki wrote: post #161
barry-cotter wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Funny how environment is continually dropped from the conversation of race in favor of heritability. You note that there is now East African dominance in marathon running. That has not always been the case however. As East Africans were provided opportunity to compete on a level playing field their talents whether inherited, conditioned by demand, and/or environmental were demonstrated. Now there is intense competiti…

I don't believe the person you're replying to said that discrimination is a fantasy, but it's not always the answer either. It's important to study the situations so that we can identify when each is the culprit or how much of a factor they are.

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#338

Post by dang »

neekleer wrote: post #210

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…

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22051823.

The race IQ war is never going to go anyplace good for this site, and it attracts hard-core ideologues who proceed to do hard-core ideological battle, which is off topic here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#339

Post by dang »

anglercut wrote: post #294
nl wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Watson is after some narrow, technical relationship between a particular gene and a particular ability. Instead, he make wide, unconstrained and unscientific generalisations which can only be defended by shrinking what he says. To quote Watson: “I think now we’re in a terrible sitution where we should pay the rich people to have children.. if we don’t encourage procreation of wealthier citizens, IQ leve…

[flagged]

We don't want hard-core ideological battle on this site, so please don't do it here. It's off topic, because devoid of intellectual curiosity, and is sure to drive away the users who want to use HN as intended.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#340

Post by elfexec »

n4r9 wrote: post #134
elfexec wrote: post #51

Aren't a lot of topics already taboo in science/academia? I'd say cancel culture has been in science for a while now. Afterall it is part of academia. Didn't a female brown university professor's study on transgenders get "canceled" because it offended some people not too long ago? Didn't Bret Weinstein, a biology professor, at some college in oregon get "canceled" not too long ago? Didn't Jordan Peterson get "cancel…

Not sure about the first example, but Bret Weinstein was fired because his behaviour didn't reflect his employer's values, not because of the science he was doing. I also don't think Peterson is having particular difficulty doing scientific work, nor is the actual research he does "taboo".

> Not sure about the first example

If you are that well versed in the lives of weinstein and peterson, you most definitely are aware the first. But being as woke as you are, you probably can't admit it to yourself.

> but Bret Weinstein was fired because his behaviour didn't reflect his employer's values, not because of the science he was doing

Weinstein wasn't fired, he resigned after getting a settlement from his university since the university couldn't provide for his safety from racist mobs.

> I also don't think Peterson is having particular difficulty doing scientific work, nor is the actual research he does "taboo".

You don't think? I suspect Peterson would disagree. You sure his research into political correctness, authoritarianism, identity politics, evils of postmodernism, etc aren't "taboo"? If it wasn't taboo, jordan peterson wouldn't be so well known. He'd be just another no-name professor somewhere in canada.

Instead of saying racism, hate and cancel culture is bad, you are defending racism, hate and cancel culture. Which may get support and upvotes in echo chambers online, but is laughed at in the real world. Reality will ultimately trump fantasy.

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