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University Profs' Criticism Led to Retraction of Math Paper on Gender (2018)

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Re: University Profs' Criticism Led to Retraction of Math Paper on Gender (2018)

#81

Post by willis936 »

clucas wrote: post #78
willis936 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. All anthropological work about contemporary society seeks to inform public opinion which dictates policy.

They're not prescribing any policy in the paper. But you seem to be saying it's impossible to write about your observations of humans without having some ulterior political motive. This seems pretty tenuous, can you back it up? What policy do you think the authors are trying to secretly advocate for?

That is not at all what I said or even implied. You're extrapolating.

My point is that studies seek to inform on their areas of focus. Particle physics spending policy does not affect social issues. Anthropology of contemporary society does.

Re: University Profs' Criticism Led to Retraction of Math Paper on Gender (2018)

#82

Post by Pinegulf »

oifjsidjf wrote: post #32

Ironicaly if the Greater Male Variability Hypothesis is true this also means that many more men are more dumber than women since women are more centered towards the gauss average. Ironicaly this is never mentioned, they just see this is a "many more men can have a higher iq distrubution wise due to the male gauss tail stretching out further than womens, so this is sexist to say that men are smarter". This shows you h…

Regardless weather this hypothesis is true or false, I think the story is that even investigating the idea is somehow VERBOTEN!

Re: University Profs' Criticism Led to Retraction of Math Paper on Gender (2018)

#83

Post by Jensson »

Ma8ee wrote: post #42
zozbot234 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that right wing trolls will pick up literally anything for their own purposes. Trying to avoid that by playing politics about scientific matters is a fool's game, it only compounds the problem further.

Are you sure about that? I’m sure that you probably could find small but significant (in the statistical sense) differences of intelligence between races and genders if you tried hard enough. It would be strange otherwise. Would that knowledge make the world a better or worse place in the current political climate? What would your thoughts be about the motivation behind that research? Do you really think it would be…

Why doesn't good people fund good science where they get all these numbers for difference in intelligence etc? Currently the only sources for those numbers comes from biased people, so getting the real numbers out there should be a win and reduce racism, no? Because without those numbers people will view the difference as much bigger than they are, that is how bias works.

You fight bias with real numbers and statistics, for example whenever biased people talk about criminal immigrants we point to statistics showing that immigrants aren't very criminal, I don't see why this situation is different.

Re: University Profs' Criticism Led to Retraction of Math Paper on Gender (2018)

#84

Post by clucas »

willis936 wrote: post #81
clucas wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not prescribing any policy in the paper. But you seem to be saying it's impossible to write about your observations of humans without having some ulterior political motive. This seems pretty tenuous, can you back it up? What policy do you think the authors are trying to secretly advocate for?

That is not at all what I said or even implied. You're extrapolating. My point is that studies seek to inform on their areas of focus. Particle physics spending policy does not affect social issues. Anthropology of contemporary society does.

In what way would this paper affect social issues?

Edit: Someone asked "does this paper aim to influence policy" and you replied "of course." I'm asking how.

Re: University Profs' Criticism Led to Retraction of Math Paper on Gender (2018)

#85

Post by mgamache »

waffleiron wrote: post #30
mgamache wrote: post #15

Retracting a paper should only be done in select situations, like fraud, plagiarism or violating ethical guidelines. Was any of that present? If you retract papers that were just 'wrong' you would be retracting at least 50% of the work published in a lot of fields. Furthermore you would leave a blind spot in the research, other researchers might try and pursue those retracted ideas not realizing they are dead ends.

Then you could as well argue peer review should not look at methodology, but only for fraud, plagiarism and ethics violations. A retraction can in some cases be seem as a delayed failed (broader) peer review.

Methodology is part of fraud and maybe ethics. It's also required in the future for meta analysis. It might be that published papers disagree on the topic. If there are problems with methodology you can't really use the data as it's noise (at best).

Re: University Profs' Criticism Led to Retraction of Math Paper on Gender (2018)

#86

Post by civilized »

willis936 wrote: post #48
civilized wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High-energy physicists make up theories for the mechanisms behind phenomena that may or may not even exist all the time. One can question the utility of this but no one strings up such authors for heresy.

Theoretical physics does not aim to influence social policy.

Are we talking about the same paper here? I thought this paper discussed a possible mechanism for a hypothesis that they openly acknowledge may or may not be true. This may be fun mathematics but it doesn't seem like any basis to influence public opinion or social policy.

This paper would have definitely gone completely unnoticed, just a cute little theoretical exercise, if it hadn't been blown up into a public controversy by its critics.

Re: University Profs' Criticism Led to Retraction of Math Paper on Gender (2018)

#87

Post by raxxorraxor »

oifjsidjf wrote: post #32

Ironicaly if the Greater Male Variability Hypothesis is true this also means that many more men are more dumber than women since women are more centered towards the gauss average. Ironicaly this is never mentioned, they just see this is a "many more men can have a higher iq distrubution wise due to the male gauss tail stretching out further than womens, so this is sexist to say that men are smarter". This shows you h…

Most often it isn't the authors of that make the outrageous claims themselves, it is the selective interpretation of some of the readers. You could argue that they are begging the question but I don't think this is true either in modern academic settings.

Agreed that academia should have had some integrity and deny the first demands of studies getting removed. Even the bad ones that at least can serve as negative example if nothing else.

Re: University Profs' Criticism Led to Retraction of Math Paper on Gender (2018)

#88

Post by raxxorraxor »

tokai wrote: post #33
mgamache wrote: post #15

Retracting a paper should only be done in select situations, like fraud, plagiarism or violating ethical guidelines. Was any of that present? If you retract papers that were just 'wrong' you would be retracting at least 50% of the work published in a lot of fields. Furthermore you would leave a blind spot in the research, other researchers might try and pursue those retracted ideas not realizing they are dead ends.

A retracted paper doesn't disappear from the surface of the world. It is still indexed in commercial and institutional repositories, some of which will also have copies. Retracting is the right thing to do if the authors or editors want to show that they cannot vouch for what they have published.

This is clearly a case where it was redacted due to pressure. This is the classical and most relevant threat to science.

Re: University Profs' Criticism Led to Retraction of Math Paper on Gender (2018)

#89

Post by raxxorraxor »

willis936 wrote: post #48
civilized wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High-energy physicists make up theories for the mechanisms behind phenomena that may or may not even exist all the time. One can question the utility of this but no one strings up such authors for heresy.

Theoretical physics does not aim to influence social policy.

What social policy would you suggest a study like this could influence?
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