Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole • Hacker News Board

Re: Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole

#141

Post by thraway180306 » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 4:03 PM UTC

quilletteThrow wrote: post #129

alexandercrohde wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we separate the discussion of whether this paper has a superfluous proof in it from whether its conclusion is true? Additionally, the main point of the article is that that Mr. Hill feels his paper was pushed out of publication because of a political agenda. Let's also acknowledge the claim of political motivations corrupting academics is independent of the "superfluous proof" claim.

The paper doesn't have a conclusion, really. It describes a model and is supposedly intended to spur greater discussion. This is probably part of the reason the paper is written as it is: meant to be simple and easily accessible to people in other fields. The parent will need to work harder to dismiss the author...

What the parent charitably didn't stress is that this proof is the totality of mathematical work in this paper.

The rest is a stream of words.

As such it is a work of social science. It might even have been respectable in social science journal. Economists input a lot of assumptions into calculus 101 level equations and call that a "mathematical proof" of an economic theory.

If the author wanted this to be a interdisciplinary discussion, why drag it into a mathematical journal where actual mathematical truths are published?

Author says himself he was unable to formulate actual mathematical idea and recruited help. Why ask Tabachnikov, who is a geometer specializing in classical mechanics, instead of someone with like a clue about statistical modeling? He then compares his experience to one he had fighting in Vietnam... which only makes me wonder if that wasn't the point: to either succeed with a flag-planting diversion or be able to make that comparison and hero of himself anyways.

Re: Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole

#142

Post by n4r9 » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 4:05 PM UTC

darawk wrote: post #96

n4r9 wrote: post #88

> Google engineer James Damore suggested that several innate biological factors, including gender differences in variability, might help explain gender disparities in Silicon Valley hi-tech jobs. Did he? I read it when it came to light and briefly again just now and cannot see any mention of higher variability amongst men. Psychological differences, yes, but mostly in the slightly vague "women like people, men like t…

> I'd also question the premise that Damore was fired merely for bringing up psychological differences. He also bridged the is/ought gap by making several demands of Google's hiring practices. I don't think he made demands. He called for open discussion, and a reconsideration of aggressive recruitment of women.

Fair point, demand is too strong a term. He specifically attacked funding for programs for minorities or women, and any hiring practises with emphasis on diversity, as being "based on false assumptions generated by our biases" (supposedly the creeping "leftist" ideology that's taking over Google) and that they "can actually increase race and gender tensions" without backing this up.

I'm not going to argue against that in this post, but I think imo he went beyond simply highlighting biological differences.

Re: Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole

#143

Post by UncleMeat » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 4:06 PM UTC

jostmey wrote: post #8

DanAndersen wrote: post #4

Direct arxiv link to the preprint in question: https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04184 Kudos to the author for being brave enough to detail these events. Academia and the process of science has enough blind spots without needing activists in the mix to add their own. >“Several colleagues,” she wrote, had warned her that publication would provoke “extremely strong reactions” and there existed a “very real possibility that th…

It looks like a well written paper with some really cool ideas. Too bad about what happened to it

Why do you feel qualified to evaluate the paper? This is the risk. It is difficult for laypeople to properly evaluate a paper, so any nonsense when presented well can convince people.

Re: Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole

#144

Post by UncleMeat » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 4:07 PM UTC

darawk wrote: post #96

n4r9 wrote: post #88

> Google engineer James Damore suggested that several innate biological factors, including gender differences in variability, might help explain gender disparities in Silicon Valley hi-tech jobs. Did he? I read it when it came to light and briefly again just now and cannot see any mention of higher variability amongst men. Psychological differences, yes, but mostly in the slightly vague "women like people, men like t…

> I'd also question the premise that Damore was fired merely for bringing up psychological differences. He also bridged the is/ought gap by making several demands of Google's hiring practices. I don't think he made demands. He called for open discussion, and a reconsideration of aggressive recruitment of women.

[flagged]

Re: Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole

#145

Post by leiroigh » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 4:12 PM UTC

quilletteThrow wrote: post #129

alexandercrohde wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we separate the discussion of whether this paper has a superfluous proof in it from whether its conclusion is true? Additionally, the main point of the article is that that Mr. Hill feels his paper was pushed out of publication because of a political agenda. Let's also acknowledge the claim of political motivations corrupting academics is independent of the "superfluous proof" claim.

The paper doesn't have a conclusion, really. It describes a model and is supposedly intended to spur greater discussion. This is probably part of the reason the paper is written as it is: meant to be simple and easily accessible to people in other fields. The parent will need to work harder to dismiss the author...

I am not trying to dispute the paper's (implied) greater point: Larger variability of reproductive success favors larger variability of phenotype (in so far as phenotype is related to reproductive success); this can obviously apply to different sexes of the same species [1]; and it is trivial to cook up a toy model for this.

I am just saying that (1) this paper does not belong into a mathematical journal, and (2) the point looks almost too trivial to state.

I am a mathematician; I cannot say whether the paper belongs into a bio journal and whether its points are common knowledge in the bio community. I can only say that, had the arxiv-paper landed on my desk for peer review, I'd have recommended to reject it.

[1] By the conservation law that each offspring has one male and one female parent, differing "effective selectivity" and differing variability of reproductive success are kinda equivalent in the model; casting it in terms of "desirability" looks like a weird choice to me.

Re: Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole

#146

Post by thraway180306 » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 4:15 PM UTC

js8 wrote: post #132

leiroigh wrote: post #122

Skim the preprint https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04184 , especially section 7. The article is not fit for publication in a mathematical journal, it is cosplaying as math. To cite: > The following simple proposition may be well known, but since no reference is known to the author, a proof is included for completeness. >Proposition 7.1. N(µ, σ1) is more variable than N(µ, σ2) if and only if σ1 > σ2. >Proof: [lots of lines]…

"The article is not fit for publication in a mathematical journal, it is cosplaying as math." It's not up to you to decide, but up to the reviewers and editors of the journal where it was sent for publication. And according to what we know, it was accepted. I downvoted you, for this reason.

Sorry, but it is for everybody to decide. Reviewers don't have a sacred sanction and exclusive right to judge. Many a time in cases of plagiarism I worked through I've met with this argument from the accused authors. It boils down to that I have no right to question basic decency because only reviewers are entitled to pass judgement on that and they already did.

Also from the description, which is not impartial being by the author, it is admitted it was snuck into an online journal by one of its editors. We don't know anything about the nature of peer review in this case other than when the wider board of editors got a know of that, majority of them allegedly threatened to resign.

It is however a very bad form by the managing editor to publish another article in the place of the other, even if that one was decided to be published erroneously. NYJM journal page says he's on leave and ceded his duties to an interim replacement.

Re: Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole

#147

Post by LocalH » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 4:17 PM UTC

orangecat wrote: post #38

waterhouse wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a similar vein, there's a paper with the fascinating name "Thirty Years of Denying the Evidence on Gender Symmetry in Partner Violence: Implications for Prevention and Treatment". https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233717660_Thirty_Ye... "Method 7: Harass, Threaten, or Penalize Researchers Who Publish Evidence on Gender Symmetry ... The most extreme example was the experience of Susan Steinmetz. When she was…

Wow. That's especially amazing considering that the claim of similar domestic violence rates actually supports the progressive axiom that there are no innate psychological differences between men and women.

The extreme progressive axiom of today is "women good, men bad"

Re: Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole

#148

Post by shard972 » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 4:21 PM UTC

jancsika wrote: post #34

> Half his board, he explained unhappily, had told him that unless he pulled the article, they would all resign and “harass the journal” he had founded 25 years earlier “until it died.” Half a board of academics skulking to avoid controversy, ok. But becoming a hive of killer bees threatening to attacking their own hive ? That doesn't pass the smell test.

Seems about right to me. Have you turned on a television in the last few years? People are out for blood these days.

Re: Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole

#149

Post by haberman » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 4:22 PM UTC

geofft wrote: post #131

> “Our concern,” [the NSF] explained, “is that [this] paper appears to promote pseudoscientific ideas that are detrimental to the advancement of women in science, and at odds with the values of the NSF.” I think this is a rational position to take. In particular I would argue that whether or not this paper is one of them, I can conceive of some papers that the NSF should distance itself from quite rationally. Suppose…

> I think the NSF would be justified in quashing this paper early instead of letting it play out in the marketplace of ideas, because of the risks to the marketplace of ideas itself if the paper is put to the debate it otherwise deserves

What about the risk to the marketplace of ideas if certain ideas can be quashed by authorities for being distasteful? Galileo being the canonical example of this.

> it is not inherently unscientific for the NSF to ever object to a paper that is at odds with its values.

Science investigates empirical facts about the world. How can a fact be at odds with a value?

Facts describe the world as it is. Values describe what we think is important, and how we ought to act. Discovering a fact about the natural world does not inherently say anything about what is right, moral, or good.

Re: Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole

#150

Post by brenschluss » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 4:22 PM UTC

yorwba wrote: post #112

brenschluss wrote: post #31

The paper seems to have some egregious and basic errors. Take a look at the paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04184.pdf On page 2, it says (in discussing Special Case 1): "If sex A is relatively selective and will mate only with the top most desirable quarter of sex B, then all of the next generation will be offspring of the more variable subpopulation B1" However, if you look at the histogram in Figure 1, it's clear…

> It would be absolutely incorrect to say that "all of the next generation will be offspring of the more variable subpopulation B1". No, that's exactly correct. The example is set up so that no individual from B2 gets to mate with A. Therefore, the next generation only consists of offspring of B1. (I think you understand that, since you say "sex A is choosing most desirable mates who happened to be part of the subpop…

This is helpful, thank you.

> If B2 ever got to reproduce, it would have B2 offspring, while B12 would produce B11 or B12.

Okay, this is clear regarding the paper’s assumption of heritability of variability. Assuming that variability is a completely static characteristic innate to a population and perfectly heritable seems to me such a simplistic assumption as render most of the conclusions ineffective or correct only within a narrow set of assumptions.

After all, every GA would never work if this was the case.