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Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole

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

#231

Post by wegs »

verylongname wrote: post #165

Assuming the basic facts claimed by the author are correct, this is really bad. I'm not referring to the behavior attributed to the U Chicago professor and her husband, either. That might be exaggerated by the author (the account is only one side of the story) and, even if it isn't, strong feelings are not uncommon when it comes to controversial topics. Systems should work even when individuals or small groups of peo…

Meh. This sort of thing happens all the time. It gets hushed up pretty well. What's unique here is author came forward with his story.

Academia is in sore need of reform. Especially elite academia has learned branding matters more than scientific truth.

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

#232

Post by tomp »

geofft wrote: post #133
maxnoe wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, reality is under no obligation to care about your feelings. I don't like the idea men live shorter than woman, but that's reality. Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. And nobody here said that women are less capable than men. The hypothesis was, that the distribution for some traits for men has more kurtosis, so while the mean is similar, there are more outli…

Reality is under no obligation to care about your feelings, yes. But that does not imply: 1. that humans are not obligated to care about each other's feelings, either. If you are pursuing a course of research that is purely hurtful and has no perceived positive impact, nobody is making you pursue it. (I don't think this paper is in this category, to be clear.) 2. that an idea is more likely to be true simply because…

Nobody is claiming (2). IMO (1) is plain wrong, I believe there is positive utility in pursuit and subsequent discovery of the truth, even if such truth is "purely hurtful" - it still allows us to structure our society and plan our future better (i.e. readjust our goals so that they are realistic (not impossible / in conflict with reality) and figure out better ways to achieve them), taking strictly more (and better) information into account.

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

#233

Post by tomp »

kupiakos wrote: post #173
js8 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstood her. She was saying that being transgender in that role was central to the character. It was the point of the movie. However, whether a character is black or not doesn't really matter (anymore). That's why we don't use blackface masks anymore. In a sense, the minority community brings it to itself. If you highlight how you're not different, then you cannot complain that stories will be writt…

I'm not really seeing that part of the argument. From what I can tell, the crux of her argument differentiating it between blackface is that being trans is a theatrical act. She literally says "I think the performative nature of transgenderism itself should allow a woman like Scarlett Johansson to play a transgender person." She bases that argument on the false notion that being trans is an act. Anybody who says that…

So you're basically saying that a non-disabled person isn't allowed to act as a disabled person? How would you shoot a movie about slavery in the US, given that there are no more slaves alive? Can an actor play a US president, given that his/her job is an actor, not a president?

I find your position laughably ridiculous.

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

#234

Post by todd8 »

frickinLasers wrote: post #183
Zanni wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weightlifting is an excellent example. It's not controversial in the least to say that men (on the whole) are stronger than women. And the strongest man will almost certainly be stronger than the strongest woman. But that doesn't mean a particular woman can't out lift a particular man. I see this all the time at my CrossFit box, where there are women who regularly put more weight on a barbell than I can manage. I'm n…

Perhaps it's not controversial in your circles. I realize this is anectodal, but I've dated two women pursuing a PhD in a STEM field, both smarter than me in many ways. The second I began to suggest the reason for my greater physical strength might be biological in origin, they both became completely irrational. They somehow believe biology plays no part in the differences between men and women--or maybe that there i…

I’ve had similar, surprising conversations with well educated women who believe that differences in physical strength between men and women have no biological basis. Maybe they were taught that; they didn’t have first hand experience training as an athlete in a strength related sport.

My daughter, who is very strong and is stronger than her brothers, wouldn’t even compete if she had to go up against men in her sport, powerlifting. It’s very obvious in that sport that sex related hormones make a difference.

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

#235

Post by rdtsc »

api wrote: post #170
antidesitter wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are ambivalent about whether this article should have been censored in the way it was?

We have political movements that are committed to removing basic human rights from 50% of the population, so sure. Maybe when Roosh doesn't have millions of followers we can discuss this stuff openly. It's an argument for scientific guilds in areas like this. God I hate writing this. Ten years ago I would have totally had the opposite opinion. That was back when I thought we'd moved past these things. Recent outpouri…

> Let me give you a different example. Let's say there's a study that shows a weak link between a vaccine and autism. If it were published, it would be amplified far out of proportion

Except if the paper had been effectively published then deleted, wouldn't it do the opposite? That won't be an incentive to duplicate or prove it wrong by other scientists, but those who'd use it to support their conspiracy theories would be even more convinced they were right all along because "Look, they censored the paper. Clearly they are trying to hide the truth. That shows we've been right all along".

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

#236

Post by worder »

crawfordcomeaux wrote: post #186
api wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you are right, but all it takes is a visit to any large social media site or 30 minutes of watching political news ( any political news) to renew my cynicism. I really don't see anyone anywhere who is even interested in the truth. People want their side to win for non-rational emotional reasons. They're only interested in what truths can be cherry picked or spun to support their cause. Truths that don't suppor…

Absolutely. The rise of Trump and the alt-right shows how shame is an unsustainable mechanism for social change, though most people in the US still seem to be applying shame/outrage. Trump and Russian bots have also shown how emotionally reactive we are, as a people. I see this as the result of us not teaching emotional responsibility and boundaries as part of normative cultures. Learning and practicing nonviolent co…

>Learning and practicing nonviolent communication

You mean you stopped beating people up?

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

#237

Post by jessriedel »

thraway180306 wrote: post #166
jessriedel wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Retracted? Yes, but only after an investigation, the results of which would then be made public by way of explanation. Just to clarify: when papers are retracted, they are not normally erased from the database and replaced with an explanation. See this Nature paper for an example; the entire paper is kept available online, just as before, except that the words "RETRACTED" is stamped on each PDF page https://www.nat…

Sorry, but the ArXiv does have a moderation team and stuff is being removed. Alike, most online journals remove stuff by wholly replacing it with a retraction notice. Journals printed on paper issue retraction letters and leave it at that, but some also do restrict online access afterwards. What no journal does is to replace erroneously published article with another entirely unrelated one in-place. This is a very po…

> Alike, most online journals remove stuff by wholly replacing it with a retraction notice

Can you provide a copy, or even examples? I can pull up dozens of Science, Nature, and Physical Review retracted articles to support my point. If those huge families of journals behave as I say, on what basis are you claiming "most" journal don't?

> What no journal does is to replace erroneously published article with another entirely unrelated one in-place.

Did anyone ever suggest this was the case?

> the ArXiv does have a moderation team and stuff is being removed

I know several members of the moderation team. They of course reject some articles at the time of submission, but I'm not aware of any being retracted and un-published after being posted publically. Can you please link to such a retraction, or to evidence of this in the Internet Archive?

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

#238

Post by darawk »

n4r9 wrote: post #142
darawk wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 tha…

What he was saying was that if these biological differences are real, then we ought to expect unequal representation in engineering of women. And therefore, diversity programs that aim for equal representation are misguided and doomed to failure.

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

#239

Post by DominikPeters »

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]…

Interestingly, this has changed over the various versions. In v1 on arXiv, this statement is presented without proof (as Example 2.2). In v3, it is Example 3.3 and has received an extra sentence with a proof hint. In v5 (and still in v7 which is current) it has turned into a Proposition. So it seems likely to me that reviewers complained that there wasn't a proof in previous versions.

[v1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04184v1.pdf

[v3] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04184v3.pdf

[v5] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04184v5.pdf

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

#240

Post by jessriedel »

jessriedel wrote: post #157
abecedarius wrote: post #79

This seems new, and passed over in all the comments so far: > None of them had ever heard of a paper in any field being disappeared after formal publication. Rejected prior to publication? Of course. Retracted? Yes, but only after an investigation, the results of which would then be made public by way of explanation. But simply disappeared? Never. If a formally refereed and published paper can later be erased from th…

> Retracted? Yes, but only after an investigation, the results of which would then be made public by way of explanation. Just to clarify: when papers are retracted, they are not normally erased from the database and replaced with an explanation. See this Nature paper for an example; the entire paper is kept available online, just as before, except that the words "RETRACTED" is stamped on each PDF page https://www.nat…

(Note: in the case on the arXiv, the process is called "withdrawal" rather than "retraction" since it's only ever done by authors themselves, and only on a voluntary basis. The arXiv does not have an editorial team who would make retractions.)
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