But he called the piece "excellent and fair to all sides" and was pretty gracious in response to Cuddy's criticisms and how the NYT portrayed him. I honestly wa

But he called the piece "excellent and fair to all sides" and was pretty gracious in response to Cuddy's criticisms and how the NYT portrayed him. I honestly wasn't a huge fan of the article but re-reading it after a bit of sleep, and knowing that Gelman thought it was strong, I appreciated the issues it brought up. I love (genuinely, non-ironically) that you reconsidered the merits of the article after reading Gelman's positive assessment of it. A possibly underappreciated benefit of Gelman's unabashed approach to criticism is that when he writes "I thought Dominus’s article was excellent and fair to all sides", it's reasonable to assume that he actually believes this rather than just pretending to "make nice" with scripted double-talk. His willingness to criticize things that he sees as wrong makes it possible (for me, and apparently you) to trust his stated opinion of things he sees as right. And I don't think sexism can be dismissed outright, if people find it safer to talk shit to a woman compared to a man. You prefaced it with an "if", but do you think it is common that "people find it safer to talk shit to a woman compared to a man"? I'd guess that at this point most male academics would be significantly more reluctant to criticise in print the work of a female colleague than that of a fellow male. I see Gelman as trying to adhere (possibly recklessly) to a gender-blind approach to criticism, and find this refreshing.