3 ms·

I think you are missing my claim that the severity of the response seem to be due to him violating a sacred value and that this was a large part of the justific

I think you are missing my claim that the severity of the response seem to be due to him violating a sacred value and that this was a large part of the justification of the response, regardless of the merit of any other claim they could have made on the merits of the paper itself. My second follow-up claim is that if the response had been entirely based upon merits then the response would have not been anything remotely this severe. tptaceks claim is on the merits of the paper, which might or might not be correct to some degree, but does not address this concern with the response and how problematic it is that sacredness is now part of the academic review process. Ideas should be engaged with and critiqued through scholarship, and basing any rejection of scholarship partially or fully on an idea of sacredness is dangerous to the integrity of our scholarship. We need to have zero tolerance of this, and McKinnon’s situation or the reaction to Charles Murray before it shows how sacredness stops us from properly critiquing ideas through scholarship.

lifthrasiir 8y ago
So you are not concerned about the response itself; you are concerned that the response is too severe. How can that be relevant to my initial reply assuming that? And I think his response was severe exactly because sacredness had won over merits---reviewers accepting a sub-par paper for a political reason. He even explicitly stated that Mathematical Intelligencer could be a reasonable fit for the paper.
- asabjorn 8y ago
  My point is that science isn't clear cut, and by definition a minority dissenting opinion is what furthers science. Sometimes that dissent violates a sacred principle, such as Galileo and many others did. The concept of what is sacred evolved and now practically all of us believe in modifications that allow these ideas. Science is a process that aids this change. Therefore if a scientist when expressing an idea meet an opposition that; - involves sacredness partially or fully as a principle for rejecting it - threatens with severe social sanctions or exceptional actions if their favored sacredness isn't respected Then we have hit something where the ones that have these sacred principles should have to justify their arguments as papers as well. There needs to be some negative response to using sacredness partially or fully as a way to reject ideas, because that is how we protect the scientific process from the corruption due to flaws in human nature. If the only thing that stops that from happening is publishing the paper then we should err on publishing it when in doubt so that we can find the truth. If they believe so much that this is wrong, let them put their reputation behind their sacredness principles in another paper objecting to this paper and let us all criticize those as well.

lifthrasiir 8y ago

So you are not concerned about the response itself; you are concerned that the response is too severe. How can that be relevant to my initial reply assuming that? And I think his response was severe exactly because sacredness had won over merits---reviewers accepting a sub-par paper for a political reason. He even explicitly stated that Mathematical Intelligencer could be a reasonable fit for the paper.

asabjorn 8y ago
My point is that science isn't clear cut, and by definition a minority dissenting opinion is what furthers science. Sometimes that dissent violates a sacred principle, such as Galileo and many others did. The concept of what is sacred evolved and now practically all of us believe in modifications that allow these ideas. Science is a process that aids this change. Therefore if a scientist when expressing an idea meet an opposition that; - involves sacredness partially or fully as a principle for rejecting it - threatens with severe social sanctions or exceptional actions if their favored sacredness isn't respected Then we have hit something where the ones that have these sacred principles should have to justify their arguments as papers as well. There needs to be some negative response to using sacredness partially or fully as a way to reject ideas, because that is how we protect the scientific process from the corruption due to flaws in human nature. If the only thing that stops that from happening is publishing the paper then we should err on publishing it when in doubt so that we can find the truth. If they believe so much that this is wrong, let them put their reputation behind their sacredness principles in another paper objecting to this paper and let us all criticize those as well.