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Thanks, I'm strongly in favor of this debate existing so I'm glad that site exists. As I read it, that site does not rebut any of the claims of particlesforjus

by geofft 8y ago

Thanks, I'm strongly in favor of this debate existing so I'm glad that site exists. As I read it, that site does not rebut any of the claims of particlesforjustice. It attacks a few sources used by particlesforjustice in defense of the claim that discrimination exists in STEM and potentially explains the reason why some groups perform more poorly. Granting, for argument, that those attacks are valid and the sources don't claim what they're being used to claim, that still does not rebut Strumia's argument. Indeed, justiceforstrumia says, "They object to Strumia's talk for 'mining' and 'misrepresenting' data, but their own case suffers from comparable flaws." In other words, perhaps Strumia's argument was flawed and so is the rebuttal; that still leaves us nowhere. The remainder of justiceforstrumia is a digression about James Damore, tribalistic thinking, why socialism is bad, horseshoe theory, the "war on gamers" (I'm not making that up, that's the exact title of a source offered by justiceforstrumia), and the importance of falsifiability. This would be interesting if at some point we got to the question of whether Strumia's claims were falsifiable or not, and whether particlesforjustice had in fact managed to prove them false, but the site never gets there. Assuming the sources offered by particlesforjustice in claims 1, 3, and 4 are invalid, claims 2, 5, 6, 7, and 8 still stand. A coherent rebuttal would either say why those claims are invalid, or why those claims are inaccurate depictions of what Strumia said. Saying "You can't say person X's claims wrong, actually the whole ideology of science is broken and falsifiability is important" is not scientific debate; it is itself ideology. Saying "Here, let us determine whether these claims are false, through analysis and argument of the claims themselves and not their speakers" would be scientific debate. (Who wrote this site, btw? Is it from a scientist, or just someone random on the internet? It doesn't seem like it's written with the same understanding of scientific debate as particlesforjustice, so I'm trying to make sense of it.)

tptacek 8y ago
Just a data point: the authors of ParticlesForJustice are 18 people from the field all with research affiliations, and the cosigners include 491 scientists with university and research lab affiliations --- this doesn't count the (vast) number of "additional signatures", many of which also have university high energy physics affiliations. There are 2x as many signatures on "ParticlesForJustice", and they appear to be of significantly higher quality.
mpweiher 8y ago
> I'm strongly in favor of this debate Same here. However, the problem with this "debate" is that only one side of the debate is generally allowed and the burden of proof is dramatically different. For one side, "you can't disprove <vague allegations/ideas>" is sufficient. For the other, even the most overwhelming empirical evidence is not sufficient, will get you vilified, branded a sexist and potentially lose your job. > As I read it, that site does not rebut any of the claims of particlesforjustice. While I don't agree this is true, if anything, the reason would be that, as I wrote before, there actually is nothing substantive in the particlesforjustice site that one could rebut. This is probably why justiceforstrumia had a digression on falsifiability etc. To back up a bit, Strumia's presentation[1], was a reaction to the dominant narrative that the low representation of women in physics is due entirely due to horrific levels of sexism against women. These are quotes from his intro slide: -------------------------------------- “All women share the same kind of sad and unfair experiences since the be- ginning of their scientific career”. “Mansplaning. Gaslighting. White Male Hetero Privilege. Sexual harassment at epidemic levels. Micro-aggressions”. Men mobilize their masculinity supporting ... men in ways that advance careers. You don’t see? You have (unconscious) bias and steal credit to women. “Eval- uators tend to favour men”. “Scientific quality is a gender social construction”. “Excellence is the current buzzword. Gender equality should achieve the same”. “I have a dream: that ... excellence in science is no more distorted and sweletred by gender stereotypes or creeping discrimination”. “Positive discrimination and gender mainstreaming”, “We have to help women at all levels ... to academic positions”, “programmes for women ... challenged in court for discrimination” [vs men]. “People and culture can be obstacles for change”. -------------------------------------- So all he is trying to do is rebut these pretty horrific and vile accusations. Accusations that I am familiar with, they are pretty much the same ones levelled against men in tech. His counter-theory is that physics is not sexist or racist or nationalist but "open to good people from any background" Given that starting point, we pretty much have to take "Strumia's thesis" as the default. That is, unless there is compelling evidence for the charge of sexism, we need to assume that it isn't sexism. This also means that he doesn't have to conclusively prove his point, it's enough to offer alternative explanations for the observed phenomena. And he's pretty clear that that is what he is doing: he says explicitly that there are two explanations, one that it's all horrible sexism, the other that it isn't, and that he will present evidence that the second explanation is sufficient to explain the observations. I never saw a claim that the first conclusion is impossible, just that the second explanation is sufficient, and therefore the first one unnecessary. Which brings us back to particlesforjustice. As far as I can tell, all their points are, with minor variations, of the form: "but Strumia failed to take into account <some noun>, therefore his conclusion is invalid. There are two main problems with this: 1. No argument that takes this form is relevant to his argument, which was not "I have conclusive and final proof that this is the reason and there can be no other", but rather "I have a simpler explanation that explains the observation". So this alone would be sufficient to discount pretty much the whole particlesforjustice 2. The second problem is that they tend to not provide any evidence that <some noun> is actually true. Instead they assume that simply by stating <some noun>, one must accept that it is true. Essentially, they are doing exactly what Strumia criticised, which isn't surprising as that is how these things are handled. One small example: "Without a thorough understanding of these processes, it is impossible to conclude anything about people’s innate abilities." If it is impossible to make solid conclusions, how come we can conclude that it very definitely is sexism? Basically, they are making his argument for him, and apparently not even aware of it. 3. The third point is that what they claim as true simply isn't. That is, when things are concrete enough to be refutable, they can be and are refuted, easily. Some by the data that Strumia provided, some by justiceforstrumia. The reason one has to even mention falsifiability is that the whole particlesforjustice piece is such a mess. Coming back to your points that the particlesforjustice piece wasn't sufficiently rebutted: why do you hold justiceforstrumia to such a dramatically higher burden of proof than particlesforjustice? Cheers [1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c_NyUhOZ8erdqU2AGZJZtNfFeA91Kefj/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c_NyUhOZ8erdqU2AGZJZtNfFeA9...

by geofft 8y ago

tptacek 8y ago

Just a data point: the authors of ParticlesForJustice are 18 people from the field all with research affiliations, and the cosigners include 491 scientists with university and research lab affiliations --- this doesn't count the (vast) number of "additional signatures", many of which also have university high energy physics affiliations. There are 2x as many signatures on "ParticlesForJustice", and they appear to be of significantly higher quality.

mpweiher 8y ago

> I'm strongly in favor of this debate Same here. However, the problem with this "debate" is that only one side of the debate is generally allowed and the burden of proof is dramatically different. For one side, "you can't disprove <vague allegations/ideas>" is sufficient. For the other, even the most overwhelming empirical evidence is not sufficient, will get you vilified, branded a sexist and potentially lose your job. > As I read it, that site does not rebut any of the claims of particlesforjustice. While I don't agree this is true, if anything, the reason would be that, as I wrote before, there actually is nothing substantive in the particlesforjustice site that one could rebut. This is probably why justiceforstrumia had a digression on falsifiability etc. To back up a bit, Strumia's presentation[1], was a reaction to the dominant narrative that the low representation of women in physics is due entirely due to horrific levels of sexism against women. These are quotes from his intro slide: -------------------------------------- “All women share the same kind of sad and unfair experiences since the be- ginning of their scientific career”. “Mansplaning. Gaslighting. White Male Hetero Privilege. Sexual harassment at epidemic levels. Micro-aggressions”. Men mobilize their masculinity supporting ... men in ways that advance careers. You don’t see? You have (unconscious) bias and steal credit to women. “Eval- uators tend to favour men”. “Scientific quality is a gender social construction”. “Excellence is the current buzzword. Gender equality should achieve the same”. “I have a dream: that ... excellence in science is no more distorted and sweletred by gender stereotypes or creeping discrimination”. “Positive discrimination and gender mainstreaming”, “We have to help women at all levels ... to academic positions”, “programmes for women ... challenged in court for discrimination” [vs men]. “People and culture can be obstacles for change”. -------------------------------------- So all he is trying to do is rebut these pretty horrific and vile accusations. Accusations that I am familiar with, they are pretty much the same ones levelled against men in tech. His counter-theory is that physics is not sexist or racist or nationalist but "open to good people from any background" Given that starting point, we pretty much have to take "Strumia's thesis" as the default. That is, unless there is compelling evidence for the charge of sexism, we need to assume that it isn't sexism. This also means that he doesn't have to conclusively prove his point, it's enough to offer alternative explanations for the observed phenomena. And he's pretty clear that that is what he is doing: he says explicitly that there are two explanations, one that it's all horrible sexism, the other that it isn't, and that he will present evidence that the second explanation is sufficient to explain the observations. I never saw a claim that the first conclusion is impossible, just that the second explanation is sufficient, and therefore the first one unnecessary. Which brings us back to particlesforjustice. As far as I can tell, all their points are, with minor variations, of the form: "but Strumia failed to take into account <some noun>, therefore his conclusion is invalid. There are two main problems with this: 1. No argument that takes this form is relevant to his argument, which was not "I have conclusive and final proof that this is the reason and there can be no other", but rather "I have a simpler explanation that explains the observation". So this alone would be sufficient to discount pretty much the whole particlesforjustice 2. The second problem is that they tend to not provide any evidence that <some noun> is actually true. Instead they assume that simply by stating <some noun>, one must accept that it is true. Essentially, they are doing exactly what Strumia criticised, which isn't surprising as that is how these things are handled. One small example: "Without a thorough understanding of these processes, it is impossible to conclude anything about people’s innate abilities." If it is impossible to make solid conclusions, how come we can conclude that it very definitely is sexism? Basically, they are making his argument for him, and apparently not even aware of it. 3. The third point is that what they claim as true simply isn't. That is, when things are concrete enough to be refutable, they can be and are refuted, easily. Some by the data that Strumia provided, some by justiceforstrumia. The reason one has to even mention falsifiability is that the whole particlesforjustice piece is such a mess. Coming back to your points that the particlesforjustice piece wasn't sufficiently rebutted: why do you hold justiceforstrumia to such a dramatically higher burden of proof than particlesforjustice? Cheers [1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c_NyUhOZ8erdqU2AGZJZtNfFeA91Kefj/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c_NyUhOZ8erdqU2AGZJZtNfFeA9...