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Science Denial Won’t End Sexism
- undoware 8y agoI stopped reading at "social justice bandwagon". Without interacting with the central claims of this article, which seem to hark back to the breathless realm of nineties _Psychology Today_ grade neursci, I believe I can safely ignore any discussion about science that is basically just more culture war conturbations in sci-sauce. If your concern is that science is being polticized, don't lead with your politics. It's just a food fight at this point.
- phonypc 8y agoThat phrase doesn't appear until nearly the end of the article. It read to me as not particularly political.
- undoware 8y agoI don't see how either how (a) where it occurs in the article body or (b) what flavours of politics are vivid to you, and which, in David Foster Wallace's memorable phrase, taste like the inside of your own mouth, would be relevant to whether this aricle constitutes unbiased scientific discourse on the matter at hand. I don't mean to be rude.
- yellowapple 8y agoFor what it's worth, the inside of my mouth tastes like meat.
- phonypc 8y agoYou said "don't lead with your politics." The author did not lead with their politics. (And IMO didn't include politics at all, other than to say politics don't belong in science.
- anth_anm 8y agoThen you're probably on his side.
- _visgean 8y agohers
- yellowapple 8y agoScience doesn't take sides.
- pnongrata 8y ago'Science' doesn't take sides, but those who choose what gets funded or gets coverage definetely do, unfortunately.
- phonypc 8y agoThe side of "science should be apolitical?" Yes. But presumably that's not how you read it.
- anth_anm 8y agoScience should be apolitical, also white men are oppressed wahhhhh.
- sonnyblarney 8y agoExcept that the term 'social justice bandwagon' is perfectly apt in the context of the article. It's at the very premise of the argument. Articles declaring that 'science indicates sexes are the same and anyone who hints otherwise is sexist' are taken at face value and published in the Guardian, CNN etc.. Contrasting opinions hardly exist in the mainstream. The author is not trying to create a culture war, they are trying to negate it. This is not a 'brains are the same' vs 'brains are different' argument. This is a 'let's look at the material evidence' argument. The brain same/different is just an example.
- jonnybgood 8y agoThe more I read these kind of articles the more I realize that it really has nothing to do with science, or science denial. Nobody in these kinds of discussions really cares about the science. It’s all about politics and ideology. Why aren’t these same people who are talking about science denial never speak up and make a fuss about the denial of climate change by a huge swath of the US population including the elected (e.g. POTUS)?
- rhn_mk1 8y ago> Nobody in these kinds of discussions really cares about the science. It’s all about politics and ideology. So when someone speaks up to rid science of the ideological influence, then by this definition, they don't care about science either? > Why aren’t these same people who are talking about science denial never speak up and make a fuss about the denial of climate change Who says they don't?
- erentz 8y ago> Why aren’t these same people who are talking about science denial never speak up and make a fuss about the denial of climate change by a huge swath of the US population including the elected (e.g. POTUS)? 1. Fallacy of relative privation? Nobody can talk about X because Y is worse. Nobody should fix X until everybody has fixed Y first. 2. Fighting ideologically driven decision should be a good thing if you’re concerned about the ideologically driven decision making going on in our government. Don’t pick and choose. That’s hypocracy. (There’s at least one person sometimes unfortunately (mis?)labeled as being in the IDW who is terrible at this, a big gaping load of hypocracy shows up anytime religion or Israel comes into play. His name rhymes with Sen Bhapiro.)
- Udik 8y ago> Why aren’t these same people who are talking about science denial never speak up and make a fuss about the denial of climate change This is called, in layman's terms, "whataboutism". I think each of us is free to pursue a primary interest, and the arguments need to be evaluated in themselves, not in relation to what else the person might be saying or not saying about some other topic. Anyway, for me this is primarily about science. I can't see any validity in certain arguments and I abhor the idea (which seems to me the only possible justification for them) that we should choose our truths according to how much we like their consequences- real or imagined. Or, let's put it this way: every time a scientist says that the study of nature provides support for one or another of our current moral values and ethical stances, I cringe.
- deogeo 8y ago"In a world where world-class scientists’ merit is now determined by their sex and skin color—with white men’s work being dismissed in the name of promoting women and minorities" A bit off-topic, but talking about 'minorities' when discussing world-wide topics such as science always seemed so bizarre to me. No single race/ethnicity represents over 50% of the world population, so isn't everyone a minority? Or does only the US count?
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoLet's call the country X. In country X, the majority of scientists are of race Y. If scientists are viewed as having more merit because they are not of race Y, that's a problem, no matter what the values of X and Y are.
- deogeo 8y agoBut the articles (not just this one, but very nearly all of them) don't talk about X and Y - they talk about "white people" and "minorities", and stubbornly pretend the two groups are distinct. A quick search (though I couldn't find any particularly authoritative sources) says white people are ~16% of the global population, behind both south and east asians. To keep calling everyone else 'minorities' is more than a little US/Eurocentric. Especially when they put phrases such as "In a world where world-class...", implying they're not limiting themselves to 'country X'
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoThe discrimination isn't worldwide; it's within a country. So, since the conversation we're having is about discrimination within a country, it makes sense that the term "minority" is also to be understood as being within that country. Whether any race has a majority world-wide is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
- tathougies 8y agoOh stop it. Asian here. Discrimination happens in individual societies. The united states and Asian countries do not share societies. It is clear from the language and website of the article that it is targeted towards the USA
- Eleopteryx 8y agoStatements like "In a world where world-class scientists’ merit is now determined by their sex and skin color—with white men’s work being dismissed in the name of promoting women and minorities" have a heavy political bias and the article isn't even concerned with supporting that point, it's just dropped in there like it's a fact.
- klyrs 8y agoThat is a pretty heavy political bias. Which isn't a surprise, given D. W. Soh's history of confusing politics with science -- she argued in favor of conversion therapy for trangender kids (which doesn't work and kills patients) and quit academia because she couldn't handle the resulting criticism -- and now she's a political writer who peddles pseudoscience.
- dogma1138 8y agoWhen did she ever argued for conversion therapy? All I’ve seen is that she was against transitioning prepubescent children as most children that exhibit gender dysphoria grow out of it.
- erentz 8y agoYeah, quite the opposite it appears she is against conversion therapy. It looks the parent poster is committing a perfect example of the kinds of things Quillette and the IDW are arguing against.
- klyrs 8y agohttps://www.newsday.com/opinion/commentary/why-bans-on-conversion-therapy-are-misguided-1.13742599 https://www.newsday.com/opinion/commentary/why-bans-on-conve...
- erentz 8y agoIn that article she is not supporting conversion therapy. She states “The most recent scientific research shows that sexual orientation is immutable and there is no evidence to suggest it can be changed through conversion therapy or otherwise.“ She is arguing against bans that she says “incorrectly conflate sexual orientation with gender identity”. So from reading that article she thinks it shouldn’t be illegal to offer for example a female child who is attracted to girls, and who likes doing activities everyone labels as “boy” interests, therapy that helps them accept they are a just girl who happens to like other girls, and happens to like what society incorrectly labels “boys things”.
- natchiketa 8y agoTo those who are put off by the article, it might help to understand that, while Dr. Soh has a PhD in psychology, she is also a political commentator, writes science articles, and is a podcast host. Like a lot of Intellectual Dark Web folks, it's best to check out a long-form discussion — like a lecture[0] or a podcast[1] — to get a better sense of the ideas they're trying to communicate. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BSb92OYA0g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BSb92OYA0g [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zere8WRepGo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zere8WRepGo EDIT: Add a second podcast link [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkhDZMwR9eQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkhDZMwR9eQ
- cbanek 8y ago"I don’t deny that sexism exists, but sexism today is not so severe that it stands in the way of a woman achieving a career in science—or any field—if she really wants to." Uh, source? Seems like the article just throws this out there without any citation, proof, or even argument. I'm not sure I can agree with such a statement.
- natchiketa 8y agoI took that as her speaking from her own personal experience. She's a doctor of psychology who specialized in sex research — her PhD thesis was titled "Functional and Structural Neuroimaging of Paraphilic Hypersexuality in Men". She worked in academia for about ten years until she became dissatisfied with the influence that political correctness had on her ability to fund her research. So you could say that she achieved a career in science, until she no longer wanted to. You could argue that she failed to account for the fact that readers of this article don't necessarily know who she is or what her own experience has been.
- cbanek 8y agoOr the fact that just because she did it doesn't mean that anyone can do it? I guess if you haven't, you just need to "want it more."
- natchiketa 8y agoSure, that too. Standing on its own, it's purely anecdotal.
- phasnox 8y agoDo you have sources that support the contrary of what she is saying?
- pnongrata 8y agoI think the person asserting has the burden of proof, in any case, not those who reject the claim.
- YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago>> Last week, Nature, one of the top scientific journals in the world, ran a review written by Lise Eliot of Gina Rippon’s new book, The Gendered Brain: The New Neuroscience that Shatters the Myth of the Female Brain For the record, I posted that article on HN 9 days ago. It was almost immediately flagged (going by the fact it collected 18 points). This one seems to have lasted at least twice as long - and I don't understand why. In terms of a controversy, an article in Nature is the definition of an uncontroversial, respected source, whereas Quillette is rather the exact opposite. If a serious debate can be had, it should be over an article on Nature, not an article on Quillette. I don't want to put this in words like "why was my article downvoted", which would sound too much as if I'm nursing some kind of petty grudge, but the same thing has happened to other articles I've posted previously on matters of gender equality in the sciences, while, for example, articles about James Damore are left alone. Is James Damore less controversial than Gina Rippon? I must say that I do get a strong feeling that one side of this issue is treated very differently than the other by a significant proportion of users on HN.
- erentz 8y agoA lot of articles on gender get the same flagging treatment. (FWIW Damore is far from uncontroversial here on HN.) I suspect sometimes the flagging treatment is because these articles can attract heated (often emotional) debate, and this might be why some flaggers flag them, to avoid that and just stick to tech stuff. That said I’m always interested in seeing these articles and debates myself, mostly because it’s a pretty important issue in tech and we won’t resolve it if we don’t talk about it. But it’s hard to do. This post may have survived this long just by luck, I wouldn’t read to much into it. But you can certainly talk about it here now since this article is in response to your article. (One question I might’ve asked about your original would be, if male and female brains are really the same then how come rates of certain mental illnesses vary so much between the sexes?) Edit: I realized I originally wrote “far from contoversial” it should be “uncontoversial” but I think that was understandabld from the context.
- drilldrive 8y ago>FWIW Damore is far from controversial here on HN. Just to be clear, in what way? Anti-Google pro-Damore I presume?
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