4 ms·

Scientists move to strip offensive names from journals, prizes, and more

34 points by drocer88 6y ago

coliveira 6y ago
Computer science also has this problem. People talk about slaves and masters without any consideration of what that may mean to others, which makes it clear that is a science done from the point of view of white groups. It should not be a big effort to abolish such unnecessary language from our papers.
- a1369209993 6y ago
  If this is meant to be sarcasm, you should probably be a bit more obvious about it.
jlawson 6y ago
Whether some word 'evokes' a 'racist past' is really up to the person hearing it. Unfortunately we've created a system where power flows to those who express the most psychic pain. Well, if you reward something you get more of it - pain included. Also 'scientists' -> 'activists' 'offensive names' -> 'names called offensive by some'
- LeonB 6y ago
  Between ‘wealth’ and ‘psychic pain’ I’d say wealth is the better proxy for measuring power. Do the two correlate?
  - jlawson 6y ago
    Not psychic pain. Expressions of psychic pain. And yes, they do correlate very strongly. How often do you hear expressions of psychic pain actually coming from America's vast poor white population why are dying daily from opioid overdoses? I never do. I hear complaints from university students who want safe space rooms with puppies to help them deal with the harmful opinions they just heard.
    - LeonB 6y ago
      Poverty in America is a terrible problem but bringing that into this discussion is a derailing tactic (at best). Class inequality is a very widely reported issue with US society. From the little I’ve read white people are not uniquely targeted by opioids and in some stats fare better than other groups. https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/opioids/data/racedisparity.html https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/opioids/data/race... Please retire the use of “whattaboutism”. It’s been done.
- elcomet 6y ago
  I mean, it depends. Naming your product "Hitler" would not go well, for a reason. We should avoid names that will obviously harm a lot of people when we can.
  - new2628 6y ago
    Aside from the fact that nobody is trying to use that name for anything, you shifted from "not go well" to "obviously harm" quite quickly. Whether it is one or the other makes all the difference.
- tasubotadas 6y ago
  IMO, the person seems to be racist and prejudiced. Like: >“Being the only Black person out in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of white people talking about noosing things is unsettling,” What does she think her colleagues are? If they are _that evil_ why does she work with them?
who_ex 6y ago
what does this actually accomplish? it reminds of twitter removing terms like 'blacklist', 'slave' and 'master' from their repo or whatever, as if renaming things will solve racism somehow. it's all so tiresome
- cglace 6y ago
  It seems we are headed to not using words with more than one meaning if one is unpleasant. No room for nuance these days.
- classified 6y ago
  Political-correctness orgies like this are instigated by people who are in desperate need of a problem to have. I would be more sympathetic if they didn't make the rest of the world suffer to relieve their own boredom.
lwhalen 6y ago
We can spend ~decades rooting out every potential English synonym that could potentially offend someone, or we could just start over with a 'clean', 'pure' language with none of that pesky baggage. In my opinion, this entire exercise leads to the wholesale rejection of the English language by the self-appointed 'elite'. Get ahead of the curve now, learn to speak Lojban today. It even has 'ban' right in the title!
- trothamel 6y ago
  Sounds doubleplusgood to me.
- drak0n1c 6y ago
  The cases motivated by ignorance of etymology and the conflation of homonyms are most frustrating. Such as the already gender-neutral version of the word “man”, which existed back when the sexes were referred to as weremen and women.
- TimTheTinker 6y ago
  If we avoid anything that offends anyone, we’ll most likely not be speaking the truth. Truth always offends someone.
Causality1 6y ago
If we don't stop naming things after people we're going to have the same problem every century as our rules about acceptable beliefs change and the beliefs of dead people don't.
- WmyEE0UsWAwC2i 6y ago
  This is the real solution to these kind of problems. It is OK to honor the people who first worked on a problem like the Gaussian Distribution, Hessian, etc... But nowadays, with so many people working on science and so many records, it time to find a new way to honor those people.
canceleinstein 6y ago
Where do we draw the line? https://www.history.com/.amp/news/albertin-einstein-racist-xenophobic-views-travel-journal https://www.history.com/.amp/news/albertin-einstein-racist-x...
- TimTheTinker 6y ago
  I assume this is meant in good faith. And it’s a good question. We need to be mindful that these people didn’t live in a social/cultural vacuum, and neither do we.
teej 6y ago
Ahh yes, this is exactly what the BLM protestors asked for.
- Jonnax 6y ago
  It's so interesting to see the how organically the next method of belittling anti racist actions has come to life spreading like a meme. How are scientists going to stop police brutality?
- happytoexplain 6y ago
  Why do you think a request from BLM protesters is necessary to legitimize this action?
  - jariel 6y ago
    It's not so much a question of legitimacy, but one of action. Nation-wide protests embolden people who want insurrections of various kinds. Some worthy, some questionable, some wrong. There's no rhyme or reason to it all, because there is no intellectual foundation to what constitutes 'fair' or 'not racist'. Ironically, were it up to the general public - little would change. Almost nobody is concerned or bothered by most language or epitaphs. Even among the groups who might take offence, there's not huge concern over most of these things. It's mostly a war among the elites in Academia, the Press, Government etc..
    - cycrutchfield 6y ago
      It’s interesting how comfortably you claim to speak for others and whether they may or may not take offense.
      - jariel 6y ago
        It's interesting that White people, who are making the vast majority of the decisions as to how we should name this or that - consider that they understand the issue at all. So let's find out, and take poll for example. Will you accept the results? Will the 'movement' accept it once and for all and shut up, admit they were wrong, if they were to find out that nobody cares about the term 'whitelist or blacklist'? Despite what you think would be my objection - I would be quite happy to allow African Americans, and not just a few of them, but all of them, decide if they find the term 'blacklist or whitelist' offensive. Because they won't. Confederate statues? Understandably. But innocuous terms - no. Our intellectualisation of these issues is completely out of touch with reality.
iron0013 6y ago
Hey dang, have y’all ever analyzed the voting patterns of newly-registered accounts? Sometimes when rage-bait like this pops immediately to the top of the front page it frankly reeks of coordinated inauthentic activity.
- s9w 6y ago
  At least let the people complain about changes like this. If we can't prevent it...
  - happytoexplain 6y ago
    Please don't use the word "we" in this presumptive way. People who disagree with you are still part of the "we" of Hacker News.
    - s9w 6y ago
      I did not mean speak for the entirety of HN, nor implied that in any conceivable way.
- dang 6y ago
  The votes weren't by newly registered users. People are divided on this divisive topic. That's why it got a lot of upvotes and also a lot of flags.
jariel 6y ago
Unspoken in all of this is that one would think that history started in 1777 and didn't happen anywhere but America. The world has a long and difficult history, and we could do this ad nauseum. Everyone has a right to feel unsettled, but that doesn't mean that everyone else doesn't have a right to use common language. Slavery has existed for thousands of years in every form, in every place on the planet, and it's touched everyone in one way or another. Confederate statues are one thing, common language is another. " The names, she says, “make visible the values and priorities and beliefs of an institution.”" This is Orwellian: "He who controls the present, controls the past, he who controls the past controls the future." Abraham Lincoln, by any reasonable definition, was a White Supremacist, and so was George Washington. Good look fighting over that. This is not a 'dangling thread', it's the entire sweater - and it will be used by totalitarian advocates to shape the future in their own image.
- happytoexplain 6y ago
  >that doesn't mean that everyone else doesn't have a right to use common language. Nobody is suggesting otherwise.
  - jariel 6y ago
    ? They absolutely are requiring people to change their language. That's literally 1/2 the article. The term 'noosing' is perfectly reasonable language for describing how lizards are 'noosed'. Blacklist/Whitelists - again, perfectly reasonable language. People are being asked to change the use of their language for no pragmatic reason: even among possibly offended groups, nobody cares. If you were to ask 1000 random African Americans for some things they feel should change about America to make it more fair, and to combat systematic racism - 0 of them would identify the terms 'whitelist and blacklist' as problematic language. These are tropes in the minds of people who think for a living, and who have little better to do than argue over words like 'noosing'. There's legitimacy in the concept of 'micro triggers' etc. but I think it's been taken entirely out of context.
    - a1369209993 6y ago
daneel_w 6y ago
"Being the only Black person out in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of white people talking about noosing things is unsettling." She probably does not realize it, but that's a terrible thing to say, and she does so on the sole merit of their skin color. This is racial prejudice in its very essence.
- happytoexplain 6y ago
  Why did you state this so judgmentally, as though you are in possession of the only truth? Edit: The parent was edited after I commented.
  - daneel_w 6y ago
    One truth could be that the "bunch of white people" are in fact her colleagues; people she know and work with. Another truth could be that she has fallen into the hands of a racist mob about to lynch her. We don't need to make guesses about what's true and what's prejudice. Edit: yes, the parent was edited - I added the last sentence.
tasubotadas 6y ago
Can I still _hang_ my coat?
stared 6y ago
A lot of words changed their meaning in time, or have problematic etymology. For example, 'slave' comes from Slav (which comes from 'słowo' a Slavic word for... 'word'). Yet, we know the difference. In Polish: the word 'kobieta' (woman) comes from 'kobyła' ('mare') and until the 19th century was derogatory (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kobieta. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kobieta.). Conversely, the word 'dziwka' (whore) comes from 'dziewka' (an archaic variant of the maid). Moreover, in many cases, etymology is less known. How should we decide which name to 'rectify'? ... For names based on scientist surnames, it is tricker. If we give a prize "in honor of X" is controversial if X held view that now we consider abhorrent. (Side note: virtually all people who died more than 100 years ago had such views, to various extent.)
1799 6y ago
Not a hill I am going to die on, but I really don't support this movement of politicizing science, nor to take these scientists out of their time context and measure them and their legacy according to recent insights and sensibilities. And how long do we wait? Do we ban Galileo after the Church found him guilty of blasphemy? Or wait a 100 years to see if he was ultimately right? I fear it is not going to stop at removing their names from prizes and buildings. I think their data sets or scientific contributions are next. As the philosopher of science states: "consider the man and his data set, too.". We are removing words (blacklist/whitelist, master/slave) and changing names of conferences (NIPS), not because these words are directly sexual or racist, but because some may take them out of context, and they indirectly offend their sensibilities. From the problematic Pearson article on The Problem of Alien Immigration Into Great Britain, Illustrated by an Examination of Russian and Polish Jewish Children: > The purport of this memoir is to discuss whether it is desirable in an already crowded country like Great Britain to permit indiscriminate immigration, or, if the conclusion be that it is not, on what grounds discrimination should be based. If there is to be discrimination it may be based on purely quantitative considerations-such as largely rule at present admission of immigrants into the United States, where percentages of each racial element only are admitted per month; or it may be based solely on qualitative considerations-all immigrants up to a certain level of mentality, physique or health may be admitted. > Here again the question of standard for admission is a very important one. It may be fixed so high that practically few are admitted, but the few may be those who are so much above the average intelligence of a nation, that they are a national gain. Or a community map admit individuals of special craft capacity, as, for example, the Huguenot silk-weavers, German clockmakers, Italian tunnel-workers, or Dutch engravers. > We cannot disregard the advantages which in the past such immigrants have brought not only to our handicrafts, but to our arts. The argument for the admission of such immigrants has, we fear, been misused in the past in order to obtain a supply of cheap labour, because the foreign immigrants have not been subjected to any rigid entrance tests. Do we want to forbid, downgrade, or demonize such a speech now?
- 542458 6y ago
  Most of the scientists is the article were the ones to “politicize” science in the first place, using research in statistics or Genetics to springboard into arguing for political policy - that the government should forcibly sterilize millions. And in Sims' case, he was explicitly taking advantage of the political climate in the southern US at the time. It was not blind coincidence the research was undertaken there - acquiring his test subjects would not have been so easy in the rest of the world (Southern medical colleges used to advertise this particular grisly advantage). So in the same way, this research is also ties to politics from the beginning. And WRT the one that includes slurs... I mean, I don't think "don't use slurs" should be political.
gruez 6y ago
>“Noosing” is a long-standing term used by herpetologists for catching lizards. But for McGee, a Black scientist, the term is unnerving, calling to mind horrific lynchings of Black people by white people in the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries. [...] McGee has urged her colleagues to change the parlance to “lassoing,” which she says also more accurately describes how herpetologists catch lizards with lengths of thread. So I found a video[1] on what exactly it is, and sure enough, it's literally catching a lizard by tying a noose around its head. If someone is going to be set off by the word "noosing", aren't they going to be set off by the actual act of noosing? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkcOpPRfeug https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkcOpPRfeug
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
> At the University of South Carolina, officials on 19 June moved to remove the name of physician J. Marion Sims from a women’s dormitory. He is known for inventing the Sims vaginal speculum. Honestly, unless it’s a pure coincidence that they chose the women’s dormitory for the obstetrics doctor, that seems somewhat offensive to begin with. You’re not being clever.
parsimo2010 6y ago
A related anecdote: I have a family member with granulomatosis with polyangiitis, abbreviated GPA, but usually called Wegner’s after the scientist that did most of the research on the disease. Several years ago, someone pointed out that not only was Wegner a Nazi, a lot of his research was conducted on captive Jews. There was a push to start calling the disease GPA exclusively, but to this day most physicians call it Wegner’s. The inertia of the existing name and the fact that most of the world benefited from his research while only the Jews were harmed seems to be enough to keep his name in use. Similarly, while established terms like “noosing” a lizard may be tangentially related to racism, I don’t think there’s enough will among scientists to change the term. Just because one person is offended doesn’t mean the term is bad. If the way you catch a lizard is by slipping a loop of string around its neck then it’s noosing. If you throw the loop of string and catch the lizard at a distance then it should be called lassoing. But don’t use less correct terms just because of a perceived (but non-existent) slight. My own field of statistics has struggled with this, as noted in the article. The general way of thinking is to accept that there were some great statisticians in the past that had wacky ideas. My own dissertation rests on work that Ronald Fisher did. I’m fine with taking down a stained glass window of Fisher but I am also comfortable talking about Fisher’s information matrix.
542458 6y ago
Having read the article, and done a bit more reading, I think a lot of the changes described here are good. Marion Sims’s accomplishments are utterly tainted by the absolutely nightmarish ways he conducted his research. Anything that pretends he’s some sort of hero - including naming buildings after him - can go away and I won’t be too upset. Likewise, Fisher’s accomplishments were great, but he was employed by eugenics organizations, actively pursued legislation to forcibly sterilize 10% of the population, and wrote essays supporting Nazi eugenics programs during and after WW2. Personally, I wouldn’t be too fond of walking past a mural every day of the guy who thinks that I, and anybody else who shares my line, should be “removed” from the breeding stock by whatever means necessary. We’re not striking him from history or anything - just removing the monuments glorifying him. I also don’t think it’s the end of the world if we remove a slur from the rarely used scientific names of some obscure species. Sure, there will always be people who try to take things too far. For example, I’m not sold that ‘noosing’ needs to go - but it doesn’t sound like that one actually has much support. But the changes that the article describes as actually having sufficient support to pass seem reasonable, at least to me.
montereynack 6y ago
I’m unsure how to feel about this. On the one hand, I can most definitely sympathize with feelings that a name, no matter how inoffensive to some groups, might be deeply offensive to others. However, in my mind there’s the question of standardization to be considered. Science (unlike the software world) can’t change every few years (at least it shouldn’t). Some of these definitions have become so ingrained in existing literature and cultural knowledge over the decades that you have to ask what happens if you suddenly decide to change something; you have to wonder what effects it can have on a field if something is suddenly and forcefully renamed (students can get confused, older but sill quite valuable reference texts can be made confusing to read). I also had issue with how the article decided to present its opening argument, by saying that an African American felt disturbed when they went to “noose” lizards in a group of white people. While I absolutely agree that this would be in bad taste if they were at all implying doing this same thing to people, the context I got is that it was a purely academic term derived from the shape of the tool they’re using, and NOT at all oriented towards the act itself or the specific things they’re trying to catch. To me that sounds very similar to someone saying that programmers referring to “killing the child” is offensive, when everyone knows the act is not related at all to the death of actual children and is not trying to make light of situations where that happens. It’s a historical and technically functional reference, nothing more. To be clear, I don’t feel that all of these causes are wrong. I’m just worried that in our haste to make symbolic changes, we’re pushing towards alterations that only have an effect years later when everyone that would be able to explain the changes is dead. I’m also worried that these very symbolic changes will be used as a band-aid and aren’t addressing the deeper issues at play here, and that they might even distract from what actually needs to be done.
- 542458 6y ago
  TBQH I think the noosing one is pretty innocent (since it is an actual noose after all) - but note that the ending paragraph says that that proposal doesn't have much support. I think most of the things described in the article that are actually changing (things named after eugenicists or unethical researchers or slurs) are good targets to change.
nabla9 6y ago
May seem slightly off the subject, but is related IMHO. I have gradually started to discriminate against people who are very active in social media in work and personal life. I'm relatively infrequently involved in hiring process, but when I'm going to work with someone I'm really strict about their mental hygiene. First thing I look is how active they are in the social media, how much influencing and self promotion they are doing. If it's above the average, I think it's negative and weighs against their good qualities. People who are caught in social media are more like than others to lose their common sense. Moving lightening fast fads and internet BS into the real life is not OK.
jbdigriz990 6y ago
I'm a degreed chemist, and I say this movement is bullshit. Laputa called and wants it back.
smitty1e 6y ago
As long as we have the Roman alphabet and English language, a vast cloud of guilt will overhang humanity.

34 points by drocer88 6y ago

Computer science also has this problem. People talk about slaves and masters without any consideration of what that may mean to others, which makes it clear that is a science done from the point of view of white groups. It should not be a big effort to abolish such unnecessary language from our papers.

a1369209993 6y ago
If this is meant to be sarcasm, you should probably be a bit more obvious about it.

jlawson 6y ago

Whether some word 'evokes' a 'racist past' is really up to the person hearing it. Unfortunately we've created a system where power flows to those who express the most psychic pain. Well, if you reward something you get more of it - pain included. Also 'scientists' -> 'activists' 'offensive names' -> 'names called offensive by some'

LeonB 6y ago
Between ‘wealth’ and ‘psychic pain’ I’d say wealth is the better proxy for measuring power. Do the two correlate?
- jlawson 6y ago
  Not psychic pain. Expressions of psychic pain. And yes, they do correlate very strongly. How often do you hear expressions of psychic pain actually coming from America's vast poor white population why are dying daily from opioid overdoses? I never do. I hear complaints from university students who want safe space rooms with puppies to help them deal with the harmful opinions they just heard.
  - LeonB 6y ago
    Poverty in America is a terrible problem but bringing that into this discussion is a derailing tactic (at best). Class inequality is a very widely reported issue with US society. From the little I’ve read white people are not uniquely targeted by opioids and in some stats fare better than other groups. https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/opioids/data/racedisparity.html https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/opioids/data/race... Please retire the use of “whattaboutism”. It’s been done.
elcomet 6y ago
I mean, it depends. Naming your product "Hitler" would not go well, for a reason. We should avoid names that will obviously harm a lot of people when we can.
- new2628 6y ago
  Aside from the fact that nobody is trying to use that name for anything, you shifted from "not go well" to "obviously harm" quite quickly. Whether it is one or the other makes all the difference.
tasubotadas 6y ago
IMO, the person seems to be racist and prejudiced. Like: >“Being the only Black person out in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of white people talking about noosing things is unsettling,” What does she think her colleagues are? If they are _that evil_ why does she work with them?

who_ex 6y ago

what does this actually accomplish? it reminds of twitter removing terms like 'blacklist', 'slave' and 'master' from their repo or whatever, as if renaming things will solve racism somehow. it's all so tiresome

cglace 6y ago
It seems we are headed to not using words with more than one meaning if one is unpleasant. No room for nuance these days.
classified 6y ago
Political-correctness orgies like this are instigated by people who are in desperate need of a problem to have. I would be more sympathetic if they didn't make the rest of the world suffer to relieve their own boredom.

lwhalen 6y ago

We can spend ~decades rooting out every potential English synonym that could potentially offend someone, or we could just start over with a 'clean', 'pure' language with none of that pesky baggage. In my opinion, this entire exercise leads to the wholesale rejection of the English language by the self-appointed 'elite'. Get ahead of the curve now, learn to speak Lojban today. It even has 'ban' right in the title!

trothamel 6y ago
Sounds doubleplusgood to me.
drak0n1c 6y ago
The cases motivated by ignorance of etymology and the conflation of homonyms are most frustrating. Such as the already gender-neutral version of the word “man”, which existed back when the sexes were referred to as weremen and women.
TimTheTinker 6y ago
If we avoid anything that offends anyone, we’ll most likely not be speaking the truth. Truth always offends someone.

Causality1 6y ago

If we don't stop naming things after people we're going to have the same problem every century as our rules about acceptable beliefs change and the beliefs of dead people don't.

WmyEE0UsWAwC2i 6y ago
This is the real solution to these kind of problems. It is OK to honor the people who first worked on a problem like the Gaussian Distribution, Hessian, etc... But nowadays, with so many people working on science and so many records, it time to find a new way to honor those people.

canceleinstein 6y ago

Where do we draw the line? https://www.history.com/.amp/news/albertin-einstein-racist-xenophobic-views-travel-journal https://www.history.com/.amp/news/albertin-einstein-racist-x...

TimTheTinker 6y ago
I assume this is meant in good faith. And it’s a good question. We need to be mindful that these people didn’t live in a social/cultural vacuum, and neither do we.

teej 6y ago

Ahh yes, this is exactly what the BLM protestors asked for.

Jonnax 6y ago
It's so interesting to see the how organically the next method of belittling anti racist actions has come to life spreading like a meme. How are scientists going to stop police brutality?
happytoexplain 6y ago
Why do you think a request from BLM protesters is necessary to legitimize this action?
- jariel 6y ago
  It's not so much a question of legitimacy, but one of action. Nation-wide protests embolden people who want insurrections of various kinds. Some worthy, some questionable, some wrong. There's no rhyme or reason to it all, because there is no intellectual foundation to what constitutes 'fair' or 'not racist'. Ironically, were it up to the general public - little would change. Almost nobody is concerned or bothered by most language or epitaphs. Even among the groups who might take offence, there's not huge concern over most of these things. It's mostly a war among the elites in Academia, the Press, Government etc..
  - cycrutchfield 6y ago
    It’s interesting how comfortably you claim to speak for others and whether they may or may not take offense.
    - jariel 6y ago
      It's interesting that White people, who are making the vast majority of the decisions as to how we should name this or that - consider that they understand the issue at all. So let's find out, and take poll for example. Will you accept the results? Will the 'movement' accept it once and for all and shut up, admit they were wrong, if they were to find out that nobody cares about the term 'whitelist or blacklist'? Despite what you think would be my objection - I would be quite happy to allow African Americans, and not just a few of them, but all of them, decide if they find the term 'blacklist or whitelist' offensive. Because they won't. Confederate statues? Understandably. But innocuous terms - no. Our intellectualisation of these issues is completely out of touch with reality.

iron0013 6y ago

Hey dang, have y’all ever analyzed the voting patterns of newly-registered accounts? Sometimes when rage-bait like this pops immediately to the top of the front page it frankly reeks of coordinated inauthentic activity.

s9w 6y ago
At least let the people complain about changes like this. If we can't prevent it...
- happytoexplain 6y ago
  Please don't use the word "we" in this presumptive way. People who disagree with you are still part of the "we" of Hacker News.
  - s9w 6y ago
    I did not mean speak for the entirety of HN, nor implied that in any conceivable way.
dang 6y ago
The votes weren't by newly registered users. People are divided on this divisive topic. That's why it got a lot of upvotes and also a lot of flags.

jariel 6y ago

Unspoken in all of this is that one would think that history started in 1777 and didn't happen anywhere but America. The world has a long and difficult history, and we could do this ad nauseum. Everyone has a right to feel unsettled, but that doesn't mean that everyone else doesn't have a right to use common language. Slavery has existed for thousands of years in every form, in every place on the planet, and it's touched everyone in one way or another. Confederate statues are one thing, common language is another. " The names, she says, “make visible the values and priorities and beliefs of an institution.”" This is Orwellian: "He who controls the present, controls the past, he who controls the past controls the future." Abraham Lincoln, by any reasonable definition, was a White Supremacist, and so was George Washington. Good look fighting over that. This is not a 'dangling thread', it's the entire sweater - and it will be used by totalitarian advocates to shape the future in their own image.

happytoexplain 6y ago
>that doesn't mean that everyone else doesn't have a right to use common language. Nobody is suggesting otherwise.
- jariel 6y ago
  ? They absolutely are requiring people to change their language. That's literally 1/2 the article. The term 'noosing' is perfectly reasonable language for describing how lizards are 'noosed'. Blacklist/Whitelists - again, perfectly reasonable language. People are being asked to change the use of their language for no pragmatic reason: even among possibly offended groups, nobody cares. If you were to ask 1000 random African Americans for some things they feel should change about America to make it more fair, and to combat systematic racism - 0 of them would identify the terms 'whitelist and blacklist' as problematic language. These are tropes in the minds of people who think for a living, and who have little better to do than argue over words like 'noosing'. There's legitimacy in the concept of 'micro triggers' etc. but I think it's been taken entirely out of context.
  - a1369209993 6y ago

daneel_w 6y ago

"Being the only Black person out in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of white people talking about noosing things is unsettling." She probably does not realize it, but that's a terrible thing to say, and she does so on the sole merit of their skin color. This is racial prejudice in its very essence.

happytoexplain 6y ago
Why did you state this so judgmentally, as though you are in possession of the only truth? Edit: The parent was edited after I commented.
- daneel_w 6y ago
  One truth could be that the "bunch of white people" are in fact her colleagues; people she know and work with. Another truth could be that she has fallen into the hands of a racist mob about to lynch her. We don't need to make guesses about what's true and what's prejudice. Edit: yes, the parent was edited - I added the last sentence.

tasubotadas 6y ago

Can I still _hang_ my coat?

stared 6y ago

A lot of words changed their meaning in time, or have problematic etymology. For example, 'slave' comes from Slav (which comes from 'słowo' a Slavic word for... 'word'). Yet, we know the difference. In Polish: the word 'kobieta' (woman) comes from 'kobyła' ('mare') and until the 19th century was derogatory (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kobieta. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kobieta.). Conversely, the word 'dziwka' (whore) comes from 'dziewka' (an archaic variant of the maid). Moreover, in many cases, etymology is less known. How should we decide which name to 'rectify'? ... For names based on scientist surnames, it is tricker. If we give a prize "in honor of X" is controversial if X held view that now we consider abhorrent. (Side note: virtually all people who died more than 100 years ago had such views, to various extent.)

1799 6y ago

Not a hill I am going to die on, but I really don't support this movement of politicizing science, nor to take these scientists out of their time context and measure them and their legacy according to recent insights and sensibilities. And how long do we wait? Do we ban Galileo after the Church found him guilty of blasphemy? Or wait a 100 years to see if he was ultimately right? I fear it is not going to stop at removing their names from prizes and buildings. I think their data sets or scientific contributions are next. As the philosopher of science states: "consider the man and his data set, too.". We are removing words (blacklist/whitelist, master/slave) and changing names of conferences (NIPS), not because these words are directly sexual or racist, but because some may take them out of context, and they indirectly offend their sensibilities. From the problematic Pearson article on The Problem of Alien Immigration Into Great Britain, Illustrated by an Examination of Russian and Polish Jewish Children: > The purport of this memoir is to discuss whether it is desirable in an already crowded country like Great Britain to permit indiscriminate immigration, or, if the conclusion be that it is not, on what grounds discrimination should be based. If there is to be discrimination it may be based on purely quantitative considerations-such as largely rule at present admission of immigrants into the United States, where percentages of each racial element only are admitted per month; or it may be based solely on qualitative considerations-all immigrants up to a certain level of mentality, physique or health may be admitted. > Here again the question of standard for admission is a very important one. It may be fixed so high that practically few are admitted, but the few may be those who are so much above the average intelligence of a nation, that they are a national gain. Or a community map admit individuals of special craft capacity, as, for example, the Huguenot silk-weavers, German clockmakers, Italian tunnel-workers, or Dutch engravers. > We cannot disregard the advantages which in the past such immigrants have brought not only to our handicrafts, but to our arts. The argument for the admission of such immigrants has, we fear, been misused in the past in order to obtain a supply of cheap labour, because the foreign immigrants have not been subjected to any rigid entrance tests. Do we want to forbid, downgrade, or demonize such a speech now?

542458 6y ago
Most of the scientists is the article were the ones to “politicize” science in the first place, using research in statistics or Genetics to springboard into arguing for political policy - that the government should forcibly sterilize millions. And in Sims' case, he was explicitly taking advantage of the political climate in the southern US at the time. It was not blind coincidence the research was undertaken there - acquiring his test subjects would not have been so easy in the rest of the world (Southern medical colleges used to advertise this particular grisly advantage). So in the same way, this research is also ties to politics from the beginning. And WRT the one that includes slurs... I mean, I don't think "don't use slurs" should be political.

gruez 6y ago

>“Noosing” is a long-standing term used by herpetologists for catching lizards. But for McGee, a Black scientist, the term is unnerving, calling to mind horrific lynchings of Black people by white people in the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries. [...] McGee has urged her colleagues to change the parlance to “lassoing,” which she says also more accurately describes how herpetologists catch lizards with lengths of thread. So I found a video[1] on what exactly it is, and sure enough, it's literally catching a lizard by tying a noose around its head. If someone is going to be set off by the word "noosing", aren't they going to be set off by the actual act of noosing? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkcOpPRfeug https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkcOpPRfeug

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

> At the University of South Carolina, officials on 19 June moved to remove the name of physician J. Marion Sims from a women’s dormitory. He is known for inventing the Sims vaginal speculum. Honestly, unless it’s a pure coincidence that they chose the women’s dormitory for the obstetrics doctor, that seems somewhat offensive to begin with. You’re not being clever.

parsimo2010 6y ago

A related anecdote: I have a family member with granulomatosis with polyangiitis, abbreviated GPA, but usually called Wegner’s after the scientist that did most of the research on the disease. Several years ago, someone pointed out that not only was Wegner a Nazi, a lot of his research was conducted on captive Jews. There was a push to start calling the disease GPA exclusively, but to this day most physicians call it Wegner’s. The inertia of the existing name and the fact that most of the world benefited from his research while only the Jews were harmed seems to be enough to keep his name in use. Similarly, while established terms like “noosing” a lizard may be tangentially related to racism, I don’t think there’s enough will among scientists to change the term. Just because one person is offended doesn’t mean the term is bad. If the way you catch a lizard is by slipping a loop of string around its neck then it’s noosing. If you throw the loop of string and catch the lizard at a distance then it should be called lassoing. But don’t use less correct terms just because of a perceived (but non-existent) slight. My own field of statistics has struggled with this, as noted in the article. The general way of thinking is to accept that there were some great statisticians in the past that had wacky ideas. My own dissertation rests on work that Ronald Fisher did. I’m fine with taking down a stained glass window of Fisher but I am also comfortable talking about Fisher’s information matrix.

542458 6y ago

Having read the article, and done a bit more reading, I think a lot of the changes described here are good. Marion Sims’s accomplishments are utterly tainted by the absolutely nightmarish ways he conducted his research. Anything that pretends he’s some sort of hero - including naming buildings after him - can go away and I won’t be too upset. Likewise, Fisher’s accomplishments were great, but he was employed by eugenics organizations, actively pursued legislation to forcibly sterilize 10% of the population, and wrote essays supporting Nazi eugenics programs during and after WW2. Personally, I wouldn’t be too fond of walking past a mural every day of the guy who thinks that I, and anybody else who shares my line, should be “removed” from the breeding stock by whatever means necessary. We’re not striking him from history or anything - just removing the monuments glorifying him. I also don’t think it’s the end of the world if we remove a slur from the rarely used scientific names of some obscure species. Sure, there will always be people who try to take things too far. For example, I’m not sold that ‘noosing’ needs to go - but it doesn’t sound like that one actually has much support. But the changes that the article describes as actually having sufficient support to pass seem reasonable, at least to me.

montereynack 6y ago

I’m unsure how to feel about this. On the one hand, I can most definitely sympathize with feelings that a name, no matter how inoffensive to some groups, might be deeply offensive to others. However, in my mind there’s the question of standardization to be considered. Science (unlike the software world) can’t change every few years (at least it shouldn’t). Some of these definitions have become so ingrained in existing literature and cultural knowledge over the decades that you have to ask what happens if you suddenly decide to change something; you have to wonder what effects it can have on a field if something is suddenly and forcefully renamed (students can get confused, older but sill quite valuable reference texts can be made confusing to read). I also had issue with how the article decided to present its opening argument, by saying that an African American felt disturbed when they went to “noose” lizards in a group of white people. While I absolutely agree that this would be in bad taste if they were at all implying doing this same thing to people, the context I got is that it was a purely academic term derived from the shape of the tool they’re using, and NOT at all oriented towards the act itself or the specific things they’re trying to catch. To me that sounds very similar to someone saying that programmers referring to “killing the child” is offensive, when everyone knows the act is not related at all to the death of actual children and is not trying to make light of situations where that happens. It’s a historical and technically functional reference, nothing more. To be clear, I don’t feel that all of these causes are wrong. I’m just worried that in our haste to make symbolic changes, we’re pushing towards alterations that only have an effect years later when everyone that would be able to explain the changes is dead. I’m also worried that these very symbolic changes will be used as a band-aid and aren’t addressing the deeper issues at play here, and that they might even distract from what actually needs to be done.

542458 6y ago
TBQH I think the noosing one is pretty innocent (since it is an actual noose after all) - but note that the ending paragraph says that that proposal doesn't have much support. I think most of the things described in the article that are actually changing (things named after eugenicists or unethical researchers or slurs) are good targets to change.

nabla9 6y ago

May seem slightly off the subject, but is related IMHO. I have gradually started to discriminate against people who are very active in social media in work and personal life. I'm relatively infrequently involved in hiring process, but when I'm going to work with someone I'm really strict about their mental hygiene. First thing I look is how active they are in the social media, how much influencing and self promotion they are doing. If it's above the average, I think it's negative and weighs against their good qualities. People who are caught in social media are more like than others to lose their common sense. Moving lightening fast fads and internet BS into the real life is not OK.

jbdigriz990 6y ago

I'm a degreed chemist, and I say this movement is bullshit. Laputa called and wants it back.

smitty1e 6y ago

As long as we have the Roman alphabet and English language, a vast cloud of guilt will overhang humanity.