8 ms·

We are hearing from two people who were able to weather the political whirlwind. Sadly, this playbook of ostracization is a generally successful one. The peopl

We are hearing from two people who were able to weather the political whirlwind. Sadly, this playbook of ostracization is a generally successful one. The people who are successfully sidelined by this kind of behavior become actual pariahs. Their isolation is so complete that people have a tendency to explain this as "academia working as intended".

_e 5y ago
This is why it is so important to have the courage to get up and leave. If one has been successfully sidelined then, yes, they will become an actual pariah because they feel like they have to explain everything that they do and will continue to do so because they feel like no one is acknowledging them. This is part of the gaslighters trap. It should not be a surprise that there are some who might feel threatened by people who want to challenge the status quo in search of the truth or constantly push their mental and physical limits.
- zomglings 5y ago
  As the academic job market gets more and more competitive, in group vs. out group dynamics get stronger and stronger and stronger. And yet so many of my classmates from graduate school (mathematics) prefer to live through "visiting assistant professor" hell than make the transition into technology, where they would do very well! I never really thought of it as a matter of courage, but maybe it is.
  - ta988 5y ago
    Do very well in what sense? Money?
    - zomglings 5y ago
      Money, mental health.
derbOac 5y ago
I really appreciated this post by Gelman — I don't always empathize with his writing, but it was a good thing to learn about this side of his experience, him being someone that I think of as being on the other side of that social inclusion continuum. At the same time I agree with you that it's hard to know what to make of it because he did obviously get through it, and the problem is that so many don't, for many reasons. I have maybe too many reactions to put into words, but the thing I wrestle with most about the phenomenon he's pointing to is why isn't this more fully acknowledged by the community, however you define that? It's the strangling silence about these types of phenomena that is maybe the worst, at a number of levels. When you're going through it, I think part of the problem is that there's no inputs to provide a different perspective, to show you "hey this looks this way but it's not". It's not even within someone's abilities at that point at some level, as you're lacking any sort of realistic social inputs. Then, at another level, why doesn't, say the academic community come to terms with how common these sorts of pathological dynamics are, and how dominant they are in outcomes? Why isn't the broader nonacademic community more aware of these kinds of problems? I don't think these sorts of issues are without consequence either. For example, this story isn't really about the same thing, but I do think it starts to involve related social problems, that had worldwide implications for COVID, measles, and tuberculosis: https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwu... . To me one of the worst problems with politicization of COVID science is how unrealistic both sides seemed to get, with one invoking strange conspiracy theories when typical academic politics is trouble enough, and the other seemingly in denial about any sort of problems in academic science.
- zomglings 5y ago
  Wow, that article about aerosol transmission gave me scary flashbacks to academia. :) The reason there isn't more acknowledgment by the community comes down to a variant of survivorship bias. The people who have remained in academia are largely oblivious to the existence of this kind of treatment mainly because it is so effective. Anyone on the receiving end of this kind of political assassination (or even just willful ignorance) doesn't survive in the academic community with a high probability. Even if they do (as we can see from this article and the one it is about), there is no strong incentive to stand up for people who didn't survive it. Those people are no longer in academia and so are not immediately important to anyone still in the academic community.

_e 5y ago

This is why it is so important to have the courage to get up and leave. If one has been successfully sidelined then, yes, they will become an actual pariah because they feel like they have to explain everything that they do and will continue to do so because they feel like no one is acknowledging them. This is part of the gaslighters trap. It should not be a surprise that there are some who might feel threatened by people who want to challenge the status quo in search of the truth or constantly push their mental and physical limits.

zomglings 5y ago
As the academic job market gets more and more competitive, in group vs. out group dynamics get stronger and stronger and stronger. And yet so many of my classmates from graduate school (mathematics) prefer to live through "visiting assistant professor" hell than make the transition into technology, where they would do very well! I never really thought of it as a matter of courage, but maybe it is.
- ta988 5y ago
  Do very well in what sense? Money?
  - zomglings 5y ago
    Money, mental health.

derbOac 5y ago

I really appreciated this post by Gelman — I don't always empathize with his writing, but it was a good thing to learn about this side of his experience, him being someone that I think of as being on the other side of that social inclusion continuum. At the same time I agree with you that it's hard to know what to make of it because he did obviously get through it, and the problem is that so many don't, for many reasons. I have maybe too many reactions to put into words, but the thing I wrestle with most about the phenomenon he's pointing to is why isn't this more fully acknowledged by the community, however you define that? It's the strangling silence about these types of phenomena that is maybe the worst, at a number of levels. When you're going through it, I think part of the problem is that there's no inputs to provide a different perspective, to show you "hey this looks this way but it's not". It's not even within someone's abilities at that point at some level, as you're lacking any sort of realistic social inputs. Then, at another level, why doesn't, say the academic community come to terms with how common these sorts of pathological dynamics are, and how dominant they are in outcomes? Why isn't the broader nonacademic community more aware of these kinds of problems? I don't think these sorts of issues are without consequence either. For example, this story isn't really about the same thing, but I do think it starts to involve related social problems, that had worldwide implications for COVID, measles, and tuberculosis: https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwu... . To me one of the worst problems with politicization of COVID science is how unrealistic both sides seemed to get, with one invoking strange conspiracy theories when typical academic politics is trouble enough, and the other seemingly in denial about any sort of problems in academic science.

zomglings 5y ago
Wow, that article about aerosol transmission gave me scary flashbacks to academia. :) The reason there isn't more acknowledgment by the community comes down to a variant of survivorship bias. The people who have remained in academia are largely oblivious to the existence of this kind of treatment mainly because it is so effective. Anyone on the receiving end of this kind of political assassination (or even just willful ignorance) doesn't survive in the academic community with a high probability. Even if they do (as we can see from this article and the one it is about), there is no strong incentive to stand up for people who didn't survive it. Those people are no longer in academia and so are not immediately important to anyone still in the academic community.