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This is a very very very dangerous subject for your career. I'll be honest I'm not sure any legitimate journal would publish anything further along in this line

This is a very very very dangerous subject for your career. I'll be honest I'm not sure any legitimate journal would publish anything further along in this line even if it was replicable, which scientist would risk peer reviewing something that could lose them their job. A domestic dog, wolf and coyote can all breed together and all produce fertile offspring. Then you look at genetic variation between the three species.

raven105x 5y ago
I often wonder how many decades of progress political correctness (different from ethics) has cost us when it comes to science (when it's sound, provable, and replicable).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- carapace 5y ago
  Probably not as many decades of progress as racism and sexism have cost us, eh?
  - cowuser666 5y ago
    This would be clever if political correctness and racism/sexism were necessarily opposed to each other. Alas...
  - Jensson 5y ago
    Racism and sexism were political correctness.
    - Causality1 5y ago
      Sometimes I feel bad for the people whose legacy was tainted by scientific racism, especially if they lived to see its end and changed their opinions accordingly. Lovecraft is an example of this.
      - KittenInABox 5y ago
        I wasn't aware Lovecraft stopped being a xenophobe late in life. Would you be willing to provide articles or something?
        Causality1 5y ago
        Oh he never stopped being a xenophobe, but he drew a line between his personal dislike and the idea that other races were inherently inferior. This is a good read: https://motifri.com/lovecraftcontext/ https://motifri.com/lovecraftcontext/ I like to think that if he hadn't died so young his personal tastes might have matured.
    - AlexCoventry 5y ago
      Whining about political correctness is political correctness.
    - geofft 5y ago
      I see what you're getting at, but this is a bit of a motte-and-bailey argument. While it is literally true that widespread acceptance of racism and sexism was (and is) motivated by a desire to avoid being wrong in the eyes of prevailing politics, that's not what the specific term "political correctness" popularized in the early '90s referred to. The NYT opinion article that popularized the term said: > Affirmative action is politically correct. So too are women's studies, gay and lesbian studies, and African-American studies, all of which are strongly represented in the scholarly panels at such professional meetings as those of the American Historical Association and the Modern Language Association. [...] Biodegradable garbage bags get the p.c. seal of approval. Exxon does not. And Bush Sr. gave a speech shortly thereafter decrying it: > The notion of political correctness has ignited controversy across the land. And although the movement arises from the laudable desire to sweep away the debris of racism and sexism and hatred, it replaces old prejudice with new ones. They and all the other media figures and conservative politicians and so forth in the early '90s would have all looked at you confused if you claimed that racism and sexism, themselves, were forms of political correctness. If your argument is that public pressure to conform to racist and sexist cultural consensuses was bad for scientific research, it does not actually help the cause to defend opponents of "political correctness" who advocate for the freedom to express now-unpopular racist and sexist viewpoints.
      - Jensson 5y ago
        > If your argument is that public pressure to conform to racist and sexist cultural consensuses was bad for scientific research My argument is that public pressure to conform to the political norms for its time is always bad for scientific research, regardless what the political norms are. The political norms are what is called "politically correct", things that you should believe because otherwise society will become hostile against you. Political correct pressure on science is similar to banning all smoking health research that isn't funded by tobacco companies. Sure tobacco funded research is still research, but it will be extremely biased. The same about politically pressured research. The pressure to confirm racist ideas lead to a lot of bad science in the past. The pressure to confirm modern political ideas lead to a lot of bad science today. Those two works in exactly the same way. However since I live today and not in the past I care about the problems science face today rather than the problems it had a long time ago that are no longer relevant.
- twofornone 5y ago
  I strongly suspect that much of the messiness in empirical biological studies would be deconfounded if we were generally more willing to classify humans into narrower ethnic groups. For example, different groups of people are likely optimized for different diets, in which case insufficiently breaking down the ethnic makeup of your study cohort would lead to weak or contradictory evidence when applied to populations at large, as we tend to see. The same likely applies to various supplements, medications, and probably even psychological studies including behavioral and medical interventions for abnormal states. I can understand the hesitancy to do so but I think most people, including scientists, are not aware of the likely cost. It is possibly to classify humans into races/subspecies without resorting to racial discrimination or animus - the same way we currently celebrate so called diversity. I do believe it would likely have implications for the interventions which certain pockets of our society are attempting to install to correct for racially correlated inequities.
rackjack 5y ago
He's a professor emeritus, I think he'll be alright. The website also has similar articles, for example "How Human Are We?": https://www.sapiens.org/biology/evolution-human-identity/ https://www.sapiens.org/biology/evolution-human-identity/
rootsudo 5y ago
If it's repeatable, why does it deserve to be censored? Science is empirical, if it can be measured, measure it. If you can re-create it, do so. The very nature of it being "replicable" means it is worth publishing and discussion.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Modern social media has ruined many careers unnecessarily. The mob mentality sometimes wins and destroys people that it shouldn't. Social media can be as much a disease as a benign influence.
- bongoman37 5y ago
  You obviously haven't paid attention to the world political climate over the last decade or so.
- 323 5y ago
  Because a lot of what we think we know might actually be false. For example the empirical idea that there are two biological sexes. That is false, despite seemingly being well established: > Sex Redefined: The Idea of 2 Sexes Is Overly Simplistic > Biologists now think there is a larger spectrum than just binary female and male > “My feeling is that since there is not one biological parameter that takes over every other parameter, at the end of the day, gender identity seems to be the most reasonable parameter,” says Vilain. In other words, if you want to know whether someone is male or female, it may be best just to ask. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the-idea-of-2-sexes-is-overly-simplistic1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the...
sirtaj 5y ago
Why? He quite clearly states that " All modern humans are clearly, morphologically H. sapiens." Do you suspect that further research along this line will disprove this?
- anonporridge 5y ago
  I think it's just a bad article title that doesn't explicitly clarify that we're not talking about existing, modern homo sapiens. Piddling about the taxonomy of extinct species isn't problematic, but I could see a mob misinterpret this as him saying that not all living humans belong to the same species, and go on a witch hunt over the misunderstanding. However, if some evidence started emerging that modern humans were not all the same species (whatever that actually means in practice) then I think the above comment applies. No one with a reputation to protect would touch that bit of truth with a ten foot pole.
- twofornone 5y ago
  Because the implication of his writings is that it would be consistent with taxonomic treatment of other animals to classify certain existing groups of humans as different subspecies or species. Which strays too closely to so called racism.
kergonath 5y ago
All sorts of quacks still get tenure. There’s always a university willing to accept most heterodox views. I see regularly comments along those lines on the Internet. I’d like some examples of “unpublishable scientific theories” that are not obviously bunk, as opposed to just controversial. Otherwise it is mostly a convenient bogeyman for bunk mongers. Also, replicability seems a strange concern for this field. We’re never going to have an Earth Mk2 to test hypotheses.
- fallingknife 5y ago
  Here's an example: https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-published-paper-down-the-memory-hole/ https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-p...
  - kergonath 5y ago
    Fascinating case. Quite a lot of emotions as well. I am not going to derail the discussion, though, as this leads to a deep rabbit hole. To stay on topic, this is not an example of career-ending article, because he’s already retired, and nevertheless still affiliated with both Georgia Tech and California Polytechnic State University. He also himself says that the un-acceptance of his article is unprecedented, so this is hardly representative of anything.
    - fallingknife 5y ago
      Yes this was an unprecedented case because it was rejected after being peer reviewed and accepted. If they are going that far to censor inconvenient truth imagine how often good papers are rejected in review or not even written in the first place because the would be author knows what would happen.

raven105x 5y ago

I often wonder how many decades of progress political correctness (different from ethics) has cost us when it comes to science (when it's sound, provable, and replicable).

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
carapace 5y ago
Probably not as many decades of progress as racism and sexism have cost us, eh?
- cowuser666 5y ago
  This would be clever if political correctness and racism/sexism were necessarily opposed to each other. Alas...
- Jensson 5y ago
  Racism and sexism were political correctness.
  - Causality1 5y ago
    Sometimes I feel bad for the people whose legacy was tainted by scientific racism, especially if they lived to see its end and changed their opinions accordingly. Lovecraft is an example of this.
    - KittenInABox 5y ago
      I wasn't aware Lovecraft stopped being a xenophobe late in life. Would you be willing to provide articles or something?
      - Causality1 5y ago
        Oh he never stopped being a xenophobe, but he drew a line between his personal dislike and the idea that other races were inherently inferior. This is a good read: https://motifri.com/lovecraftcontext/ https://motifri.com/lovecraftcontext/ I like to think that if he hadn't died so young his personal tastes might have matured.
  - AlexCoventry 5y ago
    Whining about political correctness is political correctness.
  - geofft 5y ago
    I see what you're getting at, but this is a bit of a motte-and-bailey argument. While it is literally true that widespread acceptance of racism and sexism was (and is) motivated by a desire to avoid being wrong in the eyes of prevailing politics, that's not what the specific term "political correctness" popularized in the early '90s referred to. The NYT opinion article that popularized the term said: > Affirmative action is politically correct. So too are women's studies, gay and lesbian studies, and African-American studies, all of which are strongly represented in the scholarly panels at such professional meetings as those of the American Historical Association and the Modern Language Association. [...] Biodegradable garbage bags get the p.c. seal of approval. Exxon does not. And Bush Sr. gave a speech shortly thereafter decrying it: > The notion of political correctness has ignited controversy across the land. And although the movement arises from the laudable desire to sweep away the debris of racism and sexism and hatred, it replaces old prejudice with new ones. They and all the other media figures and conservative politicians and so forth in the early '90s would have all looked at you confused if you claimed that racism and sexism, themselves, were forms of political correctness. If your argument is that public pressure to conform to racist and sexist cultural consensuses was bad for scientific research, it does not actually help the cause to defend opponents of "political correctness" who advocate for the freedom to express now-unpopular racist and sexist viewpoints.
    - Jensson 5y ago
      > If your argument is that public pressure to conform to racist and sexist cultural consensuses was bad for scientific research My argument is that public pressure to conform to the political norms for its time is always bad for scientific research, regardless what the political norms are. The political norms are what is called "politically correct", things that you should believe because otherwise society will become hostile against you. Political correct pressure on science is similar to banning all smoking health research that isn't funded by tobacco companies. Sure tobacco funded research is still research, but it will be extremely biased. The same about politically pressured research. The pressure to confirm racist ideas lead to a lot of bad science in the past. The pressure to confirm modern political ideas lead to a lot of bad science today. Those two works in exactly the same way. However since I live today and not in the past I care about the problems science face today rather than the problems it had a long time ago that are no longer relevant.
twofornone 5y ago
I strongly suspect that much of the messiness in empirical biological studies would be deconfounded if we were generally more willing to classify humans into narrower ethnic groups. For example, different groups of people are likely optimized for different diets, in which case insufficiently breaking down the ethnic makeup of your study cohort would lead to weak or contradictory evidence when applied to populations at large, as we tend to see. The same likely applies to various supplements, medications, and probably even psychological studies including behavioral and medical interventions for abnormal states. I can understand the hesitancy to do so but I think most people, including scientists, are not aware of the likely cost. It is possibly to classify humans into races/subspecies without resorting to racial discrimination or animus - the same way we currently celebrate so called diversity. I do believe it would likely have implications for the interventions which certain pockets of our society are attempting to install to correct for racially correlated inequities.

rackjack 5y ago

He's a professor emeritus, I think he'll be alright. The website also has similar articles, for example "How Human Are We?": https://www.sapiens.org/biology/evolution-human-identity/ https://www.sapiens.org/biology/evolution-human-identity/

rootsudo 5y ago

If it's repeatable, why does it deserve to be censored? Science is empirical, if it can be measured, measure it. If you can re-create it, do so. The very nature of it being "replicable" means it is worth publishing and discussion.

stjohnswarts 5y ago
Modern social media has ruined many careers unnecessarily. The mob mentality sometimes wins and destroys people that it shouldn't. Social media can be as much a disease as a benign influence.
bongoman37 5y ago
You obviously haven't paid attention to the world political climate over the last decade or so.
323 5y ago
Because a lot of what we think we know might actually be false. For example the empirical idea that there are two biological sexes. That is false, despite seemingly being well established: > Sex Redefined: The Idea of 2 Sexes Is Overly Simplistic > Biologists now think there is a larger spectrum than just binary female and male > “My feeling is that since there is not one biological parameter that takes over every other parameter, at the end of the day, gender identity seems to be the most reasonable parameter,” says Vilain. In other words, if you want to know whether someone is male or female, it may be best just to ask. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the-idea-of-2-sexes-is-overly-simplistic1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the...

sirtaj 5y ago

Why? He quite clearly states that " All modern humans are clearly, morphologically H. sapiens." Do you suspect that further research along this line will disprove this?

anonporridge 5y ago
I think it's just a bad article title that doesn't explicitly clarify that we're not talking about existing, modern homo sapiens. Piddling about the taxonomy of extinct species isn't problematic, but I could see a mob misinterpret this as him saying that not all living humans belong to the same species, and go on a witch hunt over the misunderstanding. However, if some evidence started emerging that modern humans were not all the same species (whatever that actually means in practice) then I think the above comment applies. No one with a reputation to protect would touch that bit of truth with a ten foot pole.
twofornone 5y ago
Because the implication of his writings is that it would be consistent with taxonomic treatment of other animals to classify certain existing groups of humans as different subspecies or species. Which strays too closely to so called racism.

kergonath 5y ago

All sorts of quacks still get tenure. There’s always a university willing to accept most heterodox views. I see regularly comments along those lines on the Internet. I’d like some examples of “unpublishable scientific theories” that are not obviously bunk, as opposed to just controversial. Otherwise it is mostly a convenient bogeyman for bunk mongers. Also, replicability seems a strange concern for this field. We’re never going to have an Earth Mk2 to test hypotheses.

fallingknife 5y ago
Here's an example: https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-published-paper-down-the-memory-hole/ https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-p...
- kergonath 5y ago
  Fascinating case. Quite a lot of emotions as well. I am not going to derail the discussion, though, as this leads to a deep rabbit hole. To stay on topic, this is not an example of career-ending article, because he’s already retired, and nevertheless still affiliated with both Georgia Tech and California Polytechnic State University. He also himself says that the un-acceptance of his article is unprecedented, so this is hardly representative of anything.
  - fallingknife 5y ago
    Yes this was an unprecedented case because it was rejected after being peer reviewed and accepted. If they are going that far to censor inconvenient truth imagine how often good papers are rejected in review or not even written in the first place because the would be author knows what would happen.