6 ms·

> she’s clearly qualified to participate in a scientific discussion No, her remarks about the normal distribution disqualified her from all scientific discussi

by jmmcd 5y ago

> she’s clearly qualified to participate in a scientific discussion No, her remarks about the normal distribution disqualified her from all scientific discussion.

mbg721 5y ago
Nothing "disqualifies you from all scientific discussion"; ideas that are provably wrong get tossed out, and if you think she's going to be such a frequent source of provably wrong ideas as to derail the discussion, then say so.
- jmmcd 5y ago
  She's not proposing a falsiable hypothesis here which can compete in the marketplace of ideas. We're talking about the normal distribution. If she doesn't know what it is, that casts doubt on her understanding of all the other basics she learned during her undergrad and PhD. If (more likely) she does and she's just being dishonest, that casts doubt on everything she says for a different reason.
acdha 5y ago
How? Did you read the paper she linked to and understand why she referenced it? https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.675788/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.6757... (and, for that matter, did you notice the clever way in which Razib said it was nonsense but didn't directly address or show any signs of understanding the argument? He was hoping that you'd have a good sense of righteous indignation and roll right past that without pausing to ask whether things like human cognition might not be as simple as the length of a cucumber.)
- naasking 5y ago
  You mean the paper that she co-authored that makes the same mistake, one that was roundly and harshly criticized by scientists and statisticians? The normal distribution does not entail there is any such concept as a "default human". Furthermore, that paper shows the corrupt logic inherent to a lot of woke criticism. You're tarred as a racist if you claim there are biological differences between races, while these same people cry that existing science is racist because it's not accounting for the biological differences between races.
  - acdha 5y ago
    > You mean the paper that she co-authored that makes the same mistake, one that was roundly and harshly criticized by scientists and statisticians? Yes, the one which was in a peer-reviewed journal. If it was so roundly condemned you should have no trouble doing more than drive-by accusations.
    - naasking 5y ago
      > you should have no trouble doing more than drive-by accusations McLemore didn't see fit to do more than drive by accusations of Wilson, so I'm not sure why I should bother extending her more courtesy than she extended to the recently deceased. Other scientists have already commented on this widely anyway, so you can find them if you're actually interested.
- topynate 5y ago
  McLemore's claim, "the so-called normal distribution of statistics assumes that there are default humans who serve as the standard that the rest of us can be accurately measured against", is false. Moreover, the fact that no such thing as a statistically default human exists (which has been known since at least the '40s – see https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-force-discovered-the-flaw-of-averages.html https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-...) has nothing to do with the normal distribution as such. The default human body fails to exist despite the normal distribution of many of the measures that can be made of a human body. The paper McLemore linked, of which I have read as much as I can endure, does not, to its credit, make any such claim about the normal distribution or any other distribution. McLemore, in her article but not in her paper, is simply using amphiboly to confuse the different meanings of 'normal' as part of the phrase "normal distribution" and as a synonym for 'default' sensu 'basis of comparision'. This makes no sense – hence, "nonsense". And she doesn't even use that confusion to make any sensible point. The rest of that paragraph is just a rehash of the paper's argument. I don't "understand" why McLemore inserted this guff about normal distributions, but if I had to guess, she might have done it to strengthen the link between what Wilson wrote about and what the paper is criticising – not by reasoning, but by wordplay.
- jmmcd 5y ago
  That article doesn't mention the normal distribution. I suppose she referenced it because she hoped people would assume that an article on an important topic wouldn't just be thrown around by the same author as a citation in support of total nonsense. But people who assumed that would be wrong. Questioning the idea of a "default human" is fine. Saying that the normal distribution implies the idea -- this is nonsense.

by jmmcd 5y ago

> she’s clearly qualified to participate in a scientific discussion No, her remarks about the normal distribution disqualified her from all scientific discussion.

mbg721 5y ago

Nothing "disqualifies you from all scientific discussion"; ideas that are provably wrong get tossed out, and if you think she's going to be such a frequent source of provably wrong ideas as to derail the discussion, then say so.

jmmcd 5y ago
She's not proposing a falsiable hypothesis here which can compete in the marketplace of ideas. We're talking about the normal distribution. If she doesn't know what it is, that casts doubt on her understanding of all the other basics she learned during her undergrad and PhD. If (more likely) she does and she's just being dishonest, that casts doubt on everything she says for a different reason.

acdha 5y ago

How? Did you read the paper she linked to and understand why she referenced it? https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.675788/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.6757... (and, for that matter, did you notice the clever way in which Razib said it was nonsense but didn't directly address or show any signs of understanding the argument? He was hoping that you'd have a good sense of righteous indignation and roll right past that without pausing to ask whether things like human cognition might not be as simple as the length of a cucumber.)

naasking 5y ago
You mean the paper that she co-authored that makes the same mistake, one that was roundly and harshly criticized by scientists and statisticians? The normal distribution does not entail there is any such concept as a "default human". Furthermore, that paper shows the corrupt logic inherent to a lot of woke criticism. You're tarred as a racist if you claim there are biological differences between races, while these same people cry that existing science is racist because it's not accounting for the biological differences between races.
- acdha 5y ago
  > You mean the paper that she co-authored that makes the same mistake, one that was roundly and harshly criticized by scientists and statisticians? Yes, the one which was in a peer-reviewed journal. If it was so roundly condemned you should have no trouble doing more than drive-by accusations.
  - naasking 5y ago
    > you should have no trouble doing more than drive-by accusations McLemore didn't see fit to do more than drive by accusations of Wilson, so I'm not sure why I should bother extending her more courtesy than she extended to the recently deceased. Other scientists have already commented on this widely anyway, so you can find them if you're actually interested.
topynate 5y ago
McLemore's claim, "the so-called normal distribution of statistics assumes that there are default humans who serve as the standard that the rest of us can be accurately measured against", is false. Moreover, the fact that no such thing as a statistically default human exists (which has been known since at least the '40s – see https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-force-discovered-the-flaw-of-averages.html https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-...) has nothing to do with the normal distribution as such. The default human body fails to exist despite the normal distribution of many of the measures that can be made of a human body. The paper McLemore linked, of which I have read as much as I can endure, does not, to its credit, make any such claim about the normal distribution or any other distribution. McLemore, in her article but not in her paper, is simply using amphiboly to confuse the different meanings of 'normal' as part of the phrase "normal distribution" and as a synonym for 'default' sensu 'basis of comparision'. This makes no sense – hence, "nonsense". And she doesn't even use that confusion to make any sensible point. The rest of that paragraph is just a rehash of the paper's argument. I don't "understand" why McLemore inserted this guff about normal distributions, but if I had to guess, she might have done it to strengthen the link between what Wilson wrote about and what the paper is criticising – not by reasoning, but by wordplay.
jmmcd 5y ago
That article doesn't mention the normal distribution. I suppose she referenced it because she hoped people would assume that an article on an important topic wouldn't just be thrown around by the same author as a citation in support of total nonsense. But people who assumed that would be wrong. Questioning the idea of a "default human" is fine. Saying that the normal distribution implies the idea -- this is nonsense.