10 ms·

University Profs' Criticism Led to Retraction of Math Paper on Gender (2018)

82 points by RafelMri 4y ago

defrost 4y ago
The paper itself is a chuckle fest (as are many Intelligencer submissions) and concludes: > The goal here has been neither to challenge nor to confirm Darwin’s and other researchers’ observations of greater male variability for any given species or any given trait, but rather to propose an elementary mathematical theory based on biological/evolutionary mechanisms that might serve as a starting point to help explain how one sex of a species might tend to evolve with greater variability than the other sex. ie. Such a thing may or may not be true, but if it were true there is a pachinko machine that can create that effect. Of course, more generally, if you posit a distribution, there exists a pachinko machine that can recreate it. What's telling is that this paper appends two runs of empirical data sets: A.1 Primary Research Studies Supporting the Greater Male Variability Hypothesis and A.2 Primary Research Studies Not Supporting the Greater Male Variability Hypothesis so they're not even backing a horse in any race, just stirring the pot for a giggle .. via 30+ pages with references.
- AinderS 4y ago
  Everything is a chuckle if you replace phrases like "plausible evolutionary mechanism" with "pachinko machine".
  - defrost 4y ago
    It's a valid equivalence. The paper could equally describe an plausible evolutionary mechanism by which the male sex evolves to be tiny in comparison to females who consume them after snu-snu. While this has zero bearing on the reality of human evolution it has an example in nature in the spider kingdom.
    - AinderS 4y ago
      > While this has zero bearing on the reality of human evolution It does have bearing. It is proof by example that biology and evolution does not rule out such a possibility. For the actual paper in question, it is proof that such an outcome is not (yet) ruled out even in the specific case of humans.
      - defrost 4y ago
        The possibilities are endless (albeit enumerable), sure - that's the chuckle - it's a given from the outset and flows from the axioms of the game. This paper doesn't take a broad view and show that many things are possible, it takes a narrow view and demonstrates that one specific thing (among many) is possible. ie. a dull trite result. The fact that many possiblies can follow from evolution does bring any specific light to bear on the actual extent reality of human evolution as it is today. The same arguments here that show it is possible for a mechanism of weights to favour more variation in males can equally be used to show that weights exist to favour more variation in females, or, as in the case of spider, that weights could exist to favor a size variation in which females dwarf males. Fascinating .. but an abstract result that sheds nothing on the current extant actuality.
        V-2 4y ago
        It's a math paper, not one in evolutionary biology. Only the mathematical aspect is of relevance here, and either it holds water or it doesn't. You can assume a seven-dimensional space, and for analyzing the geometry of such space it is irrelevant whether it actually exists somewhere in the universe or beyond.
- civilized 4y ago
  High-energy physicists make up theories for the mechanisms behind phenomena that may or may not even exist all the time. One can question the utility of this but no one strings up such authors for heresy.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - willis936 4y ago
    Theoretical physics does not aim to influence social policy.
    - zozbot234 4y ago
      That's news to me. How do all those nifty particle accelerators get funded, then?
      - willis936 4y ago
        The budget is only loosely related to social policy. Social policy is related to who gets what rights and priveleges.
        rowanG077 4y ago
        And a group of physicist getting very expensive toys while the chemist/biologist/psychologist do not is exactly that. The physicist have rights and privileges the others don't have.
    - feet 4y ago
      Does this paper aim to influence policy?
      - willis936 4y ago
        Of course. All anthropological work about contemporary society seeks to inform public opinion which dictates policy.
- RayVR 4y ago
  uh...no. They are not stirring the pot. Proposing rigorous processes that approximate observed phenomena is a very common line of research. Many of the phenomena in financial markets that I cared about when I was trading had researchers coming up with models/modifying existing models to attempt to generate the same observed risk premia.
akomtu 4y ago
Scientists who studied in medieval times how many angels can fit a needle tip must have reincarnated and continued their research in an adjacent field.
- eesmith 4y ago
  > However, the idea that such questions had a prominent place in medieval scholarship has been debated, and it has not been proven that this particular question was ever disputed.[6] One theory is that it is an early modern fabrication,[a] used to discredit scholastic philosophy at a time when it still played a significant role in university education. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_many_angels_can_dance_on_the_head_of_a_pin%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_many_angels_can_dance_on_t...
lkjelkj 4y ago
Jun8 4y ago
Here’s one of the authors of the mentioned article explaining how the situation developed for more context: 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...
jollybean 4y ago
Imagine the 'indirect effect' that these kinds of things have on discussions throughout the industry. Reddit just had a discussion about the video 'Fat' (i.e. 'Bad') by Weird Al Mocking Michael Jackson. It 'couldn't be made today' first because it wouldn't even be pitched in the first place - too much risk. They'll try another idea. Maybe it's 'not nice' in 2022 to use the term 'fat' - or, maybe it's not so bad, and we're just too concerned about everything - the point is - the concept won't ever really be 'thought of' because everyone is aware of the 'new rules'. It's a form of systematic oppression. It's all over the place. I suggest we should probably err on the side of expression as long as people aren't directly doing something obviously hateful. Especially in non-populist channels like academia. Fox News will always find 'something' to harp on, let's not worry about what they have to say, unless we're in some kind of emergency i.e. war, insurrection, pandemic. Let's publish, create, then talk about it.
- r3ctilinear 4y ago
  Weird Al's "Fat" did not mock Michael Jackson. The "Fat" song was a parody which continued on the theme established with "Eat It". Mockery is quite different to parody.
  - MauranKilom 4y ago
    Fun fact: Michael Jackson let them use the original "Beat It" set for "Eat It".
- rhinoceraptor 4y ago
  > It's a form of systematic oppression. Against who? Parody artists? Weird Al has a parody along the same lines on his 2014 album and I'm not aware of any outrage. If your biggest concern in life is being "cancelled" (a dramatic term for being criticized on the internet), I think that says more about you and your intolerance for free speech, than anyone else.
  - jollybean 4y ago
    Being 'cancelled' in academia and entertainment is a very real thing that happens to artists, but more notably, as I mentioned, suppresses tons of content across the board that won't even get pitched otherwise. While some people do overstate it, it's definitely real. Those who diminish it are the fascists of our generation. Sean Penn (far left activist) and Conan O'Brien (staunch centre left advocate, public supporter of Hillary Clinton etc.) publicly decried the problem as 'Stalinist' - strong words. In their experience, in private conversation in Hollywood people are freaked out about the oppression, while a few virtue signal here and there publicly while towing the party line, everyone is thinks it's nuts. Stephen Pinker (staunch centre-left, respected academic) has spoken out about this, and faced a 'cancellation' of his own for merely suggesting publicly that the issue with policing in America is more a general problem as opposed to specifically a racial problem. The 'mob' came for him and tried to have his participation on various boards 'cancelled'. A long list of thinkers, including the likes of Chomsky himself, had to come out and publicly admonish the 'cancellers' (mostly on the far left) for the systematic problem. It's without modern precedent. There's a 'civil war' between generations at the NYT (Editorial) about what constitutes 'fair'. The 'outrage mob' has a measurable effect on academia and especially creative culture. Producers just don't want to risk a project being annulled, and so they go out of their way to 'sanitize' efforts left and right. The Wachowski sisters (then brothers) were 'condemned' for 'Cloud Atlas' where they dared to have people of different classes, genders and races, play various characters - frankly in attempt to display the common humanity within all of us (not some arbitrary bit of ugly humour) - though the outrage wasn't enough to hurt them, it's become a 'no go zone' for content in 2022. Actors playing characters of different source origin i.e. someone 'non Japanese' playing a character from Anime, actors playing historical figures, actors playing arbitrary fictional characters of questionable origin etc. etc. - it's all a minefield, scaring producers away from anything. 30 Rock, made by your typically socially progressive groups, had several episodes pulled. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Go ahead and re-watch 'Superbad' - it could not be made today, it wouldn't even get pitched. Every scene is 'off message' - arbitrary bits about crude porn, jokes involving trans people, 'period' gags. It was always a bit 'outrageous' but that kind of humour will risk too much ire and so it's out. Even the actors just wouldn't want to risk being on the wrong side - look at Seth Rogen's most recent work, it's like a 180 degree shift. Institutional entities that have been around for some time, notably 'make money' and notably have their own production ability - South Park and Family Guy, basically get a free pass. But most people in entertainment and academia do not have power like 'Dave Chapelle' or institutional protection like 'South Park' or respect of 'Stephen Pinker' - so they 'stay on message' and 'away from controversy' or else the script does not get approved. And FYI even the people turning it away aren't ideological about it 'it's just business' and an accommodation of the outrage mob, fickle advertisers etc.. The 'outraged' a fairly small group, with a sizeable group of allies particularly among Gen Z, which can be noted in the continuous public furor over ostensibly 'terrible person', JK Rowling. The way they go on about here is medieval. While I don't think our campuses are overtly hostile, the issue does linger.
UberFly 4y ago
They had to be "cleared of wrongdoing" after they criticized a mathematics paper? The morality police in the US aren't so different than in other places.
- darawk 4y ago
  No, > After Hill’s paper was published in a second journal, the New York Journal of Mathematics (NYJM), University of Chicago mathematics professor Benson Farb, who is married to Wilkinson, partook in the editorial decision to retract the paper. Hill wrote to the University claiming that their actions constituted a violation of his freedom of speech, but the University found no evidence of wrongdoing after an investigation earlier this year. The wrongdoing of which they had to be cleared was a conflict of interest, due to her husband being the editor of one of the journals.
mgamache 4y ago
Retracting a paper should only be done in select situations, like fraud, plagiarism or violating ethical guidelines. Was any of that present? If you retract papers that were just 'wrong' you would be retracting at least 50% of the work published in a lot of fields. Furthermore you would leave a blind spot in the research, other researchers might try and pursue those retracted ideas not realizing they are dead ends.
- jacknews 4y ago
  I agree, but it's not clear from the article if the paper is even wrong. As I understand it there's robust evidence in support of the hypothesis itself (GMVH), and this paper was an attempt to model how the effect could come about. It looks to me more like it was retracted for being distasteful to the journal editor's wife.
  - eska 4y ago
    According to the author and a publisher no scientific criticism has been offered.
    - AinderS 4y ago
      Suppose some had. Almost every paper has some shortcomings on which it can be validly criticized. But how much criticism those shortcomings generate, and if that criticism results in a retraction or academic censure, depends on if the paper dared to endanger any modern-day holy cows.
- waffleiron 4y ago
  Then you could as well argue peer review should not look at methodology, but only for fraud, plagiarism and ethics violations. A retraction can in some cases be seem as a delayed failed (broader) peer review.
  - mgamache 4y ago
    Methodology is part of fraud and maybe ethics. It's also required in the future for meta analysis. It might be that published papers disagree on the topic. If there are problems with methodology you can't really use the data as it's noise (at best).
baazaa 4y ago
It's not novel to claim that the possibility of men going full Genghis Khan might result in greater trait-variability for men and explain the Lek paradox and so forth. The paper seems to distance itself from Bateman's principle but I can't figure how it meaningfully differs besides being framed very weirdly.
barrysteve 4y ago
According to a document drop publicly released on Retraction Watch, Senechal wrote to Hill and Tabachnikov, concerned about the “very real possibility that the right-wing media may pick [the article] up and hype it internationally.” She proposed a round-table discussion be held in lieu of publishing the paper, one that never occurred. I don't understand why the people involved would care if some political group picked up the paper. The best political move for the profs in this case is to state their criticisms of the paper and move on. Stamping down on it just makes it louder. Ignoring the valid academic criticisms of the piece makes it look deliberately pushed out to the world. Just comment and move on. This feels like another academic advertisement for internet politics. The 'sexism makes politics' angle is so worn out lately.
- Ma8ee 4y ago
  Because you don’t want yourself or the journal your are editor for to be used as a weapon by right wing extremists (i.e. so called conservatives). Even if the research would be true and we could use the knowledge to improve society, the right wing will pick it up and use it to promote sexism and racism.
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    Except that right wing trolls will pick up literally anything for their own purposes. Trying to avoid that by playing politics about scientific matters is a fool's game, it only compounds the problem further.
    - Ma8ee 4y ago
      Are you sure about that? I’m sure that you probably could find small but significant (in the statistical sense) differences of intelligence between races and genders if you tried hard enough. It would be strange otherwise. Would that knowledge make the world a better or worse place in the current political climate? What would your thoughts be about the motivation behind that research? Do you really think it would be honest, unbiased search for truth?
isaacfrond 4y ago
The paper itself: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04184.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04184.pdf
jokethrowaway 4y ago
A great example of Streisand effect. I would have never heard about this paper if the wife of the editor didn't censor it. Interesting hypothesis and nothing too far fetched, unless you're hellbent on proving men and women are the exact same.
oifjsidjf 4y ago
Ironicaly if the Greater Male Variability Hypothesis is true this also means that many more men are more dumber than women since women are more centered towards the gauss average. Ironicaly this is never mentioned, they just see this is a "many more men can have a higher iq distrubution wise due to the male gauss tail stretching out further than womens, so this is sexist to say that men are smarter". This shows you how biased all of these critics are, zero scientific discussion, pure emotional and egoistic outbursts. They see this paper as "men are better", while in reality it says only "men are more in the extremes, both higher AND lower extremes than women." Also if you read this: 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... This is a good example of how NOT to handle a situation like this. The authors tried to convience the people that they were just doing science in good faith, but those feminist zaelots just saw it as "men are better". You cannot argue with such people. Those people in charge are the opposite of intellectual academic scientists. Sad so to see what academia has devolved to. Sad that people in such high places have such beliefs. The correct response in this situation is to tell them to go f** themselves and expose them for the immature brats that they are. Growling like a dog before them IS ALWAYS THE WRONG COURSE OF ACTION. If you growel before them you give them authority, this is the worst thing that you can do and will perpetuate this anti-scientific cycle.
- christophilus 4y ago
  I think you meant “grovel”. Growling like a dog before them would be quite a fun experiment.
  - oifjsidjf 4y ago
    True my bad
- sascha_sl 4y ago
  >Ironicaly this is never mentioned, they just see this is a "many more men can have a higher iq distrubution wise due to the male gauss tail stretching out further than womens, so this is sexist to say that men are smarter". Because many advocates of GMVH are only interested in justifying the gender imbalance in leadership positions biologically, dismissing any well known social factors (e.g. competence rating on double blind fake CVs)? "Feminists say GMVH means men are all smarter" is a gross oversimplification of the situation. If you have 2.5 hours to spend on a video essay, I'd very much recommend "The Bell Curve"[1], a breakdown of the book of the same name. Not so much for the racism part, but for the background on the construction of IQ. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
There's a whole genre of simple mathematical models that excuse centuries of well documented oppression. Like the 'only a small amount of desire to live near similar people leads to self-segregation' thing. You know what else leads to segregation? Actual laws that enforce it at the point of a gun with legal and extra-legal terrorism. If only there was some way to tell which of these occurred in real history.
- fartsucker69 4y ago
  I don't know what point you're making. Should those models not be allowed to exist? Usually the way this goes is that a scientist proposes a model to describe something, and it's fine. When it goes wrong is usually when the public picks up that science and uses it to do something horrible. The thing about self-segregation behaviour you mention is a basic fact of life, you can see it everywhere, all the time, chances are you've done it to yourself if you've ever been embedded in a different culture for any amount of time. It's interesting and potentially useful to build a scientific model out of it for analysis or other purposes. There's no problem at all with it until some politician thinks it allows them to be bigoted and oppressive. If the actual 'science' implied in any way that people should be oppressed based on the models, it was obviously bad science and would not have stood the test of time in any case.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    I've created a simple mathmatical model that suggests they wouldn't get created in the first place, so we no longer need to discuss whether banning them was a good idea or not, it just happened naturally, and there's nothing anyone could have done to change that.
    - yekoc 4y ago
      And the obviously hyperbolical nature of that model still doesn't prevent you from creating it or from it leading to potential further research oppurtunities (in fact,please do release the paper that results from such,I'd love to read it.) and following logically from that it still doesn't prevent anyone from creating a model that disagrees or from following any potential research opputunities that such would lead to. The validity of a mathematical model is dependent solely upon it's internal (and,depending on the extent of the research,external) consistency.Whether it possess any form of 'accuracy to the real world' only comes into play when people who don't understand this attempt to use it to justify their preconceptions.
prvc 4y ago
>A University investigation cleared two University of Chicago mathematics professors of wrongdoing after they independently criticized a controversial mathematics paper [...] I'd like to know the sense of "independently" that the author had in mind here, considering the two are married to one another. Also worth wondering whether the paper was intrinsically "controversial", or merely made to be so by virtue of the complaint(s).
- hulitu 4y ago
  > I'd like to know the sense of "independently" that the author had in mind here, considering the two are married to one another. Yes, dear.
- feet 4y ago
  My assumption is that in this context 'independently' means not in their official duties or roles as people affiliated with the university. So the university investigated them for something they did on their own time
oxfordmale 4y ago
Surely the right wing media will now jump on the fact this paper was "cancelled" as it was communicating an inconvenient truth for the wokerati? You can't win. The best thing to do is to let such things go as this article would have gone unnoticed.
- krapp 4y ago
  Or, we could not make decisions about what to publish and what not based on how the lunatic fringe might react to it.
  - oxfordmale 4y ago
    If only. There is a very vocal minority that is advocating for tolerance and freedom of expression, but only if it aligns to their world view that "is at the right side of history"
concinds 4y ago
Context: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2018/09/11/on-the-recently-removed-paper-from-the-new-york-journal-of-mathematics/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2018/09/11/on-the-recently-re... https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2018/09/17/mathematics-matters/ https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2018/09/17/mathematics-mat... 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... (by one of the paper's authors) http://www.personal.psu.edu/cpc16/politico-email-29nov2018.pdf http://www.personal.psu.edu/cpc16/politico-email-29nov2018.p... (mail criticizing Quillette article)
PeterStuer 4y ago
imho the "Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole"[1] first hand account gives a better insight, as clearly the Chicago Maroon piece leaves too many questions. [1] 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...
stefantalpalaru 4y ago
rowanG077 4y ago
I honestly don't understand supressions of such things. I feel like to shows that the people who want to supress it know it's true but don't want to deal with the truth.
pyuser583 4y ago
Maybe this explains why political conservatives are skeptical of scientists?

82 points by RafelMri 4y ago

The paper itself is a chuckle fest (as are many Intelligencer submissions) and concludes: > The goal here has been neither to challenge nor to confirm Darwin’s and other researchers’ observations of greater male variability for any given species or any given trait, but rather to propose an elementary mathematical theory based on biological/evolutionary mechanisms that might serve as a starting point to help explain how one sex of a species might tend to evolve with greater variability than the other sex. ie. Such a thing may or may not be true, but if it were true there is a pachinko machine that can create that effect. Of course, more generally, if you posit a distribution, there exists a pachinko machine that can recreate it. What's telling is that this paper appends two runs of empirical data sets: A.1 Primary Research Studies Supporting the Greater Male Variability Hypothesis and A.2 Primary Research Studies Not Supporting the Greater Male Variability Hypothesis so they're not even backing a horse in any race, just stirring the pot for a giggle .. via 30+ pages with references.

AinderS 4y ago
Everything is a chuckle if you replace phrases like "plausible evolutionary mechanism" with "pachinko machine".
- defrost 4y ago
  It's a valid equivalence. The paper could equally describe an plausible evolutionary mechanism by which the male sex evolves to be tiny in comparison to females who consume them after snu-snu. While this has zero bearing on the reality of human evolution it has an example in nature in the spider kingdom.
  - AinderS 4y ago
    > While this has zero bearing on the reality of human evolution It does have bearing. It is proof by example that biology and evolution does not rule out such a possibility. For the actual paper in question, it is proof that such an outcome is not (yet) ruled out even in the specific case of humans.
    - defrost 4y ago
      The possibilities are endless (albeit enumerable), sure - that's the chuckle - it's a given from the outset and flows from the axioms of the game. This paper doesn't take a broad view and show that many things are possible, it takes a narrow view and demonstrates that one specific thing (among many) is possible. ie. a dull trite result. The fact that many possiblies can follow from evolution does bring any specific light to bear on the actual extent reality of human evolution as it is today. The same arguments here that show it is possible for a mechanism of weights to favour more variation in males can equally be used to show that weights exist to favour more variation in females, or, as in the case of spider, that weights could exist to favor a size variation in which females dwarf males. Fascinating .. but an abstract result that sheds nothing on the current extant actuality.
      - V-2 4y ago
        It's a math paper, not one in evolutionary biology. Only the mathematical aspect is of relevance here, and either it holds water or it doesn't. You can assume a seven-dimensional space, and for analyzing the geometry of such space it is irrelevant whether it actually exists somewhere in the universe or beyond.
civilized 4y ago
High-energy physicists make up theories for the mechanisms behind phenomena that may or may not even exist all the time. One can question the utility of this but no one strings up such authors for heresy.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- willis936 4y ago
  Theoretical physics does not aim to influence social policy.
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    That's news to me. How do all those nifty particle accelerators get funded, then?
    - willis936 4y ago
      The budget is only loosely related to social policy. Social policy is related to who gets what rights and priveleges.
      - rowanG077 4y ago
        And a group of physicist getting very expensive toys while the chemist/biologist/psychologist do not is exactly that. The physicist have rights and privileges the others don't have.
  - feet 4y ago
    Does this paper aim to influence policy?
    - willis936 4y ago
      Of course. All anthropological work about contemporary society seeks to inform public opinion which dictates policy.
RayVR 4y ago
uh...no. They are not stirring the pot. Proposing rigorous processes that approximate observed phenomena is a very common line of research. Many of the phenomena in financial markets that I cared about when I was trading had researchers coming up with models/modifying existing models to attempt to generate the same observed risk premia.

akomtu 4y ago

Scientists who studied in medieval times how many angels can fit a needle tip must have reincarnated and continued their research in an adjacent field.

eesmith 4y ago
> However, the idea that such questions had a prominent place in medieval scholarship has been debated, and it has not been proven that this particular question was ever disputed.[6] One theory is that it is an early modern fabrication,[a] used to discredit scholastic philosophy at a time when it still played a significant role in university education. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_many_angels_can_dance_on_the_head_of_a_pin%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_many_angels_can_dance_on_t...

lkjelkj 4y ago

Jun8 4y ago

Here’s one of the authors of the mentioned article explaining how the situation developed for more context: 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...

jollybean 4y ago

Imagine the 'indirect effect' that these kinds of things have on discussions throughout the industry. Reddit just had a discussion about the video 'Fat' (i.e. 'Bad') by Weird Al Mocking Michael Jackson. It 'couldn't be made today' first because it wouldn't even be pitched in the first place - too much risk. They'll try another idea. Maybe it's 'not nice' in 2022 to use the term 'fat' - or, maybe it's not so bad, and we're just too concerned about everything - the point is - the concept won't ever really be 'thought of' because everyone is aware of the 'new rules'. It's a form of systematic oppression. It's all over the place. I suggest we should probably err on the side of expression as long as people aren't directly doing something obviously hateful. Especially in non-populist channels like academia. Fox News will always find 'something' to harp on, let's not worry about what they have to say, unless we're in some kind of emergency i.e. war, insurrection, pandemic. Let's publish, create, then talk about it.

r3ctilinear 4y ago
Weird Al's "Fat" did not mock Michael Jackson. The "Fat" song was a parody which continued on the theme established with "Eat It". Mockery is quite different to parody.
- MauranKilom 4y ago
  Fun fact: Michael Jackson let them use the original "Beat It" set for "Eat It".
rhinoceraptor 4y ago
> It's a form of systematic oppression. Against who? Parody artists? Weird Al has a parody along the same lines on his 2014 album and I'm not aware of any outrage. If your biggest concern in life is being "cancelled" (a dramatic term for being criticized on the internet), I think that says more about you and your intolerance for free speech, than anyone else.
- jollybean 4y ago
  Being 'cancelled' in academia and entertainment is a very real thing that happens to artists, but more notably, as I mentioned, suppresses tons of content across the board that won't even get pitched otherwise. While some people do overstate it, it's definitely real. Those who diminish it are the fascists of our generation. Sean Penn (far left activist) and Conan O'Brien (staunch centre left advocate, public supporter of Hillary Clinton etc.) publicly decried the problem as 'Stalinist' - strong words. In their experience, in private conversation in Hollywood people are freaked out about the oppression, while a few virtue signal here and there publicly while towing the party line, everyone is thinks it's nuts. Stephen Pinker (staunch centre-left, respected academic) has spoken out about this, and faced a 'cancellation' of his own for merely suggesting publicly that the issue with policing in America is more a general problem as opposed to specifically a racial problem. The 'mob' came for him and tried to have his participation on various boards 'cancelled'. A long list of thinkers, including the likes of Chomsky himself, had to come out and publicly admonish the 'cancellers' (mostly on the far left) for the systematic problem. It's without modern precedent. There's a 'civil war' between generations at the NYT (Editorial) about what constitutes 'fair'. The 'outrage mob' has a measurable effect on academia and especially creative culture. Producers just don't want to risk a project being annulled, and so they go out of their way to 'sanitize' efforts left and right. The Wachowski sisters (then brothers) were 'condemned' for 'Cloud Atlas' where they dared to have people of different classes, genders and races, play various characters - frankly in attempt to display the common humanity within all of us (not some arbitrary bit of ugly humour) - though the outrage wasn't enough to hurt them, it's become a 'no go zone' for content in 2022. Actors playing characters of different source origin i.e. someone 'non Japanese' playing a character from Anime, actors playing historical figures, actors playing arbitrary fictional characters of questionable origin etc. etc. - it's all a minefield, scaring producers away from anything. 30 Rock, made by your typically socially progressive groups, had several episodes pulled. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Go ahead and re-watch 'Superbad' - it could not be made today, it wouldn't even get pitched. Every scene is 'off message' - arbitrary bits about crude porn, jokes involving trans people, 'period' gags. It was always a bit 'outrageous' but that kind of humour will risk too much ire and so it's out. Even the actors just wouldn't want to risk being on the wrong side - look at Seth Rogen's most recent work, it's like a 180 degree shift. Institutional entities that have been around for some time, notably 'make money' and notably have their own production ability - South Park and Family Guy, basically get a free pass. But most people in entertainment and academia do not have power like 'Dave Chapelle' or institutional protection like 'South Park' or respect of 'Stephen Pinker' - so they 'stay on message' and 'away from controversy' or else the script does not get approved. And FYI even the people turning it away aren't ideological about it 'it's just business' and an accommodation of the outrage mob, fickle advertisers etc.. The 'outraged' a fairly small group, with a sizeable group of allies particularly among Gen Z, which can be noted in the continuous public furor over ostensibly 'terrible person', JK Rowling. The way they go on about here is medieval. While I don't think our campuses are overtly hostile, the issue does linger.

UberFly 4y ago

They had to be "cleared of wrongdoing" after they criticized a mathematics paper? The morality police in the US aren't so different than in other places.

darawk 4y ago
No, > After Hill’s paper was published in a second journal, the New York Journal of Mathematics (NYJM), University of Chicago mathematics professor Benson Farb, who is married to Wilkinson, partook in the editorial decision to retract the paper. Hill wrote to the University claiming that their actions constituted a violation of his freedom of speech, but the University found no evidence of wrongdoing after an investigation earlier this year. The wrongdoing of which they had to be cleared was a conflict of interest, due to her husband being the editor of one of the journals.

mgamache 4y ago

Retracting a paper should only be done in select situations, like fraud, plagiarism or violating ethical guidelines. Was any of that present? If you retract papers that were just 'wrong' you would be retracting at least 50% of the work published in a lot of fields. Furthermore you would leave a blind spot in the research, other researchers might try and pursue those retracted ideas not realizing they are dead ends.

jacknews 4y ago
I agree, but it's not clear from the article if the paper is even wrong. As I understand it there's robust evidence in support of the hypothesis itself (GMVH), and this paper was an attempt to model how the effect could come about. It looks to me more like it was retracted for being distasteful to the journal editor's wife.
- eska 4y ago
  According to the author and a publisher no scientific criticism has been offered.
  - AinderS 4y ago
    Suppose some had. Almost every paper has some shortcomings on which it can be validly criticized. But how much criticism those shortcomings generate, and if that criticism results in a retraction or academic censure, depends on if the paper dared to endanger any modern-day holy cows.
waffleiron 4y ago
Then you could as well argue peer review should not look at methodology, but only for fraud, plagiarism and ethics violations. A retraction can in some cases be seem as a delayed failed (broader) peer review.
- mgamache 4y ago
  Methodology is part of fraud and maybe ethics. It's also required in the future for meta analysis. It might be that published papers disagree on the topic. If there are problems with methodology you can't really use the data as it's noise (at best).

baazaa 4y ago

It's not novel to claim that the possibility of men going full Genghis Khan might result in greater trait-variability for men and explain the Lek paradox and so forth. The paper seems to distance itself from Bateman's principle but I can't figure how it meaningfully differs besides being framed very weirdly.

barrysteve 4y ago

According to a document drop publicly released on Retraction Watch, Senechal wrote to Hill and Tabachnikov, concerned about the “very real possibility that the right-wing media may pick [the article] up and hype it internationally.” She proposed a round-table discussion be held in lieu of publishing the paper, one that never occurred. I don't understand why the people involved would care if some political group picked up the paper. The best political move for the profs in this case is to state their criticisms of the paper and move on. Stamping down on it just makes it louder. Ignoring the valid academic criticisms of the piece makes it look deliberately pushed out to the world. Just comment and move on. This feels like another academic advertisement for internet politics. The 'sexism makes politics' angle is so worn out lately.

Ma8ee 4y ago
Because you don’t want yourself or the journal your are editor for to be used as a weapon by right wing extremists (i.e. so called conservatives). Even if the research would be true and we could use the knowledge to improve society, the right wing will pick it up and use it to promote sexism and racism.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  Except that right wing trolls will pick up literally anything for their own purposes. Trying to avoid that by playing politics about scientific matters is a fool's game, it only compounds the problem further.
  - Ma8ee 4y ago
    Are you sure about that? I’m sure that you probably could find small but significant (in the statistical sense) differences of intelligence between races and genders if you tried hard enough. It would be strange otherwise. Would that knowledge make the world a better or worse place in the current political climate? What would your thoughts be about the motivation behind that research? Do you really think it would be honest, unbiased search for truth?

isaacfrond 4y ago

The paper itself: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04184.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04184.pdf

jokethrowaway 4y ago

A great example of Streisand effect. I would have never heard about this paper if the wife of the editor didn't censor it. Interesting hypothesis and nothing too far fetched, unless you're hellbent on proving men and women are the exact same.

oifjsidjf 4y ago

Ironicaly if the Greater Male Variability Hypothesis is true this also means that many more men are more dumber than women since women are more centered towards the gauss average. Ironicaly this is never mentioned, they just see this is a "many more men can have a higher iq distrubution wise due to the male gauss tail stretching out further than womens, so this is sexist to say that men are smarter". This shows you how biased all of these critics are, zero scientific discussion, pure emotional and egoistic outbursts. They see this paper as "men are better", while in reality it says only "men are more in the extremes, both higher AND lower extremes than women." Also if you read this: 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... This is a good example of how NOT to handle a situation like this. The authors tried to convience the people that they were just doing science in good faith, but those feminist zaelots just saw it as "men are better". You cannot argue with such people. Those people in charge are the opposite of intellectual academic scientists. Sad so to see what academia has devolved to. Sad that people in such high places have such beliefs. The correct response in this situation is to tell them to go f** themselves and expose them for the immature brats that they are. Growling like a dog before them IS ALWAYS THE WRONG COURSE OF ACTION. If you growel before them you give them authority, this is the worst thing that you can do and will perpetuate this anti-scientific cycle.

christophilus 4y ago
I think you meant “grovel”. Growling like a dog before them would be quite a fun experiment.
- oifjsidjf 4y ago
  True my bad
sascha_sl 4y ago
>Ironicaly this is never mentioned, they just see this is a "many more men can have a higher iq distrubution wise due to the male gauss tail stretching out further than womens, so this is sexist to say that men are smarter". Because many advocates of GMVH are only interested in justifying the gender imbalance in leadership positions biologically, dismissing any well known social factors (e.g. competence rating on double blind fake CVs)? "Feminists say GMVH means men are all smarter" is a gross oversimplification of the situation. If you have 2.5 hours to spend on a video essay, I'd very much recommend "The Bell Curve"[1], a breakdown of the book of the same name. Not so much for the racism part, but for the background on the construction of IQ. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

There's a whole genre of simple mathematical models that excuse centuries of well documented oppression. Like the 'only a small amount of desire to live near similar people leads to self-segregation' thing. You know what else leads to segregation? Actual laws that enforce it at the point of a gun with legal and extra-legal terrorism. If only there was some way to tell which of these occurred in real history.

fartsucker69 4y ago
I don't know what point you're making. Should those models not be allowed to exist? Usually the way this goes is that a scientist proposes a model to describe something, and it's fine. When it goes wrong is usually when the public picks up that science and uses it to do something horrible. The thing about self-segregation behaviour you mention is a basic fact of life, you can see it everywhere, all the time, chances are you've done it to yourself if you've ever been embedded in a different culture for any amount of time. It's interesting and potentially useful to build a scientific model out of it for analysis or other purposes. There's no problem at all with it until some politician thinks it allows them to be bigoted and oppressive. If the actual 'science' implied in any way that people should be oppressed based on the models, it was obviously bad science and would not have stood the test of time in any case.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  I've created a simple mathmatical model that suggests they wouldn't get created in the first place, so we no longer need to discuss whether banning them was a good idea or not, it just happened naturally, and there's nothing anyone could have done to change that.
  - yekoc 4y ago
    And the obviously hyperbolical nature of that model still doesn't prevent you from creating it or from it leading to potential further research oppurtunities (in fact,please do release the paper that results from such,I'd love to read it.) and following logically from that it still doesn't prevent anyone from creating a model that disagrees or from following any potential research opputunities that such would lead to. The validity of a mathematical model is dependent solely upon it's internal (and,depending on the extent of the research,external) consistency.Whether it possess any form of 'accuracy to the real world' only comes into play when people who don't understand this attempt to use it to justify their preconceptions.

prvc 4y ago

>A University investigation cleared two University of Chicago mathematics professors of wrongdoing after they independently criticized a controversial mathematics paper [...] I'd like to know the sense of "independently" that the author had in mind here, considering the two are married to one another. Also worth wondering whether the paper was intrinsically "controversial", or merely made to be so by virtue of the complaint(s).

hulitu 4y ago
> I'd like to know the sense of "independently" that the author had in mind here, considering the two are married to one another. Yes, dear.
feet 4y ago
My assumption is that in this context 'independently' means not in their official duties or roles as people affiliated with the university. So the university investigated them for something they did on their own time

oxfordmale 4y ago

Surely the right wing media will now jump on the fact this paper was "cancelled" as it was communicating an inconvenient truth for the wokerati? You can't win. The best thing to do is to let such things go as this article would have gone unnoticed.

krapp 4y ago
Or, we could not make decisions about what to publish and what not based on how the lunatic fringe might react to it.
- oxfordmale 4y ago
  If only. There is a very vocal minority that is advocating for tolerance and freedom of expression, but only if it aligns to their world view that "is at the right side of history"

concinds 4y ago

Context: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2018/09/11/on-the-recently-removed-paper-from-the-new-york-journal-of-mathematics/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2018/09/11/on-the-recently-re... https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2018/09/17/mathematics-matters/ https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2018/09/17/mathematics-mat... 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... (by one of the paper's authors) http://www.personal.psu.edu/cpc16/politico-email-29nov2018.pdf http://www.personal.psu.edu/cpc16/politico-email-29nov2018.p... (mail criticizing Quillette article)

PeterStuer 4y ago

imho the "Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole"[1] first hand account gives a better insight, as clearly the Chicago Maroon piece leaves too many questions. [1] 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...

stefantalpalaru 4y ago

rowanG077 4y ago

I honestly don't understand supressions of such things. I feel like to shows that the people who want to supress it know it's true but don't want to deal with the truth.

pyuser583 4y ago

Maybe this explains why political conservatives are skeptical of scientists?