Editor of JAMA Leaves After Outcry Over Colleague’s Remarks on Racism - The New York Times - "Dr. Edward Livingston, another editor at JAMA, had claimed that socioeconomic factors, not structural racism, held back communities of color... “I remain profoundly disappointed in myself for the lapses that led to the publishing of the tweet and podcast,” Dr. Bauchner said in a statement. “Although I did not write or even see the tweet, or create the podcast, as editor in chief, I am ultimately responsible for them.”... the A.M.A.’s leaders admitted to serious missteps and proposed a three-year plan to “dismantle structural racism” within the organization and in medicine"
The woke purge of academia steadily moves on
Tackling systemic racism requires the system of science to change
In Nature, no less. Let's ignore all the lessons from history about what happens when science is politicised
Controversy at Philosophical Psychology Leads to Editor’s Resignation - "the journal Philosophical Psychology published an article calling for scholars to take more seriously genetics-based approaches to research on race and intelligence. Yesterday, an editor of the journal announced his resignation. The article in question is “Research on group differences in intelligence: A defense of free inquiry,” by Nathan Cofnas, a graduate student at the University of Oxford"
So much for academic freedom
Nathan Cofnas on Twitter - "Here's philosophy professor Mark Alfano (who started the petition to retract my paper last year) wishing death on his political opponents. Academia is very hospitable to psychos as long as they focus their violent hate on the right people
Nathan Cofnas on Twitter - "In almost all cases, "This paper needs to be retracted because it causes serious harm" really means "This paper needs to be retracted because it doesn't jibe with my political opinions, and I'd rather deny the science than change my opinions.""
Philosophy journal refuses to retract paper defending research on race and intelligence - "Nearly two years ago, a feminist philosophy journal faced demands to retract a paper that compared “transracialism” to transgenderism. Some of its editors quickly apologized, but were then overruled by the journal’s top editors.Another philosophy journal is facing similar retraction demands for publishing a paper on “group differences in intelligence,” but its editors preemptively said that’s not going to happen... the default approach in philosophy and social science – “ignoring or rejecting” research on what causes differences in intelligence – can lead to “unintended negative consequences.”Cofnas contends that attributing IQ solely to environmental factors may have “enormous opportunity costs” regarding social policy.He cited the apparent failure of the low-income early education program Head Start, designed around environmental interventions, to deliver “its intended effects.” University of California-Berkeley psychologist Arthur Jensen predicted decades earlier that Head Start would fail by not tailoring programs “to the strengths of different groups” – and was “vilified” for it, Cofnas argued.While admitting that “the environmentalist explanation for the IQ gap” has some evidence in the narrowing of the gap in the 20th century, the “so-called ‘X factor’” in the environment “remains elusive,” he said.The “stubbornly constant” IQ gap between adult black and white people, for example, has remained “impervious to early education,” socioeconomic gains and the “(apparent) waning of overt racism and discrimination.”... Alfanos did not limit his criticisms to a blog post and petition. He went after Cofnas on Twitter, calling him a climate denier and comparing him to British fascist Oswald Mosley.Cofnas responded in kind, telling Alfano to “get a life.” That barb got under Alfano’s skin. He retorted: “You’re about to learn why people generally avoid fucking with me.” The student called the professor “a sad, pathetic man,” to which Alfano said he wants to ruin Cofnas’ “reputation permanently and deservedly.”... Cofnas seized on Stanley’s claim that he read the paper in “two minutes,” and another Yale faculty member joined the criticism against Stanley.Nicholas Christakis, himself the target of a student mob four years ago, said he got the “impression” that Stanley had called for retractions “more than once” when he disagreed with papers. Stanley emphatically denied that, accusing “the single most powerful faculty member at Yale” of “falsely suggesting” he had."
Peer-reviewed journal publishes a peer-reviewed paper some people don't like... - "famed Twitter tough guy Mark Alfano (Macquarie), seen here threatening the paper's author, graduate student Nathan Cofnas (Oxford) (says Mafia Mark to Mr. Cofnas: "You're about to learn why people generally avoid fucking with me"). Good to get confirmation that not only is there no norm against criticizing graduate students for their public acts and statements (which no one, other than graduate students on Twitter, believed of course), but there apparently isn't even a norm against launching a petition against the "vulnerable" and threatening them Mafia-style!...
'In the first place, the petition’s description of the paper doesn’t look factually accurate... But over and above this (of course) it’s just unserious to suppose that, because another philosopher spots something in a paper that they regard as a “glaring error” that the paper was incompetently refereed – far less that it should be retracted, or that the journal has anything to apologize for. “There is a major flaw in this argument” or “Something really important is being left out” is one of the most common forms of a reply article, and one of the most common reactions that I, at least, have on reading papers! It’s in the nature of philosophy. Sure, there’s some threshold of straightforwardly factual (or mathematical) error that might count as just a failure of refereeing, but that threshold is ridiculously higher than anything the petition discusses (either normatively or be the descriptive standards of contemporary philosophy of science). As became clear in the discussions of the Tuvel incident, there’s something particularly troubling about a call for retraction here. In the sciences, where a paper is a report of (usually empirical, sometimes statistical) work done, acceptance of the paper indicates that the journal accepts the paper’s reports of the work as fact, and retraction indicates that the journal has changed its mind. But philosophy papers (normally) don’t describe work done elsewhere: the paper itself is the research. And retraction doesn’t normally prevent the paper being read. Its only concrete consequence is to cause harm to the author. That’s a worrying way for the scholarly community to resolve its disagreements at the best of time, doubly so if the author is a junior academic (Tuvel), triply so if, as in this case, the author is a graduate student. However, in my eternal optimism I’m hoping that we’ve learned some lessons from the Tuvel incident. The statement from the editors of the journal – noting that the paper is controversial, but defending its publication anyway – is reassuring. (For all that in an ideal world we wouldn’t need these statements because they would go without saying.) One of the bright spots in the mostly-dismal Tuvel affair was the statement by Hypatia’s (then) editor, Sally Scholz:
“I firmly believe, and this belief will not waver, that it is utterly inappropriate for editors to repudiate an article they have accepted for publication (barring issues of plagiarism or falsification of data). In this respect, editors must stand behind the authors of accepted papers. That is where I stand.”
It looks as if it’s where the editors of Philosophical Psychology stand, too. Good for them.'"
Philosophy Is Being Hijacked by Woke Twitter Mobs - "A group of six philosophers and three anthropologists—including Mark Alfano and City University of New York philosophy professor Massimo Pigliucci—submitted a comment on my paper to Philosophical Psychology, pedaling some familiar fallacies and strawmen. First, they proclaim that I think racial groupings are “discrete”—wrongly suggesting that my argument requires that there should be no overlap of any kind among races, or that mixed-race people don’t exist.Then they throw out the old canard that race can’t be real because humans share 99.9 percent of their DNA. They don’t mention that there are three billion base pairs in the human genome, and therefore three million base pairs where we are not identical, which could be the basis of race differences. (The average person’s genome actually differs from a reference genome at 4.1 to 5.0 million sites, and has structural variants affecting approximately 20 million bases.) In any case, crude comparisons of genetic similarity provide little information about the magnitude or significance of differences. We are 99.1 percent identical with chimpanzees in terms of functionally important DNA, but if that’s all you told a space alien about the difference between us and chimps it would be pretty misleading. Whether the 0.1–0.2 percent difference among humans generates meaningful race differences is an open question... “Research supporting both hereditarian and environmentalist explanations of race differences is routinely published in major psychology journals, particularly in psychometrics journals like Intelligence and Personality and Individual Differences.” But I pointed out that work supporting hereditarianism (the view that genes play a role in race differences) can be much more difficult to publish and disseminate, and is almost never funded. Many prominent scientists have said openly that it is immoral to study this topic. Scholars who are seen as supporting hereditarianism are regularly fired from their jobs. Examples of the last phenomenon from just the past year include Noah Carl (fired from his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Cambridge), Bo Winegard (fired from his position as assistant professor at Marietta College), and Stephen Hsu (forced to resign from his position as senior vice president for research and innovation at Michigan State University). Those who aren’t fired still have to deal with an army of Mark Alfanos trying to “destroy [their] reputation.” There is, of course, nothing wrong with my critics writing a reply to me—even a weak one. And the editors of Philosophical Psychology were perfectly willing to publish it. Van Leeuwen and Herschbach just asked the authors to focus their attacks on me (Cofnas) rather than casting aspersions on the competence of the editors themselves, and gently suggested that they address the philosophical literature supporting my position. Van Leeuwen and Herschbach also mentioned that, in accordance with normal scholarly practice, I would be invited to write a rejoinder. This enraged Alfano and company... Apparently Herschbach and members of the editorial board were intimidated by social media pressure, and agreed to publish Alfano et al.’s comment without revision and to deny me the right of reply.The remaining editor-in-chief, Mitchell Herschbach, who previously coauthored two separate statements defending the review process and the decision to publish my paper, published a groveling apology."
Science Journals Are Purging Racist, Sexist Work. Finally | WIRED - "One paper from 2012 linked darker skin to aggression and sexuality in humans. Another from that year claimed to show that women with endometriosis are more attractive. A third, published last December, lamented physicians who posted casual pictures of themselves online—including some in which they’re wearing bikinis—as being unprofessional. All three of these articles have recently been retracted after outraged readers took to social media... It’s playing like a preview for The Purge: Academia... The critics are right: Journals do have a double-standard, and it is political. They move briskly to pull unworthy papers tinged by politics while ignoring hundreds, or likely thousands, of credible allegations of fraud or major error."
The Soviet Union would be proud
I like how they think a "purge" is good and are upfront that it's politically motivated
BLM | Sunny E. | Black Flower Science Co. on Twitter - "One of the saddest things I've learned recently: students deciding against getting a PhD because they can't take the political correctness of academia any more."
"This sounds like these individuals didn't pursue careers in academia because they didn't want to be held accountable for being bigots, then succumbed to a victim complex.The expectation of basic respect toward marginalized demographics in academia does not equate to persecution."
"you are conflating the word "respect" and "courtesy". they are not the same.you can and should expect some level of common courtesy. this is a recognition that you are human too.you CANNOT and SHOULD NOT expect respect. respect must be earned."
"The hilarious part is she is clueless to the irony of her showing absolutely zero respect to people for not adhering to her ideology...while calling them bigots for not giving her the respect she demands.I wonder what that would make her...."
For someone who supports BLM to claim others have a victim complex...
Gad Saad - Posts | Facebook - "I am receiving stories of academics setting up the latest round of witch hunts of other academics whose work they disapprove of as being non-PC. The inquisitors are also trying to purge editors who publish the "forbidden" works. It is truly a moral panic within academia. How much longer will fellow professors remain quiet? How much more are my colleagues willing to tolerate in terms of the destruction of our proud tradition of academic freedom? What will it take for thousands of professors to rise up and state in unison "ENOUGH"!"