Links - 2nd November 2019 (2)

Finland's Lessons for Europe's Militaries | Foreign Affairs - "“For a Finn, it’s an honor to do military service,” the 25-year-old Granlund said this month. “It’s just something you do if you want your country to stay independent.”... the FDF has managed a feat that other armed forces could learn from: it has made itself an attractive destination for conscripts and professional troops alike. This helps explain why the armed forces routinely have more applicants than openings for noncommissioned officer positions. According to a May Eurobarometer poll, 95 percent of Finns trust their army, a higher rate than anywhere else in the European Union. (In Germany, 66 percent trust the army; across the EU, the average is 75 percent.)... The appeal of Finland’s military extends beyond patriotism and depends partly on its willingness to listen to its soldiers. In 2002, the FDF introduced a system that tracks and evaluates soldiers’ and officers’ experiences. “It has changed how we treat our soldiers and how soldiers view the FDF,” said Brigadier General Jukka Sonninen, the FDF’s head of training. Under this system, which the FDF calls “Transformational Leadership,” Finland’s military regularly polls soldiers throughout their service on matters such as sleeping arrangements, superiors’ leadership, stress management, unit cohesion, and communications from central offices. The FDF carries out the survey at every level, too: group, company, battalion, and brigade... Finland has shown that the secret to making the armed forces popular is ensuring that the low-ranking soldiers and noncommissioned officers who make up most of the ranks are content.That approach is working. In the most recent survey of graduating conscripts, conducted this fall, 80 percent supported maintaining conscription; 42 percent said that they would serve even if conscription were not mandatory; and 22 percent were neutral. Only 36 percent said they would not serve. If Finns forced to serve say they would have done so even if they did not have to, then the FDF has managed a feat from which other countries can learn... “Don’t oversell,” he said. “You can’t have cool videos of soldiers jumping out of airplanes if you can’t deliver. But equally, don’t undersell.” Once troops are enlisted, militaries must make their service worthwhile. “Keep them learning skills that they can also use elsewhere,” Salonius-Pasternak said. “There’s a difference between getting people and motivating them. This way you get the best people instead of a large percentage who couldn’t find any other work.” (The U.S. Army has struggled with recruits who fail their training since it relaxed its admission standards.)"
Meanwhile, in the SAF...

Watchdog bans 'harmful' gender stereotypes in adverts - "The UK's advertising watchdog has said it will ban "gender stereotypes that are likely to cause harm, or serious or widespread offence". The Committees of Advertising Practice (CAP) said harmful stereotypes in adverts "contribute to how people see themselves and their role in society", and can hold some people back. The ban will cover men struggling with household chores or girls being less academic than boys... "There is nothing in our new guidance to suggest that ads can't feature people carrying out gender-typical roles."The issue would be if in that depiction it suggested that that's the only option available to that gender and never carried out by someone of another gender. "So for example if you had a woman doing the cleaning, we wouldn't anticipate a problem. But if you had an advert with a man creating lots of mess and putting his feet up while a woman cleaned up around him, and it was very clear that she was the only person that did that at home, that's the kind of thing that could be a problem."... The watchdog already has rules in place which ban adverts that include gender stereotypes on grounds of "objectification, inappropriate sexualisation and depiction of unhealthily thin body images"."
Priorities!
Presumably it's ok to show women struggling with household chores or boys being less academic than girls

Gender stereotypes in advertising have been banned in the UK - "Somewhat unrelated to gender stereotypes, this new rule also bans ads that “connect physical features with success in the romantic or social spheres.”And notably, it does not ban showing women or men performing stereotypical tasks (e.g., women shopping or men doing at-home construction projects). Ads can still be targeted based on gender as well. The clarification of the rule also helpfully explains that ads can still portray “glamorous, attractive, successful, aspirational, or healthy people or lifestyles.”...
It’s difficult to establish any kind of linear causation relationship between whether advertisers were distinctly creating this or whether they were responding to cues in society and enforcing some of the elements that would sell better. The whole history of advertising in the US was based on the assumption that women were the primary consumers."

Philadelphia and VW ads banned for gender stereotyping - "The first banned ad, for Philadelphia cheese, showed two fathers leaving a baby on a restaurant conveyor belt.The other, VW ad, showed men being adventurous as a woman sat by a pram... Mondelez UK argued that the ad showed a positive image of men with a responsible and active role in childcare in modern society. It said it chose to feature a pair of fathers to avoid a stereotype of new mothers being responsible for children... Volkswagen UK said that its ad made no suggestion that childcare was solely associated with women, and the fact that the woman in its advertisement was calm and reading could be seen as going against the stereotypical depiction of harassed or anxious parents in advertising."
Apparently ideas are harmful. The UK should ban books too

Fireman Sam axed as brigade mascot for not being inclusive - "Fireman Sam has been axed as a mascot for a fire brigade over fears he could put women off joining.Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue Service said the children's TV character was outdated and did not reflect the message it wanted to achieve.The decision follows complaints by staff and members of the public... "We're bothered by the subconscious message the term fireman has created as an issue in our recruitment.""

Fireman Sam: 'No stereotype problem' in show, says creator - "Ex-firefighter Mr Jones, 74, began working on the idea for Fireman Sam - Sam Tan in Welsh - in the 1980s after he heard Mike Young on BBC Radio 2 talking about his cartoon project SuperTed."It is for children. It wasn't meant to be advertised as a recruiting post," he said."Someone doesn't join the fire service when they watch Fireman Sam. They wouldn't be the right people for the job if that was their mentality"... the London Fire Brigade, using #FirefightingSexism in its campaign, tweeted that the involvement of Penny Morris, a firefighting character in Fireman Sam, was "devalued"."

Fireman Sam: the worst children’s programme ever? | Dean Burnett | Science | The Guardian - "Sam now looks and sounds more like a stripper who happens to be wearing the fireman’s outfit for this particular booking. All the characters now specifically say they’ll call Sam. Not the fire brigade or the emergency services; Sam specifically. And I've not witnessed one occasion where he tackles an issue single-handed. Yet he’s happy to take the credit, never correcting anyone when they thank him specifically, when his colleagues have all risked their lives as much as he has. His fellow firefighters once sang a song praising him specifically in front of the whole town and he just accepted this as normal. Part of me thinks he causes all of the calamities himself, for the attention. He’s probably got Munchausen by proxy, but with an entire town."
What passes for science at the Guardian

Facebook just banned me for 'hate speech' for criticizing Russian-owned 'FaceApp' - "Not counting my current ban, my most recent stint in the Facebook slammer came when I posted a holiday-themed meme that made fun of Nazis. Yes, Facebook banned me for a month because I made fun of Nazis. The horror. At this point, I honestly don’t know what is or isn’t going to get me banned by Facebook. Their “Community Standards” are so vague and inconsistent that you can easily find videos of people dying (like this one here – NSFW, obviously, but that doesn’t stop Facebook from keeping it on their platform and running ads on the same page, meaning they’re directly profiting from it), but if you make a joke at the expense of Nazis, or even make a joke at the expense of Russia, you get banned... I also have countless posts that Facebook declared to be “spam” that have been in review since June... I have no faith that these will ever actually be reviewed by a human person.People like Alex Jones are a threat to the public at large. That is why Facebook banned them. They spread demonstrably false information as if it is true, such as the PizzaGate conspiracy, or the Sandy Hook ‘false flag’ conspiracy. If you don’t understand the difference, read one of the many articles I’ve written addressing it. It’s really not that complicated. So please, spare me the “FaCeBoOk iS CeNsOriNg ConSeRvATiVeS” trope."
The fact that he cheers other people being censored while protesting about his own posts being zucced doesn't suggest to him that it really is more complicated than he imagines. Unless his logic is liberal = good and non-liberal = bad

'No men, no meat, no machines': How a band of women tried to forge a female utopia - "Amazon Acres, also known as The Mountain, was a female-only community set up within a sprawling 400 hectares of remote mountaintop in northern New South Wales in the mid-1970s.The source of much heated debate, men and meat were banned for the most part, and even machines at times — rejected as products of patriarchy. The collective was a child of the counterculture, but it also belonged to the so-called women's land movement, which saw closed-off utopian communities spring up in different parts of the world — from the US to Wales.They represented a determined — and largely lesbian — retreat from male culture and misogyny.Nudity was part of shaking off the chains... had to battle growing internal tensions sparked by different needs and clashing ideologies.There were no leaders on The Mountain and decisions were to be by consensus.That became harder as the community grew increasingly disparate.Open to all women, it drew everyone from academics, public servants and radical separatists to hippies, victims of male violence and survivors of mental illness.Getting decisions made, and obeyed, became almost impossible... Amazon Acres never became the self-sufficient refuge some of its founders envisaged.In the remote place with poor soil, the women tried everything from cultivating orchids to growing potatoes — they did allow chainsaws and a tractor eventually — but without success."
When feminist fantasy fails

Portland State bans professor from research for getting ‘grievance studies’ hoaxes published - "He brought “rape culture” in dog parks to the masses. The “research” may have been among his last published as a Portland State University professor.Philosopher Peter Boghossian has been banned from both human-subjects and sponsored research by the public university, owing to his participation in a “grievance studies” project with two other academics... Portland State had already determined that the untenured Boghossian had violated rules on human-subjects research by not getting permission to submit hoax research papers to journal reviewers, who were “human subjects” in the university’s view." Mark McLellan, vice president for research and graduate studies, wrote in a July 17 letter that Boghossian had failed to take the “Protection of Human Subjects training” that McLellan had mandated this winter... The results of the investigation raise concerns about the professor’s “lack of academic integrity, questionable ethical behavior and employee breach of rules”... Boghossian thanked several prominent academics, from evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins to Harvard linguist Steven Pinker, for their support."
What happens when you really speak Truth to Power
Apparently submitting papers for peer review harms the reviewers. Academia must be full of violence, then

Scholars blast Portland State for discipline against professor for ‘stress-testing’ publishing standards | The College Fix - "The Oregon Association of Scholars, the state affiliate of the National Association of Scholars, accused the public university of punishing a “whistleblower” who did nothing more than expose the “shameful lack of standards” in peer-reviewed journals “devoted to identity grievances andideological agitation.”Led by Boghossian’s PSU colleague Bruce Gilley – himself investigated by PSU for several months, allegedly because of his pro-colonialism article – the OAS said Boghossian’s project was just a form of “stress-testing” common to field such as banking, “to determine the strength and reliability of safeguards.”...
'Journal reviewers and editors have never been considered part of human subjects research protocols, not only because the scholar’s interactions with them are unforeseeable and separate from the research but also because the reviewers are anonymous. More generally, the hoax or satire based on concocted data that is later revealed to be such as part of the research is a fundamental and long-standing method of intellectual inquiry in the Western liberal tradition.'
Boghossian should be “given a letter of commendation for his research efforts” and PSU should promote his work, OAS said. It also called on PSU trustees and state lawmakers to affirm that academic freedom includes “the right to conduct hoaxes,” and create an independent committee “to recommend reforms to strengthen academic freedom in Oregon public universities.”... Robert Shibley, executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, said PSU was abusing “institutional review boards”"

‘Sokal Squared’ prof facing discipline for not having research reviewed by IRB - "Over time, the use of IRBs has become increasingly commonplace, and seemingly required, even for social science research or experiments that have a far less direct effect on the humans who might be involved. As Columbia law professor Philip Hamburger, a prominent critic of the current role of IRBs, has pointed out, even oral history projects and opinion poll research, which simply consist of asking people for their own stories or opinions, can be subject to change or simply forbidden by IRBs. (Oral history, at least, was relieved of this burden by federal regulatory changes that took effect just last year.)Particularly when removed from the medical context, it becomes all too easy for some fundamental IRB rules — such as the requirement that studies be done only with the informed consent of all human participants — to fail to work well. As Lindsay and Pluckrose point out, the Grievance Studies Affair is one of these situations, as “it is impossible to conduct a valid quality assurance investigation, which this audit was, after informing those being audited that they’re under examination.” Assuming it’s correct to characterize the journal editors as subjects of an experiment who needed to be protected from its potential physical or psychological harm, the IRB process would at the very least have required that the authors inform all of the potential “subjects” that faked research papers were coming their way. Truly “informed” consent might have required rather more specificity than that. It doesn’t take a scientist (or a whole group of them on an IRB) to understand that such a restriction would make this particular research effort pointless, but PSU nevertheless determined that the research violated its rules and was worthy of discipline... an academic fraud analysis doesn’t make much sense here: The authors could not benefit in the traditional way from faking research results, as they were using pseudonyms and were not even scholars in the actual fields in which they submitted. And with the papers’ inevitable retraction, the potential damage to actual science from those who might credit the falsified results would be eliminated... Professor Boghossian would not be the first person, nor will he be the last, to be adversely affected by the application of rules that make no sense in a specific situation. Nevertheless, this highlights the obvious problems for social science research presented by some IRB rules, especially when that research is geared toward determining the honesty, true attitudes, and/or competence of its “human subjects.” (The numerous studies on employers’ differing reactions to resumes that have differing racial or ethnic identifiers, but that are otherwise identical, are obvious examples.) When it comes to this type of research — in which Boghossian, Pluckrose, and Lindsay were certainly engaged — it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that if the rules forbid it, it’s the rules, not the researchers, that have gone wrong."

Students defend Portland State professor disciplined for ‘grievance studies’ publishing hoax - "The public university’s chapter of International Youth and Students for Social Equality published its interviews with students about Peter Boghossian on the World Socialist Web Site, of all places... “He is the only professor I’ve had that I disagreed with, but the way that he presented his reasoning, it was, like, undeniable,” another former Boghossian student said. Without naming her major, she said the fact that so many hoax articles got published “makes me feel like my degree is so invalid.”The student also agreed with the club that “affluent and privileged sections of the middle class” are the most opposed to Boghossian because they most strongly embrace “subjective identity politics.”...
The most hilarious response might come from another Boghossian student, who called the professor “my favorite teacher ever” and praised him for “taking risks and bringing in diversity”:
'My very first time at Portland State, I had to take a pop culture class and we had to write an essay on homoerotic relationships between Spock and Captain Kirk in Star Trek and learn about porn fan fiction. I was like, “What is this school?”'"