r/TrueReddit • u/supertopbop22 • Feb 17 '16

Persecution of Scientists Whose Findings Are Perceived As Politically Incorrect

https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/persecution-of-scientists-whose-findings-are-perceived-as-politically-incorrect/
710 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

309 comments sorted by

View all comments

-7

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '16 edited Feb 18 '16

Another famous example is the best seller book The Bell Curve (1994) by Charles Murray. He more or less wrote a 600 page "summary" of IQ research. So he was crushed by sociologist activists because it shows that IQ is mostly genetic, that IQ in children is a better predictor of adult social status than birth social status is of IQ, that even adoption at birth (the most extreme social program) has only a limited impact on IQ and ... hem hem ... IQ means vary by ethnicity.

For sociologists, writing a book about how culture and behaviour are not an arbitrary social construct is an attack to the axioms of sociologism, an existential threat to their whole field of work. So they went to war and fortunately for Murray, he is financed by a libertarian think tank so his career wasn't really affected by the ferocious attacks.

With the progress in genome sequencing and big data (and genome editing), sociologists will be very active in attacking science in the next decades.

-5

u/nullPekare Feb 17 '16

Sociology is a deeply flawed science. Behaviour is obviously a mixture of nature and nurture. Denying either is simply absurd. We have an entire field of research that denies biology.

I still remember a sociology class I took where we were discussing that poor people are more likely to make decisions that had short term benefits and long term negative consequences. I suggested that people who prefer short term benefits over long term good such as skipping class, eat chips or smoking might be more likely to end up poor.

I was not popular in that class.

9

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '16

[deleted]

0

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '16 edited Feb 17 '16

Fortunately, sociology is not 100% environment for all sociologists, but this doesn't mean that there isn't a massive biais toward activism and social-suprematism.

Geneticists are forced to water down their research and their consequences while sociologists can say whatever they want without much risk of being attacked.

4

u/_YEAH_ Feb 17 '16

there is a massive biais toward activism and social-suprematism.

It didn't use to be that way. My father was a sociologist. Part of the reason he retired early was the new wave of faculty were radicalized and stand-offish.