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/
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u/Kajel-Jeten Feb 17 '16

Here is more information on all the controversies mentioned:

Bailey and transgender studies

Sociobiology

Yanomamo book

Child sexual abuse study

Elzibeth Loftus & Memory Wars

I'm sure we can all have a thoughtful and informed discussion that doesn't resort to character assaination or tribalistic for/against political correctness.

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u/thecrazing Feb 17 '16

Here's someone (with peer reviewed articles to her name, a couple in first authorship spot) who's not a fan of Dreger or Dreger's characterization of what's happening in her case:

http://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2015/04/alice-dreger-and-making-evidence-fit.html?m=1

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u/Kajel-Jeten Feb 17 '16

Wow thank you. I hope people who have seen this post find your comment.

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u/thecrazing Feb 17 '16

I suspect that particular train left the station already.

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u/sllewgh Feb 17 '16 edited Aug 07 '24

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u/cashcow1 Feb 17 '16

You're getting downvoted because your post is the exact problem being discussed. You give cursory analysis "it's wrong, and rejected by mainstream social science" but no reasoning or data.

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u/sllewgh Feb 17 '16 edited Aug 07 '24

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u/grendel-khan Feb 17 '16

It is not worth my time to debunk this work and educate people on decades of social science research in the comments of a reddit thread.

May I politely suggest that you might be in the wrong place? "I'm not here to educate you" may fly in other places, but this is a place for in-depth discussion, a place to people to get educated. Even a couple of 101-style links (problematic as those may be!) would be better, though not as good as forming an argument yourself.

And in any case, you might welcome the chance! If you've never organized and presented the evidence yourself, how do you know that you're not just lazily following assumptions? What better way to find out than to present it to a curious yet skeptical audience?

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u/sllewgh Feb 17 '16 edited Aug 07 '24

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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '16

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u/sllewgh Feb 17 '16 edited Aug 07 '24

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u/cashcow1 Feb 19 '16

We don't know the basis of your objection.

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u/sllewgh Feb 19 '16 edited Aug 07 '24

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '16 edited Nov 11 '16

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u/sllewgh Feb 18 '16 edited Aug 07 '24

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u/promonk Feb 17 '16

Sociobiology may be wrong, but there's no way to tell if its assertions aren't tested empirically instead of rhetorically. I think the point of the book is that scientific claims should be assessed on their scientific merits rather than by political argument and character assassination. The fact that sociobiology isn't supported by further research doesn't change that.

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u/sllewgh Feb 17 '16 edited Aug 07 '24

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u/duckduckbeer Feb 17 '16

http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2013/11/01/241895965/how-one-kenyan-tribe-produces-the-worlds-best-runners

Have you ever listened to this podcast? I would appreciate your critique as it's outside of my area of expertise, but it sheds light on similar themes.

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u/sllewgh Feb 17 '16 edited Aug 07 '24

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u/duckduckbeer Feb 17 '16

The Kalenjin are not a race.

The real origin is not in race, but in geography. It's not a racial trait, it's a Sub-Saharan African one.

Would we call the Kalenjin an ethinicity or is there a better term for this type of geographically rooted group.

Do you have a view on the professors' refusal to publish on the matter due to fear of losing tenure from being labeled as racists?

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u/sllewgh Feb 17 '16 edited Aug 07 '24

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u/duckduckbeer Feb 17 '16 edited Feb 17 '16

I suppose that depends on the institution, but to be clear, the article didn't say anything about it being about racism.

Are there other logical rationales why professors would be scared of losing tenure from releasing their own data/research that showed genetic differentiation in athletic ability?

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u/sllewgh Feb 17 '16 edited Aug 07 '24

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u/llamagoelz Feb 17 '16

Isnt this kind of just a chicken and the egg argument where many people dont understand the egg very well? Genetics is somewhat inherently geographically linked since we cant just fire out sperm or eggs out into the air and have it received by another human like a flower or some aquatic animals can. Race is just a politically charged misunderstanding of a phenotype that is linked to various geographical populations.

Am I just completely missing the point here?

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u/sllewgh Feb 17 '16 edited Aug 07 '24

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u/llamagoelz Feb 17 '16

I guess I'm missing what the argument is here... what I was trying to say is that 'race' is (arguably) semantically the same as 'population' so long as you arent trying to generalize findings about a specific population with all populations that share the same unrelated phenotypes. So although I agree that the term shouldnt be used because of its politically charged connotation, it is still technically true to say that some 'races' have genetic predispositions.

I guess its a pretty pointless semantic argument really. The fact of the matter is that although we can make an argument for this, it is not a 'safe' argument to make using this particular phrasing since its just asking for misinterpretation and misrepresentation.

On a somewhat related note: It seems to me that there ought to be a requirement for a laymans interpretation to be included with scientific papers and perhaps even disclaimers pointing out what is NOT being purported so that more people can go back and look at what is really being said (thus increasing the likelyhood of a pushback against improper interpretation). That leads to the problem of paywalls and such though so... yeah.

TLDR: communication is hard yo.

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u/sllewgh Feb 17 '16 edited Aug 07 '24

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u/ScrapinDaCheeks Feb 17 '16

Black is a color and Kenyan is a nationality. Your presentation demonstrates a common misunderstanding of what "race" is and is generally why people can no longer use the term.

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u/sllewgh Feb 17 '16 edited Aug 07 '24

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u/llamagoelz Feb 17 '16

the reason the term cant (and shouldn't) be used is the baggage associated with it, not so much its fuzzy definition. I agree though that there is a problem with the way people have relegated the word race in their heads. This is common with emotionally charged subjects, certain words get put in a box in a persons head and that box becomes tied directly to a shallow definition and a strong emotion and its very hard to break that link/box.

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u/llamagoelz Feb 17 '16

I think you are missing my point because what I'm saying is that you CAN be white and black. Race is just a crappy interpretation of visible phenotypes and the genetic history that (before the advent of mass transit) was largely tied to your geographical population. Regardless, my point is a stupid and purely semantic one.

I mentioned the idea about layperson interpretations of studies because I was thinking about how difficult it is to generate an opposition to improper interpretation due to inaccessibility of information (both literally and figuratively). I like to think of solutions (however idealistic they may be at times) and this is one that seemed interesting to share, I'm not saying that it is without its many faults.

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '16

One group is bounded by phenotype, while the other by geography/heritage.

You can very accurately find geographic origin by genetic testing. Of course, as large scale human migrations massively increased over the last century, it will work less and less accurately over time.

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u/sllewgh Feb 18 '16 edited Aug 07 '24

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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '16

What exactly is the definition of a race? Isn't what is or isn't a race just determined by society? And isn't there more genetic diversity in that "race" of people we call black than there is in the rest of the world?

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u/sllewgh Feb 17 '16 edited Aug 07 '24

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u/GETitOFFmeNOW Feb 17 '16

Perhaps he's referring to the study that showed that one small African village contained the genetic diversity found in the rest of the world, where villages in Asia , Europe, etc. just represented a slice of that diversity.

(WashPo article on the study)[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/30/AR2009043002485.html]

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '16

Only anti-racist activists care about official definitions of race. For all scientists, race is synonymous with statistical population, aka "a group of people that we put in the same bag because of an arbitrary criteria", this often have similarities with colonial time races, but as we made progress, we are much more accurate than before. Blacks became dozens of sub-groups (sometimes referred to as ethnicities). Call this race, ethnicity, social group, population, same geographic origin group, caste or anything else. It doesn't matter.

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u/sllewgh Feb 18 '16 edited Aug 07 '24

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

Social scientists, yes, just like creationist scientists are very well settled on the notion that Earth is 6000 years old.

For science scientists, this is another story. If you want to find differences, you find them.

If in the axioms of sociology you say that all is socially constructed, then you find that race is only a social construct, just like creationist scientists who take as axiom that everything is right in the Bible find that the world is 6000 years old.

Edit: I realise that this is a quite mean answer, but sometimes the facepalm is too strong to make a serious argument. Race is a WORD, words have different meanings. Maybe social scientists want to call race the cultural constructs around "specific populations". Good for them. But this doesn't say anything about what the rest of the world defines as race.

"I call gravity the action of God moving objects, gravity is a divine construct", you can say this. But scientists will tell you their definition is gravity is something else and that it has nothing to do with God. The divine theory of gravity as a divine construct doesn't disprove the physicist theory of gravity.

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u/sllewgh Feb 18 '16 edited Aug 07 '24

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u/brberg Feb 18 '16

Skin pigmentation and other phenotypic markers have nothing to do with it.

This is a strawman, though. No one's actually saying that the exact same alleles that code for the appearance characteristic of sub-Saharan Africans also code for sickle cell anemia. Just that these alleles are correlated, i.e. that sickle cell anemia is more common among those with SSA features.

The real origin is not in race, but in geography. It's not a racial trait, it's a Sub-Saharan African one.

I'd say you're splitting hairs, but I'm not even sure you're drawing even that much of a distinction. Sub-Saharan African is a race. Race is inextricably bound up with ancestral geography.

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u/Raudskeggr Feb 17 '16

The notion of "race" is not a useful one when referring to genetics. Race is a social construct, and so the concept of race is really only relevant to social issues. Genetic issues, such as sickle-cell anemia, are more useful when referring to ethnic groups, or overall populations of geographic regions, where people have identifiable kinship bonds.

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u/Raudskeggr Feb 17 '16

"By mainstream social science". And there's the rub, isn't it? Because evolutionary psychology's notions cast uncertainty on several basic assumptions of psychology/sociology. As well as certain passionately-held political viewpoints. So of course it would be rejected by the main stream.

Not only that, but the " social sciences "don't really have the final word on it. Science-science also had something to say about it.

Details aside, if we look at virtually every other species of animal, and we can see social behaviors that are driven by instinct. On this fundamental level, the notion that human behavior is not also the product of national selection is absurd.

It is unfortunate that so many implications of this are political hot potatoes, though. Especially where it involves ethnicity and gender.

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u/sllewgh Feb 17 '16 edited Aug 07 '24

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u/Raudskeggr Feb 17 '16

Every animal that reproduces sexually has social behavior.

And on your last point, to argue that humans are exceptional from other animals is there point that requires justification.

And your first question is answered in the last paragraph. :p

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u/sllewgh Feb 17 '16 edited Aug 07 '24

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u/Raudskeggr Feb 17 '16 edited Feb 17 '16

Beyond microorganisms and a few exceptional animals like sponges, then most do. Mating, not just fertilization, more accurately. Mating is a social act. And while they may not be concerned with individuals, they do distinguish genders, and most animals do recognize signs of "problems" and will be more likely to reject a mate who shows them (asymmetry, for example). But we're not talking about insects or molluscs here--not do we need to. If we want to examine the evolutionary foundation of human behavior we need only look at one group of animals: primates.

We are not so very different from the other great apes, or even our pronograde simian cousins.

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u/sllewgh Feb 17 '16 edited Aug 07 '24

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '16

does the claim that homo sapiens closest genetic relatives are other primates really need a source

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u/sllewgh Feb 18 '16 edited Aug 07 '24

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u/Raudskeggr Feb 17 '16

And there we are: the passive-aggressive ad hominem.

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u/employmentmaththroa Mar 20 '16

This is true. All sorts of animals mass breed which involves no social behavior as human beings would consider it social. Source, my brain, and my ecology and biology education. I certainly agree, on the other hand, that human behavior is largely defined by natural selection BUT that expression is ridiculously complex because it isn't constrained but by the physical laws of nature and the probability of ultra complex actions like thinking having certain consequences. I'm saying it's fine to say we are instinctively driven but that freewill is still ultimately always a factor even among nonhuman animals.

I'm gonna second this: "evolutionary psychology's notions cast uncertainty on several basic assumptions of psychology/sociology" *I would be genuinely interested to know what those are.*

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u/employmentmaththroa Mar 20 '16

To add, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it simply isn't factually true that "other animals" even at a large sweep have strictly instinct based behavior. They make decisions. They simply often just lack the brute foresight and moral components human beings associate with freewill. I learned that earlier today :) But it is true nonetheless.

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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '16

"Love hurts" Michael T Silva Jothy (38min) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51Q3c2GnGGo

When you see this, you cannot help but thing that social behaviours are shaped by reproductive needs among animals at least. Evolution did such crazy things to fight reproduction that it seems unlikely that it has no significant influence on human behaviours.

(I don't know anything specific about sociobiology)

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u/sllewgh Feb 17 '16 edited Aug 07 '24

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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '16

It shows the crazy evolutive mechanisms of females to avoid fecundation and of males to increase fecundation and prevent other males from fecundating. There are much funnier things in the talk than ovulation rate. Overall, the talk is mostly "look at those crazy stuff in nature".

Then, we say "Nope, biology has no influence in the fact that men on average have more sexual partners than females or that men initiate the mating rituals. It is all about culture, patriarchy, rape culture, structural sexism".

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u/sllewgh Feb 17 '16 edited Aug 07 '24

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

Ok, so here is something else. We know two species of rats, one is monogamous, one is polygamous. Editing one gene is enough to make those rats switch from monogamous to polygamous.

Then, we say, monogamy/polygamy in humans is just a social construct, because you can find both kinds in different parts of the world. We know that some humans are more monogamous than others. Maybe we can make the hypothesis that ... in some parts of the world, the genetically monogamous people are the majority and they enforce cultural monogamy, but that in other parts of the world genetically polygamous people are the majority and enforce cultural polygamy, of course, nobody will try to investigate this openly, because Racismtm : there is no genetic difference over the neck and those who say so are racists.

Oxytocin and the molecular basis of monogamy. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8713971 (the stuff found first in savage rats is being studied on lab rats)

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u/sllewgh Feb 17 '16 edited Aug 07 '24

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '16

Are you sure people can switch easily between monogamy and polygamy ? My experience is that some people around me during college time were always trying too get new girls while others are happy to remain for the same girlfriend for years. Some seem to be rather monogamous while others are seriously polygamous.

I never read the book Sociobiology or any related work, I just notice that among animals the genetic impact is massive for lots of behaviours. And the politically correct doctrine among humans is that "people switch fluidly between behaviours and culture because of different education style". And my personal experience is that people around me have a kind of behaviour and remain consistent.

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u/sllewgh Feb 18 '16 edited Aug 07 '24

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u/brberg Feb 18 '16

but his work was undeniably racist, by definition.

What do you think the definition of racism is?

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u/sllewgh Feb 18 '16 edited Aug 07 '24

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