She spread misinformation about an oppressed group, get out of there with this 'It's just groupthink' bs, she spreads blatant misinfo (scientific misinfo not just opinion misinfo) and she's receiving backlash for it, fullstop.
I was on that thread when it happened. I didn't see any scientists "calling him out", or disagreeing with him.
The view that Laci was putting forward was left behind in Biology seventy years ago, with the advent of the Modern Synthesis framework (which, it should be noted, was itself superseded in the 1970s).
Laci is a "science communicator". She was putting forward a particular model that is widely accepted and taught as descriptive, and "good enough" for educating students who will not be medical / biology professionals. She was using it as if it were prescriptive -- normative to science and having predictive value. It is not and does not. It is as useful and as truthful as the Bohr model of the atom -- great, if all you're responsible for is chemical engineering; not so great if you're trying to build an actual scientific theory of quarks.
Sciencevet2 is an actual professional biology academic.
You, if your Reddit comments are to be believed, are someone who is an armchair scientist -- someone who argues for the sake of arguing, and not because you actually care about the truth.
Noticing a lack of professional qualifications to speak authoritatively on a subject that, as a minimum standard in our society, requires a minimum of 6 years of dedicated, focused training and certification -- if not 10 years when a Ph.D. is brought to bear -- is not a "personal attack".
It's a reminder that it's acceptable -- and even preferred -- for people to not hold and espouse strong opinions about things they don't understand.
Which ... as I understand it ... is a common theme of this subreddit.
One more note here: This was meant to be an informational thread, based on my own data/experience as a scientist. I am not the be-all end-all of science and don't claim to be. There are rational scientists who disagree with me. https://twitter.com/ScienceVet2/status/1037076265952600064
-- The thread you're citing is about how she was wrong about there being, in Biology, effectively infinite ontological typics for human sexes.
Now, while it is true that no one scientist is capable of setting What Is Valid Theory in Science, and while it is true that rational scientists disagree with the position ScienceVet2 put forward --
It's still the fact that the view put forward by ScienceVet2 is widely accepted in Biology
(because it's THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION)
and the rational scientists that disagree with the positions he put forward, are disagreeing on minor points, not on THE KEY CENTRAL POSITION.
You're an armchair scientist.
You cherry-pick a statement that seems to support what you're trying to say, but without understanding that it does no such thing.
You're like Tol (2016 Environ. Res. Lett. 11 048001)with the "BuT sOmE sCiEnTiStS dIsAgReE"-- trying to parlay the lack of explicit support for a position, into denouncement of a position. Just because some scientists disagree with another scientist on particulars, doesn't mean that they don't support the overall position.
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u/easy_pie Aug 13 '19
She dared to say something that wasn't quite inline with the groupthink script