New "War on Science" book

[Ann K]

Hemant Mehta has a scathing discussion of a new book.

More than three dozen Very Serious "scientists and scholars," including several well-known atheists, have contributed essays to a forthcoming book about the "war on science" that will be released by a right-wing publisher.

Those contributors include Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, Peter Boghossian, Steven Pinker, and Lawrence Krauss (the book's editor).

Before I go any further, just ask yourself two questions.

1. If you were going to publish a book about the "war on science" in 2025, what would you cover?

Maybe how the Trump Administration has fired thousands of employees at our nation's finest science agencies? Or how Republicans are decimating funding for research in areas that the private sector will never fund because it's not obviously profitable for them? Or how Trump is destroying the NIH? Or how Trump withdrew from the Paris climate agreement? Or left the World Health Organization? Or promoted anti-vaxxers to positions of prominence while a measles outbreak is currently underway and bird fluremains a very real threat?

That list could go on for a while because the current Republican Party is arguably the biggest threat to scientific progress our nation has ever seen. It's led by people who openly reject science and abhor the very scientists who contribute to our communal knowledge of what's happening.
.........
What aspects of the "war on science" are they covering?

• The supposed attack on "free speech"
• How academic disciplines have apparently been corrupted by ideology.
• "Cancel culture."
• The problems with DEI.
• Issues concerning gender and race.

It's a litany of right-wing grievances that are better suited for Joe Rogan's podcast than anything else. These are not the subjects actual scientists discuss when they're commiserating with each other about what keeps them up at night.
.......
If you think trying to get people of color and women involved in science and protecting the civil rights of trans people are bigger threats to scientific fields than all the things Republicans are doing with their power, then you've completely lost the thread.

https://substack.com/app-link/post?...0.h9XunlOAjD5IM-CsLarHNKjTgE7GL2ghHdtebAyhUN0

 

[FatPhil]

ToC:

With that number of contributors to each section it might not be particularly coherent, and might involve cherry picking from the contributions. Some of the contributors will obviously be a little off the wall, but others may have been re-edited into unrecognisability. I know that plenty that I've said, online and IRL, could be lifted out of context and inserted into several of those chapters, but that doesn't make me a christofascist RWNJ.

 

[FatPhil]

A lot of the biggest mouthpieces I don't pay a lot of attention to, I'm not necessarily in their target demographic, so I'd forgotten what I knew, and what I concluded, about some of the contributors, even if I still recognise the name. Krauss' name I definitely recognise.

One parenthetical bit you snipped, however, was the following:

(Besides that—and only because it's always worth pointing out—Krauss continued to accept money from Jeffrey Epstein even after the latter pleaded guilty to soliciting minors for prostitution. Krauss defended Epstein back in 2011 with one of the most disturbing, poorly aging, and downright arrogant quotations you'll ever hear: "Jeffrey [Epstein] has surrounded himself with beautiful women and young women, but they're not as young as the ones that were claimed… As a scientist, I always judge things on empirical evidence, and he always has women ages 19 to 23 around him, but I've never seen anything else, so as a scientist, my presumption is that whatever the problems were I would believe him over other people… I don't feel tarnished in any way by my relationship with Jeffrey; I feel raised by it.")

Yes, I remember now. Not throwing him a rope, even if the '...' parts are less scuzzy.

 

[Ann K]

Yes, I remember now. Not throwing him a rope, even if the '...' parts are less scuzzy.

I left out that bit, and the comments on the poor reputation of the publishers, but only because it was the attack on science that concerned me most.

 

[Greene]

Ann is there something you're hoping to debunk?

Or is it just indignation that there are people who exist outside of your idealogical echo chamber?

 

[Mendel]

Or is it just indignation that there are people who exist outside of your idealogical echo chamber?

that seems like a pretty good summary of the book, given the table of contents

I doubt any of the authors have hard evidence showing that science is worse off from the things they decry; if they do, bring it!
Failing that, the book should be considered either an extended opinion piece, or bunk.

 

[FatPhil]

that seems like a pretty good summary of the book, given the table of contents

I doubt any of the authors have hard evidence showing that science is worse off from the things they decry; if they do, bring it!
Failing that, the book should be considered either an extended opinion piece, or bunk.

There will be proxies, I'm sure, and demonstrated correlations.

For example, I bet the easily demonstrable increase in ratio of non-faculty (administrative) to faculty (teaching) positions in the last few decades, and associated squeezing of the academic budget, in US universities will be used (a) as a demonstration that science education is suffering; and (b) expansion of DEI initiatives is part of that change, presumably in section 4. Of course, it will be worth following the links to the sources in such cases, as many of the studies have been performed not just at the behest of "libertarian think tanks", or suchlike, or worse, but actually *by* them, and attempts to eliminate bias may not be as fastidious as would be desirable.

(It is worth pointing out that such complaints about university staffing go way back, but for the life of me I can't remember who kicked the discussion off - a big name, someone who has a law or a graph named after him (note, having such things named after you doesn't make you right, just influential).)

 

[FatPhil]

There will be proxies, I'm sure, and demonstrated correlations.

For example, I bet the easily demonstrable increase in ratio of non-faculty (administrative) to faculty (teaching) positions in the last few decades, and associated squeezing of the academic budget, in US universities will be used (a) as a demonstration that science education is suffering; and (b) expansion of DEI initiatives is part of that change, presumably in section 4. Of course, it will be worth following the links to the sources in such cases, as many of the studies have been performed not just at the behest of "libertarian think tanks", or suchlike, or worse, but actually *by* them, and attempts to eliminate bias may not be as fastidious as would be desirable.

(It is worth pointing out that such complaints about university staffing go way back, but for the life of me I can't remember who kicked the discussion off - a big name, someone who has a law or a graph named after him (note, having such things named after you doesn't make you right, just influential).)

Ahh, the clarity a good night's sleep can bring... it was Veblen[*]. I'm too lazy to scour within a primary source for an exact match, but this secondary should at least prove the connection:

The Professor's Literature of Protest

Thorstein Veblen's The Higher Learning in America is back in a new edition. Scott McLemee revisits a scathing classic.

Probably the best-known fact about The Higher Learning in America by Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) is that the author's original subtitle for it was "A Study in Total Depravity." By the time the book finally appeared in print in 1918, the wording had been changed to "A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men," which gives the reader a clearer sense of the contents, albeit at a considerable loss in piquancy.
...
"The school becomes primarily a bureaucratic organization," writes Veblen, "and the first and unremitting duties of the staff are those of official management and accountancy. The further qualifications requisite to the members of the academic staff will be such as make for vendibility, volubility, tactical effrontery [and] conspicuous conformity to the popular taste in all matters of opinion, usage and conventions." The cumulative, long-term effect on the life of the mind? "A substitution of salesmanlike proficiency -- a balancing of bargains in staple credits -- in the place of scientific capacity and addiction to study."

-- https://www.insidehighered.com/view...gher-learning-america-first-annotated-edition

Should-be-unnecessary disclaimer - just because I'm citing Veblen, doesn't mean I agree with Veblen. Heck, with bloviation like that, I barely even understand Veblen. However, the overlaps with the current complaints should be clear.

[*] As in "Veblen goods", which could be considered to have a graph or a law associated with it, so I'll consider my limited recall correct.

A Veblen good is a type of luxury good, named after American economist Thorstein Veblen, for which the demand increases as the price increases, in apparent contradiction of the law of demand, resulting in an upward-sloping demand curve.

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

 

[Gary C]

Not having read the book yet, I'll offer two thoughts:

The echo chamber effect operates regardless of political affiliation. It's a result of human cognitive biases and not restricted to one's philosophical alignment. The idea that the contents are wrong based solely on the associations of several of the authors does not feel like proper skepticism.

Given that, it is not unreasonable to ask if some universities have programs that were initially begun for entirely valid reasons but have since morphed into black holes of resource annihilation. Those are the "cherries" I expect some of these authors will be eager to pick as evidence for their position.

While this does not minimize the much more serious attacks on science we are currently experiencing from the right, the individual authors should not automatically be presumed wrong based on politics. In politics it is a routine occurrence for Both Sides* to be wrong.

*False Dilemma

A false dilemma, also referred to as false dichotomy or false binary, is an informal fallacy based on a premise that erroneously limits what options are available.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

 

[Mendel]

The idea that the contents are wrong based solely on the associations of several of the authors does not feel like proper skepticism.

this would be a stronger point if you didn't then go on to opine about the book without having read it, either

Note also that I called for evidence supporting the claims implicit in the table of contents, which I think is a proper skeptical approach to discussing the topic. (Thank you, @FatPhil!)

 

[Gary C]

Guilty. Like @Ann K , I'm familiar with many of the authors and their previous works. I know them not to be honest brokers and the book will not get to the head of my 'reading pile' anytime soon.

Some of them however have done a good bit of serious scholarly work unrelated to politics and I am interested in what experiences in academia led them to contribute to this particular effort.

Hopefully my logical faculties will improve as my caffeine level rises.

 

[FatPhil]

Guilty. Like @Ann K , I'm familiar with many of the authors and their previous works. I know them not to be honest brokers and the book will not get to the head of my 'reading pile' anytime soon.

Some of them however have done a good bit of serious scholarly work unrelated to politics and I am interested in what experiences in academia led them to contribute to this particular effort.

Hopefully my logical faculties will improve as my caffeine level rises.

As someone who has nothing [EDIT: the word "positive" should have been here, yikes!] to say about post-structuralism and post-modernism, and everything that sprouted therefrom (it is a potent fertiliser and growth medium, as the old joke goes), I've liked Alan Sokal's shitlordery in the fields best described as nonscience. But that was a while back. He has a website, he's done some stuff recently, much of which looks like it could dovetail with the chapter he's contributing to in the book:

The implicit epistemology of White Fragility
Published in the Journal of Philosophy of Education 57(2), 517-552 (April 2023).

"White empiricism" and "The racialization of epistemology in physics": A critical analysis
Published in the Journal of Controversial Ideas 3(2), 1 (October 2023).

Free-speech hypocrisies: The Tory government and the University and College Union
Published in the The Critic, 24 January 2024.

Our illiberal Terrorism Act
Published in the The Critic, 9 February 2024.

Free speech for everyone, except ...
Published in the The Critic, 17 February 2024.

My review of Umut Özkırımlı's book Cancelled: The Left Way Back from Woke
Despite some imperfections, Özkırımlı's book has the merit of being one of the first explicit and thoroughgoing denunciations of "cancel culture" from within the radical left. And this makes it an important starting point for dialogue and debate: not only within the left, broadly defined, but also among fair-minded people of all political persuasions.

Published in the The Critic, 4 March 2024.
Spanish translation published in Letras Libres, 21 May 2024.

See also the panel discussion of Özkırımlı's book.

Academic freedom, free speech, and fashionable hypocrisy
Talk at the University of Kent, 3 April 2024. Also available as a video recording.

"Sex Assigned at Birth": The medical establishment betrays science, logic and common sense
Op-ed by myself and Richard Dawkins. Published in the Boston Globe, 8 April 2024, under the title "Sex and gender: The medical establishment's reluctance to speak honestly about biological reality" -- an unfortunate title because our article was carefully limited to the issue of biological sex, and intentionally refrained from addressing the more subtle issues concerning the meaning of "gender identity".

(This op-ed was previously rejected by the New York Times and the Washington Post. Kudos to the Globe for daring to publish it.)

Here are the letters from readers published by the Globe.

French translation published in Le Point, 18 April 2024.
Spanish translation published in Letras Libres, 1 May 2024.
Also translated into Romanian.

The deceptive use of words
Published in the The Critic, 15 April 2024.

Woke invades the sciences
Published in the The Critic, 14 May 2024.

How ideology threatens to corrupt science
Published in the The Critic, 22 May 2024.

And here is a talk I gave for Heterodox Academy at UPenn in September 2024, amalgamating the preceding two articles.

Submission to the Office for Students consultation on "Proposed regulatory advice and other matters relating to freedom of speech"
My submission to the UK Office for Students consultation on "Proposed regulatory advice and other matters relating to freedom of speech", 21 May 2024.

My review of Gad Saad's book The Parasitic Mind
Published in the The Critic, 30 December 2024.

Guilt by association and "thoughtful politics"
Published in the The Critic, 30 January 2025.

My review of Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott's book The Canceling of the American Mind
Published in the The Critic, 27 February 2025.

-- https://physics.nyu.edu/sokal/

Some of that looks interesting - they're all links to somewhere - but I've not had a chance to look at any of them yet.

I'll dive down PB's stuff too, as I've liked his liberal application of draincleaner to the the dodgier corners of what calls itself science in the last decade or so too.

 

[FatPhil]

My review of Gad Saad's book The Parasitic Mind
Published in the The Critic, 30 December 2024.

I can't resist clicking on that...

Review of The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense

A spirited but disappointing screed against wokeness

Gad Saad, The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense.
Regnery, 2021, 240 pp.

I wasn't supposed to like this book — or perhaps even to read it.

The publisher is Regnery, a notorious American right-wing outfit that publishes titles
like ¡Adios, America!: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole,
Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies, and
Hide Your Children: Exposing the Marxists Behind the Attack on America's Kids. Not to
mention more austere titles like Socialism Sucks.

But let's not judge a book by its publisher.

And, truth be told, there are indeed many things about this book that I don't like —
more on those later. But the surprise is that I liked anything at all. Maybe that's just
because I am (perhaps unbeknownst to myself) a closet right-winger, as some unkind
souls might claim. But even if that were the case, how would that affect the validity or
invalidity of what I — or, more importantly, this book's author, Gad Saad — have to
say? I would modestly suggest that we put aside ad hominem argument and guilt by
association, and simply address the substance of the author's contentions.

... [six more pages...]

It doesn't look like he's gone full nutjob, at all, but apart from that, this quote is left without comment from me. (It's sauna night, and my stove is calling...)

 

[Mendel]

Hmm, can't find which chapter would mention mandates to teach intelligent design on schools. Maybe that's "war on education"?

But here's some evidence on how cancel culture (chapter 3) impacts science;

Article:

Pursuant to its authority under 5 U.S.C. § 1103(a)(1) and (a)(5), the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is providing the following initial guidance to agencies regarding the President's Executive Order entitled Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government (Defending Women).

Steps to End Federal Funding of Gender Ideology: In light of Defending Women, each agency should take prompt actions to end all agency programs that use taxpayer money to promote or reflect gender ideology as defined in Section 2(f) of Defending Women. Specifically, agency heads should take the following steps: [...]

Source: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/memorandum-from-the-acting-director-us-office-personnel-management-initial-guidance

Apparently there are more of these kinds of memos?

Article:

In a radical break with tradition, the National Science Foundation (NSF) this week began to search through billions of dollars of grants the agency has already awarded for anything touching on topics that President Donald Trump has criticized. And NSF has blocked grantees and trainees from accessing funds while the review is underway, wreaking havoc across the academic research community.

The funding freeze and vetting of research and training projects that NSF previously decided were worthy of support is a response to a slew of presidential directives since 20 January that ban all federal funding for what Trump considers to be "woke gender ideology;" diversity, equity, and inclusion; foreign aid; the green new deal; and support for nongovernmental organizations that undermine the national interest. For academic scientists, the list of banned activities could include efforts to increase diversity in the scientific workforce, collaborations with foreign scientists, and research on more environmentally friendly technologies.
[...]
At NSF, Science has learned that officials have temporarily blocked institutions and scientific organizations from getting access to money they have been promised while vetting projects. The agency has provided no indication of how long that review will take. That has left investigators wondering how to meet payrolls and buy and maintain essential equipment and supplies.

"We're in a holding pattern," says Maria Miriti, an ecologist at Ohio State University with a $500,000 NSF grant to build an undergraduate network to increase diversity in the field. "The network exists," says Miriti, who also has an NSF grant to study plant-soil interactions in arid regions. "But if NSF says no, will we have to return some of the money?"
[...]
In addition to vetting its portfolio of 40,000 individual grants, NSF has taken the preemptive step of ending an unknown number of programs supporting work that might be seen as violating the new directives. Its decision to "archive" those programs, some of which have run for decades, means the NSF is no longer accepting proposals on those topics.

NSF declined to comment on the number of archived programs, how they were selected, or what will happen to the funds that had been allocated to those programs.

Source: https://www.science.org/content/article/exclusive-nsf-starts-vetting-all-grants-comply-trump-s-orders

That's from January 31st, a February 4th follow-up is more hopeful:

Article:

As a result, staffers are hoping NSF stays the course. "No grants have been terminated [as of Monday]," says one participant who requested anonymity for fear of retribution. "And we are trying to avoid that from happening. The goal is to try and make sure that every [active] award is fully funded."

Source: https://www.science.org/content/article/nsf-reexamines-existing-awards-comply-trump-s-directives

Here's the list of words the NSF uses to flag grants for review:

Article:

The List of Trump's Forbidden Words That Will Get Your Paper Flagged at NSF

Forbidden keywords that initiate a review at NSF, according to Saxbe:

activism, activists, advocacy, advocate, advocates, barrier, barriers, biased, biased toward, biases, biases towards, bipoc, black and latinx, community diversity, community equity, cultural differences, cultural heritage, culturally responsive, disabilities, disability, discriminated, discrimination, discriminatory, diverse backgrounds, diverse communities, diverse community, diverse group, diverse groups, diversified, diversify, diversifying, diversity and inclusion, diversity, equity, enhance the diversity, enhancing diversity, equal opportunity, equality, equitable, equity, ethnicity, excluded, female, females, fostering inclusivity, gender, gender diversity, genders, hate speech, excluded, female, females, fostering inclusivity, gender, gender diversity, genders, hate speech, hispanic minority, historically, implicit bias, implicit biases, inclusion, inclusive, inclusiveness, inclusivity, increase diversity, increase the diversity, indigenous community, inequalities, inequality, inequitable, inequities, institutional, Igbt, marginalize, marginalized, minorities, minority, multicultural, polarization, political, prejudice, privileges, promoting diversity, race and ethnicity, racial, racial diversity, racial inequality, racial justice, racially, racism, sense of belonging, sexual preferences, social justice, sociocultural, socioeconomic, status, stereotypes, systemic, trauma, under appreciated, under represented, under served, underrepresentation, underrepresented, underserved, undervalued, victim, women, women and underrepresented

Source: https://gizmodo.com/the-list-of-trumps-forbidden-words-that-will-get-your-paper-flagged-at-nsf-2000559661

 

[Ann K]

Here's the list of words the NSF uses to flag grants for review:

The Center for disease control has also fallen under this ban.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered government scientists to withdraw or pause the publication of all papers set to appear in medical or scientific journals so the Trump administration can review the material for "forbidden terms" such as "gender," "LGBT" or "pregnant person," according to a shocking new report.
Inside Medicine, a Substack published by Dr. Jeremy Faust, obtained an email the CDC's chief science officer sent to researchers instructing them to stop the advancement of manuscripts that are currently being revised or those that have already been accepted for publication. Researchers were told to remove any mention or reference to a list of terms.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cdc-...wn-forbidden-words_n_67a02486e4b0521901454fe9

It's long been known that diseases, symptoms, and treatments are more effective for one sex than the other, so a ban on even mentioning "pregnant person" (quite obviously a condition that affects one sex) is about as anti-health-care as you can get.

The 2025 United States government online resource removals are a series of web page and dataset deletions and modifications across multiple United States federal agencies beginning in January 2025. Following executive orders from President Donald Trump's administration, government organizations removed or modified over 8,000 web pages and approximately 3,000 datasets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_government_online_resource_removals

 

[Edward Current]

activism, activists, advocacy, advocate, advocates, barrier, barriers, biased, biased toward, biases, biases towards, bipoc, black and latinx, community diversity, community equity, cultural differences, cultural heritage, culturally responsive, disabilities, disability, discriminated, discrimination, discriminatory, diverse backgrounds, diverse communities, diverse community, diverse group, diverse groups, diversified, diversify, diversifying, diversity and inclusion, diversity, equity, enhance the diversity, enhancing diversity, equal opportunity, equality, equitable, equity, ethnicity, excluded, female, females, fostering inclusivity, gender, gender diversity, genders, hate speech, excluded, female, females, fostering inclusivity, gender, gender diversity, genders, hate speech, hispanic minority, historically, implicit bias, implicit biases, inclusion, inclusive, inclusiveness, inclusivity, increase diversity, increase the diversity, indigenous community, inequalities, inequality, inequitable, inequities, institutional, Igbt, marginalize, marginalized, minorities, minority, multicultural, polarization, political, prejudice, privileges, promoting diversity, race and ethnicity, racial, racial diversity, racial inequality, racial justice, racially, racism, sense of belonging, sexual preferences, social justice, sociocultural, socioeconomic, status, stereotypes, systemic, trauma, under appreciated, under represented, under served, underrepresentation, underrepresented, underserved, undervalued, victim, women, women and underrepresented[/article]

"equality"..."female"..."females"..."historically"..."inclusion"..."minority"..."status"..."underrepresented"..."women"

Seems like the government banning words that routinely appear in science papers, in a variety of contexts, is a war on science.

 

[Mendel]

Seems like the government banning words that routinely appear in science papers, in a variety of contexts, is a war on science.

they are not banning the words
they are banning certain fields of study that these words stand for
if you're not the target, your 'award" is delayed while your grant gets re-reviewed, but it is not gone

 

[FatPhil]

Here's the list of words the NSF uses to flag grants for review:

Article:

The List of Trump's Forbidden Words That Will Get Your Paper Flagged at NSF

Forbidden keywords that initiate a review at NSF, according to Saxbe:

activism, activists, advocacy, advocate, advocates, barrier, barriers, biased, biased toward, biases, biases towards, bipoc, black and latinx, community diversity, community equity, cultural differences, cultural heritage, culturally responsive, disabilities, disability, discriminated, discrimination, discriminatory, diverse backgrounds, diverse communities, diverse community, diverse group, diverse groups, diversified, diversify, diversifying, diversity and inclusion, diversity, equity, enhance the diversity, enhancing diversity, equal opportunity, equality, equitable, equity, ethnicity, excluded, female, females, fostering inclusivity, gender, gender diversity, genders, hate speech, excluded, female, females, fostering inclusivity, gender, gender diversity, genders, hate speech, hispanic minority, historically, implicit bias, implicit biases, inclusion, inclusive, inclusiveness, inclusivity, increase diversity, increase the diversity, indigenous community, inequalities, inequality, inequitable, inequities, institutional, Igbt, marginalize, marginalized, minorities, minority, multicultural, polarization, political, prejudice, privileges, promoting diversity, race and ethnicity, racial, racial diversity, racial inequality, racial justice, racially, racism, sense of belonging, sexual preferences, social justice, sociocultural, socioeconomic, status, stereotypes, systemic, trauma, under appreciated, under represented, under served, underrepresentation, underrepresented, underserved, undervalued, victim, women, women and underrepresented

Source: https://gizmodo.com/the-list-of-trumps-forbidden-words-that-will-get-your-paper-flagged-at-nsf-2000559661

New Rule: Those words should also be forbidden from executive orders. (And, no, I don't think anyone involved is smart enough to understand the use/mention distinction.)

 

[FatPhil]

Enjoying Sokal presently, he makes his points coherently and in a balanced fashion. I've even lifted several of his more poignant sentences out of his writings to add to my rotating email .sig file.

However, after my morning read, I now feel inspired to express my views on what I've read using Duplo:

However, I'm not sure I'm advanced enough for that:

Both extracted from https://phipps.space/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/gender-theory-syllabus.pdf
which is "a thirteen-week syllabus on different aspects of gender and feminist theory, for upper-undergraduate and postgraduate students. It contains key and suggested readings and suggested preparation tasks and seminar activities." (https://phipps.space/lecturers/ )

Whilst searching for that, I couldn't find any of the original photos taken of the work (which is why I refer to Duplo, apparently her students weren't advanced enough for actual Lego, and people called her out on it), but I did come across a Gad Saad video which is full of his usual snarcasm.

 

[Mendel]

Whilst searching for that, I couldn't find any of the original photos taken of the work (which is why I refer to Duplo, apparently her students weren't advanced enough for actual Lego, and people called her out on it),

if they were to present their visualisation, Duplo would be better since it's bigger. Duplo bricks are harder to lose, and they may be easier to obtain since kids grow out of them.

In general, since the stated aim is to "help students become more autonomous as learners", forcing them to transfer what they've learned to another medium keeps them from doing a copy/paste/reword job, i.e. it goes beyond mere reproduction of what they've read, as is easy to do when staying within the realm of written language.

Working visually may assist a small study group to more easily focus on specific aspects of the topic they're discussing.

The fact that someone can be snarky with regard to these methods doesn't mean they don't work (or that the snark has understood how they work).

As comparison, mind maps are an established tool that is also both graphical and textual and helps people gain a structured insight into what they're learning.

 

[Dave51c]

It's long been known that diseases, symptoms, and treatments are more effective for one sex than the other, so a ban on even mentioning "pregnant person" (quite obviously a condition that affects one sex) is about as anti-health-care as you can get.

I am not in the US but work in the UK's NHS, where a lot of clinical research is international in nature e.g. esp. during Covid 19 research where we collaborated closely with US colleagues, and this is going to impact those studies which are cross sponsored with US partner organisations. I have heard that some NIH questionare forms have been altered to remove questions about gender and only include sex.

This has implications for AE (Adverse Events) and SAE (Serious Adverse Events) reporting - if a person is recruited onto a clinical trial and there is reaction to a drug or vaccine under test, then knowing that person is trans gender and might be under hormone treatment is a good starting point for further investigation. (I'm leaving aside studies where a persons hormonal regime is part of the study protocol)

We also now have a situation where study inclusion criteria in the UK might specifically mention some of these banned US terms making international multi centre studies harder or impossible to set up and share costs with US institutions leading to a loss of biomedical scientific knowledge.

Viruses do not respect borders or fascist ideologies!

 

[FatPhil]

I am not in the US but work in the UK's NHS, where a lot of clinical research is international in nature e.g. esp. during Covid 19 research where we collaborated closely with US colleagues, and this is going to impact those studies which are cross sponsored with US partner organisations. I have heard that some NIH questionare forms have been altered to remove questions about gender and only include sex.

Sex is the biological thing, medicine is a biological field, so it's the more logical thing to ask about.

This has implications for AE (Adverse Events) and SAE (Serious Adverse Events) reporting - if a person is recruited onto a clinical trial and there is reaction to a drug or vaccine under test, then knowing that person is trans gender and might be under hormone treatment is a good starting point for further investigation. (I'm leaving aside studies where a persons hormonal regime is part of the study protocol)

Then ask about medication regimes. There's no need to ask how anyone identifies in order to ascertain whether there might be contraindications.

 

[Trailblazer]

I think science is, sadly, under attack from both sides of the political spectrum.
Yes, right-wing governments distrust or are actively working to dismantle scientific and academic institutions, because of perceived "wokeness", but there is also a kernel of truth in their reasoning.

I've always been instinctively liberal and left-of-centre, but just as the right has moved further right, so the left has moved further left, and academia seems especially susceptible to left-wing fads and fashions. In science, as in politics, common sense and centrism seems increasingly to be the most extreme position, as it gets you ostracised by both sides of the spectrum...

 

[Dave51c]

Sex is the biological thing, medicine is a biological field, so it's the more logical thing to ask about.

Yes, but.

Removing cultural information because of political ideology is problematic for me. In the case of the example I gave it seems like 90% of the US far right and their sycophants seem triggered by around 1% of the population. You don't have to be a student of history to see that the language and propaganda against minorities is the same as it was in the 1930s. Sorry, but if that offends anyone here, I don't care.

Then ask about medication regimes.

This happens all the time of course starting with the study design though to the screening process. Where a likely issue can be predicted from previous work or perhaps from a simulation it is taken into account. Not every combination of reactions the participant may encounter can be covered in advance. If the researchers know that their study outcomes will be statistically skewed by people on HRT, say, then that will be in the exclusion criteria.

There's no need to ask how anyone identifies in order to ascertain whether there might be contraindications.

Yes there is. I gave a hyperthetical example. If we could predict all possible side effects ahead of time then we would. When adverse events occur there is a chain of events that must be followed to protect patient safety - having as much information as possible, not less, is vital.

Given the percentage of trans participants on trials then my example is an edge case. That does not matter. A person's worth is not based on what gender they identify by (or who it offends) and equal inclusion in medical, sociological or other research is fine by me.

Regardless, a lot of human trials exist within the cultural framework. In the UK we have public health policies which need demographic and socio-economic data to function. Doesn't matter where on the bell curve of society that comes from - the 1%, 5% or 80%.

Just to provide a real example of such a study, my manager is part of a trial that specifically targets a particular ethnic population across the country to find out why they do not receive or access the health care they are entitled to. This is mainly public health policy stuff, but medically it identifies a pool of potential trial participants who would add to the genetic diversity of our Biobank [1]

UK Biobank is a large-scale biomedical database and research resource containing de-identified genetic, lifestyle and health information and biological samples from half a million UK participants.

[1] https://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk

 

[Edward Current]

just as the right has moved further right, so the left has moved further left

The left always moves further left.

 

[FatPhil]

Yes there is. I gave a hyperthetical example.

No you didn't. You gave an example of where asking about their medication history and status would be more useful than asking about self-identification.

 

[Gary C]

I think science is, sadly, under attack from both sides of the political spectrum.
Yes, right-wing governments distrust or are actively working to dismantle scientific and academic institutions, because of perceived "wokeness", but there is also a kernel of truth in their reasoning.

I've always been instinctively liberal and left-of-centre, but just as the right has moved further right, so the left has moved further left, and academia seems especially susceptible to left-wing fads and fashions. In science, as in politics, common sense and centrism seems increasingly to be the most extreme position, as it gets you ostracised by both sides of the spectrum...

The left always moves further left.

Without effective external feedback, any affinity group will move to an extreme version of itself.

Abstract

In a striking empirical regularity, deliberation tends to move groups, and the individuals who compose them, toward a more extreme point in the direction indicated by their own predeliberation judgments. For example, people who are opposed to the minimum wage are likely, after talking to each other, to be still more opposed; people who tend to support gun control are likely, after discussion, to support gun control with considerable enthusiasm; people who believe that global warming is a serious problem are likely, after discussion, to insist on severe measures to prevent global warming. This general phenomenon -- group polarization -- has many implications for economic, political, and legal institutions. It helps to explain extremism, "radicalization," cultural shifts, and the behavior of political parties and religious organizations; it is closely connected to current concerns about the consequences of the Internet; it also helps account for feuds, ethnic antagonism, and tribalism. Group polarization bears on the conduct of government institutions, including juries, legislatures, courts, and regulatory commissions. There are interesting relationships between group polarization and social cascades, both informational and reputational. Normative implications are discussed, with special attention to political and legal institutions.

see: Cass R. Sunstein, "The Law of Group Polarization" (John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics Working Paper No. 91, 1999). at - https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/law_and_economics/542/

 

[Trailblazer]

Without effective external feedback, any affinity group will move to an extreme version of itself.

Abstract

In a striking empirical regularity, deliberation tends to move groups, and the individuals who compose them, toward a more extreme point in the direction indicated by their own predeliberation judgments. For example, people who are opposed to the minimum wage are likely, after talking to each other, to be still more opposed; people who tend to support gun control are likely, after discussion, to support gun control with considerable enthusiasm; people who believe that global warming is a serious problem are likely, after discussion, to insist on severe measures to prevent global warming. This general phenomenon -- group polarization -- has many implications for economic, political, and legal institutions. It helps to explain extremism, "radicalization," cultural shifts, and the behavior of political parties and religious organizations; it is closely connected to current concerns about the consequences of the Internet; it also helps account for feuds, ethnic antagonism, and tribalism. Group polarization bears on the conduct of government institutions, including juries, legislatures, courts, and regulatory commissions. There are interesting relationships between group polarization and social cascades, both informational and reputational. Normative implications are discussed, with special attention to political and legal institutions.

see: Cass R. Sunstein, "The Law of Group Polarization" (John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics Working Paper No. 91, 1999). at - https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/law_and_economics/542/

That's interesting, because as a "leftie" I sometimes wonder, after reading social media, whether I am not really a reactionary conservative after all

(Of course, then I read some right-wing social media and realise I'm not...)

Alan Sokal maybe feels the same:

And, truth be told, there are indeed many things about this book that I don't like — more on those later. But the surprise is that I liked anything at all. Maybe that's just because I am (perhaps unbeknownst to myself) a closet right-winger, as some unkind souls might claim.

Sokal, of course, is known for highlighting how leftist ideology gets a free pass in the academic world, by submitting a hoax paper to a journal.

Rather than being a right-wing critic, he says he was doing it to "defend the left from itself", and I can certainly see his point.

My goal isn't to defend science from the barbarian hordes of lit crit (we'll survive just fine, thank you), but to defend the Left from a trendy segment of itself. ... There are hundreds of important political and economic issues surrounding science and technology. Sociology of science, at its best, has done much to clarify these issues. But sloppy sociology, like sloppy science, is useless, or even counterproductive.

 

[Gary C]

Sokal, of course, is known for highlighting how leftist ideology gets a free pass in the academic world, by submitting a hoax paper to a journal.

Ah, that's where I remember the name from. Thx

 

[Ann K]

The left always moves further left.

In the USA, "the left" is what would probably be called "center right" in Europe. The topics that the American right wing thinks of as radical are merely emphasized by them out of all proportion to their significance in order to distract from what they themselves are really doing.

 

[Gary C]

In the USA, "the left" is what would probably be called "center right" in Europe. The topics that the American right wing thinks of as radical are merely emphasized by them out of all proportion to their significance in order to distract from what they themselves are really doing.

Agreed. The ascendence of infotainment over traditional journalism provides cover to extremists of all stripes. Influencers and partisan channels cherry pick the most egregious examples of their preferred enemy to paint a caricature for their audience. This is evident in the prevalence of whataboutism to deflect criticism of their in-group.

Tribalism is a profitable business model.

 

[deirdre]

if they were to present their visualisation, Duplo would be better since it's bigger

looking at some of the sculptures id guess the duplo (which are also legos technically) sets have characters more conducive to building a representational sculpture.
note: i will admit that Piglet on a slide is pretty deep. someone must have stolen the eeyore figure though, as he would definitely be more meaningful than that horse.

 

[deirdre]

That's interesting, because as a "leftie" I sometimes wonder, after reading social media, whether I am not really a reactionary conservative after all

(Of course, then I read some right-wing social media and realise I'm not...)

That's interesting, because as a "rightie" I sometimes wonder, after reading social media, whether I am not really a reactionary liberal after all

(Of course, then I read some left-wing social media and realise I'm not...)

i think its just a 'normal people' vs 'activist people' thing. normal people are capable of independent thought and seeing the flaws in their own "side" too.

 

[Trailblazer]

That's interesting, because as a "rightie" I sometimes wonder, after reading social media, whether I am not really a reactionary liberal after all

(Of course, then I read some left-wing social media and realise I'm not...)

i think its just a 'normal people' vs 'activist people' thing. normal people are capable of independent thought and seeing the flaws in their own "side" too.

And on social media you seldom come across 'normal people'...

It often seems politics is so tribal nowadays that any policy, no matter how common-sense, will be vilified if it originates from "the other side". The notion that there are certain common goals that should be pursued for the good of society, regardless of partisan ideas, seems to have disappeared.

 

[Mendel]

looking at some of the sculptures id guess the duplo (which are also legos technically) sets have characters more conducive to building a representational sculpture.
note: i will admit that Piglet on a slide is pretty deep. someone must have stolen the eeyore figure though, as he would definitely be more meaningful than that horse.
View attachment 77956

You're presenting this without the 200-word blurbs that go with the Duplo sculptures to explain what the structures and figures mean.
To ridicule something you have not understood, because you have not understood it, falls back on yourself.

Btw, here are some examples that employ Winnie-the-Poo to illustrate serious issues (click to enlarge):

 

[deirdre]

To ridicule something you have not understood, because you have not understood it, falls back on yourself.

nothing i wrote could be taken as ridicule, if one knows anything about winnie-the-pooh characters. Not that i expect you to be super familiar with the characters..but don't just assume i am not. because i am.

here's a quick example i'm mostly just grabbing because i dont want to explain WHY piglet is deep or eeyore would be better.

Article:

Winnie-the-Pooh himself, for example, personifies the principles of wu wei, the Taoist concept of "effortless doing," and pu, the concept of being open to, but unburdened by, experience, and it is also a metaphor for natural human nature. In contrast, characters like Owl and Rabbit over-complicate problems, often over-thinking to the point of confusion, and Eeyore pessimistically complains and frets about existence, unable to just be.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tao_of_Pooh

 

[FatPhil]

In the USA, "the left" is what would probably be called "center right" in Europe. The topics that the American right wing thinks of as radical are merely emphasized by them out of all proportion to their significance in order to distract from what they themselves are really doing.

As political entities, you're right, but idiologies don't need a political party to reify them in order to be a problem. "The left" that people complain about is mostly the same in the USA as it is in Europe (we had "loony lefties" in the 80s in the UK, for example). That's unsurprising, as many of the extremes originate in the US. The 60s was particularly fruitful in this regard. Feminism's radical side, for example, is classic 60s US. You can't spell SCUM without U and S.

 

[FatPhil]

if they were to present their visualisation, Duplo would be better since it's bigger. Duplo bricks are harder to lose, and they may be easier to obtain since kids grow out of them.

In general, since the stated aim is to "help students become more autonomous as learners", forcing them to transfer what they've learned to another medium keeps them from doing a copy/paste/reword job, i.e. it goes beyond mere reproduction of what they've read, as is easy to do when staying within the realm of written language.

Working visually may assist a small study group to more easily focus on specific aspects of the topic they're discussing.

The fact that someone can be snarky with regard to these methods doesn't mean they don't work (or that the snark has understood how they work).

As comparison, mind maps are an established tool that is also both graphical and textual and helps people gain a structured insight into what they're learning.

I look forward to an interesting contribution from you elsethread on how interwar tariffs exascerbated the economic problems in the 1920s, through the medium of interpretive dance.

I shall respond using finger bells and a tambourine.

Deirdre's the visual one in the room, I expect nothing less than an exquisite modelling clay piece.

The rest of metabunk can sit back in wonder at how magnificently this change of medium advances the exchange of knowledge.

 

[Mendel]

The rest of metabunk can sit back in wonder at how magnificently this change of medium advances the exchange of knowledge.

it's not supposed to transmit knowledge, it's a tool that's supposed to aid in the learning of it

kinda like the difference about reading a book about carpentry, and actually using a hammer and nails, the book is more efficient at presenting the knowledge, but actually doing something yourself helps to understand and retain that knowledge.

 

[Mendel]

The left always moves further left.

That's only half the truth (and "always" needs more evidence).

Article:

Source: https://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/both-white-and-nonwhite-democrats-are-moving-left/

Article:

Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/

It's not a shift to the left, it's a shift from the center to the edges.

A leftist would say that that the material divide caused by Reagonomics and its successors necessarily created a divide in the consciousness of the people.