Excellent essay from Coyne and Maroja that picks apart six widespread examples of biology being corrupted by (often well-intentioned) ideology.
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Bitching about trying not to do racism?
Ah, no: bitching about trying not to do transphobia. Starting off by fucking up sex and gender. No politics anywhere are stifling your ability to talk about does versus bucks. We are talking about people. You have a moral duty to minimize harm, even when describing true things. If you feel constrained by guidelines to avoid fueling bigots then imagine how their targets feel about bigots given fuel.
Teachers have been hounded out of their jobs and deprived of their classes simply for declaring that human sex is binary.
I appeared on “Fox and Friends,” a Fox News program, and explained that sex is binary and biological.
Yeah simply for agreeing with fascists, on national television, to promote their anti-trans bigotry. Using the full weight of your institution’s gravitas. Posterior bootprint deserved.
To a biologist, this kind of blank-slateism—which may stem partly from the Marxist faith in the infinite malleability of humans—is profoundly wrong.
Aaand the author blames communism. Fuck off with this garbage. People avoiding bell-curve scientific-sexism prejudice are not picking a fight with numbers or biology, they are trying to protect real living persons, from politics, using politics.
Your discipline interacts with reality. Your actions affect people, in the here and now. You want it to just be the medical stuff! You want it to just be the breakthroughs from unrestrained curiosity. But pop-science that emerges organically has excused, bolstered, or outright caused immense human suffering. People are getting on top of that shit, to help you avoid providing cover for monsters.
Oh hey, and they do get around to bitching about trying not to do racism! Look: to some extent race and ethnicity need to be cleaved apart like sex and gender, so when someone says one of them is kinda bullshit, their meaning is clear. Outside of bad-faith misrepresentation like this article started off with for sex and gender. Whoopsie doodle. But the larger picture is that oh my god your own fucking example is a guy saying some ethnic groups might be dumber. That’s your defense? That’s the argument! Nooo shit people get in trouble “for merely suggesting the possibility” that we could rank the races. To scoff and sputter like you can’t see the harm in that is either being so far up the ivory tower you need an oxygen tank… or just being a bigot, yourself.
Underlined a thousand times by the next paragraph beginning ‘well everyone knows IQ tests already prove some groups are automatically dumber.’
To the author’s undue credit, closing out with woo-woo nonsense suggests the former. But just fucking barely. They still dropped a link to a guy who was invited on Fox News to effectively say trans people are faking it, as if that guy facing consequences was incomprehensible. Motherfucker you namedropped creationism. You know debate doesn’t work on frauds! You know that showing up to call bullshit, can often promote bullshit! That’s why they want to debate you! Showing up to agree, but then split hairs, isn’t even partial credit. You fail. You actively made the world a little bit worse, just because you couldn’t imagine an audience outside tightly-puckered academia.
You want to keep this shit amongst yourselves until you figure assholes won’t abuse it? Go back to writing it in Latin.
Hmmmm what are your thoughts on this? I thought it was interesting and very opinionated. The authors are definitely clear on their stance. I’ll admit, I skimmed bits and read others, but it felt more like this essay was comprised of things they just wanted to get off their chest and not a means to try and sway any detractors. Which maybe was the point, but it left me wanting.
It’s certainly opinionated, polemical even. I would encourage you to read it in its entirety and follow some of many links they’ve included to make their case. I myself have subjectively noticed the same changes in science journalism over the last decade that the authors are highlighting, particularly in SciAm.
This article leans more toward Denialism than Skepticism, and you need look no further than the very first point they make to see that.
- Sex in humans is not a discrete and binary distribution of males and females but a spectrum. This statement, one of the most common political distortions of biology (e.g., Ainsworth 2018), is wrong because nearly every human on earth falls into one of two distinct categories.
They contradict themselves in the very same sentence. “nearly every human on earth falls into one of two distinct categories” is just another way of saying “sex is a spectrum because some people DO fall between two distinct groups”. There are many millions of people out there like this and deserve to be considered in scientific research.
Then their 2nd point is just a blatant straw man:
- All behavioral and psychological differences between human males and females are due to socialization.
I very much doubt this is a common statement made by any legitimate scientist. Nature and Nurture is at the very core of human psychology. That’s psychology 101.
Given that they opened their article with these two intentionally fallacious statements, I see no reason to read any further. The authors need to examine themselves for ideological biases, not accuse everyone else of it.
They contradict themselves in the very same sentence. “nearly every human on earth falls into one of two distinct categories” is just another way of saying "sex is a spectrum
That’s not a contradiction because a binary with some exceptions is not, therefore, a spectrum. A spectrum is a continuously varying attribute like height. An individual can move along the height spectrum. There is no continuous variable in mammalian sex; there are only two discrete gametes.
You may as well say humans aren’t bipedal because some individuals have one leg or none. But to describe human locomotion as a spectrum would be laughably misleading. And why corrupt the language in this way? Ideology, of course.
deserve to be considered in scientific research.
They are that’s why we know about them. Strawman suggesting the authors are implying NOT including them in research.
- All behavioral and psychological differences between human males and females are due to socialization.
I very much doubt this is a common statement made by any legitimate scientist.
The essay is not specifically targeted at scientists. They cite examples of blankslate-ism in the media and the idea itself as a theory of mind has been around in philosophy from the likes of John Locke and Descarte.
Good psychologists of course know the effects of evolution and sexual dichotomy on human psychology, but this doesn’t always penetrate into society at large.
Given that they opened their article with these two clearly IDEOLOGICAL statements, I see no reason to read any further. The authors need to examine themselves for ideological biases, not accuse everyone else of it.
It’s worth a read and it’s not terribly long. Always worth to have ideas challenged.
i will respond in detail later today. But i don’t appreciate being downvoted just for pushing back on the article you posted.
That’s not a contradiction because a binary with some exceptions is not, therefore, a spectrum. A spectrum is a continuously varying attribute like height. An individual can move along the height spectrum. There is no continuous variable in mammalian sex;
Yes there is, there is a wide array of variation among the “exceptions” as you call them.
there are only two discrete gametes.
They are not always so distinct, and your definition of sex=gametes is completely arbitrary semantics that only serves to marginalize people.
You may as well say humans aren’t bipedal because some individuals have one leg or none. But to describe human locomotion as a spectrum would be laughably misleading. And why corrupt the language in this way? Ideology, of course.
Why not describe human locomotion as a spectrum? That would not be misleading at all. Yes it is an ideology, but so is your position. Ideology is not inherently a bad thing.
The essay is not specifically targeted at scientists.
Of course it is. The very opening line of the article states:
“Biology faces a grave threat from “progressive” politics that are changing the way our work is done, delimiting areas of biology that are taboo and will not be funded by the government or published in scientific journals…”
clearly this is not in reference to random joes, but to career sceintists who decide what is funded or published.
It’s worth a read and it’s not terribly long. Always worth to have ideas challenged.
It is not always worth having ideas challenged. I am happy to have my ideas challenged but I’m not wasting my time with people arguing in bad faith like this article clearly is. The only response to a Gish gallop is not to engage.
They are not always so distinct, and your definition of sex=gametes is completely arbitrary semantics that only serves to marginalize people.
It’s not my definition of course. And the binary nature of mammalian sex “marginalises” no one. Does the binocular vision of mammals marginalise the blind? Mammals have two kidneys but people born with renal agenesis have one or none, and yet no one is arguing that the mammalian renal system “is a spectrum”. Why use such obfuscatory language?
Why not describe human locomotion as a spectrum?
Because that would be factually incorrect at every level. Humans are bipedal. Canis lupis is quadropedal. If you describe both as having “spectral locomotive” properties, you have no language to distinguish between them. It is a ludicrous exercise in semantics that adds nothing to the explanatory power of science and only diminishes it.
The essay is not specifically targeted at scientists.
Of course it is “Biology faces a grave threat from “progressive” politics that are changing the way our work is done, delimiting areas of biology that are taboo and will not be funded by the government or published in scientific journals…”
clearly this is not in reference to random joes, but to career sceintists who decide what is funded or published.
You may be shocked to learn that “non-scientists” also read scientific journals and may also care about proper allocation of research funding. I am not a professional (or amateur even) tennis player yet the governance of the sport is of interest to me and many other “non-tennis” players.
It is not always worth having ideas challenged.
Oh no, it is always worth it. JS Mill makes the case for the vital necessity of dissent in ‘on liberty’ which is far too long to paste here but should he added to anyone’s reading list.
i’m not wasting my time with people arguing in bad faith like this article clearly is.
Then why engage? Why profess your desire to remain ignorant of the text? It adds nothing. Simply hold your peace and move on.
