Don’t like biological research? Call the scientist a racist ollowing the recent death of two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson, a professor of nursing wrote for Scientific American of “the complicated legacies of scientists whose works are built on racist ideas.” Within academia, there has been a tireless, insidious movement to derail particular lines of research by terrorizing scientists with unfounded accusations of racism and bigotry. Every week, I am alerted by my readers to yet another case of an academic being tarred, feathered, and dragged as part of a concerted effort to erase biological explanations in favor of blank slateism (the belief that human nature is socially constructed and learned). Regardless of whether the topic is race, sex, gender, or something else contentious, critics will claim that biology is dangerous, conflating truth with bad ideas extrapolated from it. They don’t, however, manage to disprove the findings they take issue with, in many cases misrepresenting and straw-manning an individual’s work because they have no understanding of the scientific method and lack any interest in it. Once upon a time, if you disagreed with an academic colleague about their findings, you would write a rebuttal for publication in a scientific journal. Maybe you’d conduct your own study in hopes of disproving theirs. The colleague with whom you disagreed would welcome your dissent. Now, the most effective way to counter ideas you don’t like is to accuse the person holding them of being a racist. The effects are twofold: shutting most people up and successfully derailing any chance they might pursue similar research in the future. ___________________ One of the great minds of his time, RIP E.O. Wilson.
When scientific studies are countered with simply "that's racist", you're not dealing with science any longer but a gut feelings. Welcome back to the dark ages.
There is a long, long history of racists twisting biology to justify their racism. However, I remember reading a book 20 years ago about DNA based diseases, and the author said that scientists were reluctant to research Sickle Cell Anemia, because it is a race based disease, which involves comparing the DNA of the people who get it (Black) to the people who don't (White). Easier to let someone else do that, while you study childhood cancers, or alzheimers.
Maybe because in the US Africa-Americans are 13% of population and in Europe something like 3-4%? This same argument you used was presented in a documentary recently. Why don't African countries do any research, a large continent with plenty of resources. It's perfectly natural for Japanese to focus research more on earthquakes and tsunamis, Netherlands on dam building, Brazil on tropical diseases. It's not the obligation of anyone else to focus on other groups, especially if it's something expensive.
Well, it's somewhat encouraging that Scientific American had to go pretty deep into the bullpen to find someone to smear E.O. Wilson after his recent death. A nurse from California, not anyone with real academic credentials or in his field of study.
Even if you can prove there is a slight difference in generics there's nothing you can do about that so it's best to ignore it as inferior members of the Asian, white but also black races will abuse the findings to make themselves feel more important and do no public good. Charles Murray's* The Bell Curve is just another in a centuries long line of tomes that hands fairly inferior examples of the species a vicarious upgrade. If they don't have enough of another race around to contrast themselves to they will focus on male and female differences. Poor examples of Latinos and Middle Easternsers who can't make any great claims to specific superiorities being highly hybridised are stupidly macho instead. (OK that's a bullshit pet theory of my own). What the fuck does it matter? We are literally at the cusp of of a Gattica type future. Any baby you want with any traits, race by natural selection is ending. The wars between the "God born" and actually very superior are coming etc. etc. All of that is small potatoes in the grand scheme as we appear to be about to birth generalised AI who will be at God level. In the meantime, inferior butt hurts will make threads about the topic to feel a little more secure. Sam Harris and others have tackled the issue of 'forbidden knowledge' in social sciences. It's not ideal of have verboten areas but it seems the best minds are agreed we can do little useful with the knowledge anyway so best to carry on with other productive tasks. *had his co-author not passed away one wonders how the book would have fared with the scientific racists.
I have read it, I told you I read it and you have forgotten because you are apparently getting forgetful. If Sociobiology is the early 1980s book, I have read that also. Have you searched for any qualified counter argument? For example this op-ed written by people (two of them professors from your home state to boot) who are qualified to assess the science and narrative in the book? Took me a minute just now to find it. https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/20...murray-race-iq-sam-harris-science-free-speech I'd warrant not because you are not interested in attacking your pet theory like an honest person. You just want to repeat and repeat the same crap every time you lose ground.
They lost me when they openly admitted they think the consequences of discussing IQ and race are "toxic." That's not searching for unbiased truth. Toxic to what? The illusion that liberal policies are trying to create with affirmative action, which by the way leaves most of the black distribution curve stranded in age old problems. You can say the same about Stephen Jay Gould, who E.O. Wilson described as a "charlatan." He was writing on topics out of his field as well. Murray's work is far more detailed and professional than any of them. That's why he's a scholar at AEI.