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Tuesday, March 16. 2021

At Quillette. It begins:

Social justice activists have been arguing for some time that scientific societies and institutions need to address systemic sexism and racism in STEM disciplines. However, their rationale is often anything but scientific. For example, whenever percentages in faculty positions, test scores, or grant recipients in various disciplines do not match percentages of national average populations, racism or sexism is generally said to be the cause. This is in spite of the fact that no explicit examples of racism or sexism generally accompany the statistics. Correlation, after all, is not causation. Without some underlying mechanism or independent evidence to explain a correlation of observed outcomes with population statistics, inferring racism or sexism in academia as the cause is inappropriate...

One might have hoped for more rigor from the leadership of scientific societies and research institutions.

Posted by The Barrister in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 14:50 | Comments (14) | Trackback (1)

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Tracked: Mar 17, 13:00

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There's no such thing as "systemic racism". That's the claim that if a lot of people feel a certain way, then it's an immoral group of people. But that's ridiculous. What we call "truth" is majority opinion. The color "blue" is called "blue" because everyone agrees on that usage of the word. By the same token, if a group of people don't like blacks or lesbians, that means (by an agreed-upon consensus) that blacks and lesbians are bad people. It doesn't mean that the group is bad for having an opinion.

"Systemic Racism" tries to reverse the process of creating meaning. Usually, a bunch of people decide to agree on a certain value judgement. For example, "blacks complain all the time, and don't do much work". That shared value judgement puts blacks into the category of "bad" people. But blacks insist that they could never be defined as "bad" so they claim that being the object of a value judgement is oppression. Nobody has the right to judge. But to perceive is to project meaning, we all make thousands of value judgements everyday. So when blacks used the term "systemic racism" they are demanding that white people don't perceive, or judge, or think. It's a demand that white people disappear.

#1 Ron Liebermann on 2021-03-16 15:19 (Reply)

Personally, I think bathing suits cause drowning, because many drowning victims were wearing a bathing suit when they met their reward.

This sort of hogwash is nothing new, and epidemiology literature is full of it. It is just so sad to see such malarkey being weaponized to ruin STEM education.

#2 Drowning explainer on 2021-03-16 15:24 (Reply)

Wet streets cause rain.

#2.1 Assistant Village Idiot on 2021-03-16 20:24 (Reply)

The problem seems to me that leftists know that when subjected to rigorous analysis, their conjectures (hardly theories) do not stand up. But since the basis of their thought is that they have an exclusivity on Truth, if math and rigorous analysis do not support their conjecture, then it is the math and analytical process that is in error.

#3 Another Guy Named Dan on 2021-03-16 15:58 (Reply)

That is because they never took Latin and thus do not understand that post hoc, ergo propter hoc is fallacious reasoning (but because this is a Latin phrase, and Romans had slaves, my comment must be racist).

#3.1 drowning explaner on 2021-03-16 16:14 (Reply)

What's next? Nursing? Sports? College scholarships? Nope! White male racism/sexism is the only official approved discrimination.

#4 OneGuy on 2021-03-16 16:47 (Reply)

After we root out the systematic racism in STEM, can we move on to the NBA? Rap?

#4.1 Mike Anderson (Link) on 2021-03-16 18:24 (Reply)

The Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans do not burden themselves with this, and that advantage is only going to increase over time.

#5 Assistant Village Idiot on 2021-03-16 20:26 (Reply)

Scientific American has been "woke" for about forty years.

#6 snopercod on 2021-03-16 20:31 (Reply)

If racism is so endemic as to be a recognizable feature of social systems across their extent, then how come nobody can provide a concrete example of it? And how come institutions so plagued by systemic racism through and through aren't getting the pants sued off them on a continual basis, since it's everywhere and since we have a plethora of laws intended to address this very thing? Is it because nobody can provide a coherent example of it, strong enough to hang a lawsuit on? Maybe it's because our K-12 education has become so woke, nobody can communicate ideas in complete sentences anymore. Maybe we've moved beyond the stage where the law fails us because nobody can articulate the thinking anymore.

Our institutions are failing us through their incompetence. That this 'systemic racism' gambit could even survive a week in the public eye without being critically examined and dispatched with a simple logical debate is the proof.

#7 Aggie on 2021-03-16 21:51 (Reply)

The Age of Enlightenment is being driven out of town with torches and pitchforks while internet scribes wonder how this could be happening.

The mob wants to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It’s not an error or an oversight, it’s the whole point. Reason, logic, evidence, truth ... it’s all trash to them precisely because it tends to separate out people into groups achievement-wise. They have invented new concepts to explain everything and don’t need any of that Enlightenment crap any more.

Boomers (I am one) and Gen Xers seem to have a lot of trouble comprehending how much the world has shifted under their feet.

#8 Jeff Brokaw (Link) on 2021-03-17 00:33 (Reply)

American blacks have an average IQ of 86. East Asians have an average IQ of 105. DIsparate outcomes follow.

#9 rhhardin on 2021-03-17 06:56 (Reply)

As Iowahawk frequently says, this "wokeness' among the scientific institutions is nothing less than this:

1. Identify a respected institution.

2. kill it.

3. gut it.

4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.

To the extent that scientific institutions have bought into this crap, they're no longer scientific institutions, but they're going to continue to insist they are.

#10 Jerryskids on 2021-03-17 08:53 (Reply)

The only systemic racism I know about is affirmative action.

#11 Paul in Boston on 2021-03-17 09:19 (Reply)

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Tuesday, March 16. 2021

Science goes Woke