#corruption of science

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Literally what "decolonize STEM" means.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Think science is biased against women? You may need to think again

By: Rhys Blakely

Published: Nov 16, 2025

A landmark study that claimed men enjoy an unfair advantage in scientific careers has been seriously challenged: a nearly identical rerun of the experiment has found that the opposite is true.

The results are all the more striking because a leading scientific journal had refused to repeat the original experiment, raising concerns that some researchers are reluctant to scrutinise results that align with their views.

The original study, published in 2012, has been cited 4,600 times — an enormous figure in a field where most papers attract fewer than 20 citations. It involved science professors being sent a fictional CV for a lab manager job.

In half of CVs, the applicant was named “John”, while for the other half the applicant was named “Jennifer”. Everything else, from the candidate’s academic grades to work experience, was identical.

The professors who saw the male name rated him as more competent, more hireable and more deserving of mentoring and a higher salary. The finding is often mentioned in debates about the under-representation of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem) careers.

The new paper repeated the test on a far larger scale. Whereas the original had asked about 130 academics at six universities, the authors of the new paper — led by Nathan Honeycutt and Lee Jussim of Rutgers University in New Jersey — contacted nearly 1,300 professors from more than 50 American research institutions, using the same application materials and the same measures of perceived competence, hireability, likeability and salary recommendations.

The aim was to see whether the result of the original paper held when the experiment was repeated. It did not. The female applicant was seen as marginally more capable and appealing to work with and the more hireable of the pair. She was also seen as worth a bigger salary — $35,550 versus $34,150 for the man. The differences were small, but consistent. The widely cited bias against women failed to reappear; it now tilted the other way.

According to the authors of the new study, the resistance they encountered when they suggested repeating the experiment may be as telling as the result. Honeycutt said that he and his co-authors were taken aback when they proposed a rerun to Nature Human Behaviour, a leading journal.

When Honeycutt and his colleagues submitted a registered replication report (RRR) — a formal proposal to repeat the study — it was rejected by a panel of peer reviewers acting for the journal.

Honeycutt said his impression was that the reviewers approved of the original findings and feared they might not hold up. “We can’t know for certain — but [that is our suspicion] given just the nature of their feedback and pushback,” he said.

Writing on the Substack website, Jussim added: “If reviewers like [a study] and its results and they anticipate it won’t replicate, they can concoct serious scientific-sounding reasons to reject the RRR. Which … is exactly what happened at [Nature Human Behaviour].” He argued that the process reflected “a profoundly antiscientific attitude”.

One objection raised by the reviewers was that professors might already know about the original 2012 paper and would therefore give “tainted” responses. Honeycutt and Jussim proposed a solution: they would ask participants if they were familiar with the earlier study and analyse the data accordingly. The suggestion was dismissed.

Jussim later wrote that the reviewers’ objections in effect meant the original study “could never be replicated”, implying its conclusions “must stand intact, for ever”.

His team took the project elsewhere, preregistered their methods and ran the work regardless. Most professors, it turned out, had not heard of the 2012 paper. Their results have now been accepted by the journal Meta-Psychology.

How far the new results reflect the wider state of equality in science is debatable. Women earn about half of all doctorates in the life sciences and a growing share in fields such as chemistry and engineering. However, they remain in the minority in senior academic posts. In Britain, only about a quarter of professors in Stem are women. The study looked only at one type of relatively junior job, that of a laboratory manager.

Erika Pastrana, vice-president of the Nature Research Journals portfolio, said: “Decisions by our editors to accept or reject replication studies are based solely on whether the research meets our editorial criteria, including standards for methodological rigour. They are not influenced by whether the original study’s conclusions may or may not be replicated. Our decisions are not driven by a preferred narrative.”

She added: “We do not agree that a study becomes immune to scrutiny if exact replication is difficult or not pursued. Scientific scrutiny occurs through many mechanisms, including replication, critical commentary, meta-analyses, methodological debate, and new research that builds on or challenges prior work.”

--

Are STEM Faculty Biased Against Female Applicants? A Robust Replication and Extension of Moss-Racusin and Colleagues (2012)

Abstract

In a seminal study investigating gender bias in academic science, Moss-Racusin et al. (2012) found bias against female lab manager applicants with respect to competence, hireability, mentoring, and salary conferral. This topic was revisited here as a registered replication report with four studies—one direct replication, two direct replications with extensions, and a meta-analysis. The present set of studies, all using the same methods and materials as the original, sampled from a larger and broader pool of faculty than did the original, collectively reflecting the breadth of STEM disciplines at R1 universities across the United States. The reported studies all had higher power to detect smaller effect sizes than in the original. Across these studies, Moss-Racusin et al.’s (2012) findings failed to replicate, and biases were consistently in the opposite direction—favoring female over male applicants (albeit with smaller effect sizes). We discuss the implications of these findings for the broader literature on gender bias in science and its implications for the scientific workforce.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

The End of a Top Science Journal's Commitment To Pursuing Truth

A new article from the world's leading science journal Nature encourages researchers to incorporate transgender activism to influence how re

By: Christina Buttons

Published: May 31, 2024

The prominent science journal Nature has launched a new opinion article series on sex and gender. One paper in this series explores research attempting to search for a biological basis for trans-identity, arguing that such research could “pathologize” and “harm” the trans community. The authors discourage “investigations into the underlying bases of transgender identity” and propose various steps for researchers to incorporate transgender activism into their work to influence research outcomes — signaling the end of Nature’s commitment to pursuing scientific truth over ideology.

The article starts by reviewing neuroscientific studies aimed at finding the cause of trans-identity in the brain, identifying 83 papers from 1991-2024. It highlights the transgender brain-sex hypothesis, which suggests that trans-identified people have brain regions resembling those of the opposite sex. However, it neglects to mention that this hypothesis falls apart because the studies did not control for confounding variables such as sexual orientation.

The article does acknowledge that “the results of these analyses have been inconsistent.” Yet, when the media covers these studies, the public is often informed by headlines such as “transgender people are born that way,” “science proves trans people aren’t making it up,” and “attacks on trans people are also attacks on science itself.” You can read a simplified explainer I wrote debunking the brain-sex studies here.

The authors move on to the more plausible “own-body perception” theory, which proposes that reduced structural and functional connectivity between certain brain networks is responsible for gender dysphoria. However, these studies do not show a causal link, only an association. Abnormalities in body perception networks in the brain are also associated with many other conditions, including body dysmorphic disorder, anorexia, body integrity identity disorder, schizophrenia, and autism.

After reviewing the neuroscientific studies, the article’s language shifts into typical activist rhetoric, claiming that research into transgender identity can be “harmful.” The authors argue that if brain scans or some other objective test could assess whether someone is experiencing gender dysphoria, it could be used to prevent people from accessing cross-sex hormones and surgeries if they are not deemed “eligible.”

"A second possibility is that neuroscientific findings related to transgender identity will fuel transphobic narratives," the authors write, citing a “feminist perspective” social science journal article on "Transprejudice."

For example, they state, "Some people argue that allowing transgender women to access infrastructure, such as public toilets or women’s prisons, threatens the safety of 'real women'." It is odd and audacious for a serious science publication to use "real women" in quotations. Moreover, their source for this claim is an article about Kathleen Stock, who does not argue that transgender women threaten the safety of biological women. In fact, she explicitly states the opposite: "I am definitely not saying that trans women are particularly dangerous – they are definitely not."

The authors also take a dig at sexologist Ray Blanchard, claiming that autogynephilia “hasn’t held up to scientific scrutiny,” citing a "feminist analysis" paper by a trans activist. Apparently, they haven't spent any time on trans Reddit, where they would encounter a vast discourse on "gender euphoria boners."

The authors end by setting “four actions” for researchers studying transgender people to prevent further “harm” from being done. They suggest researchers set up an advisory board and multidisciplinary teams consisting of transgender people to consult on their study designs and “prevent the outcomes of neuroscientific and other studies from being described and published in an overly deterministic and simplistic way.” They also dictate what should and should not be studied, suggesting researchers "prioritize research that is likely to improve people’s lives" rather than searching for the cause of trans-identity.

The final suggestion is to “rethink how ethical approval is obtained,” which relates to an example they provided of a 2021 UCLA study that was suspended after significant backlash from transgender activists. The study aimed to examine the brains of trans-identified individuals by showing them images of themselves wearing tight clothes, intending to trigger gender dysphoria. Although the study obtained ethical approval from their research institute and the transgender participants provided informed consent, it seems they weren't the right transgender people to ask permission from. Their suggestion implies that researchers must obtain approval for their studies from transgender activists.

The authors seem aware of the implications of their recommendations, as they conclude their article by admitting their approach would limit scientific inquiry:

“Our aim is not to halt scientific enquiry. But when it comes to transgender identity, knowledge cannot be pursued in isolation from the many societal factors that shape how that knowledge is received and acted on.”

This statement translates to prioritizing activism over truth-seeking when the findings might be inconvenient or misaligned with political narratives and activist goals. Such a stance compromises the integrity and credibility of science, reducing it to a tool for activism rather than a means of uncovering and understanding reality.

It is disheartening to watch one of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals compromise their credibility by continuing to prioritize ideology over truth.

Besides, the authors' concerns about discovering a biological cause for trans-identity are misplaced. While there are biological traits associated with being transgender, such as same-sex attraction and gender nonconformity, “transgender” itself does not appear to be an inherent condition one can be born with. The concept of "transgender," as understood in Western cultures, is a cultural construct that doesn't have a direct equivalent in many non-Western societies.

Research into a cause for gender dysphoria would be difficult because the transgender population has become so heterogeneous. Even if one were predisposed to a psychiatric condition like gender dysphoria, predispositions are not predeterminations of a transgender outcome. The notion of transgender identities being fixed at birth is further contested by the increasing number of detransitioners and extensive research on desistance among children, suggesting that such identities can often be temporary coping mechanisms for young people in distress.

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We're just supposed to accept that hacking off body parts and giving life-altering drugs and hormones is a completely normal part of life. And that wondering where this is all coming from, what's underlying it is the problematic part.

At its core, the point of this ideology is to pathologize the completely normal and normalize the pathological.

Carl Sagan warned us about this:

"The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true." ― Carl Sagan

Reality is not obliged to conform to people's wishes or preferences, and we are not obligated to lie or consign ourselves to ignorance in order to placate those wishes and preferences. We don't allow "if you find out what's true, it'll hurt our feelings" - i.e. blasphemy - for the religious. Why are we allowing genderist fanatics to get away with it, when it's still just an accusation of blasphemy?

When people say, "you're not allowed to go looking over here, it's a moral failing to do so," the correct response is to go, "now I want to go look over there even more."

-

"Sex is real... But the belief that we have a moral duty to accept reality just because it is real is, I think, a fine definition of nihilism." ― Andrea Long Chu, gender cultist and lunatic

“The facts may tell you one thing. But, God is not limited by the facts. Choose faith in spite of the facts.” ― Joel Osteen, religious nutcase and lunatic

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Another Day, Another Blatantly False Piece of Academic Writing on Transition Regret

Why are papers on transition regret rife with ridiculous errors, and why do those errors occur in the first place?

By: JLCederblom

Published: Apr 30, 2024

One of the most basic errors you would expect to be caught in peer-reviewed academic literature is plain data errors. They require no real expertise to catch and tend to be trivial to fix. It’s simply part of regular proof reading that any serious article of any sort should undergo.

So why are papers on transition regret rife with ridiculous errors, such as inventing thousands of people out of thin air? And why do those errors occur in the first place?

Let’s have a look at the latest in a long line of peer-reviewed garbage: “A Systematic Review of Patient Regret After Surgery- A Common Phenomenon in Many Specialties but Rare Within Gender-Affirmation Surgery” by Thornton et al.

This piece self-identifies as a systematic review, which it simply isn’t, but that’s rather technical (and, dare I say, academic) compared to the grievous errors in the paper, and will require some back-and-forth with the journal. Going over all of that in detail will take time and isn’t that interesting — although if the paper does get corrected or retracted, it’ll likely be due to such procedural issues rather than overarching problems.

While many individuals report satisfaction and improved measures of mental health after undergoing gender affirming surgery, there is a small but vocal minority who experience regret after their procedures.⁴ De-transitioning, also known as continued gender transition, has been exhaustively covered in the mainstream and conservative media and is an emerging area of study in gender affirming care.

The paper also has a rather noticeable disdain for the subject matter and a clear agenda with the goal of minimizing transition regret as a niche, “exhaustively covered” issue, championed by a “small” but unnecessarily “vocal” group.

Let’s have a look at the sources the paper cites for the rate of regret.

* * *

First up: Wiepjes et al., 2018.

A study performed in Amsterdam retrospectively examined 6,793 patients who attended a gender identity clinic in Amsterdam from 1972 to 2015 and found 0.6% and 0.3% of transwomen and transmen reported experiencing regret after gender affirming surgery, respectively. The authors noted that reasons for regret could be divided into three categories. True regret was defined as regretting having GAS. Social regret involved losing touch with loved ones or being fired from a job because of GAS. Lastly, some participants reported feeling non-binary and no longer feeling satisfied with their surgical result. Average time to experiencing regret was 130 months (more than 10 years) post-operatively.³⁰

This is simply erroneous. The authors make the claim that Wiepjes et al., 2018, measured reports of “experiencing regret after gender affirming surgery”. This is false, as the study first required hormonal detransition, the cessation of cross-sex hormone treatment and going back on your natal sex hormones, at the same clinic. Every time the authors describe this as only measuring “experienced regret” they are not being truthful.

In addition, the number who were investigated for this rather specific definition of regret was not 6,793 but 2,627. I’m not sure what the exact purpose of putting the number of people who visited the clinic, including those who never transitioned whatsoever, is but it certainly inflates the number.

You might ask yourself how it’s possible that the authors read Wiepjes et al., 2018, but did not manage to understand what was investigated, nor how many people were looked at. The most likely answer, to me at least, is that none of the authors, peer reviewers, or editors, actually read the paper.

* * *

Next up: Bustos et al., 2021. If you need a primer on this, I’ve written about it before.

In 2021, a systematic review and meta-analysis was completed which assessed 27 studies, including a total of 7,928 transgender individuals. One third of the included individuals underwent transmasculine procedures, while the remaining two thirds underwent transfeminine procedures. Of the 7,928 individuals included in the analysis, 1.0% expressed regret. The most common reason for post-operative regret was “difficulty/dissatisfaction in life with the new gender role.” Another common reason was failure of surgery to achieve their aesthetic surgical goals. The authors hypothesized that the rate of regret established by this metanalysis was lower than a previously established rate from 1993 due to increased rigor in the selection process before gender affirming surgery.

Bustos et al., 2021, pulls together all the greatest hits of gender pseudoscience: erroneous data, fraudulent methods, zero peer-review, irresponsibility (or perhaps hostility) from the journal, and more. It’s a paper where the factual error count is in the triple digits to this day.

However, after wrangling the arms of the journal editors a bit, they put out a partial correction (where they actually introduced some new errors as well as fixed a handful). The lowest possible bar you could hold the authors against in this 2024 paper is that they used that 2022 “correction.”

Of course they didn’t.

An inability to even copy and paste numbers is what we’re dealing with here. From the entire chain, authors through editors. It ties into the previous paper as well—if Thornton et al. had read Wiepjes et al., 2018, they would be entirely equipped to see through Bustos et al., which makes the exact same nonsensical mistakes they did.

I would provide an exact number instead of 7,928 here, but it’s not actually possible to do that because one of the included papers reports contradictory numbers, which Bustos et al. didn’t mention or, more likely, even notice. Another provides an estimate rather than exact figures. They also included papers which did not investigate a regret rate in the review, which is just bizarre.

Either way, out of the claimed 7,928 people, at least 3,400 were not investigated for regret in any way. As previously mentioned another 2,627 had a requirement that you had to hormonally detransition in order to count as regretful. Another didn’t measure regret at all, simply legal sex marker reversals. If you go through the papers and add up the number of people who were explicitly asked about regrets (in any way) you get around 1,300. With unknown loss to follow-up, often very short follow-up, and no uniformity to the way they were asked.

Which apparently to Thornton et al., the peer-reviewers, and the journal editors, is enough to conclusively state that we know the rate of transition regret.

* * *

Next up is Narayan et al., 2021, which was a combined survey and systematic review. See if you can spot the sleight of hand.

Another study surveyed all surgeons registered for the 2016 World Professional Association for Transgender Health and the 2017 US Professional Association for Transgender Health. Most respondents practiced in the United States and had surgically treated at least 100 transgender or gender-nonconforming patients. Of the 30% of surgeons that completed the survey, 61% respondents had treated at least one patient who experienced regret or requested reversal of a procedure. Overall, the calculated rate of regret after gender affirming surgery was 0.2%-0.3%. Of the 62 patients that respondents reported had sought reversal surgery, reasons for reversal included surgical complications, continued evolution of their gender identity, rejection or alienation from social support, and difficulty in romantic relationships.⁵

An anonymous survey of WPATH or USPATH conference attendants with 70 percent non-respondents (fairly catastrophic given the population), asking them to estimate the number of patients they’ve surgically transitioned (somewhere between 18,125 and 27,325) and how many patients they’ve “encountered” (meaning what?) who “regretted their gender transition” (open for a wide range of interpretations) is not a very serious approach.

The paper sometimes treats “regret,” “reversal request,” and “detransition” as the same thing, sometimes not. The authors (both Narayan et al. and Thornton et al.) seem very confused about what the respondents were actually talking about. Usually, when you’re confused, the right thing to do is to slow down and work it out. Not to take the decision to treat 62 patients seeking surgical reversal as “the regret rate”—which is absurd, and reveals the authors’ intellectual, or rather emotional, bias towards presenting as low a number as possible.

* * *

Next up is Bruce et al., 2023.

Recently, research from the University of Michigan demonstrated low levels of regret after gender-affirming mastectomy in a cross-sectional study. On average, respondents underwent surgery 3.6 years before the survey. The median Decision Regret Scale score was 0.0. Further, of the 139 respondents, zero requested reversal procedures.³²

The respondents certainly reported low decision regret. Of course, 3.6 year mean follow-up is less than most studies put the average time to regret at, and a 40 percent non-response rate is… an issue. It’s also exclusively following mastectomy, and that this often provides (at least) short term relief from breast-related distress seem highly plausible.

If Thornton et al. was a systematic review rather than a literature review with a (very poor) systematic search, these issues would be explored and Bruce et al. would take its rightful place as low quality evidence for potential short term benefits. Presenting it as evidence of a low regret rate, however, is ridiculous.

On a side note, Bruce et al. also cites erroneous data from Bustos et al., this time regarding follow-up times rather than sample sizes. It truly is the gift that keeps giving in terms of academic misinformation.

* * *

The final thing referenced is the 2022 USTS Early Insight report.

In February 2024, the 2022 US Transgender Survey Early Insight report was published, providing data from 92,329 binary and nonbinary transgender people. This report noted that 97% of respondents who had undergone gender-affirming surgery reported that they were “a lot more satisfied” or “a little more satisfied” with their lives.³³

This was an anonymous online survey recruiting participants via advocacy groups, and described as “a survey for trans people, by trans people.”

When Thornton et al. describe it as “92,329 binary and nonbinary transgender people” they actually get that wrong as well, as the report describes it as “38% nonbinary, 35% transgender women, 25% transgender men, and 2% crossdressers.” This may seem like nitpicking, but it actually describes the inconsistencies of the worldview that Thornton et al. champion.

Other than poking fun at them, there isn’t much more to say here. The Early Insight report doesn’t discuss regret, which is why they didn’t claim it did. Which would make it odd that they put it under the heading “Regret After Gender-Affirming Surgery” if you’re operating under the assumption that Thornton et al. are writing an academic paper, but that’s clearly not the intention.

* * *

Human writing has many purposes. The most obvious is communication, to convey thoughts and ideas to others. But we also do it for fun, or to assist ourselves, to organize our thoughts, all sorts of ways. Academic papers of this sort, however, are supposed to have a single purpose: to inform others.

When people write falsehoods, figuring out why they do so is interesting. It tells us something about them. For example, when Thornton et al. repeat erroneous data about papers, it tells us that they didn’t care. Despite using emotive language about regret, it tells us that they don’t care enough about the reality of regret to even read a six page paper (a very low bar), but they were happy to write a paper about it.

So why did they write this paper, despite not caring about the topic?

Research on regret after gender-affirming surgery poses unique challenges, as patients may fear that their regret could be weaponized against the transgender community. Those who seek to limit access to GAS often use regret as a key element in their arguments and in proposed legislation.

The aim of Thornton et al. appears to be to muddy the waters and push their own narrative, as the errors are not random but rather all go in the same direction. They are concerned with the consequences of regret, not regret itself. They simply aimed to distract people, and to breathe some new life into old misinformation, and they accomplished that.

There’s a steady stream of blatant garbage flowing through journals in this field. It’s not the replication crisis of science at large, or publication bias, and it’s not about large scale matters out of control—although structural vulnerabilities in the publishing process of journals is of course an issue.

In the end it comes down to emotionally driven choices by the individuals involved allowing falsehoods to be printed. The paper is a thinly veiled ideological document masquerading as science, but whether it highlights the complicity or just the illiteracy of the peer-reviewers and editors is yet to be determined.

*This article was originally published on JLCederblom’s blog on Medium.

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They don't care about protecting people, they only care about protecting the cult. The point is to portray the cult as infallible, that the dogma and the doctrine is never wrong, it's only the members following the doctrine and dogma that are wrong. They don't have enough faith. They were never a true Scotsman. All the usual stuff.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Maori ‘ways of knowing’ is not science, says Richard Dawkins

The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has hit out at the New Zealand government for proposing to teach traditional Maori mythology as e

By: Hugh Tomlinson

Published: Mar 1, 2023

The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has hit out at the New Zealand government for proposing to teach traditional Maori mythology as equal to modern science.

The government of the former prime minister Jacinda Ardern proposed adding Matauranga Maori, or “Ways of Knowing” to the science curriculum, provoking a furious row. The proposal was put forward by the ministry of education, led at the time by Chris Hipkins, who succeeded Ardern after her shock resignation in January.

In a letter to The Spectator, Dawkins, who has recently returned from a speaking tour of New Zealand, attacked the policy of equating Maori knowledge and religious beliefs, which date back to the 13th century and include creationism, with modern science.

Dawkins defended New Zealand scientists who had opposed the plan and faced censure and allegations of racism. A number of fellows at the New Zealand Royal Society, including Garth Cooper, a medal-winning biochemistry professor at the University of Auckland who is of Maori descent, resigned from the society last year.

Seven professors, including Cooper, wrote a letter titled “In defence of science” to the New Zealand Listener in 2021, acknowledging that Matauranga Maori should be taught in schools but should not be equated with modern science. The letter said that indigenous knowledge and beliefs were “critical for the preservation and perpetuation of culture and local practices” but that “in the discovery of empirical, universal truths, it falls far short of what we can define as science itself”.

Five Royal Society members reportedly complained that the letter had caused them “untold harm and hurt”.

“Perhaps the most disagreeable aspect of this sorry affair is the climate of fear,” Dawkins wrote, attacking the New Zealand government for “self-righteous virtue signalling”.

“New Zealand children will be taught the true wonder of DNA, while being simultaneously confused by the doctrine that all life throbs with a vital force conferred by the Earth Mother and the Sky Father,” he wrote. “Origin myths are haunting and poetic, but they belong elsewhere in the curriculum.”

The government has taken several steps to incorporate indigenous beliefs into government policy over recent years. In 2017, the Ardern administration granted legal personhood to the Whanganui River, closing one of New Zealand’s longest-running court battles. The Maori had campaigned for more than a century to secure legal protection for the river, and the ruling prompted other countries to grant legal rights to natural treasures.

Dawkins is a long-term critic of Matauranga Maori. In a 2021 letter to the Royal Society of New Zealand, he wrote: “Science classes are emphatically not the right place to teach scientific falsehoods. Creationism is still bollocks even if it is indigenous bollocks.”

[ Via: https://archive.is/TjzrP ]

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The argument being made here is that it's "unfair" or even "bigoted" to not grant indigenous myths and legends "equality" in the science classroom, to be given equal time and equal consideration with actual science. That they are entitled to access to the science classroom as a form of "inclusion," despite never being subject to - and indeed, declared immune from - the process of scientific checking.

It does this through manipulation and exploitation of egalitarian instincts. This is the same tactic the creationists adopted.

Thus the creationists began to portray themselves as an oppressed minority. “Under the present system . . . the student is being indoctrinated in a philosophy of secular humanism,” one typical creationist complained. “The authoritarianism of the medieval church has been replaced by the authoritarianism of rational materialism. Constitutional guarantees are violated and free scientific inquiry is stifled under this blanket of dogmatism.” That is what a fundamentalist Christian state education official in Arizona was getting at when he said that if parents tell their children that the earth is flat, teachers have no right to contradict them. No one has a right to impose his opinion on others—and the idea that humans evolved from earlier species is, the Christians said, ultimately just some people’s opinion.

-- Jonathan Rauch, "Kindly Inquisitors"

But neither creationism nor indigenous myths are entitled to inclusion in the science classroom. Because neither has been subjected to rigorous testing or disconfirmation, and are therefore not science. No matter what sort of emotional exploitation creationists and activists try to pull. The only thing any idea is entitled to inclusion in is submitting itself to the competitive and contentious process of scientific checking.

Unfortunately, while the former is being kept at bay, the latter has made significant inroads at corrupting scientific education and inquiry.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Why I’m sticking up for science

I’m in New Zealand, climax to my antipodean speaking tour, where I walked headlong into a raging controversy. Jacinda Ardern’s government im

By: Richard Dawkins

Published: Mar 4, 2023

I’m in New Zealand, climax to my antipodean speaking tour, where I walked headlong into a raging controversy. Jacinda Ardern’s government implemented a ludicrous policy, spawned by Chris Hipkins’s Ministry of Education before he became prime minister. Science classes are to be taught that Māori ‘Ways of Knowing’ (Mātauranga Māori) have equal standing with ‘western’ science. Not surprisingly, this adolescent virtue-signalling horrified New Zealand’s grown-up scientists and scholars. Seven of them wrote to the Listener magazine. Three who were fellows of the NZ Royal Society were threatened with an inquisitorial investigation. Two of these, including the distinguished medical scientist Garth Cooper, himself of Māori descent, resigned (the third unfortunately died). I was delighted to meet Professor Cooper for lunch, with others of the seven. His resignation letter cited the society’s failure to support science against its denigration as ‘a western European invention’. He was affronted, too, by a complaint (not endorsed by the NZRS) that ‘to insist Māori children learn to read is an act of colonisation’. Is there an implication here – condescending, if not downright racist – that ‘indigenous’ children need separate, special treatment?

Perhaps the most disagreeable aspect of this sorry affair is the climate of fear. We who don’t have a career to lose should speak out in defence of those who do. The magnificent seven are branded heretics by a nastily zealous new religion, a witch-hunt that recalls the false accusations against J.K. Rowling and Kathleen Stock. Professor Kendall Clements was removed from teaching evolution at the University of Auckland, after the School of Biological Sciences Putaiao Committee submitted the following recommendation: ‘We do not feel that either Kendall or Garth should be put in front of students as teachers. This is not safe for students…’ Not safe? Who are these cringing little wimps whose ‘safety’ requires protection against free speech? What on earth do they think a university is for?

To grasp government intentions requires a little work, because every third word of the relevant documents is in Māori. Since only 2 per cent of New Zealanders (and only 5 per cent of Māoris) speak that language, this again looks like self-righteous virtue-signalling, bending a knee to that modish version of Original Sin which is white guilt. Mātauranga Māori includes valuable tips on edible fungi, star navigation and species conservation (pity the moas were all eaten). Unfortunately it is deeply invested in vitalism. New Zealand children will be taught the true wonder of DNA, while being simultaneously confused by the doctrine that all life throbs with a vital force conferred by the Earth Mother and the Sky Father. Origin myths are haunting and poetic, but they belong elsewhere in the curriculum. The very phrase ‘western’ science buys into the ‘relativist’ notion that evolution and big bang cosmology are just the origin myth of white western men, a narrative whose hegemony over ‘indigenous’ alternatives stems from nothing better than political power. This is pernicious nonsense. Science belongs to all humanity. It is humanity’s proud best shot at discovering the truth about the real world.

My speeches in Auckland and Wellington were warmly applauded, though one woman yelled a protest. She was politely invited to participate, but she chose to walk out instead. I truthfully said that, when asked my favourite country, I invariably choose New Zealand. Citing the legacy of Ernest Rutherford, the greatest experimental physicist since Faraday, I begged my audiences to reach out to their MPs in support of New Zealand science. The true reason science is more than an origin myth is that it stands on evidence: massively documented evidence, double blind trials, peer review, quantitative predictions precisely verified in labs around the world. Science reads the billion-word DNA book of life itself. Science eradicates smallpox and polio. Science navigates to Pluto or a tiny comet. Science almost certainly saved your life. Science works.

Postscript on the flight out: Air New Zealand think it a cute idea to invoke Māori gods in their safety briefing. Imagine if British Airways announced that their planes are kept aloft by the Holy Ghost in equal partnership with Bernoulli’s Principle and Newton’s First Law. Science explains. It lightens our darkness. Science is the poetry of reality. It belongs to all humanity. Kia Ora!

[ Via: https://archive.is/ehxJ3 ]

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When you're an authoritarian putting people through inquisitions and threatening their livelihoods, you're not doing science, you're doing ideology... and possibly theology.

And it's reliably the case that there's some gross form of virtuous (neo)racism baked in there somewhere.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Merit is a central pillar of liberal epistemology, humanism, and democracy. The scientific enterprise, built on merit, has proven effective

By: D. Abbot, A. Bikfalvi, A.L. Bleske­Rechek, W. Bodmer, P. Boghossian, C.M. Carvalho, J. Ciccolini, J.A. Coyne, J. Gauss, P.M.W. Gill, S. Jitomirskaya, L. Jussim, A.I. Krylov, G.C. Loury, L. Maroja, J.H. McWhorter, S. Moosavi, P. Nayna Schwerdtle, J. Pearl, M.A. Quintanilla­-Tornel, H.F. Schaefer III, P.R. Schreiner, P. Schwerdtfeger, D. Shechtman, M. Shifman, J. Tanzman, B.L. Trout, A. Warshel, and J.D. West.

Published: Apr 28, 2023

Abstract: Merit is a central pillar of liberal epistemology, humanism, and democracy. The scientific enterprise, built on merit, has proven effective in generating scientific and technological advances, reducing suffering, narrowing social gaps, and improving the quality of life globally. This perspective documents the ongoing attempts to undermine the core principles of liberal epistemology and to replace merit with non­scientific, politically motivated criteria. We explain the philosophical origins of this conflict, document the intrusion of ideology into our scientific institutions, discuss the perils of abandoning merit, and offer an alternative, human­centered approach to address existing social inequalities.

1. Introduction

We live in an incredible time of human history. As Barack Obama said: “If you had to choose one moment in history in which you could be born, and you didn’t know ahead of time who you were going to be—what nationality, what gender, what race, whether you’d be rich or poor, gay or straight, what faith you’d be born into . . . you would choose right now.” While the benefits of significant global progress and economic development have not been shared equally, the world as a whole has never been healthier, wealthier, better educated, and in many ways more tolerant and less violent, than it is today.

How did we get here? Science provided solutions to such calamities as famine and plague, transforming them “from incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces of nature into manageable challenges.” By improving the world economy and increasing global wealth, scientific progress helped create a more peaceful and just world. Science eradicated smallpox, discovered penicillin, decoded the SARS­CoV­2 virus in a weekend, helped to halve the maternal and child mortality rate globally, revolutionized agriculture, contributed to extending life expectancy in every country, and has generally granted humanity the gifts of life, health, wealth, knowledge, and freedom. By increasing literacy and communication, science has promoted empathy and rational problem­solving, contributing to a global decline in violence of all forms.

Of course, serious problems continue to challenge us; poverty, inequality, wars, and violence persist. Climate change, biodiversity loss, antimicrobial resistance, and pandemic disease threaten global gains made over the past century. However, science continues to be the best tool humanity possesses to address these complex, collective challenges. Indeed, science holds the key to solving these problems—it provides the basis for renewable energy technologies, mitigating anthropogenic impact on the global climate, feeding the world’s growing population, controlling pandemics, and eradicating debilitating diseases. Of course, science alone is not sufficient: science is but a tool that can be used for good and bad. It is our responsibility as a society to use it responsibly, ethically, and effectively.

Fulfilling this responsibility, however, is being hindered by a new, alarming clash between liberal epistemology and identity­based ideologies. Liberal epistemology prizes free and open inquiry, values vigorous discourse and debate, and determines the best scientific ideas by separating those that are true from those that are likely not. The statuses, identities, and demographics of scientists are irrelevant to this great sifting of valid versus invalid ideas.

In contrast, identity-­based ideologies seek to replace these core liberal principles, essential for scientific and technological advances, with principles derived from postmodernism and Critical Social Justice (CSJ), which assert that modern science is “racist,” “patriarchal,” and “colonial,” and a tool of oppression rather than a tool to promote human flourishing and global common good.

In this perspective, we explain the differences between the two epistemologies and argue that meritocracy (grounded in philosophical liberal epistemology), however imperfect, is the best and fairest way to conduct science. We endorse policies to mitigate existing inequalities of opportunities, but explain why CSJ-­based policies are pernicious (CSJ differs from social justice as a concept). Therefore, we offer a liberal, humanistic alternative that is compatible with maximizing scientific advances.

[...]

7. The Way Forward

Science has been the driving force behind unprecedented improvements in the global quality of life—from advances in medical diagnostics and cancer treatment to the information technology revolution, from the growth of agricultural productivity to the development of sustainable energy. Science and technology are global and highly competitive. If dismantling the merit­based practices of the U.S. and other democratic countries continues unabated, the loss of leadership in developing cutting­edge technologies is likely to eventuate.

For science to succeed, it must strive for the non­ideological pursuit of objective truth. Scientists should feel free to pursue political projects in the public sphere as private citizens, but not to inject their personal politics and biases into the scientific endeavor. Maintaining institutional neutrality is also essential for cultivating public trust in science. The rush to create systems institutionalizing racial, ethnic, and gender preferences in college admissions and hiring will further corrode public trust in academia and science (e.g., surveys from the U.S. show that most Americans, including most Americans of color, reject such preferences). Although no system is guaranteed to eliminate all biases, merit­based systems are the best tool to mitigate it. Moreover, they promote social cohesion because they can be observed to maximize fairness.

Admittedly, meritocracy is imperfect. The best and brightest do not always win. But the idea that meritocracy is nothing but a myth is demonstrably false, indeed absurd. Were it but a myth, college admissions and hiring could be conducted without regard to applicants’ qualifications, and students or employees could be selected at random.

The role of science in rectifying social inequalities goes beyond “trickle­down” effects of scientific progress. Science can help to develop programs addressing both the root causes of inequalities and the effectiveness of remedial policies. Recent works by Banerjee and Duflo illustrate how well­founded scientific methodology can narrow the gap between rich and poor countries. Heckman’s work quantifies the impact of pre­school education on students’ success. In the field of artificial intelligence, one of the most active areas of research is concerned with discrimination, fairness, and social accountability. The distinctive features of these examples, setting them apart from CSJ, are that they are based on scientific evidence and logic and they address the root causes of inequalities, rather than their symptomatic manifestations.

There is a large literature in the field of psychology on the role that demographic biases play in how we judge individuals. Such biases are real and a justified concern, but fighting them with opposite biases and undermining merit is counterproductive. Two of the most robust findings in the literature are: (1) people massively judge others on their merits when their merits are clear and salient; and (2) in such situations, stereotypes and implicit biases are minimized. Thus, a sharp focus on merit minimizes bias and maximizes the chances that those who best meet the relevant standards (for admissions, hiring, publication, or anything else) will be rewarded, thereby promoting inclusion. For example, standardized tests can help to fairly evaluate applicants from diverse backgrounds and—if used properly—increase diversity. A strict focus on merit, properly implemented, also reduces the influence of bias, department politics, nepotism, and favoritism, thus facilitating diversity, while maximizing scientific quality and the public’s confidence and trust in the academy and science.

How do we begin the process of depoliticizing science and strengthening merit­-based practices? We offer six concrete suggestions:

Insist that government funding for research be distributed solely on the basis of merit.

Ensure that academic departments and conferences select speakers based on scientific, rather than ideological, considerations.

Ensure that admissions, hiring, and promotion are merit­based and free from ideological tests.

Publish and retract scientific papers on the basis of scientific, not ideological, arguments or due to public pressure.

Require that universities enforce policies protecting academic freedom and freedom of expression, according to best practices promulgated by non­partisan free speech and academic freedom organizations, such as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

Insist that university departments and professional societies refrain from issuing statements on social and political issues not relevant to their functioning, as recommended in the University of Chicago’s Kalven Report.

Although much has been written about DEI, the arguments advocating it fall into familiar categories: reparative justice is needed to redress historical discrimination; DEI is necessary to fight current discrimination; and DEI is needed to level the playing field and achieve equal outcomes.

With respect to reparative justice, affirmative action policies are ineffective, arguably unfair, and counterproductive. Although we see no role in science for identity­based policies, we recognize that the playing field is not level. Outreach in admissions and hiring to candidates from less­ advantaged backgrounds is important, not only to promote fairness, but to enlarge the pool of promising candidates. Schools and universities have a role to play in leveling the playing field by uplifting students who have come from more difficult life circumstances, not by imposing quotas or lowering academic standards, but by providing students with opportunities to develop the rigorous skills they need to enter scientific fields, and the support to do so. In this way, merit and diversity become synergistic rather than antagonistic.

Advocates of CSJ approaches to DEI often present the options as if it is either CSJ or bigotry. We reject this false dichotomy. Dismantling or disrupting institutional practices that have produced science’s achievements, and replacing them with untested methods opposed to the Mertonian norms is a dangerous experiment that jeopardizes the future of science.

8. Conclusion

Imbuing science with ideology harms the scientific enterprise and leads to a loss of public trust. If we continue to undermine merit, our universities will become institutions of mediocrity rather than places of creativity and accomplishment, leading to the loss of the competitive edge in technology. Thus, we need to restore our commitment to practices grounded in epistemic humility and the meritocratic, liberal tradition.

We need to be vigilant against the dilution of our merit evaluations by biases, ideology, and nepotism. Moreover, as a community, we should continue to invest in mentoring and education to help people develop their full potential. Adopting the guidelines we have suggested does not mean that we ignore the contributions of past racism and sexism to the inequalities we observe today. It means addressing these issues in a fundamentally positive way—not by introducing diversity metrics into funding or hiring decisions, nor by weakening the standards for university admissions and professional advancement, but by investing in the early pipeline, for example, by strengthening educational outreach and programs to increase access to sustained quality education and early exposure to STEMM.

Scientists must start standing up for the integrity of their fields despite the risk of bullying and verbal attacks; donors and funders should condition their support on non­partisan and rational scientific pursuit. Science as a free pursuit of knowledge untainted by ideological orthodoxies maximally enhances the public good.

9. Afterword

Perhaps the grandest irony of them all, and the saddest commentary on the state of academia, is that this article, defending merit, could only be published in a journal devoted to airing “controversial” ideas. As we were finalizing the manuscript for publication, the Office of Science and Technology Policy of the White House released a 14­-page long vision statement outlining the priorities for the U.S. STEMM ecosystem. The word “merit” appears nowhere in the document. In February, 2023, The National Academy of Sciences released a report titled “Advancing Antiracism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in STEMM Organizations: Beyond Broadening Participation.” The report describes merit as a non­objective, “culturally construed” concept used to hide bias and perpetuate privilege, refers to objectivity and meritocracy in STEMM as myths, and calls for merit­-based metrics of evaluation to be dismantled.

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When merit is a "controversial idea," that needs to be "dismantled," we're through the looking glass.

For anyone who is going to bald-faced lie and insist that "nObOdY iS dOiNg tHiS!" be aware they have a six-page bibliography with 149 citations. Start there, and good luck. And yes, it includes the notorious "Feminist Glaciology" paper.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Increasing Politicization and Homogeneity in Scientific Funding: An Analysis of NSF Grants, 1990-2020 - CSPI Center

CSPI Report No. 4   Summary: The National Science Foundation (NSF) is the main governmental scientific grant distributing body in the United

Richard Feynman introduced a concept he called “cargo cult science” during a commencement speech at Caltech in 1974.1 In the Second World War, Allied and Japanese airbases sprung up on islands in the South Pacific that were home to pre-industrial cultures that previously had little contact with the modern world. The soldiers on many of these bases would trade manufactured clothing, medicine, canned food, and other goods with the natives, most of which arrived by airdrop. After the war ended and the soldiers left, the native populations on some of the islands began to create replicas of things like airstrips, airplanes, and flight control towers. They even made mock radios and headphones out of coconuts and straw. The natives believed that by recreating the conditions under which the airplanes came and dropped goods, they could get the airdrops to resume.

There were entire areas of academic study that Feynman called “cargo cult science” – mostly in the fields of social science and education. These areas of inquiry see the success that the scientific method delivers in disciplines like physics, chemistry, and medicine, and produce superficial replicas of scientific practices. They miss something essential, however, and as Feynman says, “the planes never land.” So, what is this missing element in “cargo cult science?” It is “a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty.” Science requires a willingness to relentlessly assail one’s assumptions and a capacity to bend over backwards to try and disprove ideas even if one passionately wants to believe they are true. I would love to be able to revisit this critique of Feynman’s and have a good laugh at how strange and backwards academic institutions and scientific agencies must have been in the 1970s, but unfortunately, this critique feels as salient today as it must have when Feynman first expressed it almost 60 years ago.

Ideally, the “cargo cult sciences” should start to recede as their practitioners start to notice that “the planes aren’t landing.” What if, however, we have in place institutions that have degraded to a point where they subsidize and reward practices that are not actual science, but a kind of science-like interpretive dance? Patrick Collison and Michael Nielsen find that there has been a precipitous increase in the number of science publications, PhD students graduating in STEM fields, and government spending on National Institute of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF) grants since the 1960s.2 Their same work, however, shows that when scientists were surveyed about the importance of Nobel Prize winning discoveries between the 1920s and 1980s, results indicated anywhere from a decline to a general stagnation in the impact of science over that time period – nothing anywhere near the output we might expect given the tremendous amount of time and energy now invested. One theory posited by Collison, as well as economist Tyler Cowen and others, is that science might just be getting harder; we have gotten to all the low-hanging fruit and now are in the territory of diminishing returns.

Science may be getting harder, but it seems unlikely that this is the sole, or perhaps even largest, cause of decreasing productivity. In addition to the previously mentioned increase in funding to scientific research, the costs of many of the important inputs to research – such as computing power, gene sequencing, and various types of lab equipment – have been declining exponentially. With a rise in funding and a decline in the costs of many inputs, we might expect to be able to generate increased scientific output despite potentially increasing difficulty.

Although a fuller explanation for technological and scientific stagnation is beyond the scope of this work, here I analyze the abstracts of successful NSF applications and find two reasons to believe that something has gone wrong with the culture of science, particularly in the last few decades. The first of these is increasing politicization. If paying lip service to fashionable political ideas becomes an important criterion for successful grant applications, this will certainly detract from the importance of other more vital criteria – namely those related to the quality and importance of the proposed research. When the process of deciding what research projects get funded comes to be based on a political litmus test, the scientific endeavor suffers. Additionally, the more that scientific institutions come to be viewed as conduits for promulgating ideology, the less capable they will be of swaying public opinion on important issues. We may be starting to see the harmful effects of this process in the current epistemic crisis regarding public health. The growing view of science as a vehicle for activism detracts from its more vital role of being a dispassionate referee that adjudicates the validity of empirical claims.

The second major result in this work is the constriction of the space of ideas within NSF award abstracts. The number of NSF awards given and the total amount of taxpayer money spent by the NSF have increased consistently since 1990, and yet this work provides evidence suggesting that the breadth of ideas within NSF award abstracts has been contracting. In different contexts, bureaucracies can become positive feedback chambers reinforcing and amplifying favored ideas while excluding others. Recent work by Johan Chu and James Evans supports this view by showing that the larger a scientific field becomes, the more it tends to stagnate, with more reliance on established works in citation patterns and fewer fundamental breakthroughs.3 The NSF is ostensibly an organization meant to stimulate scientific progress for the benefit of the nation, but the way in which it has become entangled with academia and established institutions may make it seem more like a professional guild representing the interests of its members. Such factors could explain the stagnation we see in the ability of the NSF to identify and support novelty.

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Science is already under threat from religious faith as the superstitious insist variously that: their feelings-based beliefs, such as "intelligent design" occupy equal footing with actual science; evolution is a fiction and science is a tool of the "devil" to deny (their) god; and "science" (e.g. the pseudoscience called "creation science") has already verified the existence of (their) god.

We must protect it just as fiercely from political capture as the ideologically compromised insist variously that: "other ways of knowing" and "lived experience" are just as valid as actual science; sex, gender, math and even reality itself are merely "social constructs (and thus evolution is a fiction) and science is a tool of heteronormative white male supremacy or someshit; and their replacement "studies" pseudosciences have already confirmed their presupposed beliefs.

These are identical tactics. The problem is the latter are working much more successfully, and even being actively pursued to ideologically compromised institutions. People know to keep the former outside the gates, but are politically coerced into welcoming the latter.

There are already those who insist that science is "oppressive" because scientists have biases. Or in other words, they're telling us both that they don't understand how it works, and what they plan to do once they capture it. We already have nonsense "cargo cult" domains like "black math," "feminist glaciology" and "queer agriculture."

Science is the best of everything we've learned over the centuries about how to determine what's true. We shed the notion that we should accept a divine "truth" as prescribed by the ideologically motivated. We must also refuse the notion that we should accept a social or political "truth" as prescribed by the ideologically motivated.

As Lysenkoism taught us, corruption of science in the name of a political narrative has truly catastrophic consequences.