#genetic fallacy

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

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Literally a manifestation of the Genetic Fallacy.

"Positionality Statements," like pronouns-in-bio, are not completely useless. They're red flags offered up willingly that tell you someone is not to be trusted or should be ignored.

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[an-awkward-tangerine]

PSA

Don't revise your opinion on a subject you have done research about JUST because someone who has personal experience in this subject tells you you're wrong. Revise your opinion if someone with more knowledge and/or personal experience actually provide you with proof and examples that you might be wrong.

If you change an informed point of view purely because someone with the right experience (from your point of view) tells you to, you're falling for the genetic fallacy.

This is not me telling you to IGNORE said people. Take what they say into account. Consider it seriously. THINK about it. But always be scientifically sceptical. This is a basis of critical thinking. Personal experience is valuable but it's not everything.

[amozabael]

Is MubzOnline another person who relies on the genetic fallacy only?

So I have been looking at the replies to this person's posts I have personally made and noticed that usually Mubz jumps on a keyboard the moment I respond. However there are a few that Mubz has not said a word about.

These posts are the ones like where Mubz attacks lighter-skinned PoC and I pointed that out. Another is where I said the Mubz has all of the same legal rights as white people on the law books.

Neither of those have a single word in response. Also when I pointed out that technically white people are foreigners to Africa because they are not native to the environment, Mubz also went tight lipped.

I now suspect the reason that Mubz did not reply to those statements is because I made an argument that he/she cannot successfully counter by just blaming white people. I backed Mubz into a corner with no way out other then by remaining silent or by attacking me directly.

This is proof that I won those arguments and Mubz threw in the towel. This is because I noticed that all Mubz has to rely on for his/her posts and responses is the Genetic Fallacy.

This is a Logical Fallacy which can be a form of Ad Hominum Attack where you attack your opponent's heritage rather then his/her argument. Taking Mubz as an example it goes like this: "You are a White European Male, therefore you are wrong!"

The other things that Mubz seems to rely on is personal attacks such as: "You obviously don't know how to read." or "You are just jealous." etc. A cheap cop out response like: "That's just your opinion." (No doubt Mubz still thinks that he and his friends are right and everyone else is wrong when this tactic is used.)

Mubz might also be using other logical fallacies as well.

Now I know what Mubz is going to do once this post goes up. It will be one or more of the following things:

1. Mubz will make excuses as to why he/she did not reply.

2. Mubz will look for those replies and respond to them.

3. Mubz will block me from replying all together.

4. Mubz will delete my replies.

5. Mubz will delete the posts.

6. Mubz will try to report my posts and replies.

7. Mubz will simply continue to ignore them.

8. Mubz will complain to his/her followers about me.

9. Mubz will delete his/her account (and possibly come back under a new one.)

10. Mubz will use some other logical fallacy against me or my posts.

11. Mubz will use a cop out response.

12. Mubz will attempt to reply to this post in some way.

UPDATE: So it appears that Mubz call this post “lowkey creepy”. As for what that means, I don’t know exactly but it sounds like I completely owned him/her by pre-empting every reply he/she could think of and that made him/her uncomfortable. Mubz then simply invoked 11 by saying I need to get out more.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

‘Positionality Statements’ Undermine Scientific Integrity

By shifting attention away from methods and toward identity, positionality statements may actually increase bias.

By: Colin Wright

Published: Mar 28, 2025

Some readers may know that I often post ridiculous, ideology-driven academic papers and dissertations on X (formerly Twitter). It’s become a bit of a hobby—calling out how certain fields have drifted into performative activism disguised as serious scholarship. Some of the worst examples turn into full-blown posts here on Reality’s Last Stand, where I break down not just what’s wrong with them, but why everyone should care. However, there’s one academic trend that I repeatedly encounter but rarely highlight, perhaps because it’s become so common it fades into the background: the “reflexivity” or “positionality” statement.

I recently posted an especially absurd example on X, where the authors felt the need to let readers and potential reviewers know that they were all “cis-gender menstruating individuals who identify as intersectional feminists,” among other things.

Although these statements are most commonly found in the usual “woke” or “grievance studies” disciplines—fields that openly reject traditional scientific norms and standards—they are now creeping into mainstream, even top-tier, science journals. What started as a practice mostly limited to qualitative research in the social sciences has now spread much more widely. Take this example from a paper published in Nature Ecology & Evolution:

We should all certainly hope that the authors have been “educated in a predominantly Euro–American cultural context and scientific tradition,” given that the paper is published in a Europe-based science journal!

So what’s going on here? What exactly is a positionality statement, and why are researchers including them?

In short, a positionality (or reflexivity) statement is a formal acknowledgment by researchers of their own social identities—such as race, gender, class, sexuality, or other “lived experiences”—that may have shaped their perspective on the research topic. Think of it like a conflict-of-interest (COI) disclosure, except instead of revealing financial ties that might compromise a researcher’s objectivity, the author is confessing their social location and ideological commitments.

Supporters of this practice claim it promotes transparency. They say it’s just being honest: all people have biases, so why not acknowledge them up front? But the reasoning gets much more ideological than that. Their view isn’t just that people are shaped by their environment—which is obviously true—but that all knowledge is socially situated. This belief comes from a branch of feminist and postmodern philosophy known as “standpoint epistemology.” According to this view, people from marginalized groups enjoy a kind of “epistemic privilege”: because of their lived experiences, they are thought to have special access to certain truths, especially about oppression and injustice. However, this epistemic privilege has been extended to scientific truths as well. The fatal flaws in this philosophy will be made clear later on.

On the surface, positionality statements seem noble—who could be against reflection and transparency? But when you start looking at it more closely, many serious issues begin to surface.

The most thorough critique of positionality statements I’ve seen comes from a paper titled “Positionality and Its Problems: Questioning the Value of Reflexivity Statements in Research” by Jukka Savolainen, Patrick J. Casey, Justin P. McBrayer, and Patricia Nayna Schwerdtle, published in Perspectives on Psychological Science. In it, the authors lay out three major objections to the practice, each of which should give serious pause to anyone who believes science should be guided by evidence and logic instead of ideology.

Positionality Statements Are Fundamentally Flawed

The first objection is philosophical: positionality statements are inherently self-defeating. They attempt to disclose how a researcher’s identity may shape their perspective on a topic, but the very epistemology that justifies positionality statements—standpoint theory—also undermines the credibility of any such self-disclosure.

As Savolainen et al. point out, reflexivity statements are “constrained by the very positionality they seek to express.” The idea here is almost paradoxical: if your identity shapes and distorts your view of the world—including your ability to reflect on yourself—then your positionality statement is just as distorted as your research. “Like a scale that tries to weigh itself,” they write, “constructing a credible positionality statement is ultimately an impossible task.” If you genuinely believe that your social location biases everything you do, then the positionality statement you construct to describe that bias is already infected by the same problem.

Advocates of positionality statements might respond: Sure, nobody is perfectly objective, but researchers can still identify some facts about themselves—like race, sex, class, or gender identity—that provide readers with useful context. The authors acknowledge this objection. Yes, it is “quite easy for scholars to accurately report their biological sex, their gender identity, nationality, race/ethnicity, and many other personal characteristics.” These are, to some extent, knowable and reportable.

But as the authors rightfully highlight, those things are often the least relevant to the scientific content of a study: “We take issue with the assumption that these kinds of attributes—the listing of which dominates positionality statements—are particularly salient for any given study.” Just because a researcher is white or black, rich or poor, or “cis” or “trans,” doesn’t automatically mean those characteristics shaped the research process or interpretation in any meaningful way. And if they did, simply reporting them does not magically make that bias evaporate.

To drive the point home, the authors analyze a published positionality statement (below) by Elliott and Reid (2019), where two white women reflect on the “dangers” of writing about low-income black Americans.

The authors of this statement claim to be guided by “anti-racist, intersectional, and feminist principles” as a way of signaling their political virtue and awareness. But as Savolainen and his colleagues point out, why focus only on those traits? Why not mention other potentially relevant parts of their identity, like their religion, education, or personality? As the authors ask, “Why did the authors reflect on the ‘dangers’ of racial and class dynamics but seemed unbothered by their strongly expressed political commitments?”

Their point is that these statements often highlight only the identity traits that are currently popular or politically favored, while ignoring others that might matter just as much. This selective framing undermines the supposedly honest and reflective nature of the exercise, turning it into a performance, perhaps often crafted to align with disciplinary norms or to curry favor with reviewers and editors.

This leads to a tough but fair question: “Should the research community trust the authors themselves to decide which aspects of their lives need to be disclosed to people who read their research contributions? We think the answer is ‘no.’”

And this isn’t just a problem with one paper—it’s a problem with the entire practice. Positionality statements claim to reduce bias, but in reality they often just amplify the author’s subjectivity under the illusion of self-awareness.

The authors sum it up:

Our point is to illustrate the challenges involved in crafting a positionality statement of any kind. These kinds of statements are unpersuasive because academic scholars cannot have it both ways. They cannot, on the one hand, claim to be burdened by their biography when conducting the research, yet, on the other hand, be emancipated from it while constructing a positionality statement. Fortunately, as we demonstrate next, this inescapable dilemma is not something that needs to be solved.

Positionality Statements Misdiagnose the Source of Scientific Bias

The second problem is that positionality statements focus on the wrong kind of bias. Bias in science does not primarily originate from individual characteristics—your race, gender, politics, or upbringing—but from a failure of the process by which knowledge is created, tested, and refined. Scientific bias is not reduced or eliminated by announcing your identity; it is reduced by rigorous methodology, peer review, replication, and being open to criticism.

As Savolainen and colleagues put it, “Positionality statements are beside the point: By focusing on the characteristics of participating scholars, these kinds of declarations miss the true sources of research bias—the field’s collective failure to adhere to the scientific ethos.” Science doesn’t work because scientists are unbiased—they aren’t. It works because the system is designed to push everyone’s ideas through a rigorous, competitive process that filters out error over time.

Ironically, by putting the spotlight on personal identity instead of scientific methods, positionality statements may actually increase bias. Instead of focusing on methods, data quality, and replicability, we are asked to judge research in part based on the author’s race, gender, or ideological alignment. That’s not objectivity—it’s just replacing one kind of bias with another.

Positionality Statements Undermine the Norms That Protect Science

Finally, and perhaps most dangerously, positionality statements erode the very norms that make science trustworthy in the first place—especially the principle of universalism. This is the idea that scientific claims should be judged by the strength of the evidence, not by who is making the claim. What matters is the quality of your data and reasoning, not your identity.

But when journals start asking (or requiring) researchers to include positionality statements, they flip that principle on its head. Instead of suppressing identity cues through double-blind peer review, we now ask authors to foreground them. That opens the door to identity-based favoritism, virtue signaling, and even manipulation. Authors may exaggerate or fabricate aspects of their biography if they believe it will help them get published. And let’s be honest: positionality statements are only encouraged in one direction. Progressive researchers are encouraged to share their “marginalized” identities or activist goals. No one is asking conservative, religious, or apolitical scholars to declare their “lived experiences” or ideological frameworks—unless to apologize for them.

As Savolainen and co-authors put it, positionality statements have become “a way for authors to signal their adherence to the ideological mainstream of a discipline.” It’s less about being transparent and more about proving you’re on the “right side.” Often, these statements read like a shield: “We are good and right-thinking researchers—please don’t peer-review us too hard.”

This gets to a deeper and more cynical interpretation of the trend. As I’ve often pointed out, there’s a growing body of academic work that looks more like propaganda in the language of scholarship. Positionality statements are part of that performance. Yes, it's true that personal identity and politics can influence research. But the idea that simply declaring your bias somehow cancels it out is ridiculous. In practice, it often does the opposite—it gives researchers permission to lean even harder into their bias while pretending to have neutralized it.

We all have biases—that's just part of being human. But science wasn’t created to embrace our personal views; it was built to help us control for them. The purpose of peer review, replication, and methodological rigor is not to validate personal perspectives but to test them against reality.

If we want a more inclusive, robust, and representative science, we should be pushing for better methods, open data, and viewpoint diversity—not more identity-based posturing. As Savolainen and colleagues argue, “the most productive path to increasing representation and reducing positional bias in research is to protect the freedom of scholarly inputs while insisting on methodological transparency and rigor.”

Science doesn’t need more confessionals. It needs more rigor.

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This is the endorsement of the Genetic Fallacy as a moral imperative.

Xians tell me that I'm disqualified from criticizing Xianity because I'm not a Xian. Muslims tell me that what I have to say about the quran is irrelevant.

Except, neither of those things are true.

If you're giving "positionality statements," you're not doing science.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Citing a scientist’s religiosity - or otherwise - is literally the Genetic Fallacy.

[pastordin]

The All-Encompassing Book of Fallacies: Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Relevance Fallacies | The All-Encompassing Book of Fallacies Home | Media | Contact Chapter 6: Relevance Fallacies Published on May 28, 2019 1. Definition and Characteristics 1.1 Definition of Relevance Fallacies Relevance fallacies are a subset of informal fallacies where the premises of an argument are not logically relevant to the conclusion. These fallacies divert attention…

The All-Encompassing Book of Fallacies: Chapter 6

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Fallacies Illustrated - Genetic Fallacy

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Circle Looks at the Evidence