#systemic bias

[yipyipallyall]

[itsmythang]

REP. @VoteGloriaJ: “I was like this can’t be real, but it is. I went to the website… House Republicans are just big ol’ racists and don’t care who knows it.” Gloria confirms what we said — White male Dems (except Powell) still have committees, Black & Female Dems were removed.

[nuthin-gold-can-stay]

more awareness around abuse in immigrant families plz, especially asian ones. lets not normalize parents hitting someone with a slipper because they got bad grades or absolutely refusing their child any form of online communication because "it will distract them from their studies" or shaming their child's body and personality because "it'll embarrass us in front of ur relatives" etc. every time you see an unhealthy asian family relationship in the media where the 'loving' aunt tells the teenage girl to lose weight, that's fatshaming, not teasing. every time you see a jokey american 2000s sitcom where the token immigrant family feels no love and acts emotionless. thats abuse via neglect and a distant family relationship.

please please please know if you are the child of immigrants: you can be a good student. you can follow your culture. you are not shameful because of something like the dress you're wearing or whether you made your hair. it is abuse if your parents are implying these things are not true.

please do not normalize abuse in your culture. americans, do not normalize abuse in immigrant families (especially asian ones). don't. make it. acceptable. don't tell kids 'oh yeah thats how indians raise their kids lol' don't tell kids 'well yk the hispanic tradition' etc etc.

don't make abuse a tradition.

[therationaldispatch]

Omission as Editorial Policy: The Guardian's Week of Curated Truths | HonestReporting

The Guardian's Israel coverage diverges from its own editorial standards by publishing articles that omit context and follow a clear agenda.

The problem with The Guardian isn't one anti-Israel article. It's an editorial pattern. This week alone, it distorted Tisha B'Av, recycled famine narratives, reframed Boy George's pro-Israel song, and omitted key context on how Hamas exploited the healthcare system in Gaza. Across every topic, the pattern is the same: context is sacrificed to sustain a narrative.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

A Cancellation and a Firing at Obesity

How an Editor-in-Chief gets silenced and then canceled.

By: Sally Satel and Michael Jensen

Published: Oct 9, 2025

This story begins this spring with a commentary we wrote for Obesity, the journal of The Obesity Society (TOS). The subject of our critique was a manuscript, since published, titled “Gap of Women Leadership in Global Obesity Research.” When we wrote our commentary, one of us—Michael Jensen—was Editor-in-Chief of the journal. However, he was not the reviewing editor for the “Gap” manuscript. He only learned of it after the journal accepted IT but before it went to print – a discovery that dismayed him.

In his view, the study was not scientifically sound. Were it up to Dr. Jensen, in fact, he would have rejected the submission on scientific grounds at the editorial level. But with the article scheduled to appear, Dr. Jensen took his prerogative as an editor to write a commentary outlining its methodological flaws. He invited Sally Satel, a psychiatrist with a particular interest in politicized medicine, to co-author.

Our commentary was scheduled to appear in the same issue as the “Gap” study. It did not: someone within The Obesity Society leadership cancelled its publication.1 As they told Dr. Jensen, our co-authored commentary, coming as it did in combination with his earlier handling of a TOS-sponsored, pro-DEI position paper (that was withdrawn for publication), was sufficient evidence of his disinclination to support what he interpreted as the progressive values of TOS leadership to warrant firing.2

The Gap of Women Leadership article, authored by Xiangxin Kong and colleagues, reported findings based on a review of obesity-related publications and research grants awarded between 2003 and 2023 from national health agencies in nine countries, including the US, China, France, and Germany.

The authors found that male investigators receive more obesity research funding than females. In addition, they documented that obesity papers written by male corresponding authors garner more citations than those by women and that highly cited obesity papers written by women still had fewer citations than those written by men.

These results, they wrote, “stem[med] from systemic biases within the research ecosystem,” contending that “gender equality” in obesity research should be attained by “consciously nominating and advocating for female researchers to leadership positions.”

We do not question the authors’ facts. Instead, we challenge their interpretation of those facts based on a failure to account for the statistical and social contexts in which their data are embedded.

For example, the authors lump all obesity research together. Yet some projects are very expensive (clinical trials, hospital-based physiological studies, complex animal models), and others are less costly (examining databases for epidemiological trends, meta-analysis, survey-based research). Some types of research require longer training periods, more post-training mentorship, and more extended periods of mentor support to learn how to maintain bench laboratory space, equipment, and personnel. Inattention to these variables casts doubt on any conclusions the authors might draw.

Kong and colleagues also found that while male corresponding authors were attached to two-thirds of highly cited obesity papers, women were associated with under half. Bias based on gender? One first needs to discern how many women are corresponding authors in the first place and, after that, to consider their place in the academic pipeline. Typically, the corresponding author is the senior contributor to the study. While women are now more represented at the senior reaches of obesity, they didn’t get there overnight.

To judge whether a problem exists, we would need to know more. Whether, for example, women publish in low-impact journals more often than do male researchers. Does their research expertise have broad relevance to obesity researchers (i.e., are widely cited) or does it pertain to narrow, but important topics within the field, and thus is less likely to be cited?

In sum, while Kong and her team collected extensive data, the missing data we outlined above are essential to proving any claim of unfair representation of women in obesity research.

Now we turn to the dubious nature of their inherent assumptions about women in obesity research. The overarching problem is that their logic is circular. They claim, reflexively, that the discrepancies between male and female researchers in funding and professional recognition are proof of barriers to “equity.” In short, it points to unequal outcomes as proof of inequity without considering other causes of the disparities it identifies.

Another problem is the authors’ assumption that the field of obesity research should comprise men and women in a fifty-fifty split. Why should women and men be present in equal numbers in any enterprise? Or even proportionate? But if the latter, then what is the apt denominator? The percentage of women in society? In medicine or among PhDs in human biology? In medical research or in obesity research more narrowly? Within each specialty area within obesity research?

A descriptive article like Kong et al. does have value, however. It can function as a database of gender-associated differentials and, as such, a stimulus for generating hypotheses about the causes of those differentials. Bias could be one such cause, but Kong and colleagues failed to deploy proper inferential methods to illuminate that it is.

Sally Satel, MD, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a lecturer in psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine.

Michael D. Jensen, MD, Professor of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN.

-

Notes

Although our commentary, Women researchers should ask why they are underrepresented before concluding that gender bias is the cause, was never published, we are happy to share the original here.

Dr. Jensen’s objection to the DEI position paper was based on the author’s inability to support her contention that gender diversity enhanced research quality. As a result, the DEI position paper was never released.

--

==

"God of the Gaps" is not isolated to conventional religion.

"If you conclude that the origin of the universe and the existence of humans are a result of anything other than a purposeful designer and creator that is, by definition, sin and heresy."

You can't just vomit up the data and say, "therefore god." You have to explain why your conclusion is the correct one and why alternative explanations are wrong. And to do that, you have to actually identify and understand what other alternative explanations there could be.

They don't want to do any of that. That's why it's called "faith."

[itsmythang]

They want to change the rules of a race, to say you can’t sprint to the finish line, because the white man didn’t win? Was Joshua Jackson supposed to stop running because white dude was almost at the finish line? GTFOH!!!

Unbelievable that people act like he was cheated out of a win. Everyone knows if you have a sprint left in you, you give it your all. Congrats Joshua Jackson!

When people in power start changing the rules mid-game because they’re about to lose, that’s not competition—that’s control. And when it keeps happening in ways that disadvantage Black competitors, we’re going to call it exactly what it is.

Same thing we are seeing with the MAGA Cult Republican Party. See themselves losing so instead of changing their ideas and how they are governing the American people they decide to rig the election. It's something many white people do on the regular.

If you’ve got a sprint left, you run. Period. The real issue is people trying to move the finish line when they don’t like who’s about to win—and we’ve seen who that tends to impact.

Run your race. Don’t move the finish line. And don’t get quiet when the pattern is obvious.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

The BBC will not learn its lesson

Even with senior heads rolling, the state broadcaster remains unwilling to confront its deep-rooted institutional bias.

By: Andrew Doyle

Published: Nov 13, 2025

The culture war has produced innumerable masters in the art of doubling down. It’s an intuitive strategy; every bluebottle knows that if at first you fail to break through the window pane, it’s best to just keep colliding into it in the certainty that you’ll eventually achieve your goal.

So it is with the BBC. Last week I wrote about the corporation’s myriad failures when it comes to fulfilling its duty of impartiality. The revelations that the editors of Panorama spliced together two clips of Donald Trump to give the false impression that he was directly inciting violence at the Capitol on 6 January 2021 has now resulted in the resignation of the Director General, Tim Davie, and the Head of News, Deborah Turness. Perhaps this is due to concern about international relations. More likely it is Trump’s threat of a $1 billion lawsuit.

But in their resignation statements, neither Davie nor Turness appeared willing or able to acknowledge the broader problem of institutional bias, evidenced most strongly in the BBC’s continual censorship of news stories that raise questions about the potential harm of gender identity ideology. Specifically, activists on the ‘LGBT desk’ have been empowered to ‘keep other perspectives off air’. The leaked internal dossier that brought about this current crisis outlines a range of failures, including ‘a constant drip-feed of one-sided stories… celebrating the trans experience without adequate balance or objectivity’. (For an exhaustive overview of examples, take a look at this thread.)

In spite of the overwhelming evidence of partisanship, this was how Davie addressed the matter in his resignation letter:

‘Like all public organisations, the BBC is not perfect, and we must always be open, transparent and accountable. While not being the only reason, the current debate around BBC News has understandably contributed to my decision. Overall the BBC is delivering well, but there have been some mistakes made and as director general I have to take ultimate responsibility.’

Turness was even more defiant:

‘In public life leaders need to be fully accountable, and that is why I am stepping down. While mistakes have been made, I want to be absolutely clear recent allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong.’

This from the corporation that issued guidelines to encourage its staff to add pronouns to emails as a ‘small, proactive step that we can all take to help create a more inclusive workplace’. This from the corporation that insisted that a London protest in the wake of the death of George Floyd was ‘largely peaceful’, even though the headline of the article itself conceded that 27 police officers had been injured. This from the corporation that instructed staff to take a day’s paid leave following the Black Lives Matter hysteria to ‘educate’ themselves on diversity, inclusion and Critical Race Theory. The reading list that was provided included texts on ‘Whiteness’, ‘The End of Policing’ and ‘The Urgency of Intersectionality’.

And in June 2020, the BBC committed to spending £100 million on improving diversity in its output, even though according to a survey by the Creative Diversity Network (of which all UK broadcasters are members), ‘those who identify as female, transgender, BAME and lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) are all represented at levels comparable with (or above) national population estimates’. In other words, the BBC was spending a significant amount of licence-payers’ money to resolve a problem that had not existed for many years.

So why are so many still denying the institutional ideological bias in the face of all the evidence? Quite simply, it is because in our age of ‘post truth’ and ‘alternative facts’, narrative is prioritised over reality. This is why even a ruling from the Supreme Court on the meaning of ‘sex’ in the Equality Act is roundly ignored by charities, corporations and even the Scottish government. When any organisation becomes infected with ideology, the creed must take priority over all other factors.

If further evidence of bias were needed, this week the BBC’s international editor Jeremy Bowen confessed that he was factually wrong to report that the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza had been destroyed by Israeli forces. In fact, the explosion had occurred in the adjacent car park. This was his version of an apology:

‘Oh yeah, well I got that wrong because I was looking at the pictures and what I could see was a square that appeared to be flaming on all sides and there was, sort of, a void in the middle. I think it was a picture taken from a drone. So, you know, we have to piece together what we see and I thought, “It looks like the whole building has gone”. That was my conclusion from looking at the pictures and I was wrong on that, but I don’t feel particularly bad about that. It was just the conclusion I drew.’

The bias against Israel in the BBC’s reporting is well documented. The BBC’s Arabic service has been forced to make 215 corrections and clarifications after misleading or inaccurate reporting in the past two years alone. So why such a casually dismissive response from Bowen?

He is not alone. Other BBC veterans are circling the wagons, determined to deny the reality of the dossier’s findings. Nick Robinson, presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, has implied that this is all some kind of coup. He has further pointed out that ‘there were no complaints received about the editing of Donald Trump’s speech’, as though shoddy journalism is acceptable so long as nobody notices. World affairs editor John Simpson likewise believes that there is ‘a political campaign by people who want to destroy the organisation’. But most of those who are criticising the BBC are doing so because they want it to maintain higher standards. It is not anti-BBC to criticise it for its failings; it’s precisely the opposite.

The resignation of two top dogs at the BBC will not save it. The activists who have been granted so much power to censor according to their belief-system are still in their roles. And those who failed to restrain them are doubling down on their delusion that there has been no systemic bias at all. Whoever succeeds Davie will need to learn from his predecessor’s mistakes, and insist that the obligation of impartiality applies as much to ideology as it does to party politics. If it cannot reckon with the activists in its ranks, the BBC has no future.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

My journey through gender equality advocacy has been one of two starkly different halves.

When I tell people about my support of women, I do so to more or less exclusive approval and applause. The stories of standing up to cat callers and to confronting misogynists are warmly welcomed; my time spent homeless in London raising money for vulnerable women, a proud feather in my hat.

And whilst it’s not why I did these things, I can’t help but noticed how it’s made me socially, intellectually and dare I say it, sexually, more attractive.

Then I move onto part two. I’ll talk about boys failing in school, the unique criminalisation of gay men historically, the abysmal male life expectency, or the abused men shut out from refuges, and suddenly the situation changes.

The environment runs cold, smiles are wiped from faces, and nodding heads grow stiff.

Often outage and condemnation follows. To them I’ve fallen down some kind of rabbit hole. My views are problematic. Ignorant. And somehow misogynistic.

People, even my own family, will protest and leave the room. “King of the Incels!” or “Z List Jordan Peterson” I am called. I’m always left wondering why I am the subject of such colourful language, for simply making my views consistent and my compassion complete?

And so the transformation is complete. The face of compassion, warmth and approval, has become the face of ignorance, coldness and stupidity.

It is, in my eyes, the ugly side of equality.

The male side; of snails and puppy dog tails, of lazy and obtuse catchphrases and victim blaming mentality. Toxic this, and patriarchy that, and privilege sprinted on top. Yawn.

So how has your journey into the ugly side of equality played out?

And why do so many progressives forsake their own beliefs, compassion and virtue so quickly?

--

Sources:

Telegraph Article: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/11/16/boys-left-fail-school-attempts-help-earn-wrath-feminists-says/

Dr Farrell Protest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiRasOrIoYQ

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/aug/13/girls-overtake-boys-in-a-level-and-gcse-maths-so-are-they-smarter

==

The activists don't care about this. They don't care about people. They care only about imposing their ideology onto everyone. You can tell from the girl who says "feminist spaces" should be used to talk about mental health. You're not allowed to talk about any real issue or problem without applying their corrupt, fraudulent ideological framework, in order to produce false, ideologically acceptable answers. Such as that suicide is caused by "the patriarchy" or "toxic masculinity." They'll literally attempt to stop you and call you a bigot if you try.

This is analogous to how believers will say that famine or disease are the result of "sin" or are "god's punishment," rather than non-fictional, actual real-world causes.

P.S. I absolutely detest how quasi-therapeutic language like "spaces" has leaked out into the everyday language of these ideologues.