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[–]chottohen 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (4 children)

I remember when Jensen was doing a lecture tour of campuses discussing his controversial research. I was talking to three Americans who had just graduated from top US colleges and they all agreed that Jensen should be banned from speaking because he was a racist, in their opinion. I remember being amazed that these supposedly well-educated people could not see the difference between a racist and a scientist whose research results might be interpreted as racist. They had been well brainwashed by their professors. That was my first encounter with the PC mindset.

[–]jet199 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

Similarly I've seen a lot of GC feminists promoting a book which argues rabidly against "race science". This book includes a passage about how telling non-white people they are at higher risk of type 2 diabetes is racist and must be stopped, a move which could potentially kill millions.

These women want everyone to care when they want everyone to recognise the science of biological sex but want to carry on the project of undermining science where it concerns for every other special interest group.

[–]chottohen 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Yes, the politicization of science is not good for any of us. We need pure research free from outside pressure

[–]HugodeCrevellier[S] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Yes.

They merely follow their professors, and academics like Dr Stephen Jay Gould, who seemed to act according to what was good for popularity, book sales, etc.

Though Gould was a scientist, his views on this were overtly political

Giving 'scientific' support to an upcoming (erroneous or not) ideology is a pretty good career move in any case.

And so, Gould wrote that the bell curve rests on 'four incorrect assumptions', that intelligence must be reducible to a single number, that it must be capable of rank ordering people in a linear order, that it must be primarily genetically based and that it must be essentially immutable.

But, as Haier suggests, to really understand this criticism, one should read the scientific evaluations of it, where it's shown to be invalid, re-establishing the validity of the (much maligned) bell curve data.

Nonetheless, you can find Gould's book, which is demonstrably wrong, in college bookshops ... under assigned(!) reading.

'It's highly popular, highly influential', this, a book that has been taken apart, point by point, by a number of people who actually understood the data.

But neither did Gould seem to care nor did the professors assigning his book.

So, what are the chances that the poor students can form a cogent understanding?

[–]chottohen 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

What we need is a required course for non-science majors that helps them understand scientific papers and be able to separate the good and useful from nonsense. The problem is, as you pointed out, nowadays we can no longer trust the science since many published papers are just made up to produce a desired effect.