Announcing from on high that it is Against Discrimination, Nature tells us: Science cannot and should not be used to justify prejudice. No indeed. But is there any general wish that it did? Then,
Difference between groups may therefore provide sound scientific evidence. But it’s also a blunt instrument of pseudoscience, and one used to justify actions and policies that condense claimed group differences into tools of prejudice and discrimination against individuals — witness last weekend’s violence by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the controversy over a Google employee’s memo on biological differences in the tastes and abilities of the sexes.
A nice touch that, to equate hapless engineer Damore’s ejection from the Goolag with white supremacist violence.
The two situations are not remotely similar. Damore discovered that on a number of subjects, evidence thoughtfully considered does not matter, however respectfully offered. So then is irrational rage becoming an essential virtue even in science and engineering, as it has now become in (what used to be) arts disciplines?
As we have noted before, the guns are facing the wrong way. The threat to science today is post-modernism: You know, objective fact is sexist, algebra is racist, science is about the personal bummers of scientists…
If Nature cannot deal with this problem, fine. Someone eventually must. But everyone will remember Nature’s failure.
See also: Nature: Stuck with a battle it dare not fight, even for the soul of science. Excuse me guys but, as in so many looming strategic disasters, the guns are facing the wrong way.