Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Quillette: Young scholar denounced as “racist” by mob of 300 elders; evidence not cited

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

Probably not wanted either:

The latest victim of an academic mobbing is 28-year-old social scientist Noah Carl who has been awarded a Toby Jackman Newton Trust Research Fellowship at St Edmund’s College at the University of Cambridge.

Rarely has the power asymmetry between the academic mob and its victim been so stark. Dr Carl is a young researcher, just starting out in his career, who is being mobbed for being awarded a prestigious research scholarship on the basis of his peer-reviewed research

Three hundred academics from around the world, many of them professors, have signed an open letter denouncing Dr Carl and demanding that the University of Cambridge “immediately conduct an investigation into the appointment process” on the grounds that his work is “ethically suspect” and “methodologically flawed.” The letter states: “we are shocked that a body of work that includes vital errors in data analysis and interpretation appears to have been taken seriously.” Yet the letter contains no evidence of any academic misconduct. It does not include a single reference to any of Dr Carl’s papers, let alone any papers that are “ethically suspect” or “methodologically flawed.”
Editorial, “Academics’ Mobbing of a Young Scholar Must be Denounced” at Quillette

Maybe research would just get in their way:

Quillette points out that one of the signatories to the letter, Professor David Graeber, whom Quilette describes as “the anthropologist and left-wing political activist,” tweeted that Carl was “very creepy ‘race scientist.’” When he was queried as to what parts of Carl’s research he found “methodologically flawed,” he said:

“That’s easy. The concepts “race” “genetic intelligence” and “criminality” are all concepts with at best questionable scientific validity, so any study that assumes all 3 as unproblematic is so wildly methodologically flawed that one can only assume a racist motive in the author.”

But Quillette counters that Graeber did not mention any research paper by Carl that included these concepts, and Quilette could not find any use by Carl of the term “genetic intelligence.” Quillette writes:

“The implication of Professor Graeber’s response, as well as the letter, is that Dr. Carl has linked average differences in intelligence between races to genetic differences, when, in fact, he has stated that a genetic contribution to racial gaps in IQ has not been conclusively demonstrated.” Hank Berrien, “Report: Without Evidence, Hundreds Of Academics Denounce Young Scholar As Racist” at Daily Wire

In other breaking news, the academics have fired that crazy-violent redheaded troll we featured earlier (sp. Trollus inyerfaceus) because they’ve decided to make life simpler by just being nuts themselves.

Follow UD News at Twitter!

See also: Larry Krauss? Francisco Ayala? And now Neil deGrasse Tyson? (All are pop science bigs, accused of sexual harassment.)

The perfect storm: Darwinists meet the progressive “evolution deniers” — and cringe… Double down cringe…

The Darwinians’ cowardice before SJW mobs explained in detail: They thought the mob was coming for someone else.

Is Darwinist Jerry Coyne starting to get it about SJW “science”? Ah, not a moment too soon.; Here is a perfect specimen of sp. SJW, Trollus inyerfaceus. We have certainly dealt with them. Coyne may find some in his own back yard.

Rob Sheldon: Have a little pity for scientists scared of SJWs I thought the Areo article was the most honest I have met in a long while. It is one thing to boast about courage in the faculty lounge, it is quite another in the provost’s office. I have been cursed with both experiences.

Comments
The only thing in the SJW’s playbook that trumps race is its dogma about “gender”-- specifically gay and transgender rights. Here are a couple of examples:
This week, shortly after being tapped to host the Oscars, Hollywood star Kevin Hart found himself on the wrong side of the woke social-justice warriors. His great sin: Years ago, he tweeted jokes referencing homosexuality. More egregiously, in 2010, he did a comedy bit in which he discussed not wanting his son, then five years old, to be gay. “One of my biggest fears is my son growing up and being gay,” Hart stated. “That’s a fear. Keep in mind, I’m not homophobic. . . . Be happy. Do what you want to do. But me, as a heterosexual male, if I can prevent my son from being gay, I will.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/radical-left-mob-kevin-hart-parenting-children/ And…
NORMAN, Okla. — Newly minted Heisman Trophy winner Kyler Murray is apologizing for anti-gay tweets posted to his Twitter account several years ago, when he was 14 and 15. The Oklahoma quarterback tweeted: "I apologize for the tweets that have come to light tonight from when I was 14 and 15. I used a poor choice of word that doesn't reflect who I am or what I believe. I did not intend to single out any individual or group." The tweets have since been deleted from the account of Murray, 21, who won college football's most prestigious individual award Saturday night over Alabama's Tua Tagovailoa and Ohio State's Dwayne Haskins.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/sports/heisman-trophy-winner-kyler-murray-apologizes-anti-gay-tweets-n945901 The fact that both these men were black made no difference. They expressed PC incorrect views and needed to be publicly shamed. What’s next? Fines? Imprisonment? Also notice that the MSM is now fully on board with the secular progressive’s SJW agenda. Specifically notice in the case of Murray how they sat on the story until after he was awarded the Heisman. Apparently journalistic ethics are no longer binding when it comes to the SJW agenda.john_a_designer
December 12, 2018
December
12
Dec
12
12
2018
09:04 AM
9
09
04
AM
PDT
All works or literature or science that do not advance the glorious cause of socialism are racist. Any such assertion, when made either by enough people or by several eminent socialists, requires no additional proof. Even questioning such an assertion demonstrates racism. Furthermore, the works and careers of racists must be burned. There is no dialog or reconciliation with a racist. The First Amendment cannot be used to protect racism. Now, substitute the word "witches" for racist and "those in league with the devil" for racism. "She's a witch." "How do you know she's a witch." "Because she disagrees with me and we must not tolerate witches." QueriusQuerius
December 11, 2018
December
12
Dec
11
11
2018
10:37 PM
10
10
37
PM
PDT
Seversky: Yes, it’s molecules in motion. No, it’s not just molecules in motion. Hmm. Interesting. I'd like to see a new thread started about this, Barry. If it's not just molecules in motion, what else is "it?" Discuss.mike1962
December 11, 2018
December
12
Dec
11
11
2018
09:32 PM
9
09
32
PM
PDT
Charles, University and college campuses is where the PC culture got its start and the Western Civ Canon has been under attack almost from the very beginning.
In 1988, the Rev. Jesse Jackson—then a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination—joined students at Stanford in chanting, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go!” With that spectacle, the university promptly dropped required courses in Western Civilization. Fifteen texts—a “core list” that included Plato, Voltaire, St. Augustine, and Marx and Engels—were replaced by a more diverse canon.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/stanford-students-want-western-civilization-studies-back-as-the-pc-backlash-begins Do your own research. This is the PC culture’s agenda. Despite what this article suggests, it has been getting stronger not weaker-- more militant and aggressive. It’s now completely taken over the Democratic Party, the main stream media and is even encroaching on big business (especially companies like Google, Apple and Facebook.)john_a_designer
December 11, 2018
December
12
Dec
11
11
2018
08:22 AM
8
08
22
AM
PDT
john_a_designer @6 As a bystander to the PC/SJW/Cultural Marxist movement, I have to say I didn't realise that great works of literature are now being branded by university academics as 'racist' or 'sexist', and therefore unworthy of study. This is frighteningly Orwellian: "Do not read Shakespeare. Do not read Milton. Do not read Chaucer. Do not read Tolstoy." "You are only allowed to read the APPROVED BOOKS on our APPROVED LIST." How soon, one wonders, before book burning is back again? (Not only was Orwell's '1984' prophetic, so too it seems was Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451".) Seversky @7 "Yes, it's molecules in motion. No, it's not JUST molecules in motion." If not JUST molecules in motion, then what else? My understanding of materialism is that it attempts to explain everything by reduction to particles acted on by forces. What else can there be, if not 'just' those entities?Charles Birch
December 11, 2018
December
12
Dec
11
11
2018
12:07 AM
12
12
07
AM
PDT
mike1962 @ 2
It’s all just molecules in motion
Yes, it's molecules in motion. No, it's not just molecules in motion. Reductionism is a tool, not the answer.Seversky
December 10, 2018
December
12
Dec
10
10
2018
08:43 PM
8
08
43
PM
PDT
Civil rights leader Martin Luther King famously said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Tragically the secular progressive left has gone in the opposite direction. There is a pretension of being opposed to racism which is itself racist. For example, on college campuses certain groups, Blacks and Hispanics, are presented as victims while whites are presented as oppressors. Indeed, according to the left’s racial doctrine, there is no such thing as anti-white racism. Instead you have the “myth of white privilege,” which allows them vilify and demonize people based on the color of their skin. That’s no longer just the mindset of a few radical professors and students, it’s the policy of the bureaucrats and it’s written into curriculum. However, it’s not actually a curriculum which students are taught, it’s an ideology into which they are indoctrinated. Here’s a recent interview with Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald that should alarm anyone who believes that there truly is a freedom of thought, conscience and belief, which is absolutely essential for a free and open democratic society to exist.
LEVIN: What have our universities and colleges become? And when did this happen? I mean, they were always kind of liberal in the last several decades, but in some ways, they are not my phrase. They are almost sort of a Soviet-style system where there really isn't free speech, you're not allowed to challenge the so-called norms in the universities, where race and gender, seem to have a priority over other things and that sort of thing. When did all of this happen? MAC DONALD: Well, the 80s was when it started in my view. That is when you got radical multiculturalism that hit. I was in college in 70s, I am grateful for because I was allowed to read John Milton, William Wordsworth and Shakespeare without anyone thinking to complain about the gonads and melanin of those authors. I got to lose myself in beauty, in greatness and sublimity. Come the 80s, and students were given a license for ignorance. They were taught that the only thing they needed to know about book was the race and gender of author to know whether it was thoroughly dismissible without even being read and they could go to instead wallow in their own delusional oppression, and it has only gotten worse since then, and what we are doing is breeding the grounds for I fear, Civil War because students are being taught to hate, to hate the greatest works of western civilization, and frankly to hate east each other. From the moment a student steps on a college campus today as a freshman or a fresh person, I should probably say, the bureaucracy is determined to drum in to that student's head, identity politics, which says, he is either a victim or an oppressor. Oppressors are obviously most famously white males, heterosexual white males. The only way they can get out to of their oppressor category is to become an ally - an ally of the oppressed. The most preposterous delusion of all of this is student actually believe that they are at risk of their lives from circumambient racism and sexism on a college campus. This is an environment that in traditional liberal terms is the most tolerant environment in human history for society's traditionally marginalized groups. Yet, there is a massive bureaucracy dedicated to cultivating in students this delusional sense of their own oppression, which then they carry with them, it's a chip on their shoulder that prevents them from seizing the magnificent opportunities to learn, to read every book that is ever been written, and they carry this chip, this delusional victimology into world at large, and they are going around blaming American institutions of endemic racism and sexism, when that no longer is true.
https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/heather-macdonald-warns-us-colleges-are-breeding-hate The entire interview is well worth watching.john_a_designer
December 10, 2018
December
12
Dec
10
10
2018
08:10 AM
8
08
10
AM
PDT
I think john_a_designer at 4 is probably right that the topic is convenient for exploitation. I say "topic" rather than "issue" because we don't know that any issue is really on the table. Or needs to be, once academics have become SJWs. Increasingly, discussions will degenerate into witch hunts and screaming matches and the science journals will be forced to report on them as if they were pursuits of science knowledge. It's one thing to hire the troll. It's another thing to become him.News
December 10, 2018
December
12
Dec
10
10
2018
03:49 AM
3
03
49
AM
PDT
Race continues to be an issue because it can be exploited by the secular progressive left as a wedge issue to gain political power. That means that there is no real intention of resolving anything.john_a_designer
December 9, 2018
December
12
Dec
9
09
2018
09:24 PM
9
09
24
PM
PDT
That tied my brain in a knot. Just to help me get my bearings, what other questions have the same answer as, "What if I locate you and chop your head off?" Is it specific to queries related to criteria for judging science and detectives who decapitate? What if I locate someone you don't know and chop my own head off? I hope no one starts a thread about this because I'll never get any work done ever again.OldAndrew
December 9, 2018
December
12
Dec
9
09
2018
07:36 PM
7
07
36
PM
PDT
Seversky: Is there any difference between judging science against the principles of social justice activism and judging it against the doctrines of a particular faith? Nothing. But then again, the answer to that question is the same answer as this question: what if I locate you and chop your head off? I say nothing whatsoever. It's all just molecules in motion. Change my mind.mike1962
December 9, 2018
December
12
Dec
9
09
2018
07:03 PM
7
07
03
PM
PDT
Is there any difference between judging science against the principles of social justice activism and judging it against the doctrines of a particular faith? Aren't they both inappropriate measures?Seversky
December 9, 2018
December
12
Dec
9
09
2018
06:17 PM
6
06
17
PM
PDT

Leave a Reply