if they fell afoul of new “diversity” rules:
Today, a new kind of scientist—with corresponding competencies—is being championed. First and foremost is the one who embraces diversity according to the definition du jour, which happens to be gender-identity, at least at the time of this writing (I just checked social media two minutes ago).
Case in point: the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the Geological Society of America (GSA) pulled job ads placed from Brigham Young University (BYU) for a tenure-track faculty position, capitulating to complaints from LGBT activists, that the University’s positions were antithetical to their hallowed notion of diversity. The complaints focused on BYU’s Honor Code—forbidding homosexual conduct among students and staff (certainly a science-stopper).
The concern for many is that in today’s political environment this kind of blacklisting will not stop with the AGU and GSA; and there will be countless other universities – both Evangelical and Catholic—requiring a similar code that will be targeted by these activists.
Emily Morales, “Hooke, Boyle, Pascal, and Newton Need Not Apply” at Salvo blog
One fears that a good deal of the diversity push today isn’t so much about science, really, as about the spoils of science: the appointments, the prestige. Not about living with walruses for years on an ice floe or staring for decades at a remote point in the sky—with no certainty of learning anything of enduring value.
The original main reason that science was so largely the preserve, for centuries, of well-to-do European men (many of whom were clergy or religious brothers) is circumstantial: They were available in considerable numbers in the right places at the right time.*
But for a long time science wasn’t very prestigious so they also had to be dedicated to something beyond personal or group recognition. When recognition becomes very important, it has a way of vastly outstripping achievement. That’s Goodhart’s Law at work.
In this case, we shall see.
Incidentally, Isaac Newton was apparently a Unitarian but this fact, which would have been politically incorrect in his day, was not publicized. Good thing if his religious incorrectness didn’t become an issue, right?
*Note: For the same reasons, a ship’s captain conducted burial services for those who died at sea: Only someone who was literate could read the burial service and enter an accurate note in the ship’s log.
See also: A glimpse at one facet of post-science physics In the post-science world, people can presumably define success according to their own frames of reference, according to their own facts and their own truths.
and
Why it’s so hard to reform peer review
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