
Academics Shouldn't Sell Out Truth for Justice - jeffreyrogers
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/11/academics-truth-justice/574165/?single_page=true
======
i_am_nomad
It takes a certain level of maturity and nuance to understand that people are
complex, multidimensional beings of often contradictory impulses and
principles, and as such, one’s academic contributions can be separated from
whose ass they grabbed. Sadly, maturity and nuance were killed and buried
years ago.

~~~
cowpig
> Sadly, maturity and nuance were killed and buried years ago.

irony

------
sharpneli
Considering that the humanities sometimes have hard time to be taken seriously
at sciences this does not help at all.

One can easily say that it's just politics and not real science if they're
even having that discussion.

(Everyone whose viewpoint was taken into account in the article was from
humanities. No-one was from hard sciences.)

~~~
Zuider
This kind of controversy is intruding on the hard sciences. For one example, a
highly abstract math paper on the greater male variability hypothesis was
blocked from publication and the authors subjected to uncollegial harassment
for purely ideological reasons.

[https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-
a-p...](https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-published-
paper-down-the-memory-hole/)

------
TangoTrotFox
It's sometimes peculiar how quick we are to aim to repeat history,
blisteringly awful history, seemingly with no concern or regard for what we
are doing. The Arab world was once near the top of the world in scholarship
and academic pursuit. Algebra, for instance, being a reference to Ilm _al-
jabr_ wa'l-muḳābala, by Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī. Or there was the House
of Wisdom in Baghdad where scholars were consigned with the responsibility of
translating cultural and scientific works from across the world into Arabic.

But then in a shockingly short period of time that same Arab world started to
place their selected social values above that of the truth, in and of itself.
Perhaps one of the major catalysts for this was Al-Ghazali, and his very well
received ideology laid out in " _The Incoherence of the Philosophers._ " [1]
Formerly a philosopher himself, that work is where Al-Ghazali began to deny
all science and reality and replace it with religion. He declared that there
was no such thing as causality. When a leaf catches fire it is not because it
was exposed to fire - rather god chose to transit the fire from the torch to
the leaf at that very moment. And again when it deteriorates into ash - that
is once again not a natural process, but rather the explicit and active will
of god acting at that very moment.

The implication of this is that there is no truth to be sought, there is no
connection in nature, there is nothing except for god. The reason for this is
because it answered any sort of inconvenient questions for religion, by
attacking the questions (and those that pose them) directly. And in a short
period of time the Arabic world was set on the path that sent it away from
academic pursuit and knowledge and onto the path that's brought it to where it
is today. Imagine what a different place the world would be today had they
instead remained focused on the truth, and the golden age of Islam persisted
indefinitely.

Social values must never take precedent over truth, no matter how undesirable
the truth may be to hear, or how undesirable the speakers of said truth may
be.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incoherence_of_the_Philoso...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incoherence_of_the_Philosophers)

------
alexandercrohde
There are unlimited mechanisms to try to "punish" somebody who violates your
moral code. Each mechanism has a certain effectiveness, a certain fallibility,
and a certain inconvenience.

For example you can boycott, you can badmouth, you can arrest, you can refuse
to acknowledge, you can socially ostracize, you can wield professional power
(e.g. give a bad grade to), you can disrupt their speaking engagements, you
can physically attack, you can sue.

I think we can all agree some mechanisms are reasonable, some are
unreasonable, and some are worth debating.

I'm glad this discussion is becoming conscious and deliberate.

------
sp332
> But no substantive imperative to cite people based on their social cachet
> exists.

Well the article is pretty disingenuous on this point. Prestige in academia is
heavily based on citations. It's insane that serial abusers are protected by
their institutions and allowed to continue their abuse without suffering a
dent in their social standing. If there were other ways to hurt a person's
reputation, as there certainly should be, removing citations probably wouldn't
be favored by as many people.

~~~
maceurt
I mean, the shame of the abuse or the justice of law should be the one that
handles punishment of crimes. To try and shame people not to cite or use
scholarly work from people with controversy sourrounding them is sinister in
its very nature. It is falling to mob rule instead of logic and reason.
Science should be subject to logic and reason and not be infected with social,
political, and culutural. Obviously science does not exist in a vacuum, but
still.

~~~
sp332
Then think of how much scientific inquiry has been discouraged because people
don't want to work under those conditions. It just weirds me out that the
article quotes people about terrible behavior from professors, but doesn't put
any blame there or with the authorities who could do something about it. It
just blames everyone who responds for doing it wrong.

When authorities aren't doing their jobs, we're left with vigilantism or
nothing.

~~~
eiaoa
>> To try and shame people not to cite or use scholarly work from people with
controversy sourrounding them is sinister in its very nature. It is falling to
mob rule instead of logic and reason.

> Then think of how much scientific inquiry has been discouraged because
> people don't want to work under those conditions.

That's an entirely different issue. What we're talking about here is work that
exists, but is not cited due to it's authorship. If Adolf Hitler himself had
correctly proven Goldbach's Conjecture, is the proof itself so inseparable
from his other actions that it should be rejected with them?

~~~
sp332
Yes, that was a response to "Science should be subject to logic and reason"
etc. To your hypothetical example, I think Hitler's reputation is pretty low
right now and it's not necessary to deny him citations just so he won't get
more cachet. Her article was about professors who are "jerks", "whose academic
sexism hasn’t risen to the level of actionable correction".

------
cafard
An article long ago in The New Republic by Richard Rorty remarked that most of
Bertrand Russell's better philosophical ideas came from Frege, whose non-
philosophical opinions were not of a nature to please Russell's admirers.

~~~
Zuider
To be specific, Frege, was quite anti-Semitic in his private writings.

------
creaghpatr
You have to read the full article, if you believe in scientific advancement
you will be absolutely terrified.

------
ericmcer
After reading this I looked into James Watson (discoverer of DNA) more. He was
blacklisted for some statements in an interview, many display his implicit
biases, but one part was:

"there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of
peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have
evolved identically."

That statement kinda embodies the darkest part of this issue. It makes sense,
evolutionary differences between peoples extend beyond skin color, eye-shape,
etc., but at the same time it is a can of worms that can never be opened
(again). It is definitely an issue of science where justice is more important
than truth.

My personal take is that we will all inevitably be a light brown shade in ~200
years and we should make that transition as enjoyable and smooth as possible.
Hopefully this doesn't get down-voted to heck :o

~~~
UncleMeat
The problem is that this statement presupposes that no research has been done.
Yes, if we were starting fresh we wouldn't want to assume that all populations
evolved identically. But we aren't starting fresh. There has been decades of
quality research on race both from a biological and social setting. What we
observe through evidence rather than conjecture is that the hypothesis that
people of certain races are genetically less intelligent than other people is
not supported by evidence.

Justice and truth are aligned here.

~~~
opwieurposiu
Unfortunately you have it exactly backwards. Watson's conjecture is indeed
supported by studies and evidence. Why don't you start with the Minnesota
adoption study:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption_Study)

The fact that so many believe such evidence does not exist just further
demonstrates the danger of suppressing science due to ideology.

~~~
octonion
The cited study has an obvious and large flaw - a black child raised by an
advantage white family is still black, and society will still treat them as a
black child.

------
weberc2
The appropriate solution is to make sure that sexism and racism factor into an
academic's evaluations (not sure, but I would guess this is already the case
given how many departments demand faculty pledges to 'diversity' and
'inclusivity'), rather than polluting scholarship. It seems like what these
academics really want is a sort of impunity for their vigilantism. This is bad
for the regular reasons vigilantism is bad--someone can visit their view of
"justice" on another person without due process--but also because it hurts
scholarship.

~~~
sp332
This is considered by Usher in her article.

 _How would a journal editor draw the line between scholars not wanting to
cite their rival in the field and not wanting to cite a sexist jerk? Would you
have to provide a detailed accounting of the sexism and gender bias to
persuade the editor?

In short, trying to avoid citing someone because you don’t like them is
impossible if their work is important in your field. Perhaps it’s just adding
insult to injury when the guy is a sexist jerk._

------
Alex3917
Why don't academics just create their own version of a nofollow link?

~~~
ummonk
Yeah, that seems like it would be ideal. Both for this sort of issue and also
the issue where for example a paper is debunking a shoddy previous paper but
has to cite that previous paper in the process.

------
Folcon
I might be being dense here, but how is this different to plagiarism?

~~~
sp332
“If you can avoid teaching/discussing [Searle’s work], that may be the best
strategy.”

“In the case of a sexist jerk, you are often left without recourse: Cite him,
or look like you don’t know what you’re talking about to reviewers and
readers.”

This is about removing the content, not just the credit.

~~~
modzu
tell me this "usher" person is not an actual academic, please. they sound
12...

~~~
sp332
Dr. Usher received her Ph.D. and MA from the University of Southern
California's Annenberg School for Communication and her AB from Harvard (magna
cum laude) [https://media.illinois.edu/nikki-
usher](https://media.illinois.edu/nikki-usher)

It probably helps to read the paper [https://www.chronicle.com/article/Should-
We-Still-Cite-the/2...](https://www.chronicle.com/article/Should-We-Still-
Cite-the/244450) and maybe her response to TFA
[https://twitter.com/nikkiusher/status/1058032795803639808](https://twitter.com/nikkiusher/status/1058032795803639808)

~~~
modzu
ouch. didn't help (but thank you for the references)

------
mar77i
For this comment I'll pretend I'm writing this on a Linux installed on
ReiserFS. You get the idea.

------
ummonk
I'm usually anti-SJW, but if someone is a sexist ass who doesn't acknowledge
women's contributions to the field, why should those women acknowledge his
contributions either?

~~~
justinjlynn
Because academia shouldn't be a tit-for-tat game played by people who wish to
score points against each other in a game of judge-jury-executioner.

If you don't condone a particular colleagues attitudes or actions or reported
actions - by all means please do say so in your footnotes and citations. Make
sure your colleagues know of your discomfort and that they should also be
discomforted by people like that being in a place where they are enabled to
contribute to the field - when they should be driven from it.

However, under no account should one defraud one's editors and/or reviewers -
or your colleagues who trust your work has been reviewed and approved by them.
To do so is plainly dishonest and deprives those people of their right to
autonomy. You aren't forced to cite, but then they don't have to approve - or
read - either.

If you have to lie and cheat to people in order to get your way - perhaps what
your doing is wrong, because you're certainly doing wrong to those people.

At what point do you opt out of a system with which you disagree? Is it
morally acceptable to commit an unjust act to achieve what you believe to be
justice? Is it acceptable to venerate vigilantism - to be a vigilante?

I would say that it certainly isn't - in precisely the same way using unjustly
or immorally obtained data is unacceptable.

------
gweinberg
Shouldn't have edited "social" out of the title. "Social justice" and
"justice" are unrelated concepts.

~~~
thetrumanshow
The article never uses the standalone word "justice", and it is always
preceded by "social". Therefore, your suggestion that the title is incorrect
is spot on.

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crimsonalucard
There's a fine line between truth and justice. Nothing illustrated this more
than the movie, The Dark Knight.

~~~
purplerabbit
Did you mean to be hilarious here or was that unintentional?

~~~
crimsonalucard
I'm 100% srs.

