
Science Denial Won’t End Sexism - andrenth
https://quillette.com/2019/03/11/science-denial-wont-end-sexism/
======
YeGoblynQueenne
>> Last week, Nature, one of the top scientific journals in the world, ran a
review written by Lise Eliot of Gina Rippon’s new book, The Gendered Brain:
The New Neuroscience that Shatters the Myth of the Female Brain

For the record, I posted that article on HN 9 days ago. It was almost
immediately flagged (going by the fact it collected 18 points). This one seems
to have lasted at least twice as long - and I don't understand why. In terms
of a controversy, an article in Nature is the definition of an
uncontroversial, respected source, whereas Quillette is rather the exact
opposite. If a serious debate can be had, it should be over an article on
Nature, not an article on Quillette.

I don't want to put this in words like "why was my article downvoted", which
would sound too much as if I'm nursing some kind of petty grudge, but the same
thing has happened to other articles I've posted previously on matters of
gender equality in the sciences, while, for example, articles about James
Damore are left alone. Is James Damore less controversial than Gina Rippon?

I must say that I do get a strong feeling that one side of this issue is
treated very differently than the other by a significant proportion of users
on HN.

~~~
erentz
A lot of articles on gender get the same flagging treatment. (FWIW Damore is
far from uncontroversial here on HN.) I suspect sometimes the flagging
treatment is because these articles can attract heated (often emotional)
debate, and this might be why some flaggers flag them, to avoid that and just
stick to tech stuff.

That said I’m always interested in seeing these articles and debates myself,
mostly because it’s a pretty important issue in tech and we won’t resolve it
if we don’t talk about it. But it’s hard to do.

This post may have survived this long just by luck, I wouldn’t read to much
into it.

But you can certainly talk about it here now since this article is in response
to your article. (One question I might’ve asked about your original would be,
if male and female brains are really the same then how come rates of certain
mental illnesses vary so much between the sexes?)

Edit: I realized I originally wrote “far from contoversial” it should be
“uncontoversial” but I think that was understandabld from the context.

~~~
drilldrive
>FWIW Damore is far from controversial here on HN.

Just to be clear, in what way? Anti-Google pro-Damore I presume?

~~~
erentz
From what I’ve seen (so it’s anecdotal) they seemed to attract emotional
debate, and lots of downvotes, and flags, and people making throwaways before
commenting, etc. In that way controversial. To my mind when you see lots of
downvoted comments it’s a pretty good sign of a controversial topic because I
never usually see that on purely tech topics ok HN. From which I infer on tech
topics a bad comment doesn’t get upvoted and sinks because good comments rise.
On non tech topics like gender comments (bad or good) can quickly be grayed
out by downvotes. I suppose it might be an interesting hypothesis to test
somehow if historical HN posts could be classified into topic and we had the
voting and flagging data.

------
natchiketa
To those who are put off by the article, it might help to understand that,
while Dr. Soh has a PhD in psychology, she is also a political commentator,
writes science articles, and is a podcast host.

Like a lot of Intellectual Dark Web folks, it's best to check out a long-form
discussion — like a lecture[0] or a podcast[1] — to get a better sense of the
ideas they're trying to communicate.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BSb92OYA0g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BSb92OYA0g)

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zere8WRepGo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zere8WRepGo)

EDIT: Add a second podcast link

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkhDZMwR9eQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkhDZMwR9eQ)

------
Eleopteryx
Statements like "In a world where world-class scientists’ merit is now
determined by their sex and skin color—with white men’s work being dismissed
in the name of promoting women and minorities" have a heavy political bias and
the article isn't even concerned with supporting that point, it's just dropped
in there like it's a fact.

~~~
crowdpleaser
I think I can provide evidence of this, but I'd like to use a double-crux and
put both of our beliefs on the table.

If I can show you criticism of a scientists' work in a natural / mathematical
science field that emphasizes the (white or male) identity of the scientist in
question, would you be prepared to concede that there is progressive
scientific denialism and progressivism can be at odds with scientific inquiry?

------
deogeo
"In a world where world-class scientists’ merit is now determined by their sex
and skin color—with white men’s work being dismissed in the name of promoting
women and minorities"

A bit off-topic, but talking about 'minorities' when discussing world-wide
topics such as science always seemed so bizarre to me. No single
race/ethnicity represents over 50% of the world population, so isn't everyone
a minority? Or does only the US count?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Let's call the country X. _In country X_ , the majority of scientists are of
race Y. If scientists are viewed as having more merit because they are not of
race Y, that's a problem, _no matter what the values of X and Y are_.

~~~
deogeo
But the articles (not just this one, but very nearly all of them) don't talk
about X and Y - they talk about "white people" and "minorities", and
stubbornly pretend the two groups are distinct.

A quick search (though I couldn't find any particularly authoritative sources)
says white people are ~16% of the global population, behind both south and
east asians. To keep calling everyone else 'minorities' is more than a little
US/Eurocentric. Especially when they put phrases such as "In a _world_ where
_world_ -class...", implying they're not limiting themselves to 'country X'

~~~
tathougies
Oh stop it. Asian here. Discrimination happens in individual societies. The
united states and Asian countries do not share societies. It is clear from the
language and website of the article that it is targeted towards the USA

~~~
nkurz
> It is clear from the language and website of the article that it is targeted
> towards the USA

Maybe, but since the author is Canadian, and the website is Australian, I'm
surprised you would be so confident of this.

------
jonnybgood
The more I read these kind of articles the more I realize that it really has
nothing to do with science, or science denial. Nobody in these kinds of
discussions really cares about the science. It’s all about politics and
ideology.

Why aren’t these same people who are talking about science denial never speak
up and make a fuss about the denial of climate change by a huge swath of the
US population including the elected (e.g. POTUS)?

~~~
erentz
> Why aren’t these same people who are talking about science denial never
> speak up and make a fuss about the denial of climate change by a huge swath
> of the US population including the elected (e.g. POTUS)?

1\. Fallacy of relative privation? Nobody can talk about X because Y is worse.
Nobody should fix X until everybody has fixed Y first.

2\. Fighting ideologically driven decision should be a good thing if you’re
concerned about the ideologically driven decision making going on in our
government. Don’t pick and choose. That’s hypocracy. (There’s at least one
person sometimes unfortunately (mis?)labeled as being in the IDW who is
terrible at this, a big gaping load of hypocracy shows up anytime religion or
Israel comes into play. His name rhymes with Sen Bhapiro.)

------
cbanek
"I don’t deny that sexism exists, but sexism today is not so severe that it
stands in the way of a woman achieving a career in science—or any field—if she
really wants to."

Uh, source? Seems like the article just throws this out there without any
citation, proof, or even argument. I'm not sure I can agree with such a
statement.

~~~
natchiketa
I took that as her speaking from her own personal experience. She's a doctor
of psychology who specialized in sex research — her PhD thesis was titled
"Functional and Structural Neuroimaging of Paraphilic Hypersexuality in Men".
She worked in academia for about ten years until she became dissatisfied with
the influence that political correctness had on her ability to fund her
research. So you could say that she achieved a career in science, until she no
longer wanted to.

You could argue that she failed to account for the fact that readers of this
article don't necessarily know who she is or what her own experience has been.

~~~
cbanek
Or the fact that just because she did it doesn't mean that anyone can do it? I
guess if you haven't, you just need to "want it more."

~~~
natchiketa
Sure, that too. Standing on its own, it's purely anecdotal.

------
undoware
I stopped reading at "social justice bandwagon".

Without interacting with the central claims of this article, which seem to
hark back to the breathless realm of nineties _Psychology Today_ grade
neursci, I believe I can safely ignore any discussion about science that is
basically just more culture war conturbations in sci-sauce.

If your concern is that science is being polticized, don't lead with your
politics. It's just a food fight at this point.

~~~
phonypc
That phrase doesn't appear until nearly the end of the article. It read to me
as not particularly political.

~~~
undoware
I don't see how either how (a) where it occurs in the article body or (b) what
flavours of politics are vivid to you, and which, in David Foster Wallace's
memorable phrase, taste like the inside of your own mouth, would be relevant
to whether this aricle constitutes unbiased scientific discourse on the matter
at hand. I don't mean to be rude.

~~~
phonypc
You said "don't lead with your politics." The author did not lead with their
politics. (And IMO didn't include politics at all, other than to say politics
don't belong in science.

