
Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole - alexmat
https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-published-paper-down-the-memory-hole/
======
ve55
When opponents think about how 'damaging' papers like this are, they should
also consider how damaging things like this are to the field in general, and
how they may cause a lot of second-order harm.

Many that I know have begun to distrust areas of academia much more recently,
and when they see scenarios like this over and over it doesn't help. We all
know that no one will support you for saying the truth if it won't go down
well politically. The end result of this is that Academia will only publish
the 'right' results, but it will not matter as few will trust them to begin
with.

After reading the full article I find it funny they decide to critique the
paper by calling it 'pseudoscientific'. I'd like to play the same game back at
them and simply call their beliefs 'pseudoscientific' and proceed to pretend
like they are discredited and don't warrant further inspection.

If you keep crying wolf, eventually no one will believe you when you really
need them to. You can't go against truth forever.

~~~
api
It's a tough issue because both sides are right. Recent political and social
events show that the general public is not yet able to discuss issues like
this rationally and maturely. Yet at the same time science must be free to
inquire without political restriction. I do not have an answer.

~~~
antidesitter
You are ambivalent about whether this article should have been censored in the
way it was?

------
verylongname
Assuming the basic facts claimed by the author are correct, this is really
bad. I'm not referring to the behavior attributed to the U Chicago professor
and her husband, either. That might be exaggerated by the author (the account
is only one side of the story) and, even if it isn't, strong feelings are not
uncommon when it comes to controversial topics. Systems should work even when
individuals or small groups of people behave badly.

The scandal here is the journal editors deviating from their standard
procedures. There are procedures in place for re-evaluating articles which
have been published or accepted for publication, and for retracting them if
they don't meet proper standards. If the members of editorial boards don't
think those procedures are proper, they should work to change them, or,
barring that, resign. What they did instead undermines the credibility of the
journals. How do we know that usual procedures are followed in other cases
when they clearly weren't in this one (assuming the facts are as stated in the
post)? Are there articles that are accepted for publication because of
external pressure, over the objection of reviewers and editors? Are there
other papers which have been disappeared without the expected retraction
notices? What a disgrace.

~~~
thraway180306
The process, as told by the author, was that one of the editors invited to
submit, and three weeks later it was published upon which the rest of the
editorial board took notice and threatened resignation.

By that telling it was published practically on the spot, especially for
mathematics where things are famously glacially slow. Browsing through the
journal one mostly sees submission and publication dates separated by many
months. Last published paper in the current volume was received over a year
before. But this paper made it in three weeks.

So it was fast tracked by an editor. Editorial board could take issue with
that, arguing it haven't gone by the review properly or whatever the usual
procedures before publication are. It might have been put up on the web by the
managing editor (since on leave and replaced in the interim) or whomever had
the admin password, but editorial board to whom the journal's reputation
really belongs hasn't deemed it to be their publication.

Of the timeline, author says he's uploaded to ArXiv in September, while by
that time he was on revision 3 of
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04184](https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04184) uploaded
in March. What was added in September however was a piece of journalism in an
appendix, that then disappeared in most recent revisions. Last revision was
posted just 2 weeks ago, apparently there still were arguments to strengthen
(or journalism to remove) before Quillette ran the story.

There he paints his work as "science" and some people including the editorial
board as "activists". By Google however appears the same Ted Hill founded a
site "to promote campus activism in general" and "to serve as a focal point
for organizing activists" where he chronicles his long history of activism
[http://www.motherfunctor.org/CompleteHistory2013.php](http://www.motherfunctor.org/CompleteHistory2013.php)

~~~
haberman
According to the article, publication was approved by Editor-In-Chief Mark
Steinberger, who founded the magazine 25 years ago.

The members of the editorial board did not just threaten resignation, but
(according to the article) threatened to "harass the journal until it died."

~~~
thraway180306
I find these threats doubtful, I don't see the editorial board wasting their
life on sustained activism over the years chasing remnants of something they
helped to create and what would be served a deathly blow by their resignation
already. The author however has a history of activism I haven't looked into,
but that usually involves a spin. There's also the possibility of his
correspondents' misguided politeness by throwing him something to chew on to
diffuse the blame. Mathematical Intelligencer editor could be seen as doing
that in a somewhat more intelligent way blaming the possibility of
"international hype".

As for the description of alleged emotional states involved, I'm oblivious and
not seeing the relevance. Recounting the events and actions taken sufficed for
a horrific story. The author deemed it important however to make it into
something even more colourful with threats of some unspecified future actions
(how does one harass a journal?).

The managing editor you speak of went on leave and has an interim replacement.
I can see that entirely appropriate if only because of how retraction was
handled by deletion and overwriting, instead of a proper notice in place. This
was extremely unprofessional administration, which is usually a duty of the
managing editor solely. The other possibility I described is that it wasn't
really published the usual way, which is even more damning.

------
abecedarius
This seems new, and passed over in all the comments so far:

> None of them had ever heard of a paper in any field being disappeared after
> formal publication. Rejected prior to publication? Of course. Retracted?
> Yes, but only after an investigation, the results of which would then be
> made public by way of explanation. But simply disappeared? Never. If a
> formally refereed and published paper can later be erased from the
> scientific record and replaced by a completely different article, without
> any discussion with the author or any announcement in the journal, what will
> this mean for the future of electronic journals?

I'd had the impression online journals normally had some plan for archiving.
So insiders were left out of the threat model?

~~~
jessriedel
> Retracted? Yes, but only after an investigation, the results of which would
> then be made public by way of explanation.

Just to clarify: when papers are retracted, they are _not_ normally erased
from the database and replaced with an explanation. See this Nature paper for
an example; the entire paper is kept available online, just as before, except
that the words "RETRACTED" is stamped on each PDF page

[https://www.nature.com/articles/nature10167](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature10167)

Likewise, nothing published to the arXiv is ever removed. A retraction notice
can be added as an update, but the complete version history is always
available.

Articles are much more likely to be "un-published" (wiped from the archives)
in journalism than scientific publications.

~~~
thraway180306
Sorry, but the ArXiv does have a moderation team and stuff is being removed.
Alike, most online journals remove stuff by wholly replacing it with a
retraction notice. Journals printed on paper issue retraction letters and
leave it at that, but some also do restrict online access afterwards.

What no journal does is to replace erroneously published article with another
entirely unrelated one in-place. This is a very poor behaviour on the part of
the managing editor here, who is currently on leave and replaced.

Nature is unusual, for example they publish letters complaining about ArXiv's
moderation, beside publishing a lot of editorial and opinion stuff.

~~~
jessriedel
> Alike, most online journals remove stuff by wholly replacing it with a
> retraction notice

Can you provide a copy, or even examples? I can pull up dozens of Science,
Nature, and Physical Review retracted articles to support my point. If those
huge families of journals behave as I say, on what basis are you claiming
"most" journal don't?

> What no journal does is to replace erroneously published article with
> another entirely unrelated one in-place.

Did anyone ever suggest this was the case?

> the ArXiv does have a moderation team and stuff is being removed

I know several members of the moderation team. They of course reject some
articles at the time of submission, but I'm not aware of any being retracted
and un-published after being posted publically. Can you please link to such a
retraction, or to evidence of this in the Internet Archive?

------
oflannabhra
I had not heard of Quillette until Tyler Cowen interviewed [0] Claire Lehmann,
the founding editor. This article, and the precipitating events, fit perfectly
into Quillette’s _raison d’etre_ [1].

[0] - [https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/claire-
lehmann-t...](https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/claire-lehmann-
tyler-cowen-political-correctness-social-norms-australian-
culture-e52e2c08c629)

[1] - [https://quillette.com/about/](https://quillette.com/about/)

~~~
duskwuff
Indeed. The suspicious part of me wonders if the authors deliberately
engineered this situation.

~~~
wmf
If the authors got fired would you still suspect they engineered it? In
reality this kind of stuff spirals out of control chaotically so it's
incredibly risky to do it on purpose.

------
rebuilder
Does anyone have an outside source on this? The writeup linked seems pretty
one-sided, and the whole naive-surprise-meets-hardnosed-doggedness tone
doesn't seem very genuine. So I'm left wondering how accurate a portrayal of
events this is.

~~~
zebraflask
Exactly. It's quite a story, but something in it doesn't ring true.

------
jfoutz
Reminds me of
[https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/vl/notes/dijkstra.html](https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/vl/notes/dijkstra.html)

------
quotemstr
This disgraceful behavior from academia is shredding the credibility of the
entire enterprise.

How is anyone supposed to trust _any_ unintuitive conclusions with expensive
implications --- for example, on climate change --- when the academic
community has demonstrated a propensity to shriek at and censor unorthodox
ideas instead of contest them on the merits?

~~~
briandear
This is specificly why I am a climate skeptic. Not a denier, mind you, but a
skeptic when it comes to anything purporting to be “settled science.” It’s
specifically because there is a strong resistance to anything damaging to the
status quo, as supported by grant funding and, to a lesser extent, political
agenda.

Frankly, it’s hard to trust academia on controversial topics.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
What we need to distinguish here is what exactly we're talking about being
"settled science".

Is "human CO2 emissions are causing an increased greenhouse effect and ocean
acidification" settled science? Yes.

Is "how much will that affect us and the planet at different time scales"
settled science? Not completely, no. The climate system is incredibly hard to
model.

What scientists are doing in the latter regard is making their best estimates,
seeing that these predict very bad things happening, and then saying we should
work as hard as possible to reduce emissions.

Which, incidentally, nobody is actually doing.

~~~
quotemstr
Well, reduce emissions and more seriously consider geoengineering. A lot of
otherwise-reasonable climate researchers seem to have an unduly negative view
of potential direct interventions in the climate.

~~~
PeterStuer
A lot of otherwise-reasonable climate researchers seem to have an unduly
negative view of potential direct interventions in the climate, and for good
reason. Scientists know that theory and practice often are very different. You
can't 'experiment' with global scale geo-engineering.

To put it in HN terms: you're deploying untested code for a global scale life
support system written by a first-project-junior in an experimental new
technology stack directly to production without having a test or staging
environment, and there are no backups.

~~~
08-15
> Scientists know that theory and practice often are very different.

Obviously! But the theory of Anthropogenic Catastrophic Global Climate Change
is different. This one is beyond reproach and matches practice perfectly.

------
traject_
Wow, I didn't know that academia was getting this bad; what happened to
letting the truth be debated a la the Socratic dialogue in the academia of all
places!

~~~
quotemstr
What happened? I call it valence hijacking.

Sometimes, a thing --- a word, an institution, a bit of history --- has
cultural power. It's surrounded with an aura (or valence, if you will) of
gravitas and mystique, usually accumulated over decades, or millennia.

Acrivists notice that these things have cultural power and hijack them,
turning them into something useful for the cause while denying that anything
has changed. Consider, for example, how many people claim, in all earnestness,
that disagreement is "literal violence". Disagreement is obviously not
violence, but by using this word, activists can "steal" some of the emotion
attached to the word "violence" and weild it for their cause.

This hijacking works for a while, until people catch on. At that point,
activists, like locusts, move on to areas not yet stripped bare of meaning.

The same mechanism that at micro scale operates on words operates at macro
scale on institutions.

Academia in particular has been ravaged by this process: huge parts of the
academy no longer practice anything resembling science. Their studies do not
reproduce. Their papers go unread. Their lectures become diatribes. Their
students become zealots. The forms are present, but the substance is gone.

This article describes the early stages of such a hijacking.

~~~
cosmon0t
I like that term, "valence hijacking" and I don't disagree. Ultimately I think
we as a society are approaching a pivotal point where any body (individual or
institution) are so afraid of a drag through the public square for their
statements/image that we have created de facto censorship on what is
"appropriate" and what "is not", which might have negative repercussions on
what is allowed under freedom of expression and free discourse.

~~~
mirimir
Well hey, there you have it! That's precisely why you see "mirimir" as the
author of this comment. Because, you know, my meatspace persona can't tolerate
anything at all controversial. I learned my lesson on Usenet :( And the
climate is way^N worse now.

------
leiroigh
Skim the preprint
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04184](https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04184) ,
especially section 7.

The article is not fit for publication in a mathematical journal, it is
cosplaying as math.

To cite:

> The following simple proposition may be well known, but since no reference
> is known to the author, a proof is included for completeness.

>Proposition 7.1. N(µ, σ1) is more variable than N(µ, σ2) if and only if σ1 >
σ2.

>Proof: [lots of lines]

In a real mathematical paper, this claim would not be glorified into a
numbered proposition, and it would not merit a proof; this amount of
mathematical work is the distance between one line and the next. I would not
even expect students to provide a proof for such utter trivialities in a
homework assignment.

Author should have submitted to PNAS instead, or written a blogpost.

~~~
js8
"The article is not fit for publication in a mathematical journal, it is
cosplaying as math."

It's not up to you to decide, but up to the reviewers and editors of the
journal where it was sent for publication. And according to what we know, it
was accepted.

I downvoted you, for this reason.

~~~
thraway180306
Sorry, but it is for everybody to decide. Reviewers don't have a sacred
sanction and exclusive right to judge. Many a time in cases of plagiarism I
worked through I've met with this argument from the accused authors. It boils
down to that I have no right to question basic decency because only reviewers
are entitled to pass judgement on that and they already did.

Also from the description, which is not impartial being by the author, it is
admitted it was snuck into an online journal by one of its editors. We don't
know anything about the nature of peer review in this case other than when the
wider board of editors got a know of that, majority of them allegedly
threatened to resign.

It is however a very bad form by the managing editor to publish another
article in the place of the other, even if that one was decided to be
published erroneously. NYJM journal page says he's on leave and ceded his
duties to an interim replacement.

------
tasubotadas
I just love this new concept of inclusivity by exclusivity.

And what are those people thinking? They are seriously undermining their
credibility in the long term. Imagine this in 50 years - whenever you would
mention something about gender-inequality you would be taken as a tin-foiled
freak.

~~~
jey
> whenever you would mention something about gender-inequality you would be
> taken as a tin-foiled freak.

Are you sure? We won't be allowed to acknowledge differences in average adult
height or differences in the ability to carry children?

------
userbinator
The suppression of uncomfortable truths is not new; it seems almost like a
religion and reminds me of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair)

------
epx
I have observed empirically GMVH in cats. Female cats were more "standard" in
behavior, and held their own much more consistently. (This is NOT to say that
they were run-of-the-mill; every one of them had pretty different
personalities. I still miss Maria, my Siamese cat. Hope reincarnation exists.)

The male cats varied from totally dumb to extremely intelligent. One cat
"Negro" was almost like a monkey, he managed to walk on my shoulders around my
head, while most cats are afraid of being held this high. But he ran the wrong
gay when my dad was parking the car and was run over ;( Pretty dumb error for
a cat that was so intelligent. An idiot-savant cat, perhaps?

~~~
YuriNiyazov
You are getting downvoted because you included the name of your cat which to
an American-native audience means something quite different than a Portuguese-
or Spanish- native audience.

~~~
epx
Oh... damn. But I won't edit.

------
opwieurposiu
Amie Wilkinson has managed to do many times more harm to the image of women in
science then this paper ever could.

~~~
mirimir
Well, that's going too far, I think. She comes off as extremely
unprofessional, but there are lots of unprofessional men, as well.

------
no_identd
Here's a blog post discussing this:

[https://gowers.wordpress.com/2018/09/09/has-an-
uncomfortable...](https://gowers.wordpress.com/2018/09/09/has-an-
uncomfortable-truth-been-suppressed/)

Here's a "Statement addressing unfounded allegations." by the Mathematical
Intelligencer:

[https://math.uchicago.edu/~wilkinso/Statement.html](https://math.uchicago.edu/~wilkinso/Statement.html)

And here's a "Statement in response to Ted Hill's unfounded allegations." by
the New York Journal of Mathematics:

[https://www.math.uchicago.edu/~farb/statement](https://www.math.uchicago.edu/~farb/statement)

------
DanAndersen
Direct arxiv link to the preprint in question:
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04184](https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04184)

Kudos to the author for being brave enough to detail these events. Academia
and the process of science has enough blind spots without needing activists in
the mix to add their own.

>“Several colleagues,” she wrote, had warned her that publication would
provoke “extremely strong reactions” and there existed a “very real
possibility that the right-wing media may pick this up and hype it
internationally.”

It's as if these people had never heard of the Streisand Effect. What would
have been a stuffy publication of no interest beyond a small circle of curious
researchers is now a public salacious affair.

~~~
jostmey
It looks like a well written paper with some really cool ideas. Too bad about
what happened to it

~~~
AlexCoventry
There is nothing original or subtle about it, and it was blatantly intended by
the _Mathematical Intelligencer_ editor to stir shit up.

~~~
barry-cotter
All of that can be true and Amie Wilkinson's campaign of harassment would
still be vile and disgusting behaviour, unworthy of an adult of any kind. She
got the paper withdrawn from two different journals, and got Dr Tabachnikov to
withdraw his name from the paper.

What do you think of Dr Wilkinson's behaviour? Because that’s what the article
is about, a campaign of harassment from a woman in a position of power.

~~~
AlexCoventry
> What do you think of Dr Wilkinson's behaviour?

I'd need a more authoritative account of it to form a view.

~~~
aunasdfuyb
And what authoritative accounts have you used to dismiss the paper and the
journal editor?

If you believe the editor when they say "I am happy to stir up controversy"
why not also believe them when they say "we could make a real contribution
here"?

~~~
AlexCoventry
> what authoritative accounts have you used to dismiss the paper and the
> journal editor?

I read the paper and drew my own conclusion.

> why not also believe them when they say "we could make a real contribution
> here"?

That snippet in context: "After the Middlebury fracas, in which none of the
protestors had read the book they were protesting, we could make a real
contribution here by insisting that all views be heard." That's just fancy
language for "stir shit up." There's nothing there about the intellectual
merit of Hill's paper, just an unobtainable value that "all views be heard."

People should read the paper to make up their own minds, though. I'm with her,
there.

~~~
antidesitter
> That's just fancy language for "stir shit up."

How so?

> I'm with her, there.

With who?

------
geofft
> _“Our concern,” [the NSF] explained, “is that [this] paper appears to
> promote pseudoscientific ideas that are detrimental to the advancement of
> women in science, and at odds with the values of the NSF.”_

I think this is a rational position to take. In particular I would argue that
whether or not _this_ paper is one of them, I can conceive of _some_ papers
that the NSF should distance itself from quite rationally.

Suppose someone had written a paper showing that, say, scientific reaearch
itself was harmful, that the more research was done, the more we angered the
gods, or something, and so we should limit our research. The authors have
actual evidence to this effect (increasing natural disasters in countries with
nationwide science programs, etc.) and apart from the intuitively-bizarre
hypothesis, nothing is obviously nonsensical with their methods. Still, almost
all scientists think the hypothesis is far-fetched enough that this evidence
isn't nearly strong enough to even put the hypothesis into play. Also the
hypothesis happens to align with a political plank of the Yellow Party, one of
the major political parties that believes in not angering the gods and
reducing NSF funding.

I think the NSF would be justified in quashing this paper early instead of
letting it play out in the marketplace of ideas, because of the risks to the
marketplace of ideas _itself_ if the paper is put to the debate it otherwise
deserves and becomes popular on Yellow-leaning non-scientific media.

At that point we are just trying to figure out where the line is. Science, in
the sense of the project of humanity to do research about the world, _does_
have values of its own; it is not inherently unscientific for the NSF to ever
object to a paper that is at odds with its values.

~~~
haberman
> I think the NSF would be justified in quashing this paper early instead of
> letting it play out in the marketplace of ideas, because of the risks to the
> marketplace of ideas _itself_ if the paper is put to the debate it otherwise
> deserves

What about the risk to the marketplace of ideas if certain ideas can be
quashed by authorities for being distasteful? Galileo being the canonical
example of this.

> it is not inherently unscientific for the NSF to ever object to a paper that
> is at odds with its values.

Science investigates empirical facts about the world. How can a fact be at
odds with a value?

Facts describe the world as it is. Values describe what we think is important,
and how we ought to act. Discovering a fact about the natural world does not
inherently say anything about what is right, moral, or good.

------
scythe
Interesting. I strongly disagree with the author's attempt to connect his
experience with the Damore fracas. Damore's "manuscript" comprised a number of
weakly-justified claims on a variety of subjects in psychology and sociology,
reaching far beyond the GMVH, and was furthermore directly critical both of
the hiring policies of his employer (!!) and of inclusiveness initiatives in
the technology industry more generally. By contrast, the paper by Hill et al
provides a single argument about a specific topic and downplays the political
implications (to the extent it mentions them at all).

The paper is not without at least one obvious mistake:

> If gender differences in selectivity have been decreasing and are now less
> significant in some species than they were in prehistoric times, then this
> theory could also predict that the gender difference in variability in those
> species has also been decreasing. One recent meta-analysis found empirical
> evidence of exactly that trend in humans, reporting “The gender difference
> in variability has reduced substantially over time within the United States

Gender variability over the 240 years of the existence of the United States is
probably not a good proxy for gender variability over the 5000 years from the
beginning of literate societies to the present.

------
Quanttek
I have to issues with it: The write-up seems very one-sided as can already be
noticed in the language (1) and the paper, as others have pointed out, is not
much of a good scientific paper (2). It seems like the whole controversy was
engineered or, at least, he deliberately tried to provoke/"troll" the academic
community with his paper.

1)

Certain parts of the post ring my alarm bells when it comes to the language
used:

For example: "Fortunately for me, I am now retired and rather less easily
intimidated—one of the benefits of being a Vietnam combat veteran and former
U.S. Army Ranger, I guess."

Also, certain parts don't really seem to pass a smell test:

> Half his board, he explained unhappily, had told him that unless he pulled
> the article, they would all resign and “harass the journal” he had founded
> 25 years earlier “_until it died._” Faced with the loss of his own
> scientific legacy, he had capitulated. “A publication in a dead journal,” he
> offered, “wouldn’t help you.”

I also find it highly suspicious that so many statisticians, fellow
mathematicians etc seem to think of the paper as pseudoscientific. When even
the NSF and editorial boards, institutions traditionally very conservative,
are unhappy, there is probably a reason why

2)

I'm not mathematician but a cursory glance at the text reveals a few very
surprising assumptions. The paper's hypothesis is this:

> SELECTIVITY-VARIABILITY PRINCIPLE. In a species with two sexes A and B, both
> of which are needed for reproduction, suppose that sex A is relatively
> selective, i.e., will mate only with a top tier (less than half ) of B
> candidates [1]. Then from one generation to the next, among subpopulations
> of B with comparable average attributes, those with greater variability will
> tend to prevail over those with lesser variability. Conversely, if A is
> relatively non-selective, accepting all but a bottom fraction (less than
> half ) of the opposite sex, then subpopulations of B with lesser variability
> will tend to prevail over those with comparable means and greater
> variability.

[1] As the author points out himself, this presupposes that there is an
absolute scale of attractiveness. However, he hides that fact (and its facial
controversy) in a bit more convoluted writing: "it will be assumed that to
each individual (or phenotype) in each sex is assigned a numerical
desirability value which reflects its desirability to the opposite sex". There
is only a larger group of people in the top bracket, e.g. 9s, if that is an
absolute value on an universal, absolute scale (i.e. if you pick a set,
numerical point on this graph
[https://i.stack.imgur.com/JWWuw.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JWWuw.png)).
If attractiveness is relative and based on the average for example, your
contextual situation and "top bracket" corresponds to e.g. top 10%, than the
group size doesn't change and the subpopulation with greater variability
doesn't have an advantage. And there is evidence for that when we recall that
most people date people from a similar social background and that ideas of
attractiveness are (partially) based on your background.

Additionally, looking at statistical evidence, we can see that, while there is
a difference in childless partners, - which would imply that one groups dates
more selectively - that difference is not as large as the authors allude to:
[https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2010/27/more-childless-
men](https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2010/27/more-childless-men). And that is
only one crude statistic, best would be number of children per partner.

From the way he writes the paper (and especially this write-up), despite
disclaimers to the contrary, he clearly tries to apply his theory to humans
with women being the selective sex.

~~~
cbolton
I don't see a problem with any of this. For 1) maybe you want to explain more
explicitly what bothers you? I don't find the U.S. army ranger thing
surprising in a personal blog post. If one cannot write this without losing
credibility... now that's something that worries me.

For 2), this looks quite normal in terms of mathematical modelling. You make a
model based on some simplifying hypotheses. You show what result you can get
from these hypotheses. The conclusion is "these results follow from the
hypotheses". You don't pretend to prove that this is how it works in the real
thing, you just give one example of a mechanism that gives the observed
results. This is basically how you propose a new theory. Then your "opponents"
are supposed to show with more scientific work that a) you made a mistake, or
b) your simple theory is a bad model, for example because after changing
hypothesis X to better reflect reality, the model no longer produces the
expected result.

(Your opponents are not supposed to suppress your theory by exploiting their
social connections to prevent publication behind your back. Well I guess there
is a viable argument for suppressing valid research if the "truth" is harmful
to society, but I don't think this was properly argued here).

~~~
joshuamorton
And as others note, that would be a reasonable social science paper, but
"flimsy oversimplified model that might explain a phenomena" does not a
mathematics publication make.

It's not made clear (and others mention) that the paper has changed a lot, so
it's current form is different than it was originally, and it appears that the
author tried to sneak it in to at least one journal, without normal peer
review.

That's not good science.

------
jancsika
> Half his board, he explained unhappily, had told him that unless he pulled
> the article, they would all resign and “harass the journal” he had founded
> 25 years earlier “until it died.”

Half a board of academics skulking to avoid controversy, ok. But becoming a
hive of killer bees threatening to _attacking their own hive_? That doesn't
pass the smell test.

~~~
daodedickinson
Sounds exactly like standard academic politics to me.

------
n4r9
> Google engineer James Damore suggested that several innate biological
> factors, including gender differences in variability, might help explain
> gender disparities in Silicon Valley hi-tech jobs.

Did he? I read it when it came to light and briefly again just now and cannot
see any mention of higher variability amongst men. Psychological differences,
yes, but mostly in the slightly vague "women like people, men like things" or
"women are more neurotic" sense.

I'd also question the premise that Damore was fired _merely_ for bringing up
psychological differences. He also bridged the is/ought gap by making several
demands of Google's hiring practices.

~~~
darawk
> I'd also question the premise that Damore was fired merely for bringing up
> psychological differences. He also bridged the is/ought gap by making
> several demands of Google's hiring practices.

I don't think he made demands. He called for open discussion, and a
reconsideration of aggressive recruitment of women.

~~~
n4r9
Fair point, demand is too strong a term. He specifically attacked funding for
programs for minorities or women, and any hiring practises with emphasis on
diversity, as being "based on false assumptions generated by our biases"
(supposedly the creeping "leftist" ideology that's taking over Google) and
that they "can actually increase race and gender tensions" without backing
this up.

I'm not going to argue against that in this post, but I think imo he went
beyond simply highlighting biological differences.

~~~
darawk
What he was saying was that if these biological differences are real, then we
ought to expect unequal representation in engineering of women. And therefore,
diversity programs that _aim for equal representation_ are misguided and
doomed to failure.

~~~
n4r9
You use the word "therefore", but it is in the connecting logic between your
first and second sentences that Damore brings in a lot more than biological
differences. For example, he claims that the opinions of staff at Google are
clouded by leftist ideology, and that this determines the manner in which it
attempts to increase workplace diversity.

Again, I am neither advocating for or against the truth of this. I'm pointing
out that Damore did _more_ than simply highlight biological differences. I
think that's important because the shallow way it is discussed - e.g. in the
linked article - only leads to divisiveness.

~~~
darawk
So, you think that his statements garnered controversy because he proposed
policy amendments and didn't simply leave things at "innate biological
differences might explain these disparities better than bias"? I think that's
a pretty profound misreading of the situation.

------
aldoushuxley001
Well that's a fine indication of how corrupt our scientific institutions are
these days. Damn shame.

------
octonion
Isn't Quillette a right-wing propaganda outlet? I have them blocked on
Twitter.

~~~
ignoramceisblis
Extraordinary.

"I don't know a particular thing, but I'm censoring it anyway and (because?) I
heard it was "right-wing"."

Read their (succinct) about page to find out more
([http://quillette.com/about/](http://quillette.com/about/)), and consider
reading their articles for yourself, especially before echoing any
disinformation you've acquired from your trusty sources.

Your comment adds nothing to the discussion. Mine only serves to help guide
you in thinking for yourself.

------
another-cuppa
I don't even understand why this is controversial. I've explained this to a
number of women before and none of them have felt hurt. On the contrary, in
fact, it makes them feel better. Humans always fixate on extremes. Men and
women. It's a problem in our society. We always want to see the very best and
we're not interested in others who are still way above average. There are
thousands of women doing great science, engineering, programming etc., but the
_very best_ are almost always men, and it's our fault that we only care about
the very best.

~~~
kupiakos
It may have made the women you've talked to feel better, but personally, I'm
not a fan of the idea that I'm simply less biologically capable than men in
any way.

~~~
js8
"the idea that I'm simply less biologically capable than men in any way"

Nobody (serious) is saying that. First, when this is talked about, it's always
about averages, which are meaningless from individual perspective.

Second, there are obvious biological traits where women are less capable than
men on average, like weightlifting. There are also traits where women are more
capable, like having kids.

These are facts though. You might also not be a fan of idea that "Earth
revolves around Sun", but that's how it is.

On the other hand, I can understand your feeling. I am for example not a fan
of idea that many humans are xenophobes.

~~~
Zanni
Weightlifting is an excellent example. It's not controversial in the least to
say that men (on the whole) are stronger than women. And the strongest man
will almost certainly be stronger than the strongest woman. But that doesn't
mean a particular woman can't out lift a particular man. I see this all the
time at my CrossFit box, where there are women who regularly put more weight
on a barbell than I can manage. I'm not even talking about pound for pound of
bodyweight either. I'm talking about women who are 50 pounds lighter than I am
who can still deadlift 50 pounds more than I can. Some of these CrossFit women
are _strong_.

~~~
frickinLasers
Perhaps it's not controversial in your circles. I realize this is anectodal,
but I've dated two women pursuing a PhD in a STEM field, both smarter than me
in many ways. The second I began to suggest the reason for my greater physical
strength might be biological in origin, they both became completely
irrational. They somehow believe biology plays no part in the differences
between men and women--or maybe that there is no biological difference at all
(?). Imagine the intellectual revolt that would occur if I were to bring up
this GMVH hypothesis.

There's something about the "girls can do anything" mantra (which I totally
agree with!) that seems to translate to "no girl has ever been less capable
than anyone at anything as long as they try hard enough." Any theory or
evidence contradicting that notion is nonsense.

~~~
todd8
I’ve had similar, surprising conversations with well educated women who
believe that differences in physical strength between men and women have no
biological basis. Maybe they were taught that; they didn’t have first hand
experience training as an athlete in a strength related sport.

My daughter, who is very strong and is stronger than her brothers, wouldn’t
even compete if she had to go up against men in her sport, powerlifting. It’s
very obvious in that sport that sex related hormones make a difference.

------
DINKDINK
And yet it still ~~moves~~ distributes.

------
jonnybgood
This is a one-sided story pushing a "Us vs Them" narrative. I can see nothing
productive coming out of this.

~~~
lolc
The weird thing is that the paper was accepted at two journals. Which says
something about it's quality. It doesn't mean the author is right! But at that
point (if you assume scientifc honesty) you'd expect critics to distill their
disagreements in a paper and publish that.

That hasn't happened however. All that's happened has happened behind the
scenes. Unless the article we read is dishonest in this regard.

------
jmmcd
My main problem with the paper is that it's about groups, not individuals.
Groyp selection has been debunked. There are better ways to think about the
wider variance that don't involve groups. Think instead about each individual
"gambling" in its embryology and development.

~~~
yorwba
Selection in the paper operates at the individual level. The groups are only a
convenient abstraction to determine outcomes at the population level. You can
think of group membership being determined by carrying a specific allele. Then
the number of individuals in a group is just the frequency of that allele.

------
brenschluss
The paper seems to have some egregious and basic errors.

Take a look at the paper:
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04184.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04184.pdf)

On page 2, it says (in discussing Special Case 1): "If sex A is relatively
selective and will mate only with the top most desirable quarter of sex B,
then all of the next generation will be offspring of the more variable
subpopulation B1"

However, if you look at the histogram in Figure 1, it's clear that if sex A
mates with the top most desirable quarter of sex B, then sex A is choosing
_most desirable mates who happened to be part of the subpopulation B1_.

That is, as diagrammed in the histogram, variability is not a function of the
population any more, since the red rectangle noting 'B1' with desirability 3
to 4 is _no longer variable_. It would be absolutely incorrect to say that
"all of the next generation will be offspring of the more variable
subpopulation B1".

In other words, it's like saying:

"In Sack 1, I have a mix of of blueberries and watermelons. Sack 1 is varied
in fruit size, and has a high variability. I've sorted them by size, and taken
the most largest fruit and put them in Sack 2. Now Sack 2 is full of variable
sizes of fruit, since it came from Sack 1, which had high variability."

(EDIT: to be clear, I think the above sack example is incorrect; I'm
illustrating the logic in which the paper seems to be incorrect, according to
my understanding.)

~~~
quotemstr
You've identified the mechanism by which sexual selection operates. It's
clearly a powerful force.

This paper is arguing that in addition to sexual selection's first order
directional effect, there's an overlaid second order effect on variability,
and the argument makes sense. Male reproductive success is already highly
variable, because male gametes are cheap. Some males end up being
disproportionately successful, e.g., Genghis Khan. From a gene's point of
view, being hosted in Khan was winning the jackpot.

If you have a number of male offspring, some of them will be evolutionary
"duds" no matter what. If you increase the variability in reproductive success
of your male children, then some of them will be less reproductively
successful and others will be more successful. But there's an asymmetry:
"duds" are already duds and can't be made _less_ successful, but on the other
side of the curve, by increasing variability, you increase the likelihood of a
jackpot.

The effect doesn't apply to female children, since a female mammal cannot have
200 offspring in her lifetime, but a male mammal certainly can.

(Your fruit analogy is inapt, since fruit in a bag don't reproduce among
themselves and regress toward the population mean.)

~~~
mirimir
> ... since a female mammal cannot have 200 offspring in her lifetime ...

Ah, but now she could. With enough money to pay for enough surrogates (or
eventually, machines) and childcare.

So maybe, going forward, there'll be more variability in human female
reproductive success. Interesting.

~~~
quotemstr
Yeah. Various kinds of reproductive and genomic technologies invalidate
general evolutionary assumptions, but the techniques haven't been around long
enough or been common enough to matter so far. But in the future? Who knows?

