Science Denial Won’t End Sexism

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.

> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

One solution for this could be to talk about the subject at a more abstract level than an example.

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?

“Minority” in many contexts of discrimination refers to power minorities, not necessarily numerical minorities (the two sometimes align); once you recognize that this is often intended, when it is intended is usually clear from context.

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.)

So when someone speaks up to rid science of the ideological influence, then by this definition, they don't care about science either?

> 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

Who says they don't?

? I think the point of the article is that we should care about science.

The author is indicating that there seems to be evidence that difference exist in the brain from a pre-natal age, and that the impetus behind the more popularly published stuff is political.

This is not an ideological argument, nor one that has the backing of major news outlets trying to promote a specific agenda - just the opposite - someone saying: "hey, look at the data, why are people being called sexist for reporting the data?"

The unaccounted data in climate change is no more proof of natural phenomenon than unaccounted data in wages is proof of discrimination, and yet scientists in those two fields reach the opposite conclusions. If we really cared about science they should follow the same standard and treat unaccounted data as just that, unaccounted.

Quillette published an article in January on just that: "The Right Needs To Grow Up On Environmentalism".

This is called, in layman's terms, "whataboutism". I think each of us is free to pursue a primary interest, and the arguments need to be evaluated in themselves, not in relation to what else the person might be saying or not saying about some other topic.

Anyway, for me this is primarily about science. I can't see any validity in certain arguments and I abhor the idea (which seems to me the only possible justification for them) that we should choose our truths according to how much we like their consequences- real or imagined.

Or, let's put it this way: every time a scientist says that the study of nature provides support for one or another of our current moral values and ethical stances, I cringe.

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.

It's at the very premise of the argument.

Articles declaring that 'science indicates sexes are the same and anyone who hints otherwise is sexist' are taken at face value and published in the Guardian, CNN etc..

Contrasting opinions hardly exist in the mainstream.

The author is not trying to create a culture war, they are trying to negate it.

This is not a 'brains are the same' vs 'brains are different' argument. This is a 'let's look at the material evidence' argument. The brain same/different is just an example.