Comment by bmitc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bmitc | Hacker News Reader

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Really? Because the fact that this article was published seems to showcase evidence for a systemic problem. How did this article get approved? I mean, it's linking to a study that makes racial and sexist judgements based off of ... general relativity?

Edit: I've read the full article and it is borderline incoherent. I have no idea what in the world she is talking about or how it even remotely relates to E.O. Wilson, much less why in the world they would post this mere days after his death. The article actually barely mentions Wilson other than slandering him in the sentences it does and provides no references to his work or anything that substantiates, well, anything the author is arguing for or against. Yet, the author takes the time to reference near lunacy.

The article ends with:

> The early work of Venter and Collins was foundational to my dissertation, which examined tumor markers of ovarian cancer. I spent time during my training at the NIH learning from these iconic clinicians and scholars and had occasion to meet and question both of them. As a person who uses science as one of many tools to understand the world, it is important to remain curious in our work. Creative minds should not be resistant to change when rigorous new data are presented. How we engage with old racist ideas is no exception.

What does that have to do with anything this article was supposably about? It makes no sense. Yet, someone (multiple people?) approved this article.

Not only was it simply published as an op-ed but Scientific American's editor-in-chief publicly praised this piece on Twitter, calling it insightful, and retweeted the author and another tweet praising it. So unfortunately we can expect Sci Am to continue on this downward trajectory.

As far as the veracity of Medium articles go, this is from the Wikipedia page describing Medium:

The platform is an example of social journalism, having a hybrid collection of amateur and professional people and publications, or exclusive blogs or publishers on Medium,[3] and is regularly regarded as a blog host.

I tend to take things I read on that website with a grain of salt.

What does Medium have to do with anything I wrote?

Medium is where the piece we’re talking about was posted - “The Shameful Decline…”.

While the article in SA does seem appalling, I don’t see this single article’s publication as justification for this broad indictment of SA. It’s concerning, yes. But it’s ONE ARTICLE, and that’s all the piece talks about. OP may well be right, but they haven’t shown it by the citing of ONE ARTICLE.

I was not and am not commenting on the Medium article. I was referring to the Scientific American article.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-complicated-l...

For me, it's enough to think something is seriously wrong there at Scientific American. The more I think about it, the more the article makes little sense to me. I can't even understand what it has to do with E.O. Wilson. The timing of the article would imply that the article was written in just a couple of days by a recurring author. So they used the death of a notable scientist to push some agenda.

It’s common for a media company to have a file and even a pre-written obituary for famous people. That way there’s no need to cobble together an obituary hours after getting word that, say, Steve Jobs has died.

I take it that Scientific American didn’t have a pre-written obituary for E.O. Wilson.

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