should we stop large swathes of research into athletic performance? bc i guess it doesn't provide sufficiently "antiracist" outcomes?
They truthfully reveal that the psuedoscientific 19th century ideas we refer to as race had no scientific basis. Some people really haven't taken this "truth" well though.
They still try to fit every new fact into their old model.
Like "West African Scorpios" are much more open to emotion, while "East African Scorpios" are open to new experience. So should we stop all research into Astrology?
Yes, because it's psuedoscientific nonsense that only distracts from the actual truth.
This current controversy includes the attempts to stop exactly this, with rules saying if you do medical research, and classify people by "race" then you need to explain who made this classification and why. Because a Brazilian looking a photos might put people into different races than an American or Japanese researcher, which might differ from the subjects chosen race, which definately differs from their genetic race, because genetic races don't exist.
but cool, now suppose some study has a result i can't spin as "anti-racist". what do?
also you seem well-intentioned but your definition seems wildly different from kendi's defining anti-racism to include support for present discrimination to "remedy" past.
You've read Haidt's take on it and have been misled, as intended.
here's the thing: "anti-racism" is being used as a motte-and-bailey argument. it's basically dogwhistling an intent to promote present discrimination (c.f. kendi) even if they're using a different definition that doesn't explicitly state that, because it's how that term has been widely used and understood. but when people take issue with it, they can be like "oh our definition doesn't say that." and ngl i find it pretty disingenuous.
The academic claim that "Race is not scientific" is really an overstatement of the case being made by people who are very optimistic but also fairly good at overlooking some fairly well understood science. It's not a universally held opinion but most people who disagree with it are fairly circumspect because it's very easy to get cancelled by talking about race and science in public.
Suppose you find out that the green people from East Arbitria are less productive. The immediate effect is that an innocent objective employer who being tried for discrimination or hated by a community no longer has to suffer- the cruelty of the universe is no longer being made anyone's fault. The secondary effect is that we now have grounds to investigate why Arbitrarians have that disadvantage. Maybe green people have a harder time metabolizing a nutrient; a non-issue with the diet/climate/lifestyle of Arbitria. An update to health recommendations later and millions of people's lives are improved.
The point is, there is a history of race-based discrimination in the world and researchers can't just pretend that it doesn't still exist when constructing these kinds of studies and how their outcomes could be used negatively by both benevolent and malevolent actors. It isn't just 'truth or not truth', also because lots of sociological studies aren't repeatable and many others suffer all sorts of issues with methods, populations, etc. Measuring people is crazy hard to do reliably. Anyway, my hot take is that its not a simple question and does not have a simple answer.
2. rarely is a piece of research only used for 1 thing, and even if someone uses it wrongly, maybe someone else uses it for good purpose or builds on it for an important discovery.
3. the correct answer is to address the person attempting to abuse the data when that person does it not to attempt to suppress that information by preventing the research or limiting how it's done.
4. are you saying we shouldn't do research on e.g. whether certain groups are better at lifting because it could be abused?
What I do see is a long history of race-based 'science' being used to justify some pretty terrible policies and laws.
The long lesson from the history of this research is that it produces garbage wrapped in a thin veneer of credibility, and becomes a weapon to justify or deepen real existing problems. It doesn't matter if it gets debunked eventually, the problem is how it is used now."
edit: (I don't know that I'm happy with either pole in this debate, but it seems like a good thing to worry about)
Becomes sometimes it's important. The efficacy of modern medicine is not uniform across ethnic groups. To deny this fact would effectively be to deliberately withhold treatment from some groups of people. Does that seem fair and just to you?
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2594139/
- https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/pharmacogenetics-p...
> Diverse research participants (e.g., understudied or underserved populations)
or in case it's due to the team they should also probably encourage:
> Diverse members of the research team (e.g., those from underrepresented sociodemographic backgrounds, from an array of career stages, from outside the United States, or with professional affiliations that are not typical at SPSP such as predominately undergraduate serving institutions, minority-serving institutions, or outside academia)
Hopefully if thay do that won't be portrayed as a bad thing by anyone.