Political Correctness Prevents Advancement of Science

[Nachtengel]

Alex Berezow - American Council on Science and Health

... Some research is so politically controversial that few dare to speak of it in public for fear of running afoul of the PC police. And this fear, argues Nathan Cofnas in the journal Foundations of Science, obstructs the self-correcting nature of scientific inquiry ... To support his case, Mr. Cofnas focuses on the taboo subject of group differences in intelligence, which he says is suppressed by those who believe that even discussing the topic is “morally wrong or morally dangerous.” ... Such misguided efforts to maintain perfect equality can hamper the advancement of knowledge ... Certainly, many — perhaps most — people prefer to ignore reality in favor of feel-good fallacies. Mr. Cofnas believes this phenomenon is rooted in a “deep human impulse to conflate facts and moral values.”

http://acsh.org/news/2016/08/11/poli...nt-of-science/

[Catterick]

http://acsh.org/news/2016/08/11/poli...nt-of-science/

Examples:

• Racial differences
• Male-female differences including sociobiology/evolutionary psychology
• Causes of homosexuality, transsexualism and paedophilia
• Heredity of IQ especially of the g-factor
• Heredity of personality traits

Nowadays it looks odd Eysenck was controversial simply for noticing people inherit personality traits as we do eye colour and the like. But that battle is long since won, at least. Science papers routinely discuss genetic roles in personality traits and mental illness nowadays. In scholarly circles sociobiology has won long ago, but not in the minds of the liberal left, who still favour social constructionism. Though I have no doubts the left would love to see all evolutionary explanations of behaviour discredited, they only object as it applies to man.

Feminist outcries about sex differences at present are like the Satanic Panic in the 1980s - the moral panic created by a dying elite struggling to maintain status. What percentage of people take feminism seriously now? Back when Mike Bailey's book caused uproar, that was the same thing happening but fewer people cared, organisations like the APA had started following the Blanchard model. With gays and transgenders there is an odd situation, they're fine with a vague biological cause but you mustn't ask what it is...

IQ still annoys the left, but I think they're coming round on race differences that aren't related to intelligence or antisocial behaviours. At the present few people care about words like Caucasoid, Nordic or even Aryan like they used to. Typology still gets people annoyed more than the differences themselves, obviously because it means putting people into boxes.

[Shadow]

"Morals" is the problem. There are no morals in science. In biology we have witnessed the rise of Jewish people calling themselves "Ethicists". They want to claim some mythical moral high ground and then tell us what we can study and what we can not.

[Catterick]

"Morals" is the problem. There are no morals in science. In biology we have witnessed the rise of Jewish people calling themselves "Ethicists". They want to claim some mythical moral high ground and then tell us what we can study and what we can not.

Ethicists routinely dismiss concensus standards as a kneejerk. Its very elitist in that sense, mind you, bioethicists are very open to ideas.

[Shadow]

Ethicists routinely dismiss concensus standards as a kneejerk. Its very elitist in that sense, mind you, bioethicists are very open to ideas.

All I ever heard was some guy, usually named Kaplan, come on and tell us why we shouldn't do science.