I have to correct the statement below.
You cannot be a responsible teacher or researcher if you cannot tolerate ideas with which you expect you might disagree.
You cannot be a responsible teacher or researcher if you tolerate lies and demonstrably false ideas.
There is a line we have to draw where we openly repudiate bad ideas presented in bad faith. We should no more have a conference panel at a serious meeting on fallacious ideas about sex than we should have conference panels on creationism and flat earth…unless it’s to flatly reject them. And even then, that has limited utility.
I genuinely cannot stand the “academic freedom” defense for ideas that are empirically unsupported, especially ones that are so fucking old on top of being wrong. It’s an academic conference. There should be standards for presenting ideas there. And contrary to the mythology that science is dispassionate and value-neutral, those standards can and should very much include anticipating harms caused by certain ideas that have a proven track record of causing harm.
Relatedly, I’m not sure if I found this article from this blog or not, but on the assumption it was from somewhere else, you should check out the article by biochemist John Herbert titled “Academic free speech or right-wing grievance?” published in Digital Discovery earlier this year.
Who is Kathleen Stock and why should I care?
Cthulhu, she is a generic TERF.
Kathleen, we’ve heard your cuckoo nonsense lies hundreds of times by now.
Repeating them over and over again doesn’t make them true, it makes you a boring hater.
.1. “She has opposed transgender self-identification in…”
Cthulhu, this is stupid.
Who is she to tell anyone much less the entire world that they can’t self-identify as whatever gender they want to?
It’s none of her business and doesn’t affect her in any way.
Kathleen self-identifies as a mindless hater and bigot. Shrug. I don’t have a problem with that.
.2. “and has argued that allowing self-identification would “threaten a secure understanding of the concept ‘lesbian'”.”
This is gibberish.
We already allow self identification and have for decades to varying extents.
It does no such thing and there is no obvious reasons why it should.
How complicated is the idea of “lesbian” anyway. The idea is thousands of years old at the least.
Proof.
We still know what lesbians are.
We still know what Trans people are.
…and has argued that allowing self-identification would “threaten a secure understanding of the concept ‘lesbian’”.
Has anyone “argued that allowing self-identification would “threaten a secure understanding of the concept ‘gay’”? I’ve certainly never heard anyone making such a claim, let alone supporting it with any kind of evidence, reasoning, or even anecdotes. So…yeah…dismissed.
PZ, regarding gov’t meddling in academic work, here is a nightmare:
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/scientific-integrity-biden-administration
White House Censorship in the Name of Scientific Integrity
There is good reason to fear that a new Biden administration policy will create a broad chilling effect on scientific work involving hot button topics, such as birth control, climate change, and fetal tissue research. We must do better.
I read her Wikipedia entry and she is all over the place. It’s incoherent and she contradicts herself often.
This is someone with a lot of hate for Trans people who is unable to coherently give any reasons why.
Basically, all of law is a “legal fiction”, meaning it is something we humans have just made up. Calling a law a legal fiction is meaningless.
Trans people aren’t changing gender.
They are claiming the gender that they self identify with, that may be different from the one they were assigned at birth. By someone else.
Calling Trans people changing their legal gender documents a “useful untruth” is just an insult.
She is claiming either that gender doesn’t exist, a common TERF claim.
Or that the Trans people really aren’t changing their gender because that is impossible, which is just a lie.
Kathleen Stock has nothing worthwhile to say. It’s just incoherent hate and lies.
It’s an academic conference. There should be standards for presenting ideas there.
There are, and always have been. Just for starters, you have to stick to the pre-stated subject of the conference. It’s also expected that only people with known expertise in the subject get to present; that participants don’t get to spout stupid nonsense that causes embarrassment and wastes time for others; that everyone is expected to be civil and polite to each other; that no one is allowed to spread lies, especially lies that may cause harm to others; and probably more such rules, none of which are considered “free speech” or “academic freedom” issues, except by bad people acting in bad faith.
“The scientific method is nothing more than a system of rules to keep us from lying to each other.” – Ken Norris
Well, maybe these false academics can catch up with the law and reality, for likely, the first time in their lives.
A judge just struck down a Texass law that prohibited drag performances on commercial or public property, due to overly broad language.
For fuck’s sake, Milton Berle would’ve been arrested under the language of that hateful, idiotic law. The same Texass that complained about not having money to defend unconstitutional laws.
Seriously, they wanted to ban Uncle Milty!
Especially, given such false academics also caused immeasurable harm in rejecting the notion of hand washing by physicians and germ theory, adhering to bloodletting in favor of actual infection control measures. It took denial of graduation from medical schools and denial of medical licenses to drag medicine into something approaching European standards, in the “best health care system on the planet” – which is still 20 years behind Europe and even Cuba.
In part for Cuba, as they have a small cell lung cancer vaccine we’re only now finally testing and it took the US over 20 years to finally authorize testing of transcatheter cardiac valve replacement.
Oh wait, it has trans in it… I must’ve been evil for partially transecting a man’s airway, when his airway was obstructed or something. Better to die than have anything trans, like transoceanic trade.
Well, except for grift transactions, which are OK.
#4 Shermanj,
The sequence of words that the article you linked to claims are in the proposed policy do not appear in the policy. I had thought that CommonDreams was reliable, but apparently not.
@9 profpedant said: The sequence of words that the article you linked to claims are in the proposed policy do not appear in the policy.
I reply: policy wording is (almost) always ‘interpreted’ in application. While this exact string of words may not appear, the clear implication and intent is clear. It is just one of many recent steps to thwart honest, open academic discussion.
Common Dreams, like most news sites, may use exaggerated terminology to achieve attention-getting headlines, but I have read many of their articles over the years and I find them much more valid than most mainstream Snews sites. As our book stipulates, you should get numerous credible sources to corroborate or disprove information you read. I’m sure that I’ll run across other stories about this to ascertain its validity.
profpedant @ # 9 & shermanj @ # 10: The sequence of words that the article you linked to claims are in the proposed policy do not appear in the policy.
Indeed, the key word “construe” appears only once (per my search function, not my personal reading of the whole 17 pages), and that in an apparently innocuous phrase.
While I agree that ultimate responsibility here lies with CommonDreams.org, the hard questions* here should go to article author Tim Whitehouse and the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) group he directs (which I had also previously thought a reliable source).
*Oh jeez, the comments…
@shermanj, I read the OSTP scientific integrity policy back in May when it was released and the NIH’s proposed scientific integrity policy released this Monday. Neither of them does the things that Tim Whitehouse is claiming that they do. In fact, they do the opposite. The right of federal scientists to express their views and opinions is explicitly protected, as long as they don’t claim to represent their agency’s views (which has been federal law for forever).
Tim Whitehouse is straight up lying about what the OSTP policy does. I’m not sure what his motivation is, but what he wrote is not just exaggeration. It’s a lie.
Common Dreams? I used to see them quoted on what had to be the stupidest fake-leftist anti-war blog ever. Color me unimpressed.
Common Dreams are a bunch of Stalinists and tankies.
As well as supporters of genocide, mass murder, rape, and terrorism.
No the Russian invasion of Ukraine wasn’t provoked.
This is just the common lie of abusers everywhere.
“See what you did. You made me hit you by…existing, not being able to fight back, and not calling the police.”
That was 45 seconds of my life wasted looking them up but at least I know enough to not ever bother with Common Dreams again.
Of topic, but spider news
https://youtu.be/7DmAymNHxus?t=407
shermanj and profpedant–
Thanks for the pickup, profpedant. Those words don’t occur at all in the document referred to.
shermanj:
[1] It is reasonable to describe the impact of policy, it is not reasonable to put in quotation marks words that are not to be found anywhere in the policy
[2] It is also not reasonable to describe the policy in terms that are 100% at odds with the policy itself. I have read the entire section Ensuring the Free Flow of Scientific Information in the document, which Whitehouse is specifically referring to. His description is not just a misquote, it is a blatant misrepresentation. I encourage you to read the section yourself, it starts at page 8. Almost all of the limitations described are to prevent administrators from blocking the release or altering the text of research findings and from punishing whistleblowers. In this policy, scientists are constrained only by research ethics and not representing personal beliefs as the official position of their agency. I wonder if Whitehouse feels constrained by normative journalism ethics.
A note on Common Dreams: they largely function as a soapbox for the US progressive movement, reposting statements of advocacy in news format and as press release. You can keep up with a range of mostly-reputable movements and campaigns all at one site – in a time when we need coordination more than ever.
They have some respectable standards – no antivaxxers, 9/11 troofers, or “No Labels” hacks show up there (that I’ve noticed). Their priorities have shifted over the years, apparently with changes of management, but they’ve stuck with it enough to legitimately earn a mostly-white hat status.
Which isn’t to exculpate them this time, but I suspect laziness/complacency/understaffing in passing along yet another rant from an organization which has also done good work for many years (starting at least in the Shrub era) without enough review; don’t write Common Dreams off entirely, not yet. They have their flaws, but they also fill a useful niche, one not easily replaced.
Tim Whitehouse and PEER, howsomeverwise, got a lot of ‘splainin’ to do.
They always go with this dishonest whitewashing of “ideas with which you expect you might disagree”.
No. By all means do a conference on how pineapple doesn’t belong on pizza.
We’re talking about there existing a minority that science firmly shows to be a natural part of human diversity – and by firmly I mean the consensus of every major relevant medical and scientific body based on half a century of peer-reviewed study, results, testing and evidence – and refusing to accept this minority are entitled to the same dignity, rights, recognition and respect as anyone else.
This isn’t “something on which we disagree”, this is fucking bigotry.
shermanj @ # 10: I’m sure that I’ll run across other stories about this to ascertain its validity.
What did you find?
@ 3 Raging Bee
Yes. Any ridiculous anti-trans argument you can think of has been made in the last eight years of the manufactured war on trans people.
That one is a staple of anti-trans hate group LGB Alliance and the “reasoning” never gets anymore sophisticated than, “simply by existing, trans men make gay men attracted to ‘females’, and that’s conversion therapy and therefore homophobic”.
Don’t try to make it make sense. Transphobia never makes any sense.
As a trans woman there’s a pretty long history of us being harmed by ideas presented at academic conferences. Those who know their Black American history might also have something to say about the idea
Well. I’ve read the comments here and they are not all in agreement. Some are quite harsh. But, I appreciate the input. As our book stipulates, you should get numerous credible sources to corroborate or disprove information you read. These comments are indeed numerous sources. From what I can coherently piece together, the article I mentioned IS likely inaccurate. However, I have found commondreams to be generally accurate in their reporting. This is basically corroborated by:
@17 Pierce R. Butler who said: A note on Common Dreams: they largely function as a soapbox for the US progressive movement, reposting statements of advocacy in news format and as press release. You can keep up with a range of mostly-reputable movements and campaigns all at one site – in a time when we need coordination more than ever.
They have some respectable standards – no antivaxxers, 9/11 troofers, or “No Labels” hacks show up there (that I’ve noticed). Their priorities have shifted over the years, apparently with changes of management, but they’ve stuck with it enough to legitimately earn a mostly-white hat status.
I reply, then from what I read from these and other outside remarks I must conclude that this article is NOT credible. Thus, the comments lead me to say, I should and will research the articles commondreams more carefully in the future.
In the 18th century some educated people (including Linnaeus) used potions against disease that included some kind of animal droppings.
I look forward to presenting my research on the topic on a conference of pharmaceutical research.
After I have resurrected Lysenkos biology, and phlogiston research.
@19 Pierce R. Butler asked what did you find
I reply: I looked into this further. I noted that the article was an opinion piece by Whitehouse not a news article. And, secondly, today (thur. morning 20230928) I ran a search against common dreams site and the article seems to be gone completely. I guess that commondreams (either themselves upon examination or from feedback) decided it wasn’t a valid article. This may indicate greater integrity on their part. I found no other significant articles regarding the Scientific Integrity Policy, so I will consider this article an inaccurate aberration and be done with it..