An evolutionary biologist speaks out.

[Iused2BanOptimist]

I did not train to be a scientist for over a decade just to sit quietly while science in general, and my field in particular, comes under attack from activists who subvert truth to ideology and narrative.

twitter.com/swipewright/status/1068595105211301888?s=21

Colin Wright's piece is being discussed in HBE's thread:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3439449-Reclaiming-evolutionary-biology-thinking-about-what-Heather-Brunskell-Evans-said

I strongly agree with the feeling that science is being attacked.

Wright's piece: quillette.com/2018/11/30/the-new-evolution-deniers/

As a biologist, it is hard to understand how anyone could believe something so outlandish. It’s a belief on a par with the belief in a flat Earth.

I hope other academics and scientists will support the pushback. I still can't understand how otherwise supposedly intelligent people are coming out with tripe like this: " Even more recently, the most prestigious scientific journal in the world, Nature, published an editorial claiming that classifying people’s sex “on the basis of anatomy or genetics should be abandoned” and “has no basis in science” and that “the research and medical community now sees sex as more complex than male and female." and believing it and demanding the rest of us believe it too.

Oh right, I missed that.

That is an outstanding essay; expect the pile-on and whataboutery to commence (if it hasn't already) as soon as the blue-haired gang sleep off their Apple Sourz.

Mostly positive on twitter so far.

For me, this attack was legitimised by the 'vaccine wars' and how long they were allowed to rage.

Public reporting and understanding of science has been groomed to accept anti-science and moral wars on science.

Researchers avoided going into the field because they needed to avoid the controversy and the attacks on those in the field were vicious.

www.badscience.net/2003/12/mmr-never-mind-the-facts/

sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-anti-vaccine-movement-strikes-back-against-dr-paul-offit/

sciencebasedmedicine.org/smartvax-versus-maxvax/

If you like this essay (and I do), you should also note that the writer does not believe that gender is a social construct and that sex-based differences in behaviour are at least partially inherited (with all the disclaimers that they are two overlapping distributions, environment is also important etc etc).

But merely stating that ‘gender is a social construct’ does not make it so.

Jerry Coyne, author of Evolution is True, has consistently spoken out on this too.

I have to ask any biologist who does accept that there’s more than one sex and that you can indeed change it (PZ Myers, I’m looking at you), if your work involves breeding test subjects (yes, you Myers) how do you pick which ones will be capable of mating? Do you just throw two random zebra fish together and hope for the best or do you select a male and a female? And if it’s true that animals are sexually dimorphism why aren’t hunans? What’s so special about humans that they defy the biological constraints of all other mammals? Is it a soul?

Dimorphic. Bloody autocorrect.

I'm so pleased that Evolution Is True is still up - I'd seen a comment that Wordpress took it down. Coyne quotes from Wright's pieces and concludes with:

This politicizing of science can lead to no good, but I’m already seeing those who object to unfounded blank-slateism branded as racists and sexists. That’s not a scientific discussion, but truth-shaming, and it bodes ill for evolutionary biology.

whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2018/12/01/evolution-denialism-from-the-left/

I like this essay. I don't believe that gender is entirely a social construct. I agree with this biologist that there is a spectrum of gender presentation that to me is partly innate (it's good biology to make the baby feeding sex most interested in feeding babies, at a very basic level) and of course reinforced and exaggerated by society, and in which there is a significant amount of overlap: in general at population level women are more people focused, but plenty of men are more people focused than plenty of women.

I'm so pleased that Evolution Is True is still up - I'd seen a comment that Wordpress took it down.*

Jerry’s blog is banned in Pakistan for religious reasons. It astounds me that Wordpress will acquiesce to this kind of thing but then again they recently banned ‘deadnaming’ once again proving that transgenderism is a religion and criticism is a blasphemy that cannot be tolerated.

Oh Christ, I hadn’t seen that nature editorial ( I’d forgotten that nature had had a recent change of editor, too). Magdalena Skipper is bloody bright and will be entirely correct about the genetics and the range of possible variation that means that trump’s proposed law wouldn’t work , but what the duck is she doing automatically conflating that with gender id of perfectly genetically normal blokes?

There’s a sporting chance I might actually get to ask her that at an event next month. There’s also a chance that doing so might put me out of a job... can we have John Maddox back from the grave, please, as he always liked a good argument?

There’s a sporting chance I might actually get to ask her that at an event next month.

Could you invite her to explain it in a way that the audience for Woman's Hour or Mumsnet could understand?

For all I know, she’s on Mumsnet anyway! I don’t work with her but I do know people who do.

The thing is, I’d say that editorial was pretty easy to reward and understand. It’s what it missed out that is the problem.

Reward = read

Could part of the attack on science also be part of an attack on poorer classes? It just struck me that access to the arts, as the obvious opposite, is restricted to those with money. Science and maths are available to all of us. Religion too is commonly associated with social dominance by birth.

‘And always remember, nuance and compassion is key in these discussions.‘(Colin Wright on Twitter)

We could use a bit more of this sometimes.