Helen Joyce in the Times: Science Under Siege

[Igneococcus]

Interesting and concerning read:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/1b63ee04-74d4-11ee-81be-c4b540065935?shareToken=975a9210f934d7e4d23e6b0626f01cad

Thank you for the share token.

Thank you.

Thank you. I love her clarity.

An interesting piece. Academics, researchers, scientists,and the staff at universities are all human beings, and findings are always in one sense provisional, dependent on future studies, but there used to be various devices in place to guard against human frailty, greed, and bias from affecting the results and the type of research that will be funded.

They were imperfect (because of that human bias, frailty etc.), but proper seminar and journal debates, peer reviews, auditing research funding contracts etc. all served to reduce the problems Joyce discusses.

I think this has now changed, and one reason for those changes is the turning of higher education into a facsimile of commercial enterprises with customers (students or donors) and with products which should please those customers.

That students, in fact, are expected to change through the education they receive by learning to think better and more critically appears not to get much weight now. If the institution is supposed to provide them with what they wish to get at the point of entry, when they are eighteen or so, and not to force them to learn anything which makes them feel troubled, to me much of the reason for the existence of universities has gone by the wayside.

And once private businesses fund research, the firms doing that also become customers who must be satisfied. Even governments, where the funding system is politicised, might end up pushing for certain types of research only.

That is a cracking article. Might share that.

The paragraph in my screenshot describes the reality for people living in certain countries worldwide. In theocracies: countries with mandated religion, and dictatorships: countries with mandated political beliefs. It is hideous to see our democracies going that way.

Screenshot

Helen is so measured and reasonable. I loved how succinctly she sums it all up:

"The lie that now concerns me is that people can change sex, which destroys all the accommodations women need to play a full part in public life, from female toilets, changing rooms and sports to rape crisis centres and domestic-violence shelters. I’ve watched in horror as becoming “trans inclusive” has turned women’s organisations through 180 degrees, so that instead of standing up for women they campaign for the rights of men who cross-dress, sometimes for erotic purposes, to come into women’s spaces.

Organisations that should have child safeguarding at their heart, such as the NSPCC and Girlguiding, now allow men who identify as women to oversee girls’ private spaces and intimate care. Gay rights campaigners press for children confused about their gender to be put on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones that turn them into sterile facsimiles of the opposite sex. Since these children are statistically more likely than others to grow up gay, this is a form of gay conversion therapy."

Thanks Igneococcus, that is a truly great article from Helen Joyce.

Thanks for the share token, igneococcus and of course thanks to Helen for writing such a powerful article. It seems to me that what was really valuable about the article was the way it located a lot of trans ideology within a wider anti science trend. I've not seen that before but maybe it's my ignorance.