Alice Roberts in The Times

[Igneococcus]

Mostly plugging her new book but the interviews bring up the trans issue:

"I am not trying to propel Roberts back to a 2019 skirmish in the trans wars in which she tweeted that “biology is, quite simply, messier and more wonderful than some people like to believe” and advised doubters to “ask a clownfish” — a clownfish being a fish that starts life as male but becomes female. It does, however, strike me that if human female and male brains are the same, how can it ever be said that a baby possessing male genitalia was born into the wrong body.
There is quite a pause.
“I think that’s a very difficult philosophical question. It’s very difficult to pin it down, isn’t it? And we’ve had decades of feminism where we’ve been trying to get away from women being reduced to their genitalia. My own feeling is that you approach everybody as an individual.”

No Alice, it really isn't difficult to pin down, and it's not about genitalia, it's about gametes.

On a side note, it seems if it weren't for Alice we'd still be clueless about the causative agent of plague:
"Her chapter on the Black Death of the 14th and 15th centuries reveals its genesis as the Yersinia pestis bacterium,"

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/31f84383-e923-42d5-8011-64d0dd7c1ff9?shareToken=2d6448182015ccd30701f4cb6c84de9f

She understands perfectly well that men are not women, it’s just more convenient to her to ignore that and to word salad around it. Belonging to the pink hair tribe and being seen to be a good liberal is more important than being rational and telling the truth.

However, I don't know why anybody would pay much attention to a TV presenter's views on contentious social issues. What next, Ant and Dec asked to advise on immigration? Claudia Winkelman on knife crime? The cult of celebrity has a lot to answer for.

But she's not Claudia Winkleman. She's a former president of Humanists UK and a former professor of public understanding of science.

Wow, some of the vitriol on here.
Why is it no longer possible to disagree -vehemently- even violently- with another person’s viewpoint, without deriding and denigrating, and refusing to ever read a word written by that person ever again ( even someone you used to enjoy)?

Actually I think most of this thread falls into the vehemently disagreeing category and not personal attacks. Most posters are pulling apart the irrational nature of what she says, and yes sometimes being very annoyed by a scientist and supposed science communicator promulgating unscientific woo that has no basis in evidence, and obviously false equivalences as arguments. It's OK to criticise that and point out why it's harmful.

I think it's also OK to consider what is motivating her and whether she really believes the illogical and unevidenced things she says. Because I think it's quite serious that a very public "voice" of science is either a) that stupid and uninformed (she can't be can she?) or b) being disingenuous and using her public platform to promote faddish nonsense ideas above reality, because she wants to be on the right side of the transactivist mob. That's a big worry whichever it is.

She can't believe it so it must be ideological. It's very offensive and I'd think against the general spirit of her role as science communicator.

True. The latter is more relevant than the former. We know, though, that simply being a scientist doesn't mean being rigorously logical and doesn't seem to rule out holding two or more diametrically opposed beliefs at the same time. I've been astonished to come across tales of physicists who are Young Earth Creationists and don't believe in the theory of evolution.

My point was that she couldn't just leave Christians to their religious festival, she had to tweet rubbishing it. That does not show much tolerance, or live and let live. It shows a determination to be oppositional.

I also once willingly liked and admired Roberts and her work. She was a breath of fresh air amid your usual, run-of-the-mill Bristol academic, and breathed a bit of life and energy into that style of programming. Her relationship with her parents is her own affair, but undeniably I've seen some behaviour play out on social media - not least issues surrounding academic integrity - that have led to a complete change in my view of her.

One situation on X related, if memory serves me correctly, to the biological sex debate. Roberts was challenged in her somewhat incoherent views on this topic by a much younger academic - a postgraduate researcher I think it was - who was able to put up robust arguments in the field in which both were qualified. The attitude she was met with amounted to Roberts using her seniority, professorial status and dogmatic attitute of 'I'm a professor: I'm more experienced and senior than you therefore my opinion carries more authority than yours'. Any academic worth their salt can make their arguments stand up by virtue of what they have to say alone. They have no need to use their status to make others look small.

What's interesting here is that the whole thing created a great deal of feeling on X and Roberts ended up setting her profile to private, claiming she'd been the victim of misogynistic abuse. In actuality she'd had her opinions respectfully challenged by another woman, and doubled down when her own less than commendable responses were rightly called to account. She was more than happy to use her own privileged seniority to put down a fellow female academic, which does call into question her protestations about the glass ceiling and 'misogyny' getting in the way of her progression. Perhaps, after all, her attitude to her more junior colleagues is the problem.

As to a professorial chair awarded on account of public impact, I'm involved in this myself and know that public impact targeting lay audiences requires a very different set of standards from academic impact (conferences, publications and the like). Public audiences will by nature be less discerning and will challenge you less than an academic audience. The work of hers I first encountered was 'The Incredible Human Journey', which I found impressive and enjoyable to watch - enough so that I went and did my own reading about it. What I found was that the whole work was a plagiarised, bastardised reinvention of Spencer Wells's 'The Journey of Man: a Genetic Odyssey'. No credit was given for this anywhere.

Every academic knows that plagiarism is one sure way to render yourself completely discreted by your peers. I'm well aware the HE system is far from perfect, but Roberts seems incapable even of considering that her own shortcomings might have played any part in her lack of promotion. Reflecting on this in order to do better is something we all have to do. Instead she picks arguments on SM and places the entirety of blame onto others, the The System, and those who disagree with her 'authoratitive' view.

She's a huge disappointment.

Yes! That is what I think is going on here. You feel the need for some kind of emotional certainty and so you replace one system of belief with another.

Karl Marx rejected religion as the opiate of the masses, but then replaced it with another rather fixed and rigid ideology. What matters most is the certainty of the belief. It provides a kind of security blanket in an unpredictable and often unfair world.

I mentioned earlier that Peter Boghossian talks about groups whose viewpoints are based on ideas about what is morally right being unresponsive to changing their minds based on evidence. The ideas are evidence free in the first place, so they see no reason to engage in evidence at all.

Exactly. It was completely inappropriate for someone in her position and completely against the stated aims of the organisation she was the head of.

I believe that was Emma Hilton, (developmental biologist) on twitter (@FondOfBeetles)

Shame this isn't still available; I remember Alice being very much on the side of the impact of gender stereotypes being problematic.

It was pitched as an either / or scenario to explore; of course both are right. Some things are genetically innate to males and females and cultural gender stereotyping adds an extra layer of issues on top.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04knbny

Ooh there's a clip though. ends with

"We are going to look at research that shows there are important sex differences which has important implications for science and our health."

I wonder if the bbc did a u turn on this sort of programme shortly afterwards, as if certainly goes against the true trans narrative.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0278p3p

I've been astonished to come across tales of physicists who are Young Earth Creationists and don't believe in the theory of evolution.

Although at least both of those are cases of experts wrong about things outside their direct area of expertise. Whereas Roberts is a biologist talking complete nonsense about biology.

SidewaysOtter · Today 07:48

On a side note, it seems if it weren't for Alice we'd still be clueless about the causative agent of plague: "Her chapter on the Black Death of the 14th and 15th centuries reveals its genesis as the Yersinia pestis bacterium,"

"Eh? That’s been known for years!"

I thought that it was isolated at the turn of the century, but it was a bit longer ago. 130 years ago:

https://www.pasteur.fr/en/research-journal/news/alexandre-yersin-man-who-discovered-bacterium-responsible-plague#:~:text=June%2020%2C%201894,pestis%2C%20which%20bears%20his%20name.

• June 20, 1894
• He isolated the plague bacillus Yersinia pestis, which bears his name.

I assume that the goth archaeologist is Janina Ramirez?

https://nextbigideaclub.com/magazine/femina-new-history-middle-ages-women-written-bookbite/41118/

She's a scardy cat, lots of women are. She knows, she's no fool.

She isn't an archaeologist.

That's not a personal attack. Lots of people aren't archaeologists.

Yeah, but there are some who identify as archaeologists and corner you so you they can tell you their theories about Sumerians or how monuments align with each other or tunnels . . . .

Yes it is complicated to know who's an archaeologist. Hence we should accept self identification and effectively abolish any meaning of the statement 'I'm an archeaologist'.

I bet AR wouldn't lean too far out of an upstairs window no matter how imperfect our understanding of gravity is. Brilliant@Igneococcus!😂

She sent her children to a church school despite being so against religion which is an extremely odd choice (except it isn’t because middle class parents will always push principles to the kerb when it come to getting into the best schools).

She says they had no choice because there were no state-funded schools able to offer places except the church school(s). Do you know differently?

We were fortunate to be able to avoid that dilemma in London, but she lives in a rural area where I can well believe there is effectively very little choice. OK, they could have moved or paid school fees to avoid the church school, but that's extreme.

I do know the area and there is a nearby non church school but I don’t know where she lived or what the catchments were like when hers were at primary. Both schools were popular but one was considered more arty/alternative and one more academic (the church school).

And of course if she felt that strongly she could have definitely got a place somewhere in the city that wasn’t religious.

Absolute bullshit. Ideas adamant that my kids would not go to a religious school and hence we did not buy in an area where they would have been necessary. She's not stupid. They could have chosen to live elsewhere if it mattered as much to her as she says..

Because once someone is so obviously wrong about something - and blocks you on Twitter - it's pretty hard to care what else they say!