Hmmm. Last circus that blew through town was hollering about the Right’s war on science.
So far as we can see, there is no war. it’s more that some sciences are running out of feet to shoot themselves in. Not an easy job to recruit for even in hard times. 😉
Meanwhile, from the UK Spectator:
The witch hunt against Napoleon Chagnon shows us what happens if scientists challenge the core beliefs of ‘progressives’
You don’t say.
How much longer can the liberal left survive in the face of growing scientific evidence that many of its core beliefs are false? … Chagnon is a key figure in a new book by Alice Dreger, an American academic who has spent the last few years investigating attacks on heretical scientists by the grand inquisitors of the left. Dreger used to be something of a Torquemada herself. To defend the interests of people born with both male and female genitalia, she used many of the same questionable techniques to discredit opponents in the medical establishment. Then, in her words, she became ‘an aide-de-camp to -scientists who found themselves the target of activists like me’.
More.
In a fight between a king cobra and a Great Western Diamondback, it’s hard to sympathize with any position other than, we wish them equally deadly success.
This review article follows on a similar item at New York Magazine (See EMS Crying Towel! Liberals attacking social sciences)
The noise around Dreger’s book, Galileo’s Middle Finger, reeks of the fact that political correctness still matters far more than evidence to these people—and always will:
Dreger has not abandoned her own liberal convictions. She believes the search for scientific truth and social justice go hand in hand and ends her book with an plea to academic colleagues to defend freedom of thought. But her title, Galileo’s Middle Finger, suggests the progressive left may not survive these clashes with heretical scientists.
For whatever reason, the progressive lefties have decided to rehabilitate Napoleon “Ax Fight” Chagnon. For now, anyway. But the story of his pursuit of “primitive man” is much nastier and more complex than buckets of brand new whitewash can address.
Patrick Tierney, the progressive left’s current punching bag, was certainly not wrong about everything, in Darkness in El Dorado. Wonder what he did lately that was Incorrect?
Advice: Don’t believe any of them. Not even when they admit they were just trying to shut someone up. It’s true but don’t accept it from them.
See also: Why social science is riddled with “flaky research and questionable theories” Because “ Graduate students were entering the field in order to change the world rather than discover truths. ”
and
Seven Myths of classroom social psychology
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