blickpall
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- Nov 8, 2017
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Paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04184.pdf
Article: https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-published-paper-down-the-memory-hole/
(Note: The article is not as long as the scroll bar suggests - that is the result of comments, which I haven't dared to read yet.)
TL;DR: Feminists feel that a certain mathematical paper is damaging to feminist ideology. A handful of women (and at least two men) manage to make it so that the paper can never be officially published.
Brief Summary:
Notable quotes from the article:
(Note: Emphasis mine. I only selected quotes from the first half of the article because otherwise this section would be too lengthy; this is just a taste.)
Conclusion: Feminists can veto publication in mathematics (and presumably other) journals if they feel it goes against the feminist agenda. It is quite possible that this has been going on for some time. Feminism is hampering science at its foundation.
Article: https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-published-paper-down-the-memory-hole/
(Note: The article is not as long as the scroll bar suggests - that is the result of comments, which I haven't dared to read yet.)
TL;DR: Feminists feel that a certain mathematical paper is damaging to feminist ideology. A handful of women (and at least two men) manage to make it so that the paper can never be officially published.
Brief Summary:
The "Greater Male Variability Hypothesis" is a theory that has adequate evidence in numerous species and has floated around since Darwin's research in the 19th century. This researcher realized that although there have been many works which documented this, none had ever tried to propose a reason. So, he created a mathematical, theoretical model which could help explain the greater variability in men, not limited to the concept of intelligence (the commonly accepted hypothesis that men have more idiots and more geniuses than women, i.e. a greater spread of intelligence). This is the summary of what happened to the research:
1. A woman and a man, who worked at the same university as one of the co-authors of the paper, did the following:
2.Other women at the journal in which it was to be published ensured, when they found out that the paper was to be published, that the paper went from "Approved" to "Rejected," which is something that is relatively unheard of.
3. In yet another journal, the article was published, but then it was replaced by some other article right after because yet more female and one notable male feminist decried it as "pseudoscience" and "a piece of crap." This put the author in an impossible situation because he could not re-publish the research elsewhere, since it had technically been published already, even though it was removed without notification or explanation in all publications of the volume.
1. A woman and a man, who worked at the same university as one of the co-authors of the paper, did the following:
a. Hosted a meeting to "explain" to said co-author why his work is detrimental to women and why they "disagree with it."
b. Wrote letters to the foundation which funded the research anyway, calling the paper "pseudoscientific," which in turn led to the foundation asking any mention of their funding removed.
2.Other women at the journal in which it was to be published ensured, when they found out that the paper was to be published, that the paper went from "Approved" to "Rejected," which is something that is relatively unheard of.
3. In yet another journal, the article was published, but then it was replaced by some other article right after because yet more female and one notable male feminist decried it as "pseudoscience" and "a piece of crap." This put the author in an impossible situation because he could not re-publish the research elsewhere, since it had technically been published already, even though it was removed without notification or explanation in all publications of the volume.
Notable quotes from the article:
(Note: Emphasis mine. I only selected quotes from the first half of the article because otherwise this section would be too lengthy; this is just a taste.)
"Evidence for this hypothesis is fairly robust and has been reported in species ranging from adders and sockeye salmon to wasps and orangutans, as well as humans. Multiple studies have found that boys and men are over-represented at both the high and low ends of the distributions in categories ranging from birth weight and brain structures and 60-meter dash times to reading and mathematics test scores. There are significantly more men than women, for example, among Nobel laureates, music composers, and chess champions—and also among homeless people, suicide victims, and federal prison inmates."
"Mathematics at Pennsylvania State University, to help me flesh out the model. When I posted a preprint on the open-access mathematics archives in May of last year, a variability researcher at Durham University in the UK got in touch by email. He described our joint paper as “an excellent summary of the research to date in this field,” adding that “it certainly underpins my earlier work on impulsivity, aggression and general evolutionary theory and it is nice to see an actual theoretical model that can be drawn upon in discussion (which I think the literature, particularly in education, has lacked to date). I think this is a welcome addition to the field.” "
On August 16, a representative of the Women In Mathematics (WIM) chapter in his department at Penn State contacted him to warn that the paper might be damaging to the aspirations of impressionable young women... readers “will just see someone wielding the authority of mathematics to support a very controversial, and potentially sexist, set of ideas…”
Sergei sent me a weary email. “The scandal at our department,” he wrote, “shows no signs of receding.” At a faculty meeting the week before, the Department Head had explained that sometimes values such as academic freedom and free speech come into conflict with other values to which Penn State was committed.
However, a Freedom of Information request subsequently revealed that Penn State WIM administrator Diane Henderson (“Professor and Chair of the Climate and Diversity Committee”) and Nate Brown (“Professor and Associate Head for Diversity and Equity”) had secretly co-signed a letter to the NSF that same morning. “Our concern,” they explained, “is that [this] paper appears to promote pseudoscientific ideas that are detrimental to the advancement of women in science, and at odds with the values of the NSF.” "
Conclusion: Feminists can veto publication in mathematics (and presumably other) journals if they feel it goes against the feminist agenda. It is quite possible that this has been going on for some time. Feminism is hampering science at its foundation.