A major theme here at the Daily Sceptic is the politicisation of the world’s ‘top’ scientific journals, Nature and Science. Over the last few years, both of these publications have handed over an increasing amount of editorial space to woke activism.
In the summer of 2022, Science ran a piece about how astrophysics helped the author embrace her “non-binary” gender identity. Meanwhile, Nature published an article claiming that fat people contribute to “diversity”.
Science has now run a piece on “systemic racism”, which has very much the same flavour. The author is Agustin Fuentes, who in 2021 wrote an article on Darwin’s The Descent of Man, which described Darwin as “an English man with injurious and unfounded prejudices”. Lest you doubted his credentials, Fuentes’s latest piece comes under the heading ‘Expert Voices’.
He begins by referring to “massive amounts of data” and “countless analyses” which “demonstrate unequivocally” that racism persists in the United States, including in higher education. Yet he laments that “six of the nine justices on the US Supreme Court recently chose to disregard these facts and argue for a “race neutral” approach in college admissions.”
Where to start with this one? Even if racism does persist in the United States, why would that imply colleges shouldn’t follow a race neutral approach to admissions?
After all, affirmative action is pretty much the definition of a racist policy. It says that two students with the same grades and test scores should be treated differently because of their races. For Fuentes, however, it’s being neutral with respect to race that is racist – or at least tantamount to ignoring racism.
He seems to think that because some black people face discrimination, Harvard is justified in discriminating against whites and Asians – none of whom had anything to do with the discrimination faced by black people. Which makes absolutely no sense. Has Fuentes never heard of the concept that two wrongs don’t make a right?
He goes on to say that “this same ideological approach” of “denying such massive evidence” is also present “among a not insignificant cluster of scientists”, before citing many studies which supposedly show there is “systemic racism” in science.
I’m sceptical, to say the least. This isn’t Fox News or NASCAR we’re talking about – academia leans overwhelmingly left. So what Fuentes is saying is that all these left-leaning scientists are going around engaging in “systemic racism”. I don’t buy it.
There’s also the small matter of Asian scientific success. According to Pew Research, Asians comprise 6% of all workers and 13% of STEM workers – so they’re overrepresented by 117%. By contrast, whites comprise 63% of all workers but 67% of STEM workers – so they’re overrepresented by only 6%. In short, Asians are far more overrepresented than whites.
It’s unclear how “systemic racism” can explain this pattern, unless it’s “systemic racism” against non-Asians. (Unsurprisingly, the word ‘Asian’ doesn’t appear in Fuentes’s article – presumably because it would undermine his narrative.)
Fuentes’s pièce de resistance comes in the final paragraph: “Some will decry this essay as “woke” and use it as an example of how the journal Science has fallen off the path of “true” science.” Err, yes I will do that. He continues:
If being “woke” means actively considering the available data and analyses and responding to them by considering the social contexts, histories, and processes that facilitated and created them, then being woke is just doing good 21st-century science
And if my grandmother had wheels she would have been a bike. That’s clearly not what “woke” means. It’s also incredibly vague: how do I “respond” to data by “considering the social contexts” that created them?
We all know what “woke” means: blaming group disparities on “systemic racism” and then refusing to explain why Asians come out on top. It’s the very opposite of doing good 21st-century science.
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Being “woke” most certainly does not mean actively considering the available data and analyses and responding to them by considering the social contexts, histories, and processes that facilitated and created them.
Why? Go dope, go woke…….
The woke are incapable of such detailed thought processes, and we know why:
‘15% of people of all ages who used cannabis in the past 30 days met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fifth Edition) criteria for cannabis use disorder, and rates specifically among youth ages 12 to 20 were significantly higher at 23%’
‘15% of cases of schizophrenia among men aged 16-49 may have been avoided in 2021 by preventing cannabis use disorder, in contrast to 4% among women aged 16-49. For young men aged 21-30, they estimated that the proportion of preventable cases of schizophrenia related to cannabis use disorder may be as high as 30%.’
How does marijuana affect the brain? June 2023
As a boomer who went to Uni in the 60s, I’d guess there were plenty of opportunities to avail myself of the recreational substances on offer, but I never actively sought them out and they didn’t find me.Over the intervening years, Ive never never given ‘weed’ much thought, but a decade ago, reading a Peter Hitchens column, I was led to a book called ‘Henry’s Demons’ by Patrick and Henry Cockburn. It was utterly transformative to the way I view the issues surrounding so-called ‘soft drugs.’ It was a real eye-opener.
Among my university friends, many decades ago now, one suicide, one severe psychosis requiring ECT and two nervous breakdowns, all clearly linked to cannabis use, led me to a clear belief in the ever wider damage to society of the widespread ingestion of harmful chemicals.
The rise in perception of racism or ‘injustices’ may be in step with the increase in strength of Cannabis? I recall a college friend becoming very aggressive and paranoiac over something I had said – I have no idea what it was. He took dope and this was when it wasn’t as strong as skunk.
It seems as if the elites, being elites, upgrade from cannabis to cocaine, and get bigger ambitions than mere social justice.
The US Democrats need to keep everyone thinking that blacks are victims. It’s a key plank of their strategy to retain power – without it they are screwed.
21st century science = unfalsifiable hypotheses.
Didn’t LBJ say “I’ll have those nig**** voting Democrat for 200 years”?
Why, on average, do those with Asian ancestry do well academically, and those with African ancestry fare so poorly?
It’s a complete mystery. All the experts are baffled. I guess it must be racism.
What are those numbers?
Regardless, I don’t think you need the numbers. Just look at per capita GDP, the way the map is divided would be pretty similar. So relative levels of achievement are not surprising unless you believe in magic dirt.
Average IQ by country. And it does indeed correlate with per capita GDP, as you might expect.
I think there are other complexities in this. Africa has suffered over the decades from Communist insurgencies. There have been nearly 50 military coups and the weapon of choice has been the AK47. Any Russian or Chinese publications I come across will go on and on about colonialism, so encasing the minds of many Africans in a victimhood mindset. As far as academics are concerned – the Industrial Revolution was driven largely by non-academics with poor formal education. There is such a thing as too much education (formal).
“The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn”
Cicero
“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.”
Einstein
“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
Einstein
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
Einstein
“Two things are outstanding in the creation of the English system of canals, and they characterise all the Industrial Revolution. One is that the men who made the revolution were practical men. …they often had little education, and in fact school education as it then was could only dull an inventive mind. The grammar schools legally could only teach the classical subjects for which they had been founded. The universities also (there were only two, at Oxford and Cambridge) took little interest in modern or scientific studies; and they were closed to those who did not conform to the Church of England.”
Jacob Bronowski
Not sure it’s that complex. Most countries, regions, continents, peoples on the planet have chequered histories, but historically some have consistently thrived and others not.
Agustin Fuentes, “an
EnglishAmerican man with injurious and unfounded prejudices”. Nuff said.English.
Apologies. I misunderstood.
It is precisely this coordinated pretence to “scientific objectivity” which exposes the left as the gnostic charlatans they are.
Even granting their nonsensical claims about “racism” in the US, merely pointing racism in some other direction is no cure, as the author very properly notes. Rather it is unjust in itself – witness the experience of Orientals; and it is clearly the prelude to open persecution.
To explain why, let us delve a little deeper.
The left decrees that there is “overwhelming evidence” for racism in the US but offers few hard facts in support of this claim. Indeed, the facts – when discovered – expose the claims at once. For example, whites are far more frequently the victims than the perpetrators of racial violence. And black victims are far more likely to be preyed upon by black predators.
If “black lives matter” then someone ought to tell the blacks themselves.
Confronted with such points, the left’s ultimate recourse, once they have screamed themselves hoarse and worked themselves into a quasi-murderous tantrum, is to offer one of three get out clauses: first, that the statistics are “cherry picked”; second, that they are “lies” and third – the worst of all – that they are the results of “white science” or “rationality” itself.
In other words, the left has sunk – quite deliberately – beneath the level of reasoned argument and commitment to truth. At the same time it is seeking absolute power.
Confronted with such a movement we are in precisely the same fix that confronted Bruning and Hindenburg and Papen in the early thirties. Let us not make their mistake.
Instead, let us begin the process of crushing this poisonous left before it leads to yet another hell on earth. It has led us to hell on so many occasions, with exactly the same overtures of hate and with such speed that there is no more room for complacency.
But being irrational is just doing good twenty-first century science. It says so in a Science magazine, and that proves it scientifically.
While some kindly souls might believe it’s all because of racism, I don’t think the top academics believe it, nor do the top political leaders. They are just exploiting white guilt.
Woke————Aware of social injustice.—— So let’s close your bank account if you disagree about the alleged injustice. ——The problem with wokery is that it sits in its little castle on top of the moral high ground and seeks to banish from polite society everyone who dares not to comply. However way you dress it up this is TYRANNY. If you cannot have a free exchange of ideas and opinions then you are not free. ——Wokery removes freedom, and it is taking the Farage to fight the good fight on our behalf once again as many of us seem reluctant to do so. We just sit and take it. But all it takes for evil to succeed is for good people to remain silent.
Can we stop referring to them as Asians.
We all know that it’s only certain nationalities under that Group Heading who are “over-represented” … because they are highly educated and are not controlled by a bunch of Faith Leaders and Governments who want to maintain their societies in a state of Medievalism.
In the 60s we smoked tobacco – my preference was Three Castles (untipped). Nobody in my circle took cannabis seriously.
My son, at uni in early 2000s, when I enquired en passant if he’d ever tried smoking said, ‘there’s no sense in f*ck*ng up my brain if I want to get a good degree’.
The smart ones knew what made sense.
I think where Noah Carl goes wrong here is assuming some kind of logic on behalf of the paper’s author, Fuentes. Logic doesn’t cut it any more and Noah needs to get with today’s scientific memes of skin colour and “lived experience”. This trumps our rather quaint scientific methodology and is the true path to understanding and “equity”. We can of course only gasp at the major step forward this gives the human race in its unflinching desire to uncover the true nature of the world around us. Amen.