Comment by naasking | Hacker News Reader

Comment by naasking | Hacker News Reader

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> Let me stop you right there. The replication crisis has shown repeatedly, across disciplines that have testable hypotheses, that bad articles are accepted in academic journals.

The replication problem is worse the less rigourous the field. The hoax authors managed to publish their first 7 articles, with 20 more still in review IIRC, over the span of 10 months. They were quite confident that the rest would have gone through had some journalists not prematurely unearthed their subterfuge.

For instance, in the dog park paper, the authors claimed that they had inspected the genitals of 10,000 unique dogs in a single dog park over a short time span, and then questioned the dog owners on their sexual orientation. If you can even look past the absurdity and take it seriously, the sample being analyzed is clearly biased in various ways. What dog park would have 10,000 unique dogs and owners visiting in such a time frame? How is this a representative sample? What sort of owners would be open to strangers fondling their pet's genitals and then questioning their sexuality?

Each paper had distinct and meaningful bias or clear cherry picking injected into the data, and not a single one of them was caught in review. The hoax authors have emphatically claimed that this field is more akin to theology than any kind of meaningful science, where any paper that reinforces the orthodoxy gets published, no matter the methodological flaws, and that's what they attempted to demonstrate (and they did I think). This result is far, far worse than the replication crisis.

> I'm assuming you're talking about the conclusion many have drawn - which I think is pretty uncontroversial - that science, logic and math are not fields free from bias.

No, I mean quite literally that these "academics" think that the scientific method, and that logic and mathematics itself, are tools of white oppression. I won't vouch for the rest of the site, but the description presented here is a decent introduction to the "reasoning" they employ: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/07/the_scienti...

Edit: or just google "the scientific method is oppressive" if you want to find further evidence. There are thousands of papers, articles, blogs and posts debating this claim. See: https://www.thecut.com/2017/04/the-science-march-sparked-a-b...

> The hoax authors have emphatically claimed that this field is more akin to theology than any kind of meaningful science, where any paper that reinforces the orthodoxy gets published, no matter the methodological flaws, and that's what they attempted to demonstrate (and they did I think). This result is far, far worse than the replication crisis.

Interesting claim, considering https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/04/16/is-th...

It is interesting to me that sometimes people seem to argue that the "grievance studies" subjects are useless practically, and then in the next sentence to argue they have a massive impact on other disciplines. In fields like economics we can, however, often see and measure the effects directly. And the effects of the orthodoxy that wants to justify, in this case austerity, using bad papers, with publically available data, that anyone could have checked, is far worse than the sokal squared hoax.

> No, I mean quite literally that these "academics" think that the scientific method, and that logic and mathematics itself, are tools of white oppression.

> There are thousands of papers, articles, blogs and posts debating this claim.

The first article you linked quotes an orientation video. The second rests on the "feminist glaciology" paper, which I've seen parroted by the right as an example of this claim you're making, many, many times, and another article posted on a website. I might be justified in asking you to provide evidence that "thousands" of papers defending the claim that "the scientific method is oppressive" but I don't expect you to, or be able to, defend that statement. Lets focus on a smaller scope, and try to prove that there exist papers in the two articles you've linked here that make that claim.

People who read these papers often make the mistake of reading an argument against all knowledge by conflating a few things:

1) That the institution of science represents pure infallible access to scientific knowledge

2) That objective truth is equivalent to, and accessed by scientific knowledge

We only have to go back a short period of time to see scientific justifications of awful things. But, the vast majority of academics aren't arguing that we should discard all of science. And, anyone can make a blog post. Objective truth is always necessarily filtered through humans.

It is also a good point that scientists should listen to indigenous people and their theories about natural phenomena. There are many examples of scientists correlating myths and stories with natural events and discovering that there was an eruption at a particular time. Understanding those perspectives advances science.

> Interesting claim, considering https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/04/16/is-th....

False equivalency. A single calculation error is not the same as a whole field that eschews scientific methodology. Which isn't to say that other fields don't suffer from biases and errors as well, but they have processes in place to rectify them, and your article points out exactly how this happens.

Notice how it took a hoax to point out that there's a problem with grievances studies. That's a bad sign that the methodology and/or culture is fundamentally flawed.

> It is interesting to me that sometimes people seem to argue that the "grievance studies" subjects are useless practically, and then in the next sentence to argue they have a massive impact on other disciplines

That's not inconsistent. For the sake of argument, suppose grievance studies argues for affirmative action and hiring quotes to counter innate bias. Suppose that companies buy into this, and implement such policies. Now suppose that such measures are actually impossible to implement in practice, and are illegally discriminatory. All of these can be true simultaneously (and probably are true at this present time), which makes grievance studies a) practically useless, b) have a massive impact, and c) harmful. I think an even stronger case can be made in fact, but this thread is long enough as it is.

> And the effects of the orthodoxy that wants to justify, in this case austerity, using bad papers, with publically available data, that anyone could have checked, is far worse than the sokal squared hoax.

Maybe, but that doesn't somehow negate the harm from grievance studies, any more than the existence of genital mutilation of women abroad somehow negates any milder forms of sexism that might still exist in the west.

> I might be justified in asking you to provide evidence that "thousands" of papers defending the claim that "the scientific method is oppressive" but I don't expect you to, or be able to, defend that statement.

Interesting strawman. You've alleged that I said there are thousands of papers that are making this claim, rather than what I actually said, which is that there are thousands of papers, articles, blogs and posts that have debated this claim. The latter is easily verified by looking at google search results without even going into the academic literature. The former is a clear attempt at casting me as unreasonable making absurd and overreaching claims.

> We only have to go back a short period of time to see scientific justifications of awful things.

There is no legitimate "scientific justification" for awful things. Certainly some people have claimed scientific justification for awful things, but that does not entail that such justification actually exists.

> But, the vast majority of academics aren't arguing that we should discard all of science.

I agree. And yet, that doesn't negate the evidence that a particular academic field does advance claims that are equally dangerous, nor does it negate the evidence that such a field has influence that isn't congruent with the empirical evidence.

> It is also a good point that scientists should listen to indigenous people and their theories about natural phenomena. There are many examples of scientists correlating myths and stories with natural events and discovering that there was an eruption at a particular time. Understanding those perspectives advances science.

Except few people argue otherwise. Historians and geologists have connected mythical events to possible historical events countless times (see for instance, geomythology which was coined in 1968).

That's a very different claim to saying that such myths should be given equal weight as demonstrable facts, and that science has no particularly unique or meaningful claim to truth about the natural world over other views. That's patently false.

In fact, I'll make an even stronger claim and say that it's logically and mathematically false. Solomonoff Induction grounded scientific inquiry with a proof that it converges on the truth. No other process aside from math can demonstrably produce real truth. Of course, people deep in grievance-type fields disavow logic and math as well, and so they would find such proofs unconvincing.

I think its time to pin down what fields you believe are in "grievance studies" which is just name calling since...

> A single calculation error is not the same as a whole field that eschews scientific methodology. Which isn't to say that other fields don't suffer from biases and errors as well, but they have processes in place to rectify them, and your article points out exactly how this happens.

...it seems you believe Art and Creative Writing are "grievance studies".

And your claim was this was "far worse than the replication crisis"... how? Vast economic policy changes versus what, exactly?

> That's not inconsistent.

Yes it is - to claim that these academics (who are accused of being postmodern neomarxists) can recruit corporate, capitalist HR departments, but not recruit more students, is inconsistent.

> Maybe, but that doesn't somehow negate the harm from grievance studies,

What harm? What harm do you think is specifically proven by this hoax or any other paper?

> You've alleged that I said there are thousands of papers that are making this claim, rather than what I actually said, which is that there are thousands of papers, articles, blogs and posts that have debated this claim. The latter is easily verified by looking at google search results without even going into the academic literature. The former is a clear attempt at casting me as unreasonable making absurd and overreaching claims.

Sorry for misreading you. I thought you were making a non-trivial claim that people in academia were debating the scientific method. If you're making the claim that non-academics are debating a subject, that's a pretty trivial thing to say. Flat earth, anyone?

> I agree. And yet, that doesn't negate the evidence that a particular academic field does advance claims that are equally dangerous, nor does it negate the evidence that such a field has influence that isn't congruent with the empirical evidence.

Awesome, lets discuss all the "dangerous claims" that this academic field is making. This hoax has nothing to do with the field's "claims", but I'm happy to talk about specific claims in specific papers, and compare their acceptance and their magnitude. I would much prefer that discussion to one where we allude to a vast academic conspiracy that doesn't exist.

> There is no legitimate "scientific justification" for awful things. Certainly some people have claimed scientific justification for awful things, but that does not entail that such justification actually exists.

See, here's the core of the point. If scientists and presumably, people like yourself, were so sure they'd found scientific knowledge previously, and it "didn't exist", couldn't the same doubt exist for the claims you make today? Who gets anointed to decide what scientific knowledge does, or does not, exist? Perhaps all these academics saying that we must be suspect of anyone who proclaims such a thing have a point.

> That's a very different claim to saying that such myths should be given equal weight as demonstrable facts, and that science has no particularly unique or meaningful claim to truth about the natural world over other views. That's patently false.

I'm happy to discuss papers that you think make those claims.

> And your claim was this was "far worse than the replication crisis"... how? Vast economic policy changes versus what, exactly?

"Far worse" does not entail these effects are in industry. I actually meant far worse for our body of knowledge and for academic credibility. Particularly since the US has taken a serious anti-academic pivot in the past 20 years.

> Yes it is - to claim that these academics (who are accused of being postmodern neomarxists) can recruit corporate, capitalist HR departments, but not recruit more students, is inconsistent.

It's not. HR departments are not populated by students, and the claim that they are capitalist is debatable. They were students at one point certainly, but the circumstances and mentalities of every generation of students differs. To claim there's an inconsistency is to claim you know why enrollment in these disciplines might be down (assuming it is), which you don't. And that tells you nothing about the influence of these subjects outside of academia.

> What harm? What harm do you think is specifically proven by this hoax or any other paper? [...] This hoax has nothing to do with the field's "claims"

Right, the hoax highlights the poor methodology common in this field, which is why the claims in this field should be viewed with extreme skepticism.

The results from this field have guided a lot of policy, in government, in industry, and in academia. As but one example, Google has pushed a number of initiatives to improve diversity, initiatives that are logically impossible to implement and that are legally discriminatory (and for which they are now being sued). Harvard too with its admission policies. This pattern has repeated itself numerous times.

> I thought you were making a non-trivial claim that people in academia were debating the scientific method.

Some are, so you've misread me again. Read the article I cited which quotes McLean (thecut.com).

> Awesome, lets discuss all the "dangerous claims" that this academic field is making. [...] but I'm happy to talk about specific claims in specific papers, and compare their acceptance and their magnitude.

No thanks. Not only have I already done this numerous times and am loathe to yet again, it's also against HN rules to divert and prolong discussions in this fashion. We're probably already in violation by going on this long. This will probably be my last post.

> If scientists and presumably, people like yourself, were so sure they'd found scientific knowledge previously, and it "didn't exist", couldn't the same doubt exist for the claims you make today?

Denying facts in favour of fantasy is the only way to justify oppression and dehumanization. If you ask for evidence of any claim, either the evidence actually justifies those claims or it's specious and/or inconclusive, and the people advancing the claim are pushing an agenda rather than following the facts. I have never seen a single instance that did not follow this pattern.

Furthermore, moral victories in society are largely driven by factual advances, by the questioning of existing circumstances and the discovery that things are not what was initially believed. For instance, refuting the divine right of kings, the illegitimacy of slavery, the equality of genders, all of them are hailed as grand moral victories, but the moral progress was achieved because people simply asked, upon what factual basis do we treat these classes of people differently?

In every case, there has been no legitimate basis, and so those distinctions were torn down. Except we're now reaching a point where factual distinctions are themselves being torn down, because science itself is being questioned. Here be dragons.

> I actually meant far worse for our body of knowledge and for academic credibility. Particularly since the US has taken a serious anti-academic pivot in the past 20 years.

What evidence is this claim based on?

> They were students at one point certainly, but the circumstances and mentalities of every generation of students differs. To claim there's an inconsistency is to claim you know why enrollment in these disciplines might be down (assuming it is), which you don't. And that tells you nothing about the influence of these subjects outside of academia.

Saying "they were students" is meaningless. I am pointing out the decline in student numbers because the claim that these disciplines are increasing in power is inconsistent with that... and you still haven't stated what fields you think are in those disciplines.

> Right, the hoax highlights the poor methodology common in this field,

No it doesn't, it highlights how easy it is to get bad articles into academic journals, which is also true of many other disciplines.

> The results from this field have guided a lot of policy, in government, in industry, and in academia. As but one example, Google has pushed a number of initiatives to improve diversity, initiatives that are logically impossible to implement and that are legally discriminatory (and for which they are now being sued).

Please show how these disciplines and diversity initiatives are causally linked.

> In every case, there has been no legitimate basis, and so those distinctions were torn down.

The change of ideology through history is more complex than you'd like to believe.

> Except we're now reaching a point where factual distinctions are themselves being torn down, because science itself is being questioned. Here be dragons.

There's no evidence of this. This is a conspiracy theory.

By the way, I believe the hoax authors actually cited many examples of papers that they found problematic, so if you're interested in actually examining some objectionable work, that's your way forward.

Sure, and if you'd like to point out what claims in those papers indicate that the authors believe "myths should be given equal weight as demonstrable facts", I'd love to hear it.

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