Sunday, May 31, 2009

Questions about science under Obama.

I don't know how I missed this. I'm not usually a fan of Derbyshire, but he asks some very pertinent questions.

Most people still think of human-science controversies in terms of nature/nurture. As a matter of real scientific dispute, that is all long gone. ... The dust of battle has pretty much settled now, in science departments if not in the popular press, and nature is the clear victor. ...

The younger generation of human-sciences enthusiasts trend conservative/libertarian, and Obama has them worried. For a glimpse of the kind of discussions that their fears generate, read through the recent thread on Gene Expression here. ...

About 45 percent of the way down that thread are two gems. First, population geneticist Henry Harpending posts a creepy invitation he got from the National Human Genome Research Institute (yes, that’s a “.gov” you see there in their web address), who are “planning a workshop to explore the ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSI) raised by research on natural selection in humans.” The impetus for this meeting, they say, is “a growing need for more thoughtful deliberation by genomic researchers, ELSI researchers, science writers and science editors regarding the societal issues raised by natural selection research.” Get the picture? ...

A couple of items further on, science blogger Jason Malloy posts the transcript of an NPR discussion about The Bell Curve from October 1994, featuring “civil rights lawyer and writer” Barack Obama, who “lives in Chicago.” What did our young civil-rights lawyer and writer think of Herrnstein and Murray’s pop-psychometrics masterpiece? He no like.

Mr. Murray isn’t interested in prevention. He’s interested in pushing a very particular policy agenda, specifically, the elimination of affirmative action and welfare programs aimed at the poor. With one finger out to the political wind, Mr. Murray has apparently decided that white America is ready for a return to good old-fashioned racism so long as it’s artfully packaged …

We are about to find out whether our traditional devotion to free speech and free enquiry can survive real, incontrovertible results from the human sciences; and in particular, ... whether that devotion can survive under ... an administration much more interested in shoring up the soft totalitarianism of “diversity” and “multiculturalism” than in permitting the discovery of true facts about human nature.

My favorite part was the quote from a population science researcher who said, "The Democrats are really more anti-Darwinian than the fundamentalist Christians who deny the origin of species," because of the Dems' general unwillingness to even discuss the question of inherent population differences. Check out the whole article.

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