Great article that shows irrational SJW academics using threats to suppress ideas written by a mathematician, Vietnam Vet and former US Army Ranger. Worse than a Twitter mob, and more terrifying👇
h/t @seanmdav
quillette.com/2018/09/07/aca…
h/t @seanmdav
quillette.com/2018/09/07/aca…
"In the highly controversial area of human intelligence, the ‘Greater Male Variability Hypothesis’ (GMVH) asserts that there are more idiots and more geniuses among men than among women"
"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"
"My aim was not to prove or disprove that the hypothesis applies to human intelligence or to any other specific traits or species, but simply to discover a *logical* reason that could help explain how gender differences in variability might naturally arise in the same species"
"No sooner had [we] posted a preprint [online] we began to encounter problems. On August 16, a representative of the Women In Mathematics (WIM) chapter [at] Penn State contacted him to warn that the paper might be damaging to the aspirations of impressionable young women"
"the Department Head...explained that sometimes values such as academic freedom and free speech come into conflict with other values to which Penn State was committed"
"I wrote to the three organisers of the WIM lunch and offered to address any concrete concerns they might have with our logic or conclusions or any other content...I never received a response"
"The editor-in-chief...notified us that, with “deep regret,” she was rescinding her previous acceptance of our paper"
"'Several colleagues,' she wrote, had warned her that publication would provoke 'extremely strong reactions' and there existed a 'very real possibility that the right-wing media may pick this up and hype it internationally'.”
"Working mathematicians are usually thrilled if even 5 people in the world read our latest article. Now some progressive faction was worried that a...straightforward logical argument about male variability might encourage conservative press to...read and cite a science paper?"
"In my 40 yrs of publishing research papers I had never heard of the rejection of an already-accepted paper...I emailed [the] Professor. She replied that she'd received no criticisms on scientific grounds & that her decision to rescind was entirely about the reaction she feared"
"She compared our paper to the Confederate statues that had recently been removed from the courthouse lawn in Lexington, Kentucky"
"I wrote...asking for their criticisms or suggestions...Neither replied. Instead, even long after the [journal] rescinded acceptance of the paper [he] continued to trash both the journal and its editor-in-chief on social media...
"...a lifeline appeared. Igor Rivin, an editor at the widely respected online research journal, the New York Journal of Mathematics, got in touch with me. He had learned about the article...and asked me if I’d like to submit a newly revised draft for publication"
"I duly submitted a new draft...and, after a very positive referee’s report and a handful of supervised revisions, Steinberger wrote to confirm publication on November 6, 2017. Relieved that the ordeal was finally over, I forwarded the link to interested colleagues"
"Three days later, however, the paper had vanished. And a few days after that, a completely different paper by different authors appeared at exactly the same page of the same volume (NYJM Volume 23, p 1641+) where mine had once been"
"Upon discovering that the journal had published my paper [another] Professor had written a furious email to [the editor] demanding that it be deleted at once...[I] was a person with extremist views...[it was] pseudoscience...a piece of a crap"
"Unaware of any of this, I wrote to [the editor] to find out what had happened"
"Half his board, he explained unhappily, had told him that unless he pulled the article, they would all resign and “harass the journal” he had founded 25 years earlier “until it died.” Faced with the loss of his own scientific legacy, he had capitulated"
"None of [my friends] had ever heard of a paper in any field being disappeared after formal publication. Rejected prior? Of course. Retracted? Yes, but only after an investigation, the results of which would then be made public [as] explanation. But simply *disappeared*? Never"
"No matter how unwelcome the implications of a logical argument may be, it must be allowed to stand or fall on its merits not its desirability or political utility"
