Thread by @Katja_Thieme

Top notch thinking here: if you look at purple dots instead of blue dots, you know what will happen? Racism has disappeared! And guess what? Sexism is gone, too! Just try it. This department head suggests this is how it works.

https://twitter.com/epkaufm/status/1214844077616902144

It appears that some of my readers are concerned for my ability to make sense, my honesty, and my credibility when they read the above tweet. A parody tweet. An ironic tweet. A tweet with humour. It is indeed a pattern I have, I should disclaim: I like writing parody tweets.

(Seems also that some would like to consider the use of clever parody and cutting irony a professional no-go-zone for academics, particularly for female academics. I have things to say about that. But not now.)

In my vain attempt to be taken seriously, rescue my credibility, prove my honesty, and start making sense, let me comment on what Eric Kaufmann linked to with the words that it explains, "why the PC left keeps finding pervasive racism & sexism when these have largely declined."

To some degree the authors, and to a larger degree Eric Kaufmann give the game away.

They want this to be objective psychology. Just look at the data. Only the data. And the truth. The data & the truth.

OK, that's not exactly what they say, but it's what we hear day in & out.

When someone invokes that "the data & the truth" mantra, a few things happen. One is, we might be asked to forget what thought structures allow us to recognize something as data and as data of a certain kind and as comparable to other data and as relevant to a question.

Is data about the shading of blue and purple dots relevant to questions of racism and sexism in a historically specific and particularly structured society?

Nah.

It is not.

Are answers to the question of "what do you call this shade of colour" and to the question of "how ethical do you consider this research proposal to be" comparable? Are they comparable in such a way that we can use the answer to assess current political pessimism?

Nah.

No.

Is there a politics, a history, and training to understanding some research proposal as ethical and others not? Yes, there is.

Is there a politics, a history, and training to recognizing some shades of colour as blue and others as purple? Maybe. Sometimes.

Concepts can creep.

Okay.

Many things are said to run.

Yes.

Thoughts run. Athletes run. Noses run.

There is little point in studying these types of running in the same way and then saying one has developed some evolutionary insight into running.

Because evolution comes up in the paper. Yes, it does.

"Holding concepts constant may be an evolutionarily recent requirement that the brain's standard computational mechanisms are ill equipped to meet."

Even galaxy brains might not be able to hold concepts constant.

Who knew.

The authors' political disclaimer: "We take no position on whether these expansions are good or bad. Rather, we seek to understand what makes them happen. Why do concepts creep?"

Maybe it's a bit strange, then, that examples of concepts creeping overlap with anti-SJW ideas.

"Many other concepts, such as abuse, bullying, mental disorder, trauma, addiction, and prejudice, have expanded of late as well."

Might be just my own sensitivity.

Tell me, dear reader:

Can you really say you don't take a position on whether concept creep is good or bad when the central phrase and idea you adopt for your paper, "concept creep" ("concept change" in the title), has been extensively used for political purposes and positions?

So, come out and say it, authors.

You have a political position.

You are conducting your research from a political position. I appreciate if you're trying to temper it. That's good.

It's still there.

We should know about that.

We should know that you know about that.

This "only the data & the truth" isn't getting us anywhere if we are not also talking about the political positions you are clearly holding while conducting your research.

PS: I'm adding a few more tweets I made in conversation elsewhere in this thread.

"Concept creep" is a very particular, a very recent, and a politically motivated term. There are many terms like that in research writing. You might have noticed, there's now a loud group--those who like terms like "grievance studies"--who have as one of their main gripes...

...that there are politically motivated, morally positioned, and not objectively measurable concepts in most research fields.

Well, research terms with political positions built into them have been with us for very long and I don't see that they will nor why they should go away.

We do have to be able to talk about their politics and their morality, however. And we have a right to critique those; deflections of "well it's hardly revelatory that you say researchers have bias" are not good enough.

Here's where "concept creep" comes from.

Don't tell me that's not research from a particular political position.

Don't tell me that those who pick up the term in an endorsing way aren't also picking up its politics.

Don’t tell me you can look that key publication when “concept creep” was created as the concept that is now being used (in an article enthusiastically linked by Eric Kaufmann) and tell me that one sentence in this badly theorized paper can instantly make this into a neutral term.

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