Dr. Katja Thieme 👀 Profile picture
Aug 20, 2020 9 tweets 4 min read Read on X
I wrote this as postmodernist parody of #JamesLindsay.

There's a deeper point: History of research disciplines tells us that as you build new knowledge, even through sometimes aggressive critique of others' work, you need to build it with others' concepts and ideas. 1/
Even as you build your knowledge *against* some other knowledge that you think is dead wrong, you need to build it *with* knowledge that's already around, and you need to choose that knowledge with care and scrutiny as to its quality. 2/
Part of the process is that you tell your readers & listeners what that knowledge is. Who are the sources? What are the concepts? How do you relate them together? How do see them apply to your evidence? What questions do you pick up from where, which do you leave aside? 3/
As you do that, you outline your academic or intellectual or epistemic community. Often that's a mixed community--you pick up some aspect from someone's work, but leave others silent or even reject them explicitly. 4/
As a result, even if you claim to do something very very new and unheard of, you cannot claim you do this work without help. You stand with others.

Also, your work will be judged in part by the quality of the work with which you stand.

I teach this in all my courses. 5/
I teach this in the first-year research writing courses. 6/
I get the sense that #JamesLindsay thinks he doesn't need that help. He can do it all himself. Hammer out his own, handmade concepts. Swing them together in loopy motion. Wield them, by himself, in his fight against full research departments and international associations. 7/
And he thinks he's doing great. He tells himself, and his fans, that he's smarter than everyone.

Meanwhile, there are crowds of academics from a range of fields going: "What's that? Where did you get that idea? Who are you building on with that wacky way of thinking?" 8/

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More from @Katja_Thieme

Jul 10, 2023
Someone tweeted a Riley Gaines clip at me today thinking it unassailably showed we should not teach about trans identities and experiences in schools. The question attached to it was, „Are you okay with enabling this kind of abuse?“
In the clip, Gaines talks about feeling mistreated in a photo op with Lia Thomas. They both won 5th place. Thomas was the tiniest fraction ahead, not enough to effect placement. But enough to say Thomas should hold the single available 5th-place trophy. Gaines got hers mailed.
Gaines gets tearful about the emotional effect it had on her that Thomas was holding the trophy which she had also won.

That’s just whiny. What a sore not-even-loser.
Read 21 tweets
Nov 2, 2022
#NathanCofnas has written a response to recent journalistic articles critical of his appointment as Leverhulme fellow in philosophy at Cambridge. I was tempted to line up the terms he is using to give the impression that his work can't have been debunked.
So, let's do that. 1/
A: terms he uses to describe his own work
B: terms for the work of his critics

A: He works in "philosophy of biology and ethics" and his paper in a "highly respected philosophy and psychology journal" calls for "free inquiry into all possible causes of race difference" in IQ.
B: In response to that story, a "small group of philosophers" had "a meltdown" which is "its own funny story."

I'll leave out the description of his encounters with the journalists at the two news outlets; it's not as relevant to the characterization of his & others' research.
Read 17 tweets
Oct 7, 2022
Playbook for white supremacist profs.

1. Do your white supremacists things. Write blog posts, tweets, articles in which you take white supremacist positions. Attend white supremacist rallies. Take photos with Nazi symbols. Whatever it is you like to do.
2. Do it repeatedly, perhaps more openly in public & more veiled in professional life. Do it enough until your students and colleagues are alert to it and your university administration notices.
3. When an investigation is launched, immediately contact FIRE. Let them in on the public parts.

4. Provide FIRE with receipts that show you engaging in public political expression. Indicate how people have noticed you doing so & have sent career-threatening emails to your uni.
Read 10 tweets
Oct 4, 2022
Pit of a puzzle to me how one can say faculty *must* work to make their institutions more equal and inclusive, and then dismiss a request to sketch out how faculty do this work they *must* do as "purity tests" that open some mysterious yet unsavoury doors.
Oh, wait, here's how I should have written the above tweet:

I believe university faculty must work to make their institutions more equal and inclusive. #BUT.
What am I going to do with this ubiquitous #BUT structure. Should I write a paper about it? What kind of paper?
Read 8 tweets
Aug 7, 2022
It's a sharp statement. The ministry's letter is egregious enough for the uni president to comment on it directly and critically. He explains that the minister has not followed through by meeting with the uni's executive and has instead put the matter into the public domain.
I think Canadian uni presidents should comment more often & more openly on how they are engaging with education ministers. Beyond simply saying that's behind closed doors. We should know what the issues are on which they disagree with ministry, on which they assert uni interests.
Read 5 tweets
Aug 6, 2022
Four years ago, before he published his first #Quillette piece, before he signed on as editor to that same online magazine, #ColinWright wrote an email to #JamesLindsay in which he laid out the set of simple and basic ideas that continue to drive his anti-trans activism. 1/
1. You can be an academic⁠—held to the quality of his evidence, the knowledge of the existing literature, & the soundness of his arguments⁠—or you can be a "free-thinking intellectual." (To the point that having lousy evidence & no demonstrable knowledge shows "free thinking.")
2. Let's blame everything on the "trans activists." Let's call everyone who disagrees with anti-trans talking points a "trans activist." "Trans activists" are bad, it goes without saying. Let's claim they are in "denial of gender or sex differences."

Straw man done! And done!
Read 11 tweets

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