An interesting tale of science communication, journalism and the culture wars has just dropped - ​🧵
@JenniferRaff @ewanbirney @aylwyn_scally @minouye271 + I recently published a paper about the lexicon of genetics, and how it needs to be addressed
bit.ly/3ddQu96
We argue that certain terms are confusing, scientifically invalid, and some are wedded to the racist history of our field.
Last night, the Telegraph published a hit piece on it
bit.ly/3xWvPOI
...which misrepresents the arguments, misquotes the paper, and spells two of our names wrong. Nice work.
I wonder if this might be some latent revenge, as I have a previous run in with the author over some of the most comically wrong reporting of a science story ever
That was for the Daily Mail, which followed up with their own story on our new paper last night by copying the Telegraph's, but actually doing it quite well.
bit.ly/3xSkdw0
Anyway. This is fairly terrible reporting and violates basic standards in journalism, such as contacting authors, or getting quotes from them, or comments from relevant people - ironic given that our paper is about science communication.
Well, I suppose it is written to demonise academics, and the comments below (never read the comments) both reflect this, though we might consider this exposure as good, as it further broadcasts the conversation we wish to promote.
As I said before, we’re not prescribing or policing language, but want to prompt a dialogue with colleagues in similar and adjacent fields about our terminology, datasets and tools, and move towards a lexicon that both serves the science and frees us from a racist past.
So, please get involved. It's important.

And ignore this flamebait gibberoni when journalists at major papers are not even capable of getting 3/5 names spelt correctly).
<minority report> That picture of me in the Mail was taken in 2009. I look so young and full of light, instead of the hollowed out shell of a man today.
And in a new twist, a new report of our paper has managed to spell our names wrong in new and exciting ways. 🤷🏽‍♂️🤣

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More from @AdamRutherford

21 Jun
New paper klaxon! @JenniferRaff @ewanbirney @aylwyn_scally @minouye271 and I have been working on this a while: sparking a conversation about the lexicon of genetics, which continues to utilise scientifically redundant, confusing and racist terminology.

arxiv.org/abs/2106.10041
We’re definitely not prescribing or policing language, but want to prompt a dialogue with colleagues in similar and adjacent fields about our terminology m, datasets and tools, and move towards a lexicon that both serves the science and frees us from a racist past.
This is to be a conversation, so please please please let us know what you think. This is a preprint, it is also in with a journal, but this is a community effort to move genetics forward. 🧬
Read 5 tweets
23 May
In 1877, Rhodes wrote in his will about forming a secret society devoted to the British conquering the entire world, as the ‘Anglo Saxon race’ were the finest people on Earth and deserved to rule over and occupy every other country. His ambition was pretty much equal to Hitler’s.
I know we bandy words like white supremacy and racist around rather easily these days, and false comparisons to Hitler has its own law - but Godwin’s Law does not apply when the comparison is justified, and Rhodes was a literal white supremacist with a comic book global ambition
Nigel Biggar must know this, yet writes the same anti-intellectual and anti-history piece for the Telegraph week on week, presumably high on the attention, like an addicted one trick pony.
Read 4 tweets
14 May
New paper out today, finally, on the misplaced confidence about a so-called geographical ‘homeland’ of Homo sapiens, and how to avoid ‘inference pitfalls’ from weak data.

authors.elsevier.com/c/1d3iS15SlTrL…
Led by @DrEleanorScerri, @cschlebu, @liisaloog and @mt_genes, it’s a response to Chan et al (2019), a Nature paper which we didn’t think was very good, and was misleading about how we can understand human origins.
Thanks to a dizzying array of colleagues from a range of disciplines @huw_groucutt, @Turi__King, @chiarabarbieri, Guido Barbujani, @ChikhiLounes, @ChrisStringer65, Mattias Jakobsson, @DrAEriksson, @DrManica, @SarahTishkoff, @aylwyn_scally, Chris Brierley,
Read 4 tweets
9 May
Okey doke artichoke. This article from the Telegraph is pure culture wars bullshit. What they are proposing is traditionally called History of Science, and is taught everywhere.
Assessment of historical figures and their views is literally part of history, and yes, Darwin held views which were typical for his time, but deserve to be aired and understood. Here's a feature I wrote on this very subject earlier this year bit.ly/3pQWacz
The foundations of modern science are inextricably entwined with empire building and colonialism, as human taxonomy was used in service of subjugation. Linnaeus was a key figure in that classification. Here's a feature I wrote on this bit.ly/3txIapY
Read 11 tweets
3 May
‘It is commonly believed that psychic ability... runs in families.’

The genetics of psychics. An n=23 ‘study’ that shows journal publishing is a spooooky scam👻🧬

NB one of the authors is a standard issue race weenies🤡

sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
Think of the work and person-hours that have been wasted to squeeze out this shart. They had to find the ‘psychics’ - or, to give them their full title, ‘not psychics’ - match them with also ‘not psychics’, sample them, sequence their 🧬, analyse that, write it up, submit it...
The journal editors had to read it, send it out to peer review, receive comments, email the authors, make corrections. And at no point did anyone go ‘hold on a minute! This is a tiny pebble of ploppypoop, that makes us, the journal, science and academia look ridiculous’. 🧬💩
Read 5 tweets
24 Apr
Ok, so I read some of the articles in the Journal of Controversial Ideas. Some notes:
1) The logo is terrible.
2) The articles are terrible
3) Poorly written, poorly structured, imagined arguments, lazy scholarship.
4) And boring.
5) that is all.
Take this one: Make up a term - 'Cognitive Creationism' - define it to mean something that at best, a tiny, largely ignored fringe think is roughly right, cite non-scholarly work + waffle + quote-mine = CONTROVERSIAL. My arse.
bit.ly/3gx0lJz
The only question is which of the race wienies wrote it, but wasn't brave enough to put their name to it.
Read 4 tweets

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