From January 10-12 (Friday through Sunday), there will be a substantial conference at the University of Southern California on censorship in science, and by that they mean all the sciences: STEMM. You can see details about the conference at the website below (click on screenshot), and view the preliminary program here. (There was an sketchier announcement of the conference in August, but now things are in their final stages.)
You can register here; the fee is $200 ($100 for students), and that’s not a bad deal given that the registration includes lunches, coffee breaks, and receptions with drinks and food. And the participants include, beyond a passel of working scientists, people like Jonathan Rauch, Jesse Singal, FIRE President Greg Lukianoff and, mirabile dictu, Marcia McNutt, President of the National Academy of Science.
And of course there’s this by way of self-promotion (end of the meeting):
Yes, I team up again with my partner in crime Dr. Maroja, on a two-person panel moderated by UC Berkeley molecular biologist Julia Schaletzky.
I hear that space is filling up, so if you want to register, and have the time and ability to go to USC (in LA), I recommend registering ASAP.
“Censorship and Pseudoscience in the Life Sciences” – sounds great!
I hope the speeches and panel discussion are recorded by Cspan or made available on YouTube. Each is something I’d like to hear.
We will stream the lectures and panels. We also hired a tech group to do recording using professional equipment for future viewing — thanks to generous help from the Heterodox Academy.
Thanks Anna. This is terrific…though I will miss the richness of being there and possible offline conversations and relationship building. That said, the schedule is so rich that I will likely be lucky if I am able to absorb the information scheduled to be presented online over three days!
Oh and a big thank you to Heterodox Academy.
Thank you AnnaKrylov. These recordings could become a valuable resource for students afraid to share their perspectives on sensitive issues and for defenders of higher ed’s need to preserve the academic freedom to pursue even controversial scientific and philosophical truths and ideas.
I should add that Anna was the driving force for this meeting, with the help of several others on the organizing committee.
Awesome. Thank you!
Bravo!
Curious if ot will begin with a land acknowledgement.
No land acknowledgments on my watch!
🙂
And no pronouns on name tags either.
+1
Following the lead of AOC?
OT indeed.
Knock ’em dead!
Jerry/Anna,
Is there a way for me to register for the event and watch the live lectures and panels online, even though I won’t be able to attend in person in Los Angeles?
Anna is in charge here; I am just a participant. I will call her attention to your question.
We will post the link for zoom connection on the conference website — and you do not need to register for that. You can also sign up for conference updates through the link on the website — we will be emailing this information to this list as well.
Sounds great, Anna, thanks
mirabile dictu indeed!
Thank you for doing this, to all participants!
I’m interested in something that might be called “reverse censorship.” It’s the idea that promoting false and misleading claims about a subject tends to work against those who want to correct those claims because they are seen as old-fashioned and reactionary.
For example, there’s a lot of noise these days about a new theory of evolution. It usually goes under the banner of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES). Nobody is censoring the proponents of these ideas – quite the contrary. However, it is difficult to publish a paper defending the standard version of evolutionary theory in the face of this deluge of misinformation.
Similarly with respect to junk DNA (my issue), the antijunk proponents have so dominated the scientific literature that attempts to refute their misleading claims are viewed skeptically. This is implicit censorship based on scientific misunderstanding.