Tuesday: Hili dialogue

61 thoughts on “Tuesday: Hili dialogue”

1. “Some scientists are again trying to demonstrate that there is no sex binary in humans, but have done so by showing, in a new paper (see below), that gene expression for various traits like height showoverlap between the sexes.”

   Diethard Tautz, emeritus scientific member at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology (Plön, Germany), made questionable statements about the binary nature of human sex two years ago. In response, a doctor of biology contradicted him in an article published by the Humanistischer Pressedienst (hpd). The article is in German only, but definitely worth reading. Because it shows that Tautz has taken a big swig from the identity politics bottle.

   https://hpd.de/artikel/des-professors-nebelkerzen-21836

2. I did a double take when I saw ‘Max Planck Insitute of Evolutionary Biology’.

   Of course the paper turns out to be fine, as it damn well should be from that source. Shows how reflexively defensive I have become.

   Then again, given the current climate, I feel like the paper’s title could be considered a touch clickbaity.

   Edit: The context added by the preceding (first) comment does move this firmly into clickbait territory, however.

3. And of course no food on 24+ hrs of yom kippur. But for Jewish boys in the 50’s and 60’s staying home from school to attend morning rosh hashonah services meant home watching world series on b&w tv in afternoon if the schedule worked out that year and similarly sneaking out of all-day yom kippur services for a bit in the afternoon to listen to a world series game on your dad’s car radio.

4. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
   Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed. -Bruce Springsteen, musician (b. 23 Sep 1949)

5. I looked at Bennet’s original post on X. Someone replied with a similar set of graphs proving that “cars are horse and vice versa.”

6. Well, I suppose that, with Kimmel back on the air, news of the death of democracy has been greatly exaggerated. Sinclair Group has said they will still preempt his show. I haven’t seen an announcement about Roseanne getting her show back. Stay tuned.

   1. haha. Dr B. I think there’s more chance of a Benny Hill Show reboot than Roseanne getting her show back. Sadly. Roseanne is bananas crazy a lot of the time, but she is deeply entertaining.

      D.A.
      NYC

7. Good old Man from U.N.C.L.E., always combatting a nasty case of thrush.

   Leo G. Carroll (pictured) appeared in more Alfred Hitchcock films than any other male actor, apart from the director himself.

8. Do I understand this? Doesn’t it assume what it is trying to disprove in step 2?

   How to prove that there is no sex binary:

   Step 1: get a large group of people.

   Step 2: divide them into two groups, male and female.

   Step 3: measure a trait, for example height.

   Step 4: make a graph showing overlap between male and female.

   1. yep!!!!

   2. The movie Idiocracy is seeming to be nearer and truer than ever.

9. The man on the left, David McCallum, looked very familiar. I looked him up, and it must have been The Great Escape in which I saw him. I don’t think I’ve seen anything else of his.

   I feel sorry for the goat. I hope he gets himself a good lawyer. A few years ago, dolphins were accused of working for the Russian security services. Beluga whales too! One of them, Hvaldimir, got away from the program and swam free. No danger of him falling out of a window.

   In India, a suspected Chinese spy pigeon was detained, interrogated and finally released after eight months.

   1. When I was a teenybopper in the 60s David McCallum was the teenybopper heartthrob in my neighborhood – and therefore The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was necessary viewing. His appeal (presumably based on his cute and vaguely androgynous good looks) didn’t confine itself to just one region of the US.

      It wasn’t a show aimed at 9 and 10 year old girls and actor McCallum must have been a bit confused and bemused to be regularly interviewed by 16 Magazine and Tigerbeat. Because he was married, however, none of us ever had a chance to Win a Date with him.

      1. My sister the same.
         For me it was Mrs. Peel. OK, Agent 99, too.

         Funny. The girls could cut out magazine photos of their heart throbs and wallpaper their bedrooms with them. Guys kept theirs in their desk drawers and brought them out only for special occasions.

         1. “Special occasions”. Now that’s a new euphemism.

         2. I too was torn between Peel and 99 in my youth. A monogamous relationship with either was just not possible.

      2. David McCallum reminds me of Oskar Werner who acted in many notable films, including Spy Who Came In From the Cold, before he was nabbed by Lieutenant Columbo for murdering his mother-in-law.

10. Re. the Holocaust post, if you have a PBS passport, you can watch Passage to Sweden, a documentary on the many Jews who managed to escape to Sweden from Norway. It’s quite good.

11. I think I finally figured out how the ‘sex is a spectrum’ theory works: As everyone knows by now, instead of relying solely on gametes – which are undeniably binary – the sex is a spectrum theory relies on a whole bucket list of sex-related traits, of which gametes are just one trait. But this is the crucial gambit: in the SiS theory, gametes have no more importance in sex determination than, say, hormonal profile or gender identity.

    The sex-related traits that they usually mention as weighing just as strongly as gametes are: sex chromosomes, genitals, secondary sexual traits, hormonal profiles, and gender identity. So, suppose we give +1 point for every trait a person has that is on the ‘feminine’ side of the spectrum, and -1 point for every trait a person has that is on the ‘masculine’ end of the spectrum.

    Masculine -6——– 0 ——–+6 Feminine

    E.g., here’s Tyler, pre-transition:

    Genes: male -1
    External genitals: male -1
    Gametes produced: male -1
    Sex hormone profile: male -1
    Secondary sex characteristics: male -1
    Gender identity: female +1

    His ‘masculinity’ score is -5—still solidly on the male end of the spectrum, which Tyler hates being on. But then, post-transition, Tyler:

    Genes: male -1
    External genitals: female (surgical) +1
    Gametes produced: none (elective orchiectomy) 0
    Sex hormone profile: female (due to HRT) +1
    Secondary sex characteristics: female (due to HRT) +1
    Gender identity: female +1

    Now, Tyler’s place on the gender spectrum is at +3, which makes her feel a whole hell of a lot better since she is now every bit as ‘biologically’ female as, for example, a post-menopausal female with an androgen excess. And better yet, since her biological femininity is attested to by legitimate scientists, anybody who denies she is a “real” woman is a fundamentalist and/or transphobe.

    1. Excellent comment. Regarding your last sentence:

       And better yet, since her biological femininity is attested to by legitimate scientists, anybody who denies she is a “real” woman is a fundamentalist and/or transphobe.

       I would change “fundamentalist and/or transphobe” to science denier and/or fundamentalist. (For radical trans activists there are only two motivations for disagreeing with them: science denial or transphobia, which is an irrational fear of trans-identified individuals.)

       Of course, as the philosopher Karl Popper used to say, definitions are statements that are not capable of being true. They are conventions: we assign a word to some phenomenon. From a scientific point of view, a definition is more of less useful, but not true or false. It remains to be shown how the sex-is-a-spectrum view helps scientists to explain the things they care about.

       Or is this all about politics, about being able to say that sex is a spectrum and therefore trans-identifying males can change their sex and therefore should be allowed into female-only spaces, etc.? Since self-ID (no gate-keeping) is the policy goal, in the end one has to argue that gender identity trumps all the other characteristics that the sex-is-a-spectrum view uses. Then even males who did not undergo any secondary sex trait modification can also be viewed as women simply because they claim to identify as females.

    2. Well said Brooke. That indeed seems to be TRA’s M.O. Lots of playing “hide the ball” on society. That, the suicide threat and the reframing of the issue as “The New Civil Rights” (Time mag. circa 2012)… is how it has been so effective.

       Intellectuals like this person (and our “friend” August Fuentez) burn a lot of fuel doing this kind of 3 card monty stuff which scientists, the well informed and/ or high IQ people see through like a carney fairground rigged game… but it “plays well in Preoria” as they say (works on a LOT of the population).

       D.A.
       NYC

       1. Typo for “hide the balls”?

12. The sex non-binary argument – to paraphrase Helen Joyce, it’s so bloody stupid, we could be thinking about real and important things.

    Thanks for the Brooks Falls link. I opened it and immediately saw a bear positioned at the top of this little falls catch a leaping salmon. The fish just about jumped into bear’s mouth. But it doesn’t have to be that way — they are quite adept at snagging the fish in midair with a quick sideways or downward grab. The bears we getting fish other ways as well, grabbing them out of the water, of course. There was a cub feasting on a large fish, alternating taking a bite or two & then looking around, maybe a bit wary with all the adults around, maybe looking for mom.

13. Motte, no praxis : free speech

    Bailey, praxis : advance Leftism ; propagandize under the Smith-Mundt Modernization act

    “I’m not a fan of censorship, but this wasn’t about free speech – it was about consequences for saying something vile. You can say what you want, but networks don’t have to pay you to say it. …
    Actions have consequences, and ABC made the right call.”

    Jimmy Kimmel referring to Roseanne Barr’s show
    May 29, 2018
    (Bold added)

    Praxis

    1. What prompted Kimmel to say this?

       1. And did he? The post above does not give a source. But if true, it would be an appalling instance of hypocrisy 🙂

       2. I understand – Here are his full remarks – I had a longer one up earlier but tried to keep it concise :

          https://youtu.be/12m1rG0Tj7U?si=uZc9UxtjY7XwclRW

          It was Roseanne Barr’s show being cancelled because she said something “offensive”.

          The overall results are entirely consistent with praxis.

          1. Thanks. He did not say what’s in the quotation. But he wasn’t sympathetic at all. Hypocrisy! 🙂

             1. That’s weird – I posted it the other day – I’ll check.. because I already checked before ..

          2. The quote isn’t included in that clip. Do you have a source for the original quote? The clip is mostly about poking fun at how little cancelling Roseanne’s show will matter to ABC’s lineup. It would have been great if Kimmel had defended free speech but he didn’t say anything as hypocritical as your earlier quote in the linked clip.

    2. ADDENDUM :

       The quote is moving now – could have sworn I checked it here before posting :

       https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2025/09/19/friday-hili-dialogue-542/#comment-2158426

       … yes, it is not matching up. Well, this is a drag – if I find it, I guess I’ll post it.

       Very confusing… the video is .. May 29th…

       Apologies for the confusion.

       …

       I found the quote on eXtwitter, checked YouTube, and COULD HAVE SWORN I verified it the other day.

    3. Apologies for the over-commenting but this quote cannot be verified on video of Jimmy Kimmel. I looked around and cannot find it. Snopes says it’s fake. Grok says it’s fake. As I wrote before – I could have sworn I verified it. So I must have made a mistake.

       That’s the best I know about this! I am glad there was feedback because this is important to get straight, so thanks to those above.

       1. And thank you for your diligence and forthrightness, Bryan.

          1. FWIW I went on eXtwitter and asked the Enthusiastic to help verify the critical parts of this, or publish an erratum.

             I do indeed hope it is merely my own human error here. Note this was like last week.

             1. Let me extend Dr MacMillan’s thanks for your diligence! And don’t feel bad about it – we all get discombobulated from time to time. As I get into official Olded Farte years, I find it occurs disturbingly frequently. It’s like the creeping decrepitude in bones and body; one of the indignities we suffer as we get older.

                Best,
                E

       2. Thanks for following up and thanks for not taking my question about the authenticity of the quote as a personal attack – which is the standard response on the interwebs. I’m glad there are still places like WEIT where civil discourse can occur. Big thanks to our host for creating and enforcing da roolz that make it possible.

    4. I’m a little confused. I was under the impression that a company such as ABC has the right to fire anyone, Roseanne, Kimmel, anyone it wants. No one seriously disputes that. But the difference between the Roseanne and Kimmel cases — or so I thought — was the appearance of government pressure, holding ABC’s owners hostage in at least two ways, demanding that they fire Kimmel. I am unaware of any hint of government coercion in the Roseanne case. In other words, ABC can fire Kimmel, but the FCC cannot threaten ABC if it does not. Apologies if my understanding is a bit naive — I barely know who these people are. not having watched television since about 1985.

       1. Right – I am glad to take this up, but on another day (vide infra 😁).

       2. The FCC absolutely can threaten ABC. The airwaves are public property, licensed to broadcasters as a regulatory activity of the executive state. Your FCC, and our Canadian Radio and Television Commission, holds the licensing authority. Unlike a newspaper or a blue-haired person of indeterminate gender waving a sign on a public sidewalk, the broadcaster can be silenced, yes censored, through licence revocation for failing to uphold the terms of the licence. When the Smothers Brothers ran into trouble with the censors at CBS, — I know, I’m dating myself — CBS was worried about the FCC yanking their licence to print money, as well as the advertisers yanking their sponsorship.

          One way to interpret the threat by the FCC Chairman about easy ways and hard ways would be that she told ABC that the FCC could call a hearing at which ABC would have to (expensively and riskily) show cause why it’s licence shouldn’t be revoked over what its employee Kimmel had said on the air, or ABC could take him off the air voluntarily and the FCC would let bygones be bygones, allowing ABC itself to continue to occupy its government-allotted slice of the electromagnetic spectrum without further hassle.

          I’ll leave it up to others as to whether the FCC acted appropriately in this case. But the FCC certainly can issue threats to broadcasters.

          1. If I understand it correctly, and I may not because this is not my field, ABC as such does not hold a broadcast license – the licenses are held by the individual TV stations, or perhaps by by an entity (e.g., Sinclair Broadcasting, which apparently owns about 185 ABC stations). The stations broadcasting ABC programming are ABC affiliates, not ABC subsidiaries; and this is why, for example, the Sinclair stations reportedly will not broadcast Kimmel but preempt him with some other program of their choosing.
             The real pressure that the FCC can bring on the networks is commercial: if ABC wants to merge with CBS, to create an absurd example, it will need FCC approval. And the networks, and their owners, frequently want to do deals that need government approval. So when Brendan Carr threatens, they listen.
             It’s classic behavior by Trump and his sickophants (yes, I can spell and this is how I care to spell it here) – “nice place you have here, pity if something happened to it.”

             1. ✅

             2. Or, psychophants.

                [Edit: Ok, I really do not understand why this one was kicked into “awaiting moderation”. Again, a retarded AI™ seems a plausible if not likely cause.]

          2. You may be correct, but your comment does not address my point, which was that firing (or suspending) a TV person is well within the rights of the network, but as far as I understand it, was not really the issue. The issue — and the people raising it might have been wrong, despite being legal experts on this sort of thing — was the appearance of government pressure to fire Kimmel, an act that would have nothing to do with the larger issue of whether ABC was meeting its licensing obligations.

             (Gomez, the FCC’s sole Democratic-affiliated commissioner, issued a statement criticising administration pressure and accusing ABC of “cowardly corporate capitulation”.

             “We cannot allow an inexcusable act of political violence to be twisted into a justification for government censorship and control,” she said.

             “This FCC does not have the authority, the ability, or the constitutional right to police content or punish broadcasters for speech the government dislikes.” — the BBC story on the issue…)

             After all, Trump himself claimed that ABC was totally and wholly corrupt, dishonest, and a mouthpiece for the “Democrat” party, so presumably firing one late-night guy with low ratings would not even come close to rectifying this wholesale corruption of ABC by the woke socialists/progressives/liberals. That suggests a different motive for threatening Kimmel and ABC.

             1. Ultra vires on steroids.

                (The Muse is prodding me to do a parody version of Oklahoma!, starting “U-U-U-U-Ultra vires! Where the X comes Y-ing through the Z….” (FSV X,Y,Z), but I can’t be arsed. Please have at it if you feel the urge. If you want a collaborative effort I’ll contribute.)

14. “Some bad news (among much other bad news) is that Trump and other health officials issued a warning that pregnant women taking Tylenol could produce babies with autism. There is no evidence for this claim.”

    The last sentence is not correct. Andrea Baccarelli, the dean of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, led a team which published a systematic review in August “that supported evidence of an association between acetaminophen exposure during pregnancy and increased incidence of NDDs.” This association included autism and ADHD, among other neurodevelopmental disorders. Moreover, the recommendation to limit acetaminophen intake and to use it, if necessary, only under physician supervision at the lowest effective dose and for the shortest duration came directly from the study.

    One could correctly note that the study did not establish causation. But Kennedy has long stated that if the science suggests harm to children, he will default to doing no harm while research is ongoing.

    I imagine many Democrats in an alternate universe of decades past would increase their daily habit of cigarettes and encourage pregnant mothers everywhere to light up with abandon. Raging in Trump derangement and stewing in Kennedy hate, they would note that “Hell, ‘more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.’ Association, smoshiation. Ain’t no one ever proved nothing about no lung cancer and they’ve been doing hundreds of studies and looking at it for years and years.”

    I watched the press conference. It was vintage Trump—a caricature of a caricature of a caricature. His team was much more appropriately measured in their talks.

    https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/using-acetaminophen-during-pregnancy-may-increase-childrens-autism-and-adhd-risk/

    1. Well now, if that fool Kennedy really was “following the science” and not his own ignorance, he would not have ignored the Swedish study of more than 2 million people which found no correlation to acetominophen use in pregnant women and autism; (see here and here)

       Pretending contradictory evidence doesn’t exist is NOT protecting children from harm. It does support his personal agenda but he is derelict in his duty. It is difficult to be more disgusted with a governement official than what is owed to Kennnedy.

       1. A relatively trusted source (website of main German television news programme—if anything slightly too anti-Trump for my taste (I see myself as a classical progressive/liberal/leftist but non-woke)) cited a metastudy which in turn cited some studies showing a correlation (not necessarily causation, of course), some not, some an anti-correlation. On the whole, it looks like slight evidence for a correlation (but even if that is true doesn’t explain the increase in the number of autism diagnoses—I have two children with autism myself, so have a bit more background). So, to be fair, you citing just one study which supports your point of view is the same tactic you are accusing Kennedy of. (Of course, I regard Kennedy as a nutcase with regard to many health issues, including his anti-vaccine stance).

          1. Here is the article: https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-025-01208-0

             Do Trump and Kennedy have an irrational hatred of vaccines? Yes. Are they otherwise crazy? Yes, in many respects. Is there strong evidence for their claim against Tylenol? No. Is it just completely fabricated bullshit made up with no basis at all? Definitely not; see the study linked to above.

             All the same, the lion’s share in the increase in autism diagnoses in the last few decades couldn’t be explained by Tylenol. But that doesn’t mean that the claim is baseless. Most lung cancer is caused by smoking, but that doesn’t mean it’s OK to insulate my house with asbestos.

          2. Mothers’ fevers in pregnancy are known to cause some disorders in offspring. Fevers are treated with acetaminophen. Therefore acetaminophen causes disorders???

             1. Obviously not, but who claimed that? Certainly not I. Correlation does not always imply causation. But it can sometimes. If there is a correlation, one then has to check. It’s not always straightforward. Have you read all the studies cited in the metastudy? Do you really think that no-one has thought to check for that?

                More to the point, can you point to any evidence that fevers cause autism? If not, then that is irrelevant here, even if fevers might cause other disorders.

             2. Apologies, I should have been clearer: I was supporting your point about the difference between causation and correlation.

             3. Thanks!

       2. Edward, if you had read closely what I posted, looked at the study itself, or listened to the conference, you might reconsider the kneejerk response. Marty Makary, the FDA commissioner, specifically noted that some studies reached opposite conclusions. As he said, “that’s how science works.” The study done by the Harvard/Mt. Sinai team was a systematic review of 46 earlier studies.

          Here are the results from their abstract: “We identified 46 studies for inclusion in our analysis. Of these, 27 studies reported positive associations (significant links to NDDs), 9 showed null associations (no significant link), and 4 indicated negative associations (protective effects). Higher-quality studies were more likely to show positive associations. Overall, the majority of the studies reported positive associations of prenatal acetaminophen use with ADHD, ASD, or NDDs in offspring, with risk-of-bias and strength-of-evidence ratings informing the overall synthesis.”

          1. The problem is that the main author of the study, Andrea Baccarelli, is an endocrinologist with no toxicology or pharmacology background who proclaims to be an expert in “environmental exposures.”

             His testimony in a multi-district litigation (MDL): In re: Acetaminophen – ASD/ADHD Products Liability Litigation was rejected by Federal Judge Denise Cote because it did not adhere to the Daubert standard — criteria used in trials when an ‘expert’ is presenting scientific evidence to assess whether the methodology is valid, if it is applicable to the topic at hand, or if they are merely using an appeal to authority to try to legitimize unsupported and unsubstantiated claims.

             The paper you reference has multiple problems, which one can read about here, from a source I find very creditable:

             https://news.immunologic.org/p/the-tylenolautism-pseudoscience-pipeline?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=155te&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

             1. And all that might be true, yet I see it as besides my main point. Taking issue with evidence or the person who produced it is a much different matter than declaring “there is no evidence.”

                I used the cigarette smoking example for a reason. From the time that the first major epidemiological study suggested a strong link between smoking and lung cancer, thirteen years passed before the federal government acted. Thousands of studies on smoking were conducted. Each side could engage in motivated reasoning about how this study conflicted, that study was flawed, this person or industry had vested interests, that person lacked competence. The iterations are endless. This is particularly true when deep pockets and massive profits are involved. Add political tribalism to the mix and the arguments will be hopelessly distorted.

                Ask yourself this: If studies suggest an association that could be harming children, and if your contentions turn out to be either false or irrelevant, and if causation is eventually established to the satisfaction of all but the moneyed interests, and if it takes thirteen years to do that, how would you wish you had acted if you were in a policy position at the front end of those thirteen years? How many children might have been harmed in that thirteen years because of your inaction and failure to acknowledge that you might be wrong?

                On the other hand, fast forward thirteen years and assume we find the association proves to be spurious with no causality whatsoever. What harm would have been done by issuing precautionary guidance that told pregnant women, while studies tried to sort out causality, to consult unnecessarily with their physicians and limit acetaminophen intake to as low a dose and as short a duration as possible?

             2. “How many children might have been harmed in that thirteen years because of your inaction and failure to acknowledge that you might be wrong?”

                Tylenol is the only recommended pain and fever reducer in pregnancy, and untreated fever and pain pose legitimate risks to pregnancy outcomes – including Autism Spectrum Disorder and autism! That’s why.

                Please read the entire article I linked, because it seems you have not done so.

             3. Ginger, I am aware of the issue. What I don’t understand is your apparent objection to “consult with your doctor” as a precautionary measure while the science is being worked out. Nobody is pulling Tylenol from the shelves.

                I also read enough of your linked article to determine that this is not how disinterested science gets done.

             4. The review study you insist is worthy of changing treatment recommendations, as the article I linked and others here have pointed out, ignores the largest quality study on the topic done to date – a study published in JAMA that included 2.5 million subjects.

                The new “Harvard study” uses the same evidence that a Federal court characterized as lacking in proper methodology. Andrea Baccarelli’s testimony in the trial was thrown out, and he is also the main author of the “Harvard Study”.

                No medical organizations are endorsing the conclusions of the new paper. According to Perplexity AI:

                Some authoritative bodies, like the European Network of Teratology Information Services (ENTIS), have explicitly criticized key studies cited by the Harvard report as unreliable. The FDA and major health organizations have not reversed their general guidance on acetaminophen use during pregnancy, which is considered safe when used as directed.

                You shouldn’t change treatment guidelines based on lousy data, especially when those changes may put patients at risk of adverse effects on fetal development.

                You shouldn’t fund patient outreach programs to educate them about these treatment guideline changes based on lousy data.

                You shouldn’t change package inserts to imply there is a risk of autism/ADHD from prenatal acetaminophen use based on lousy data.

                You shouldn’t approve state Medicaid payments for leucovorin use for the treatment of autism spectrum disorder in patients without cerebral folate deficiency, without clinical evidence of safety and effectiveness or an approved clinical indication.

15. Thanks for posting the fat bear link. I love watching those bears. I don’t vote, though, just enjoy watching the bears.

16. I agree that “There is no evidence for this claim” is not correct. In brief summary, there are a number of correlational studies that support the claim. Probably the weight of the evidence is that the claim is false (because the correlational studies are misled by confounders), but that’s not the same thing as there being no evidence to support it.

    I would cite particular studies, but you can go to ChatGPT for that.

    1. Re using ChatGPT and its ilk for cites, I highly recommend
       https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-024-09775-5

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