Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Here’s an 11-minute video of CNN commentators (and a few guests), most of whom are certainly Democrats, discussing the debate and agreeing that Biden’s performance was dismal—that Biden appeared disengaged and incompetent. As David Axelrod notes, Biden did make some good points, but his performance, particularly near the beginning, made Democrats panic.
Yes, of course Trump blustered and lied, but his supporters are used to that, and probably ignore the lies. Debates are about appearances, not substance, and appearances were critically important in this debate when so many Americans, like me, are worried about Biden’s ability to run the country. Biden flunked. And remember too, he has coattails. If Biden’s defeated, it will affect other Democrats across the country. We’re faced with the prospect of a Republic President, a Congress with two Republican houses, and a conservative, pro-Republican Supreme Court.
My view is the same as that of most of the commentators, and I especially agree with Van Jones. “it was painful.” But I also liked his quip: it was “an old man versus a con man.” Jones added this:
“I just want to speak from my heart. I love that guy. That’s a good man. He loves his country; he’s doing the best that he can. But he had a test to meet tonight—to restore confidence of the country in a debate, and he failed to do that. And I think there’s a lot of people who are going to want to see him consider taking a different course now. We’re still far from our convention, and it’s time for this party to figure out a different way forward if he will allow us to do that. But that was not what we needed from Joe Biden, and it’s personally painful for a lot of people: it’s just panic—it’s pain.”
Most of us Democrats harbor similar affection for Biden, but that doesn’t mean he should now run the country.
A different way forward? Who could the Democrats nominate now? The money has come in, the posters and buttons are printed, and the Democratic Convention is ready to roll. Will Biden step aside now? I wouldn’t bet on it. He and his wife appear convinced that he did okay. And who could take on the painful job of saying, “Joe, it’s time to step aside”?
Here’s your chance to weigh in on the debate in the comments.
I’m watching the debate now, and have gone through an hour. It’s pretty bad: Biden wobbles and Trump lies. So far Biden isn’t totally out of it and has made some good points. But he does look as if age has taken its toll. He’s a good man—far better than Trump—but Trump is winning. Half an hour to go. Here are some “must watch” moments from the debate selected by CNN; the video 35 minutes long:
All I can say is this: I TOLD YOU SO! Every time I worried and kvetched on this site about Biden’s scary shows of incompetence and inscentience, some readers took me to task, even asserting that I was trying to promote Trump. To those folks: do you still think Biden is a good choice for President? You may say he’s better than Trump—and I will never vote for Trump—but how competent will he be in a couple of years? Seriously!
Well, last night’s debate vindicated me, but also terrified me, because Biden’s performance was apparently so appalling that Democrats throughout America are calling for someone to replace him as a candidate—at this last minute! Trump, meanwhile, blustered and lied a lot, but clearly came off looking better. We Democrats had better regroup! Ceiling Cat help us all!
Here’s this morning’s NYT headlines. You can read the stories behind the headlines on the top and left here, and here, respectively:
→ The debate happened: I don’t know where to begin. In my home we’ve been screaming at the TV for two hours as I write this. Biden walked on stiff, uncomfortable, strange. He held a bewildered expression throughout the night, his mouth slightly open, his eyes wide, staring off into the distance, rarely smiling. I won’t say Trump looked young (he isn’t), but he is less stiff and his eyes blinked normally, jaw firmly in control of mouth. And then they started talking. The extent of Biden’s cognitive decline is undeniable and, speaking as a citizen who wishes my president the best, devastating. For a strange moment as the debate went on, the entire media commentariat was in agreement: this is a disaster for Joe Biden, and the Democrats need to replace him.
Here’s Nicholas Kristof, éminence grise of progressive political commentators: “I wish Biden would reflect on this debate performance and then announce his decision to withdraw from the race, throwing the choice of Democratic nominee to the convention.” Here’s Kasie Hunt, CNN anchor: “The voice, open-mouthed look, and visual contrast between President Biden and former President Trump all have Democrats I’m talking to nearly beside themselves watching this debate.” Here’s top pollster Dave Wasserman: “This debate making abundantly clear that Biden’s insistence on running for another term. . . has gravely jeopardized Dems’ prospects to defeat Trump.”
The low moment for Trump was probably when Biden said Trumpo had “the morals of an alley cat” (great line). And Trump found himself saying: “I didn’t have sex with a porn star.” Which is just. I mean. With all due respect. . .
Low moment for Biden, other than overall presentation, was when his words became a nonsensical garble and then the camera panned to an alarmed-looking Trump for his response. “I really don’t know what he said,” Trump says. “I don’t think he knows what he said either.” Or maybe it was when Biden said, perplexingly: “We finally beat Medicare.”
High moment for both was the two of them fighting about their golf skills. Biden goes: “I got my handicap when I was vice president down to a 6.” Trump hits back: “That’s the biggest lie—that he’s a 6 handicap—of all.” Biden: “I was an 8 handicap and—and—” Trump: “I’ve seen your swing. I know your swing.”
And kudos to CNN’s moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bush, praised by the left and right for being fair. Turning off the mics after each candidate hit their time limit was really smart, as was having no studio audience. It made for a calmer, more focused debate, and it made it harder for Trump to be a bully. But it still didn’t save Joe.
On CNN, Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s former communications director, said: “It was a really disappointing debate performance from Joe Biden. I don’t think there’s any other way to slice it.” Van Jones, close to tears, suggested Biden should drop out. CNN correspondent John King said senior Democrats are considering going to the White House to urge Biden to drop out. The most positive thing former Obama campaign chief David Axelrod could muster was to warn Republicans that if Biden did drop out, Trump might be in trouble.
I won’t fact-check here, but they both told huge and strange lies (Trump said Democrats allow killing children after they’ve been born full-term; Biden said the Border Patrol guys endorsed him). Maybe I’m slap-happy, but this random left-wing Twitter account made me laugh a lot.
In a last-minute scramble, Biden’s team leaked to friendly media: The President has a cold. The Biden after-party featured an extraordinarily animated Jill Biden saying to her husband: “Joe, you did such a great job. You answered every question! You knew all the facts. And let me ask the crowd, what did Trump do? He lieeeed!”
I think the question we all have to ask after tonight is simple: If this is Biden, who’s been running our country? Like, practically, who’s been doing the job job of it? Jill Biden? The White House handyman? The interns? Karl Rove? A random Houthi? I’m not mad, I just want to know. Because the people who have been pushing to keep him in office certainly know he’s this bad, and they must like it that way. Weak and confused, he can be used, kept as a pet moderate. Interns, release the old man, just tell us your demands, and we can figure something out.
All right, it’s the turn of readers to weigh in. What do you think? Did Biden really do that badly (I’m watching the debate as I write)? Should he be replace? (And isn’t it too late?). If you’re a Democrat, as most of us are, do you still plan to vote for Biden, or will you not vote at all for President (something I contemplate on and off in a state where Biden’s victory is assured)? And if you chewed me out for saying in earlier posts that Biden looked bad, you’re welcome to apologize! 🙂
Your opinion below, please, while I finish watching this debacle. And I’m adding a poll, so please vote, too
UPDATE: Go here for Melanie Phillips’s take on the debate (she had been a “yes” in an earlier debate (2019) on the same question in London).
_____________
Normally you’d have to pay to watch this Munk Debate (they’re all in Toronto), but it recently appeared on FIRE’s YouTube site. And normally I wouldn’t watch it as it’s nearly two hours long, but it’s a holiday and I get to do something besides writing.
In my view, this is a “good” debate for two reasons. First, and less important, the opponents of the motion show themselves up to be zealots: both fanatical, purveyors of lies, and swallowers of Hamas propaganda. They both want Israel eliminated in favor of a “one-state” solution, which only a fool would think wouldn’t lead to the elimination and/or dispersal of its Jews. In that sense, the debate shows the opponents of the motion up for who they are, both anti-Zionists and antisemites.
But mainly it’s good because both Murray and Hausdorff show their typical debating skill, eloquence, and adherence to the truth. (As I note below, I’ve already said in previous posts that I agree that modern anti-Zionism (i.e., calls for the elimination of Israel) is also anti-Semitism, so I came to this debate with my own strong pro-proposition opinion. That said, I think I was open to having my mind changed, but I can’t envision what arguments would do it. In the same way, I’m open to see evolution proven as false, but I can’t imagine what arguments (or data) would do it.
Here’s the motion under debate:
Motion: Be it Resolved, anti-Zionism is antisemitism
And here are the relevant definitions given by the moderator:
antisemitism: “Hate directed at Jewish people, or cruel and unfair treatment of people because they are Jewish”
anti-Zionism: being against Zionism, defined as “the movement for the self-determination and statehood for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland, the land of Israel.”
We have four people participating. As the Munk site notes (I’ve added the links to the people):
Arguing for the resolution is award winning journalist, best-selling author, and former Munk Debater Douglas Murray. His debate partner will be Natasha Hausdorff, an international law expert and legal commentator on antisemitism.
Hausdorff is director of the UK Lawyers for Israel, and, like Murray, is whip-smart, eloquent, and passionately pro-Israel. If I had to choose a pair to defend the motion, it would be these two. (Look up some of Hausdorff’s interviews and debates on YouTube.) Hausdorff is the only one of the four without a Wikpedia page, and that needs to be fixed.
Opposing the resolution is Mehdi Hasan. Mehdi is a best-selling author, former MSNBC anchor, and the CEO and editor-in-chief of the new media company Zeteo. He will be joined by the award winning Israeli broadcaster and Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy.
Hasan had an MSNBC show but left the network when his show was canceled. Levy, who writes for Haaretz, seems to hate the idea of a Jewish state, for he, like Hasan, favors a “one-state solution” and he also supports boycotts of Israel. As Malgorzata says, “he believes that Jews can live happily and peacefully alongside Palestinians in a single state.” She added, “Levy is either a fanatic or stupid—and he’s not stupid.”
There are four six-minute presentations, four three-minute rebuttals, and then the moderator asks the debaters questions, which leads to a back-and-forth that got quite heated, especially on the “no” side. There were lots of interruptions. (Hausdorff, however, seems incapable of shows of anger, but she’s nevertheless passionate.) Finally, the debate ends with four 4-minute closing statements by the debaters and then the final vote (spoiler: Murray and Hausdorff win).
But enough palaver. Watch for yourself. The debate preliminaries start at 4:00, while the debate proper starts at 14:02 with Douglas Murray’s 6-minute statement.
My notes as I watched:
Hausdorff’s opening speech, giving what she sees as the four “blood libels” of anti-Zionism, is magnificent. These are, she avers, libels used by anti-semites to justify their ant-Zionism. She denies that (at least now) Zionism is not a political movement.
Levy, on the other hand, sees Zionism as “Jewish supremacy.” By that I don’t think he means Jews are superior to all other people or to the Arab citizens of Israel. Rather, he sees Zionism as the view that Jews are superior to Palestinians. This is likely connected with his preferred “one-state” solution. Levy thus sees Zionism as an ideology: the doctrine of Jewish supremacy that has to be leveled by creating one Jewish + Palestinian state. He also argues that Israel is “more Jewish than democratic” as sees Israel as “occupiers”.
In his own rebuttal, Hasan agrees that Zionism is the doctrine of “Jewish supremacy”.
In her rebuttal, Hausdorff argues that the use of double standards against Jewish state omstantiates both anti-Zionism AND anti-Semitism. She scores a huge debate point when she catches Hasan lying about the Balfour declaratin, and happens to have his out-of-context quote on hand, which she corrects.
In his rebuttal, Levy argues that to create a real democracy in Israel, you more or less have to get rid of Israel, creating a single state in which there is a single regime promoting equality of Palestinians and Israels. Levy, an Israeli Jew, apparently believes that Israel is not a democracy because citizens of the Palestinian territories can’t vote in Israeli elections. Murray calls both of his opponents out for argui9ng Israel is not a “democracy.” Indeed, that argument is not even stupid.
One of the best parts of the debate is Murray’s description of how anti-Israel students in America (and other countries, I suppose) as falling in two classes: the “sinister and the silly” That starts at 1:10:16.
To my mind, the most sagacious statement of the debate was Hausdorff’s analogy that, to her, explains why antisemitism is the same thing as anti-Zionism. She says that a couple can argue about whether or not to have a child, and that there could be good arguments on both sides. But she adds this: “Once a child is born, to suggest that that child be got rid of is murder.” What she means, of course, is that before 1948 there was a debate, even among Jews, about whether a Jewish state should be created. But once it came into being in that year, it was a fait accompli, Jews flocked there to find refuge, and it is a nation like other nations, with the right to defend itself against aggression.
That is why to Hausdorff, and to me, it is murder to call for the elimination of a Jewish state that already exists. Whether it be through war or the one-state “solution”, that elimination, an “anti-Zionist” endeavor, shows “cruel and unfair treatment of people because they are Jewish”—the given definition of anti-Semitism.
In the end, the “one-state solution” will lead not only to dissolution of Israel, but the targeting of Jews. Since both Levy and Hasan favor that “one-state solution”, they are in effect calling for either the destruction of the Jews through murder or through dispersion of them throughout the world, for those are the two fates of the Jews under a one-state “solution.” Antisemitism, as Murray maintains, has taken the form of anti-Zionism.
You may ask yourself, as I did, whether a Jew like Levy can be antisemitic if they are anti-Zionist. How can a Jew be antisemitic? The answer is this: for the same reason that an American can be anti-American. In the end it’s not your own identity that determines whether or not you like or hate that identity, but how you feel about those who share your identity.
My partner in crime, evolutionist Luana Maroja of Williams College, is going to be debating a touchy question tomorrow evening: the proposition given in the title (she’s on the Negative side). Her debate partner, Erec Smith, is a research fellow at The Cato Institute and teaches rhetoric and composition at York College. The Affirmative team includes Chad Womack (Senior Director of National STEM Programs and Initiatives) and Jaret Riddick (Senior Fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology); while the moderator, Nadine Strossen, is a lawyer and activist who used to be the national president of the ACLU.
The debate is TOMORROW, Thursday November 2, at 8 p.m. Eastern time, and will be broadcast live on YouTube (site given at bottom). Mark your calendars.
Here’s the announcement:
Join MIT Free Speech Alliance (host) and Heterodox Academy (co-sponsor) at MIT on November 2 at 8:00 pm ET for an Oxford-Union style debate about whether STEM is systemically racist.
The event will be conducted as a modified Oxford-Union style debate between two teams. There will be an audience Q&A period at the end. Every listener will be their own judge, no “winner” will be declared.
Debate proposition: “Resolved, that STEM is systemically racist.”
Time and place: Thursday, November 2, 2023, at MIT’s Wong Auditorium (E51-115). Lobby opens at 7pm for light refreshments and interaction with sponsors. Auditorium doors open at 7:45pm. Debate and streaming video begins at 8:00pm. The debate will run for approximately one hour followed by audience Q&A.
Attendance is free. Registration is not required; however only registered attendees will be guaranteed a seat in the auditorium. Speakers will be set up in the lobby for any overflow. In-person attendees can register at this link. Those without an MIT Sloan Login can sign up for a free account by pressing “Sign Up” under the First Time User button.
No pre-registration will be required to watch the livestream video, which will be broadcast nationally via YouTube.
And here’s the YouTube site; just click on it tomorrow at 8 p.m. Eastern time.
From Matthew Yglesias’s Substack site Slow Boring comes a frightening article by Maya Bodnick describing what’s happened to high-school debating in America. It’s turning into an exercise in “critical theory”, with judges telling contestants in advance what kind of politics they favor, the debaters ignoring the assigned topic, and debaters speaking so fast you can’t understand them. Further, many of the debaters advocate a dismantling of America, no matter what system they’re talking about.
It’s a far cry from the kind of debates we see at Oxford or Cambridge, or that Hitchens and others have engaged in. And because Bodnick tells us that many famous current politicians (e.g. Lyndon Johnson, Nancy Pelosi, and John F. Kennedy) honed their skills in high-school debating, this change bodes ill for the future politics of America.
Click to read:
Here’s Bodnick’s take on what’s happened:
In a traditional debate round, students argue over a topic assigned by the tournament — for example, “The U.S. should adopt universal healthcare.” One side is expected to argue in favor of the motion (the affirmation side), and one against (the negation side). However, in recent years, many debaters have decided to flat-out ignore the assigned topic and instead hijack the round by proposing brand new (i.e., wholly unrelated to the original topic), debater-created resolutions that advocate complex social criticisms based on various theories — Marxism, anti-militarism, feminist international relations theory, neocolonialism, securitization, anthropocentrism, orientalism, racial positionality, Afro-Pessimism, disablism, queer ecology, and transfeminism. (To be clear, traditional feminism is out of fashion and seen as too essentialist.)
These critical theory arguments, known as kritiks, are usually wielded by the negation side to criticize the fundamental assumptions of their affirmation side opponents. Kritik advocates argue that the world is so systematically broken that discussing public policy proposals and reforms misses what really matters: the need to fundamentally revolutionize society in some way. For example, if the topic was “The U.S. should increase the federal minimum wage,” the affirmation side might provide some arguments supporting this policy. But then the negation side, instead of arguing that the government shouldn’t raise the minimum wage, might reject spending any time on the original resolution and counter-propose a Marxist kritik.
Here’s an example of how the negation might introduce this kritik:
Revolutionary theory is a prior question — the aff [proposal about raising the minimum wage] is irrelevant in the grand scheme of capitalism… [You as a judge should] evaluate the debate as a dialectical materialist — you are a historian inquiring into the determinant factors behind the PMC [first affirmation speech] — The role of the ballot is to endorse the historical outlook of the topic with the most explanatory power… Vote negative to endorse Marxist labor theory of value.
Or, if the topic was “The U.S. should increase troops in the Korean DMZ,” the negation might choose not to argue against the resolution and propose a securitization kritik:
Securitization is a political decision that discursively constructs certain phenomena as threats to justify their management and extermination. The practice of security erases alternate perspectives through the dominance of Western rationalism, permitting unchecked violence against alterity. We should use this round to create space for an epistemological multiplicity that breaks down dominant discourses of North Korea.
These are two examples of negation kritiks. Additionally, sometimes the affirmation side kicks off the debate by proposing a kritik — they don’t even bother advocating for the original resolution! For example, let’s say the original topic was “The U.S. should impose a carbon tax.” The affirmation side could decide to throw the resolution out the window and instead argue for an Afro-Pessimism kritik:
Western societies are structured on Enlightenment-era philosophy that fundamentally does not value Black people as people, and defines them as slaves. Even though documents like the Constitution have been amended to end slavery, it created a society that is rotten to the core, and the only way to fix it is to burn down civil society.
These kinds of kritiks are starting to dominate the two main platforms for high-school debates, “Policy” (now 67% kritik) and “Lincoln-Douglas (now 45% kritik).
In response, people started two new and more traditional debate forums: Public Forum and Parliamentary. But critical theory is starting to invade both of these, too. And they’re self-reinforcing, for as debaters age and become coaches and judges, “kritik” debates became more common.
What’s scary is how the judges publish in advance the kind of arguments they favor. Here’s a list of judges’ preferences from the 2023 “Tournament of Champions” debate (the winning debate from that contest is in the video below):
“Love the K, this is where i spent more of the time in my debate and now coaching career, I think I have an understanding of generally every K, in college, I mostly read Afro-Pessimism/Gillespie, but other areas of literature I am familiar with cap, cybernetics, baudrillard, psychoanalysis, Moten/Afro-Optimism, Afro-Futurism, arguments in queer and gender studies, whatever the K is I should have somewhat a basic understanding of it.”
“Before anything else, including being a debate judge, I am a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist… I cannot check the revolutionary proletarian science at the door when I’m judging… I will no longer evaluate and thus never vote for rightest capitalist-imperialist positions/arguments… Examples of arguments of this nature are as follows: fascism good, capitalism good, imperialist war good, neoliberalism good, defenses of US or otherwise bourgeois nationalism, Zionism or normalizing Israel, colonialism good, US white fascist policing good, etc.”
“…I’ve almost exclusively read variations of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism… I find these arguments to be a valuable and fun tool in debate and am happy to evaluate these debates to the best of my ability.”
Kritik vs. kritik debates are “currently my favorite type of debate to judge. My literature knowledge is primarily concentrated in Marxism, Maoism, and proletarian feminism, and I have a baseline familiarity with postcolonial theory, queer theory, and feminist standpoint theory, but I’m down to evaluate anything as long as it’s explained well.”
“Ks I have written files on/answering/into the lit for – spanos, psycho, cap, communist horizon, security, fem, mao, death cult, berlant, scranton, queerness, set col…”
This, of course, completely ruins the way that, I think, debates should be to run: winners aren’t supposed to cater to judges’ tastes, but to make the best argument that they’re assigned. And they’re supposed to stick to their topic! In the end, Bodnick tells us why we should fear this trend:
This is what concerns me so deeply about this seismic shift in the debate landscape—and why I would hate to see the Public Forum and Parliamentary formats follow the trajectory of Policy and Lincoln-Douglas. Kritiks promote a worldview with pernicious implications for American politics among a group of people who are likely to end up in positions to have a serious impact on American politics.
When debaters reject the topic and advocate for these critical theories, they choose not to engage in pragmatic policy discussions. Instead, they condemn American institutions and society as rotten to the core. They conclude that reform is hopeless and the only solution is to burn it all down. Even if they’re not advocating for kritiks, in order to succeed at the national level, debaters have to learn how to respond critical theory arguments without actually disagreeing with their radical principles.
High school debate has become an activity that incentivizes students to advocate for nihilist accelerationism in order to win rounds. It’s the type of logic that leads young people to label both parties as equally bad and to disengage from electoral politics. What most normal people think debate is about — advocating either side of a plausible public-policy topic — is no longer the focus. With kritiks taking a larger share, debate is increasingly societally rejectionist. Too often the activity is no longer a forum for true discussion, but a site of radicalization.
Now surely you’re going to want to see an example of the new style of “kritik” debate. A championship debate is below, and note how fast the debaters talk. This is very common now, and I don’t know how either listeners or the judges can even make out what’s being said. As Bodnick notes:
These formats were started as a response not only to critical theory, but also to speed debate — often a related phenomenon. If you watch any of the examples of kritiks that I’ve linked to, it’s likely you will not be able to understand what the debaters are saying because they’re talking so fast. I abhor this trend, but it’s not the focus of this article.
So I give you a good example in the video below:
This was the championship debate at the 2023 Tournament of Champions Lincoln-Douglas Debate Tournament between Muzzi Khan and Karan Shah. The decision is a 2-1 for the affirmative (Dombcik, Kiihnl, *Schwerdtfeger). The 2NR goes for the Kant NC.
At the University of Kentucky’s 2023 Tournament of Champions, held earlier this month, senior Muzzi Khan won the national championship in Lincoln-Douglas Debate. The topic was “Resolved: Justice requires open borders for human migration.” After an excellent preliminary record, Khan went on to win five single elimination rounds.
You don’t have to listen to the whole hour, but do sample both debaters. Good luck understanding them! The second debater starts at 17:53. They sound as if they’re speaking in a foreign language!
Lee Jussim is an antiwoke social psychologist at Rutgers and one of the 29 authors of our paper “In Defense of Merit in Science” (“Abbot et al.”). As we expected, that paper was controversial, but it’s also been widely read, with more than 100,000 views on The Journal of Controversial Ideas.”
As I said in the WSJ op-ed I wrote with Anna Krylov (the guiding force of the paper), it’s a shame that a paper espousing the view that science and scientists should be judged on “merit” should be seen as “controversial,” but what do you expect these days.? The pushback was considerable. Many people simply rejected the idea of merit, with one of the editors who refused the paper saying that the idea of merit was both “hollow” and “hurtful”. That, of course, is arrant nonsense.
Others tried to refute our argument by giving examples of science where merit was not recognized, or where bad science was lauded. These anecdotes are also a dumb way to go after our paper, especially because we were making a general argument, not saying that it’s always applied everywhere in science. Still others, like our bête poilue, P. Z. Myers, dismissed the paper largely on ideological grounds, or used the common by worthless guilt-by-association argument. PeeZus:
I had no idea that merit needed defending, or was at all controversial, but it has 29 authors, some of whom have significant prestige. Others are nothing but Intellectual Dark Web sort of cranks, and all of them would be not at all out of place on the fake University of Austin faculty. It’s an expansion of the Grievance Studies nonsense, and Boghossian is one of the authors, while Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay are cited, and if authors are not on the staff of the University of Austin, at least some of them are publishing opinion pieces in Quillette. Basically, it’s a collection of right-wing ideologues complaining about ideology, unaware that it’s ideology all the way down.
Well, if the idea that “science should be judged by its merit” is “ideology”, so is the idea that “airplanes should be flown by the most accomplished pilots,” or “a cancer operation should be judged by how well it was able to remove the malignant cells and prevent recurrence.”
But we’ll pass on, as Myers had no arguments against the substance of our thesis. The quote above, by the way, is one of many collected by Jussim, who has produced a compendium of criticisms of our paper, most (but not all), being unedifying yet often unintentionally funny. I was particularly amused by the muddy and obtuse criticisms of Holden Thorp, the editor-in-chief of Science who took our paper as an attack on racial diversity which, he argued, was the real way to advance science, and that such diversity would in fact advance science better than judging research and scientists on merit. (I’d argue that intellectual diversity would be more efficacious.) Here’s are two quotes from Thorp’s editorial:
. . . . the public has been taught that scientific insight occurs when old white guys with facial hair get hit on the head with an apple or go running out of bathtubs shouting “Eureka!”
and
It has somehow become a controversial idea to acknowledge that scientists are actual people.
But Jussim goes after him more thoroughly, as you can see by reading his essay.
You can read it, with the appropriate refutations of nonsense (and praise for thoughtful criticism) by clicking on his Substack headline below:
Lee can be quite snarky, and here’s an excerpt from his section called “Really stupid criticisms”. Here are two of them (all of Lee’s prose is indented, save for double-indented quotes):
One blogger went on a bizarre rant on the grounds that it was absurd for us to claim that a journal’s failure to publish our article violated our free speech rights.
It would have been absurd, had we claimed it. This delusional critique was by Scott Lemiux, who is described as a professor of political science. Presumably, that means he has a Ph.D. For further insight into why someone with so much education can write something so stupid, I highly recommend Taleb’s The Intellectual Yet Idiot.. . .
Another vein of stupidity is the “straw man” critique. Supposedly, when we argued that many prominent postmodern and critical theory perspectives reject merit and objectivity, that’s a straw man argument, an absurd caricature because, duh, no one is so stupid as to reject objectivity and merit right? This was in some of the PNAS reviews of our article that led to its rejection there, and it was all over academic twitter.
Richard Delgado was one of the most prominent critical race theorists of the last 30 years. Shall we see what he wrote? Fom Delgado & Stefanic’s 2001 book on Critical Race Theory:
“For the critical race theorist, objective truth, like merit, does not exist, at least in social science and politics. In these realms, truth is a social construct created to suit the purposes of the dominant group.”
Nothing quite says “some prominent critical race theorists reject merit and objectivity” as a prominent critical race theorist literally rejecting merit and objectivity.
Then Lee gives some “Faux sophisticated criticisms,” like this one from Holden Thorp:
He then goes on to pull a subtle bait and switch. See if you can catch it:
One view is that objective truth is absolute and therefore not subject to human influences. “The science speaks for itself” is usually the mantra in this camp.
But the history and philosophy of science argue strongly to the contrary. For example, Charles Darwin made major contributions to the most important idea in biology, but his book The Descent of Man contained many incorrect assertions about race and gender that reflected his adherence to prevalent social ideas of his time. Thankfully, evolution didn’t become knowledge the day Darwin proposed it, and it was refined over the decades by many points of view. More recently, pulse oximeters that measure blood oxygen levels were found to be ineffective for dark skin because they were initially developed for white patients.
Did you catch it? The fact that science has gotten some things wrong or that scientists’ biases have, sometimes, misled them to advance false conclusions, is presented as if it invalidates the reality of objective truths. It does nothing of the kind. Indeed, the way Darwin’s incorrect assertions about race and gender, and the fallibility of pulse oximeters were discovered, was by subsequent scientists debunking false claims and replacing them with true ones. The failures of pulse oximeters was discovered because it was objectively true that they were ineffective for people with darker skin.
The entire notion of scientific validity rests on the existence of objective truth, and without it, science is meaningless. Thorp baited you with the implication that there is no objective truth and switched in scientists’ biases and errors as if it refutes the existence of objective truth. Which it cannot possibly do because to know that an error was made or a conclusion is biased implies that one has access to objective truths that debunk those errors and biases.
Lee then cites a paper that disses Thorp but also gives us some thoughtful criticism:
An excellent essay on this controversy by a bio-ethicist at Merck (which includes some thoughtful criticisms of our paper) puts it this way:
Thorp adopts a questionable strategy known as the motte-and-bailey tactic, employing it fallaciously and deceptively. He presents the easily justifiable opinion encapsulated in “It matters who does science” (the [uncontroversial and easily defensible] “motte”), while conveniently avoiding any arguments that challenge Abbot et al.’s initial claim. Thorp’s unspoken and potentially harder-to-defend propositionthat “merit should (to some degree) be replaced by social engineering or identity-based policies” (the “bailey”) remains unsupported and unaddressed in his discourse.
There’s also a section on “logically incoherent” criticisms, though I think Lee makes a misstep here:
To criticize our paper is to argue that it is bad or unjustified in some way. However, to make these sorts of arguments, the critics must have some standard for truth. If they do not, then they cannot possibly know our paper is wrong, biased, misguided, hurful, or anything else.
Implicitly, then, they believe that getting at the truth is possible because they are making a truth claim when arguing our paper is wrong, hurtful, etc. If we are wrong and they are right, then they themselves are promoting claims that are actually true! That is, their claims have merit, whereas our’s [sic] don’t. Anyone who believes the critics [sic] claims have merit (including the critics themselves) implicitly accepts our central argument that science has to be judge [sic] on its merits, even if they pose as critiques of our paper.
I’m not sure that’s true, for a critic could claim that science should be judged on a combination of merit and its ability to promote ethnic diversity, and that the “truth” is that society would be better off if science were judged by some combination of the two factors. That is a truth claim that at the same time criticizes our paper.
Finally, here’s an Epilogue that gives you another site with information about the reaction to our paper.
Anna Krylov, the main force of nature behind the merit paper, has also created this website, indefenseofmerit.org, that curates a lot of the essays, blogs, and podcasts discussing our paper. [JAC: see especially the last two sections, giving links to reactions about the paper as well as some quotes about the paper.] Jerry Coyne, over at WhyEvolutionisTrue has a slew of entries on some of the critical responses to our paper (such as here, here, and here).
The critics reviewed herein are, by many measures, really smart, accomplished people. They are all academics with PhDs, and, often, long lists of scientific publications. Make of that what you will.
One addendum: A colleague and I have a related paper, on the dangers of infusing ideology into evolutionary biology, coming out in two weeks. While it doesn’t have a lot of prestigious authors or Nobel Laureates, it does make claims that I expect to be controversial. That’s because those desperately trying to turn our field into a branch of Social Justice Ideology get furious if you say that it’s a bad idea.
Here’s the announcement I have, and note that the seminar/webinar features Loury and McWhorter, who will surely make some people angry. But everyone knows that affirmative action is effectively dead, just as we know that universities will find a way around it when the Supreme Court bans it this Spring.
To register to see it, just click HERE (or click on the screenshot. You need provide only your name and email address, and it’s free.
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