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.
I’m getting tired of virtue-flaunting miscreants who yammer about our anthology The War on Science(Lawrence Krauss, ed.). Their beef? By and large, the 32 chapters by 39 authors discuss the negative effects of woke ideology on science, effects that come largely from inside science: scientists themselves, journals, publishers, university programs, and so on. And, of course, nearly all these people are on the left, with many being authoritarian “progressives.” And it just won’t do to criticize science from the left. Don’t you know that Trump, who is bullying many universities and threatening to withdraw science funding unless they meet his agenda, is a far greater danger to science than is the left? Ergo, the left should simply shut up, or use its energies attacking Trump.
As if we haven’t already! Nearly all the authors are liberals who freely admit the damage Trump is doing to science. But we also argue that the “progressive” wing of our ideology is damaging science, and in a way that will last a long time. Further, the book was organized before Trump began his series of orders and bullying of colleges. But never mind, the critics are, in effect, going after us because, after all only one side at a time should be criticized. And a lot of people who criticized the book hadn’t even read it: they were going after it based solely on the title and the table of contents, saying that the book is “right wing.” ”
Well, that’s palpably stupid. And it’s hypcritical. Did you hear these critics raising hell when Obama and Biden threatened to punish colleges that didn’t let trans-identified men compete in women’s sports, or, especially, when these Democrats tried to enforce the clearly unfair rules used by colleges under title IX in adjudicating cases of sexual harassment or assault? Nope, not much noise came from the “progressives”. That’s because the improvement in those standards were mandated by Betsy DeVos, Trump’s Secretary of Education, and we can never, ever admit that anybody in a Trump administration did anything good. Such is the divisiveness in American politics, in which each side totally demonizes the other.
But I digress, for one of my readers has made the points above far more eloquently than I could. You may have read this reader’s arguments already, but I thought they deserved a standalone post. It involves a pair of comments on a recent post containing the video “A panel of authors from the anthology ‘The War on Science”, Sure enough, Paul Torek weighed in with a comment like the ones I mention above:
OK, I’m not trained in military strategy. But it seems to me that when an army comes after your science funding with tanks and jets, you don’t worry too much about a few boy scouts with pea shooters coming from the opposite direction. Even if they’ve got girl scouts and nonbinary scouts too. Priorities do matter.
Here, it seems, Torek seems to mean that we shouldn’t have been worrying about what the woke left was doing to science instead of worrying about Trump. (Alternatively, the authors could be interpreted as the ones with pea shooters.) Either way, I thought it was misguided, but even misguided comments get posted if they advance a discussion.
I am trained in military strategy, but the field isn’t essential to grasp the point. I would suggest that insurgency can pose a far more difficult fight than an external adversary—no matter how well the latter is armed. It’s rather unpleasant to fight your neighbor, your family, your colleagues, your [former] friends. Who can you trust? Who will betray you? Nor is it clear how to do so without destroying the very things and places you seek to defend. But rallying against those despised people outside your tribe is rather simple. And framing the current war in terms of former wars is an ever-present temptation and often a road to defeat.
The battle for academia is on two fronts. There is no shortage of either courage or effort in countering Trump—nor is there a lack of weapons to do so. But the internal attacks on science, merit, and academic freedom are insidious and began long before Trump became part of the national political conversation—and they will continue when he is gone. You belittle that threat. Fair enough. I’ll let your colleagues either side with you, wring their hands, or disagree. But universities aren’t country clubs for their current inhabitants. Those of us outside who value what they once were—and hope they can be again—also get a vote. We know you want to fight Trump. Do you have any interest in fighting the illiberal elements in your own committees, departments, and administration? What’s your plan to succeed?
Academia has not corrected itself over the last decade. Why? Self-satisfaction? Confusion? Lack of courage? The latter would make it difficult to distinguish friend from foe, hampering reform. Your illiberal insurgents push on, gaining significant ground. Your “peashooters” dictate the culture and rules across much of elite academia—the proving ground for future national leadership. They control many professional associations, academic publishers, credentialing agencies, and the media. An influential swath of the legal profession is theirs. And they largely control one major political party, populated with “leaders” who brook little internal dissent and offer none. Concomitant with the advance of your peashooting brigade is an increased willingness to tolerate violence, to silence speech with which one disagrees, to ruin the lives and reputations of those who dissent to the new and everchanging rules for polite society. Ask Carole Hooven and Joshua Katz why they cried so much from being pelted with mere peas.
It is now entirely unclear whether lost ground in academia can be recaptured without substantial outside assistance. Many of us would greatly prefer an Administration of either party that empowers academic reformers, but who are the mythical people in the universities who would welcome the assistance of the much-hated Right wing? Where are the mythical Democrats in national leadership who would insist on reform? Unfortunately, those now in federal power decided that firebombing is to be preferred over precision strikes. And I must admit, despite the destruction, I am not confident that they are wrong. What I am confident of is that the battle will not be waged at all should the insurgents get a final supportive push from a new Democratic administration. Oh, certainly, you would retain your vaunted academic freedom—in much the same way that wings are legs, too.
Another way to put it is that it is silly to worry about an antibiotic-treatable infection, no matter how unpleasant, if you have a cancer metastasizing within. But one of these is easier to ignore—especially if the patient is blind to the symptoms, avoids personal pain, and has no interest in being screened.
As I’ve mentioned, the anthology The War on Science, edited by Lawrence Krauss, has gotten some flak from “progressives”. These critics argue that it really should have been a book about how Trump and the Republicans are attacking science rather than a book about how the Left is damaging science. I’m not going to go after that whataboutery again, as I’ve done it before. No one side is immune from criticism, and there are a gazillion people noting, correctly, that Trump is doing rather serious damage to scientific funding right now. But how many people are showing how the leftist ideology is injuring science? QED. (Full disclosure: Luana Maroja and I have a chapter in this book, one that’s a slight revision of one we wrote for The Skeptical Inquirer.)
At any rate, there is now a longish video, featuring Krauss and three authors, with moderator Joshua Katz. Everyone on the panel is listed below in bold. It was based on a discussion held by the American Enterprise Institute, and if you want to damn it because the AEI is a generally conservative venue, damn away, but you’ll be outing yourself as narrow minded. Here are the AEI notes for the discussion that I’ve put below.
On October 2, AEI’s Joshua T. Katz hosted an event to discuss The War on Science, a new volume to which he and several other AEI fellows contributed chapters.
After brief opening remarks from AEI’s M. Anthony Mills, the Origins Project Foundation’s Lawrence M. Krauss, the volume’s editor, delivered a presentation offering historical context for the book and detailing some notable instances of the imposition of ideology on scholarly practices. Each panelist then gave brief overviews of their respective chapters: AEI’s Sally Satel discussed her chapter “Social Justice, MD—Medicine Under Threat”; AEI’s Carole Hooven discussed her chapter “Why I Left Harvard”; and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s Solveig Lucia Gold discussed “An Apology for Philology,” a chapter she coauthored with Dr. Katz.
Following these remarks, the panelists engaged in a discussion moderated by Dr. Katz, and the event concluded with a Q&A, wherein panelists fielded questions from the audience.
Event description
Among assaults on merit-based hiring, the policing of language, the denial of empirical data in medicine and science, and the replacement of well-established standards with ideological mantras, rigorous scholarship is under threat throughout Western institutions. To make matters worse, many who have spoken up against this threat have faced professional consequences, creating a climate of fear that undermines the very foundation of modern research. In The War on Science, the Origins Project Foundation’s Lawrence M. Krauss assembles a group of prominent scholars from wide-ranging disciplines to detail ongoing efforts to impose ideological restrictions on scholarship—and issue a clarion call for change.
Solveig Lucia Gold, Senior Fellow in Education and Society, American Council of Trustees and Alumni Carole Hooven, Nonresident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute Lawrence M. Krauss, President, Origins Project Foundation Sally Satel, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Moderator: Joshua T. Katz, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Now I haven’t yet listened to the whole thing, as I cannot abide long podcasts and videos, so I’m going through it person by person. So far I’ve heard Krauss’s nice opening (31 min.), which spares no science-warping ideologue from the Left, giving lots of cringeworthy examples. If you have the patience to listen to a 1.5-hour long discussion all the way through, knock yourself out and comment below.
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (BAS) is most famous for its “Doomsday Clock,” which assesses how close we are to a worldwide anthropomorphic catastrophe, including global warming and nuclear war. Right now the clock stands at “90 seconds till midnight,” but it’s gone back and forth over the years and I don’t take that figure too seriously.
But the journal is a serious one dealing with important existential issues for humanity, and I believe it’s widely respected (it was founded by Albert Einstein and participants in the Manhattan project after the nuclear bombings of Japan in 1945).
Well, it was serious—but now, after seeing the article below, we have to worry about ideological capture of yet another organ of science and technology. Why was this published?
Click the headline to read:
The article is a response to “hateful” tweets among comment that “the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation received in response to a December 2022 panel discussion on LGBTQ+ identity in the nuclear weapons space.” The hatefulness is of course bigoted and uncivil, but in response the authors make insupportable statements that we need to “queer” thinking about nuclear weapons to prevent disaster. Why? Some quotes from the piece (indented):
While the event received an outpouring of vocal and wide-reaching support from some of the best-known figures in the nuclear field, the disparaging tweets illustrated the common belief that queer identity has no relevance for nuclear policy, and that examining the relationship between queerness and nuclear policy is intended to push a social agenda rather than to address substantive issues.
During this Pride Month, we would like Bulletin readers to understand that the visible representation and meaningful participation of queer people matters for nuclear policy outcomes. Discrimination against queer people can undermine nuclear security and increase nuclear risk. And queer theory can help change how nuclear practitioners, experts, and the public think about nuclear weapons.
I’ve never really understood what “queer theory” is, so of course I went to Wikipedia:
The term “queer theory” is broadly associated with the study and theorization of gender and sexual practices that exist outside of heterosexuality, and which challenge the notion that heterosexuality is normal. Following social constructivist developments in sociology, queer theorists are often critical of what they consider essentialist views of sexuality and gender. Instead, they study those concepts as social and cultural phenomena, often through an analysis of the categories, binaries, and language in which they are said to be portrayed.
. . . Similarly, queer theory remains difficult to objectively define as academics from various disciplines have contributed varying understanding of the term. At its core, queer theory relates to queer people, their lived experience and how their lived experience is culturally or politically perceived, specifically referring to the marginalization of queer people. This thinking is then applied to various fields of thinking
That doesn’t help me much; it seems to be a collection of post facto claims and generalization without much “theory”. At any rate, as you read on, the “theory”, as it relate to nuclear security and disarmament, turns out to be the usual demand for equity in a technical field based on the claim that increased equity will improve the field by bringing in salubrious views:
Equity and inclusion for queer people is not just a box-ticking exercise in ethics and social justice; it is also essential for creating effective nuclear policy. Studies in psychology and behavioral science show that diverse teams examine assumptions and evidence more carefully, make fewer errors, discuss issues more constructively, and better exchange new ideas and knowledge.
I’d check the references (I couldn’t access one of them), for the “diversity” mentioned included exclusively racial diversity and gender diversity sans “queer” diversity. The first reference in fact says that in business the “Theory” hasn’t worked, probably because it’s been misapplied. Here’s a quote from the Harvard Business Review (first link):
These rallying cries for more diversity in companies, from recent statements by CEOs, are representative of what we hear from business leaders around the world. They have three things in common: All articulate a business case for hiring more women or people of color; all demonstrate good intentions; and none of the claims is actually supported by robust research findings.
None of these references include diversity of sexual behavior or sexual identity encompassed in the authors’ call for more LGBTQ+ people, nor do they consider other forms of diversity, like socioeconomic background. While surely LGBTQ+ people should not be discriminated against in this field, and in others, the argument that they have “different ways of thinking,” and thus added representation will help stave off nuclear disaster, is not convincing. More from the BAS article:
When the stakes of making best-informed decisions are as high as they are with nuclear weapons, governments cannot afford to lose out on the human capital and innovation potential of queer people. Informed by their life experiences, queer people have specific skills to offer that are valuable in a policy and diplomacy context. LGBTQ+ people often must navigate being different from those around them; develop the ability to listen and empathize; and mobilize the skill and perseverance to make themselves heard.
This is an assertion without evidence, and the argument would of course apply to any “marginalized” group—were it true.
Again, any bigotry against people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ people in the area of nuclear policy is shameful and should be eliminated, but does it exist? Only one or two anecdotes are given, not a claims of “structural bigotry.”
Further, the article does nothing to dispel the notion that “examining the relationship between queerness and nuclear policy is intended to push a social agenda rather than to address substantive issues.” Indeed, I can’t imagine one could read this article and not conclude that it’s pushing a social agenda:
Here are a few of the putative advantages of creating LGBTQ+ equity (headings are mine):
Better decision making.
Including a wider range of perspectives in nuclear decision making creates a more comprehensive definition of who or what constitutes a “threat” to nuclear security. An example of this is the threat posed by some white supremacist groups with plans to acquire nuclear weapons or material, which can go undetected when a white-majority workforce does not perceive these groups and their ideological motivation as a relevant threat to their nuclear security mission. Individuals targeted by these kinds of groups—including women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community—are more likely to identify these types of behaviors and attitudes as security risks and can play a crucial role in identifying a potential insider threat.
This seems both hypothetic and uber-hyperbolic to me, and again, seems clearly aimed at pushing a social agenda, not ameliorating palpable threats. If you look at the second link in the paragraph above, you’ll find another BAS article that says stuff like this (note that the article is not about white supremacists, as claimed above, but “far-right extremists”:
Inspired by the ideas of accelerationism, the modern breed of violent far-right extremism is becoming more destructive, and nuclear weapons certainly fit into this profile of catastrophic violence.
. . . While some violent far-right extremists are clearly motivated to carry out catastrophic terrorist attacks, a question remains: Do they possess the means and opportunity to conduct an act of nuclear terrorism? There is no public evidence violent far-right extremist groups have obtained the resources or exhibited the requisite operational sophistication to carry out an act of nuclear terrorism.
I can’t say that this really worries me, nor am I convinced that adding more queer people to the field would help us find white supremacists plotting to use nuclear weapons. In fact, were the instances of theoretical “nuclear terrorism” already mentioned by those on the far right (some aren’t even in the U.S.) detected largely by queer people? We have no data here. Here are some of the reasons why, say the authors, we must “queer” nuclear policy. Again, quotes from BAS are indented:
The historical legacy of anti-gay discrimination in government.
Being LGBTQ+ has historically been considered a security risk. Akin to the “Red Scare” anti-communism movement, the “Lavender Scare” was a campaign persecuting and dismissing gay and lesbian federal employees. The linking of homophobia and national security concerns seems to stem from sensationalized case studies of defections of US intelligence specialists to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. This legacy of queerness being considered a security risk is still pervasive in the nuclear field.
Read the second link; it’s from 1995 and notes that since 1991 the investigators have found no cases of discrimination against gays procuring security clearances:
. . . .our work disclosed no evidence that sexual orientation has been used as a criterion in the security clearance process for federal civilian and contractor employees since 1991.
In fact, this kind of discrimination is now illegal, and could lead to lawsuits. Once again, the evidence is distorted seemingly to push a social agenda.
Finally, there’s this claim:
Nuclear facilities don’t create a “welcoming environment: for queer people.
Despite setbacks, public acceptance of the queer community is rising globally, and the supposed links between espionage and homosexuality have been unfounded. However, nuclear facilities still have a reputation for being unwelcoming toward queer people and have failed to investigate allegations of homophobia and harassment. In part, this is due to the lack of diversity in the nuclear field. Homogenous organizations run a higher risk of isolating queer employees, leaving them vulnerable to pressure. Employees in the majority can feel threatened by those they perceive as “different” and exclude them due to discomfort, rather than any legitimate risk factors. Nuclear security practice needs to refrain from treating an individual’s behavior or identity as a risk and focus instead on identifying misbehaviors that indicate malicious intent.
By failing to create a welcoming workplace at nuclear facilities—whether military or civilian—practitioners risk reducing the effectiveness of an organization’s nuclear security culture.
Again, if there is bigotry and discrimination in nuclear facilities against queer people, that’s reprehensible and should be rooted out. But here we need facts, not feelings. Given the welcome and rapid acceptance of queer people into mainstream society and science in particular, the assertion of structural bigotry is questionable. In fact, the authors adduce only one link instance of a failure to investigate homophobic bullying and abuse at one British nuclear site. That’s reprehensible, but is one instance sufficient to indict the entire field and raise a sweeping call for equity?
The Solution:
We need to beef up the number of LGBTQ+ people in nuclear policy—that is, “queer the field”—to reap the substantial benefits of greater queer equity (though the present degree of inequity isn’t specified and is surely not known). Some quotes on the benefits:
Queer identity is also relevant for the nuclear field because it informs theories that aim to change how officials, experts, and the public think about nuclear weapons. Queer theory is a field of study, closely related to feminist theory, that examines sex- and gender-based norms. It shines a light on the harm done by nuclear weapons through uranium mining, nuclear tests, and the tax money spent on nuclear weapons ($60 billion annually in the United States) instead of on education, infrastructure, and welfare. The queer lens prioritizes the rights and well-being of people over the abstract idea of national security. . . [JAC: What is national security but a balancing of well-being and rights against dangers like nuclear weapons?]
. . . Queer theory also identifies how the nuclear weapons discourse is gendered: Nuclear deterrence is associated with “rationality” and “security,” while disarmament and justice for nuclear weapon victims are coded as “emotion” and a lack of understanding of the “real” mechanics of security.
That is another risible assertion without evidence; in fact, no quotes or links are given. It goes on:
. . . Queer theory is also about rejecting binary choices and zero-sum thinking, such as the tenet that nuclear deterrence creates security and disarmament creates vulnerability. It identifies the assumptions and interests these ideas are built on—and imagines alternatives that serve a broader range of interests, including those of the invisible and resource-stripped.
. . . Finally, queer theory informs the struggle for nuclear justice and disarmament. For example, queer artist and writer Jessie Boylan highlights the harm done by nuclear weapons by documenting the social and environmental consequences of nuclear testing in Australia as part of the Atomic Photographers Guild. Queer theory helps to shift the perception of nuclear weapons as instruments for security by telling the hidden stories of displacement, illness, and trauma caused by their production and testing.
As we know, there have been plenty of arguments for nuclear disarmament and depictions of the dangers of nuclear war made by non-queer people, beginning with Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer, both cis physicists who pushed strongly for nuclear disarmament. Citing Jessie Boylan’s work does nothing to support the authors’ general argument.
And so we have Reitman and Nair’s argument, an argument that in principle could be made for any field of endeavor. It’s based on a concatenation of assumptions and undemonstrated assertions, among them the claim that queer people have a “different way of knowing” and a “different way of thinking” than do non-queer people, and that absorbing these differences could lead to in a substantially better nuclear policy than we have now.
It is an argument based in victimhood and divisiveness, and forgive me if I find it unconvincing. As I said, if you adduce the past evidence of homophobia, which was once pervasive, any field of human endeavor could be subject to this article’s argument: all fields need to be “queered.”
But assuming that each once oppressed group can bring to the table important new “ways of thinking” about policy or science itself is not only unevidenced, but leads to an “otherism” that only serves to divide LGBTQ+ from cis people.
Although the authors claim that they are not trying to push a social agenda, it seems evident that they are. What is that agenda? Simply to bring more LGBTQ+ people into nuclear policy. But given our ignorance of the claimed inequities, and especially of any important “ways of thinking” of queer people that would inform nuclear policy, this seems to be an argument without evidence.
Of course bigotry against queer people in any field is reprehensible, and often illegal, and should be condemned. Equal opportunity for entry should be the rule. But that’s not the same thing as saying that we need more queer people in nuclear policy because they bring something new and important to the table. The whole argument is in fact what the authors deny it is: a pastiche of dubious claims that add up to a social agenda.
The’ comments by the article’s readers also show that, by and large, they aren’t buying it. Have a look after the article. Here are two:
That one deals with the “merit versus ideology” dichotomy, and, as always, I’m going with merit.
If you’ve listened to National Public Radio (NPR) in the past few years, what you’ve heard is basically a progressive, left-wing radio station, not a station that represents American diveristy of opinions and viewpoints. Several of my friends have canceled their subscriptions, even though they’re Democrats and consider themselves on the Left.
But NPR is also publicly funded to some extent. Although it claims that it gets less than 1% of its funding from the government (i.e., from taxpayers like you and me), The Hill notes that “NPR may receive little direct federal funding, but a good deal of its budget comprises federal funds that flow to it indirectly by federal law.”
Regardless, NPR is suppose to be a radio station that all Americans can listen to with profit, not a megaphone for progressive Leftism. Yet, according to this new article in the Free Press by Uri Berliner, the senior editor of NPR’s business desk (and still with the station!), NPR has not only tilted increasingly leftward, with a changing demographic, but has become more “white” as elitist listeners tune in while blacks (and conservatives) don’t listen much. Further, it has bought into stories that were later found dubious or even debunked, yet has never corrected itself. Right now subscriptions are falling, the local branches are laying off workers, and NPR’s future seems uncertain.
Click to read: I’ll summarize it briefly and give a few quotes. Note at the bottom that NPR has officially responded, and I’m unsure whether Berliner has a future at the institution.
First, the changing demographic of listeners:
For decades, since its founding in 1970, a wide swath of America tuned in to NPR for reliable journalism and gorgeous audio pieces with birds singing in the Amazon. Millions came to us for conversations that exposed us to voices around the country and the world radically different from our own—engaging precisely because they were unguarded and unpredictable. No image generated more pride within NPR than the farmer listening to Morning Edition from his or her tractor at sunrise.
Back in 2011, although NPR’s audience tilted a bit to the left, it still bore a resemblance to America at large. Twenty-six percent of listeners described themselves as conservative, 23 percent as middle of the road, and 37 percent as liberal.
By 2023, the picture was completely different: only 11 percent described themselves as very or somewhat conservative, 21 percent as middle of the road, and 67 percent of listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal. We weren’t just losing conservatives; we were also losing moderates and traditional liberals.
An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America.
Berliner then goes into three stories in which NPR took positions that ultimately seemed dubious or even indefensible; but in no case did it ever correct itself (three points below are my take):
1.) NPR glommed onto the idea that Trump colluded with the Russians during the 2016 election. No evidence supporting that came out, and NPR quietly dropped the story without any corrections.
2.) NPR poo-pooed the “Hunter Biden laptop story,” barely covering it at all because it didn’t believe the notion that Hunter Biden would use his dad’s name to advance himself. It turned out that, of course, he did. NPR never corrected itself.
3.) NPR bought big-time into the “wild virus wet-market” theory for the origin of COVID, dismissing the idea that the virus came from a leak in a lab in Wuhan, China. As time progressed, the lab-leak theory became more credible, and now, though we still don’t know for sure, the lab-leak seems more credible than the wet market. NPR, however, utterly rejected the lab-leak theory and hasn’t corrected its earlier insistence.
According to Berliner, after the death of George Floyd the station adopted a form of Critical Race Theory, even accusing itself of complicity in racism. Of course if any station is lily-white, it would be this station with its elitist and progressive listeners carrying NPR tote bags and driving Volvos. But it’s startling how quickly the issue of race came to dominate every aspect of NPR:
And we were told that NPR itself was part of the problem. In confessional language he said the leaders of public media, “starting with me—must be aware of how we ourselves have benefited from white privilege in our careers. We must understand the unconscious bias we bring to our work and interactions. And we must commit ourselves—body and soul—to profound changes in ourselves and our institutions.”
He declared that diversity—on our staff and in our audience—was the overriding mission, the “North Star” of the organization. Phrases like “that’s part of the North Star” became part of meetings and more casual conversation.
Race and identity became paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace. Journalists were required to ask everyone we interviewed their race, gender, and ethnicity (among other questions), and had to enter it in a centralized tracking system. We were given unconscious bias training sessions. A growing DEI staff offered regular meetings imploring us to “start talking about race.” Monthly dialogues were offered for “women of color” and “men of color.” Nonbinary people of color were included, too.
These initiatives, bolstered by a $1 million grant from the NPR Foundation, came from management, from the top down. Crucially, they were in sync culturally with what was happening at the grassroots—among producers, reporters, and other staffers. Most visible was a burgeoning number of employee resource (or affinity) groups based on identity.
They included MGIPOC (Marginalized Genders and Intersex People of Color mentorship program); Mi Gente (Latinx employees at NPR); NPR Noir (black employees at NPR); Southwest Asians and North Africans at NPR; Ummah (for Muslim-identifying employees); Women, Gender-Expansive, and Transgender People in Technology Throughout Public Media; Khevre (Jewish heritage and culture at NPR); and NPR Pride (LGBTQIA employees at NPR).
And I read this next bit with utter dismay. Along with the absence of viewpoint diversity in its programs, something that the station simply ignores when it comes up, they’ve bought into gender activism to the point where they can’t use the term “biological sex”! Oy! And of course in the Hamas/Israel war, the station is tilting towards Palestine, because that’s what progressives want to hear: Israel is the white colonialist oppressor. I myself have noticed this even on my short drives around Chicago. Bolding below is mine:
The mindset prevails in choices about language. In a document called NPR Transgender Coverage Guidance—disseminated by news management—we’re asked to avoid the term biological sex. (The editorial guidance was prepared with the help of a former staffer of the National Center for Transgender Equality.) The mindset animates bizarre stories—on how The Beatles and bird names are racially problematic, and others that are alarmingly divisive; justifying looting, with claims that fears about crime are racist; and suggesting that Asian Americans who oppose affirmative action have been manipulated by white conservatives.
More recently, we have approached the Israel-Hamas war and its spillover onto streets and campuses through the “intersectional” lens that has jumped from the faculty lounge to newsrooms. Oppressor versus oppressed. That’s meant highlighting the suffering of Palestinians at almost every turn while downplaying the atrocities of October 7, overlooking how Hamas intentionally puts Palestinian civilians in peril, and giving little weight to the explosion of antisemitic hate around the world.
The inevitable result is that people are tuning out and listening instead to the many podcasts on tap:
These are perilous times for news organizations. Last year, NPR laid off or bought out 10 percent of its staff and canceled four podcasts following a slump in advertising revenue. Our radio audience is dwindling and our podcast downloads are down from 2020. The digital stories on our website rarely have national impact. They aren’t conversation starters. Our competitive advantage in audio—where for years NPR had no peer—is vanishing. There are plenty of informative and entertaining podcasts to choose from.
Berliner offers a solution, which is to return to “traditional” journalism, but in the engaging way it used to. They need to broadcast more diverse viewpoints, perhaps even debates. Since NPR has a new CEO, businesswoman Katherine Maher, only 40, it might change course. I can’t tell enough about her to guess if she’ll change the direction of NPR’s broadcasting.
You may well ask yourself, as I did, “Why on earth does Berliner stay at such a dysfunctional station?” Well, maybe he’s hoping that Maher will effect a big change. But judging from his own narrative, buttressed with emails, names, and evidence, his tenure at NPR now seems to be one big tsuris. And he doesn’t explain why, given this large kvetch, he’s still with the organization.
Sadly, some liberals are dismissing this piece; after all, it’s in the “conservative” Free Press. As one reader wrote me:
A response to it from a friend, a fellow academic:
“This guy sounds like a disgruntled MAGA Republican boohoo.”
NPR’s chief news executive, Edith Chapin, wrote in a memo to staff Tuesday afternoon that she and the news leadership team strongly reject Berliner’s assessment.
“We’re proud to stand behind the exceptional work that our desks and shows do to cover a wide range of challenging stories,” she wrote. “We believe that inclusion — among our staff, with our sourcing, and in our overall coverage — is critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world.”
She added, “None of our work is above scrutiny or critique. We must have vigorous discussions in the newsroom about how we serve the public as a whole.”
A spokesperson for NPR said Chapin, who also serves as the network’s chief content officer, would have no further comment.
But there are also heated denials from NPR employees rejecting Berliner’s claims. Read the piece to see them. Still, the best way to judge whether NPR is doing what it should do is simply to listen. And, thank Ceiling Cat, you no longer have to listen to the uber-woke and deeply spiritual Krista Tippett, who was let go. As I always said about her, she was so moved by her own profundity that she often came close to tears. Just sayin’.
There’s more DNA-dissing is going on, this time in a piece in Aeon arguing that it is bad for society and for biology to think of the cell as an assembly line of molecules controlled by a “boss” in the nucleus. The cell, after all, is more socialistic!
Author Charudatta Navare, whose short bio is given below after his name, advances his thesis that the cell is NOT an entity “controlled” from the top down by the capitalistic nucleus, as if the cell were a “factory” with its sweating workers—the contents of the cell—lashed by the whip of the nuclear DNA. To Navare, that’s simply an invidious capitalistic/patriarchal/classist metaphor. Instead, the “workers”, including everything in the cytoplasm like the ribosomes, mitochondria, vacuoles, vesicles, endoplasmic reticulum, and ribosomes, are independent entities with their own heredity, all cooperating in a genial manner to make the cell function smoothly. As Navare asserts, “the nucleus is only a tiny subset of the hereditary material.” The cell, it seems, is more like a collective farm than a car factory.
The message, which Navare repeats at length, is THE CELL IS NOT A HIERARCHY. The motivation for the misguided view that the Big Boss Nucleus controls the workers is, consciously or not, to read into nature the hierarchy of modern patriarchal society. To Navare, the hierarchical view of the cell not only buttresses a maladaptively structured society, but, most of all damages biology by distorting our understanding.
Navare’s big mistake is this: the nucleus, which contains the genes, really is the boss. Even the mitochondria, which replicate themselves and contain their own genes, interact intimately with the nucleus to perform a number of functions. (The mitochondria, as you may know, are derived from original endosymbiotic bacteria that have, though evolution, been integrated into the cell as an essential organelle. Chloroplasts, essential for photosynthesis, have a similar origin and interact with the nuclear in the same way.) But both of these organelles can function only with the help of nuclear genes. And they’re the sole exception to the notion that prganismal DNA is the recipe for the cell and the organism.
The rest of the organelles in the cytoplasm, then, ultimately derive from genes, as does the spatial organization of the egg that helps set off development. This is not to say that random factors, like chemical concentration in different parts of the egg, can influence development, but at bottom, yes, everything in the cell save the mitochondria and chloroplasts ultimately come from the DNA in the nucleus. Without the Nuclear Boss, the workers lose their jobs and the factory goes kaput. Figuring out how this all evolved, of course, is a difficult issue. But evolve it did, via changes in the DNA.
Click below to read the article in Aeon:
Here’s the thesis (Navare’s words are indenteed):
In short, the textbooks paint a picture of a cellular ‘assembly line’ where genes issue instructions for the manufacture of proteins that do the work of the body from day to day. This textbook description of the cell matches, almost word for word, a social institution. The picture of the cytoplasm and its organelles performing the work of ‘manufacturing’, ‘packaging’ and ‘shipping’ molecules according to ‘instructions’ from the genes eerily evokes the social hierarchy of executives ordering the manual labour of toiling masses. The only problem is that the cell is not a ‘factory’. It does not have a ‘control centre’. As the feminist scholar Emily Martin observes, the assumption of centralised control distorts our understanding of the cell.
A wealth of research in biology suggests that ‘control’ and ‘information’ are not restricted at the ‘top’ bu
t present throughout the cell. The cellular organelles do not just form a linear ‘assembly line’ but interact with each other in complex ways. Nor is the cell obsessed with the economically significant work of ‘manufacturing’ that the metaphor of ‘factory’ would have us believe. Instead, much of the work that the cell does can be thought of as maintaining itself and taking ‘care’ of other cells.
Why, then, do the standard textbooks continue to portray the cell as a hierarchy? Why do they invoke a centralised authority to explain how each cell functions? And why is the imagery so industrially loaded?
It’s capitalism and the patriarchy, Jack! But in fact, the textbooks make DNA the boss because it is the boss. But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself:
All of this coded information in the cytoplasm leads us to ask: why do modern textbooks, which are supposed to present the standard, well-accepted knowledge of the day, continue to portray the cell as hierarchical in structure? Why do science journalists continue to refer to the codes and programs of genes in the nucleus when discussing how life develops and evolves?
I believe that the hold of the centralised view comes from how it resonates with the human social order. The nucleus providing instructions and the cytoplasm performing the labour of ‘nurturing’ sounds ‘natural’ and even ‘obvious’ in a patriarchal society. The central nucleus ordering its ‘underling’ cytoplasm to actually carry out tasks sounds obvious in a class-stratified society.
. . .The reason we find centralised functioning everywhere is not necessarily because it is everywhere. It just appears to be everywhere because of the lens through which we view the world. When scientific narratives, using all the authority of science, project the social hierarchy onto nature, they can reinforce the same hierarchy as ‘natural’. The centralised model from cells to animal social groups suggests that everything in nature is centralised, and that centralisation works. The ‘truth’ about nature is influenced by our values, and this ‘truth’ can then play a role in doubling down and reinforcing the same social values in the world.
. . . I believe that the hold of the centralised view comes from how it resonates with the human social order. The nucleus providing instructions and the cytoplasm performing the labour of ‘nurturing’ sounds ‘natural’ and even ‘obvious’ in a patriarchal society. The central nucleus ordering its ‘underling’ cytoplasm to actually carry out tasks sounds obvious in a class-stratified society.
And this metaphor, says Navare, damages our understanding of biology. I can’t think of how, since scientists have been beavering away at understanding the cell, and I haven’t sees them impeded by a bad metaphor. Perhaps they have, but I can’t think of one example. Navare keeps saying that the view is an impediment, but gives no examples of how. Here are more of his lucubrations:
How science conceptualises the cell also gives us insight into how we think of scientific objectivity. We often think that, when values interfere with science, the quest for truth and accuracy is put at risk. Scientists are supposed to leave their values and beliefs outside their labs. However, research in feminist science studies suggests otherwise. One does not necessarily need to be free of values to do good science, but denying their influence undermines the quality of scientific work. Instead of denial, reflecting on values and biases would help researchers steer clear of the pitfalls. Self-reflection can help scientists identify how their values are shaping their science, and think of better experimental designs that could ‘catch’ their assumptions before they compromise results.
. . .But the trouble with doubling down on this kind of metaphor as a stand-in for science is that assumptions about how a cell ought to function prevent us from understanding how the cell really functions. What is more, when science projects social hierarchies onto the cell, it also reinforces the notion that social hierarchies are ‘natural’.
In fact, Navare says that there are other metaphors that could serve equally well:
. . .Unfortunately, the centralised and hierarchical metaphor, so pervasive in textbooks, is often the only one for the internal workings of the cell.
One alternative metaphor for the cell nucleus, I tentatively suggest, could be a ‘collaborative notebook’. The cell keeps this notebook, and all the cell’s components use it to keep track of their activities and help maintain the cell. The cell ‘writes’ in the notebook, writes in the ‘margins’ and ‘refers’ to its own notes. Cellular organelles sense each other’s needs and take ‘care’ of each other. While the ‘factory’ metaphor attributes control and information to the nucleus, the ‘nucleus as a collaborative notebook’ shows agency on the part of the cell. While the factory metaphor makes the cell seem obsessed with ‘production’, alternative metaphors can highlight the mutual aid among the cellular components and the labour of maintaining the cell.
Try as I might, I fail to see how the Notebook Metaphor is more helpful than the “factory”metaphor, but of course it fits right into the Kropotkin-esque tendency to see mutual helpfulness (one could also see it reflectiong socialism). But truth be told, I’m not that enamored of the factory metaphor, either. All I care about is how the cell works, and you can’t do that without appreciating the overweening effects of genes whose action produces almost everything in the cell, influences how the organism develops, and is, in the end, the result of the selection among genes. Every adaptive aspect of development, including cell structure and function, depends on adaptive changes in the DNA put in place by natural selection (this holds also for how the mitochondria and cytoplasm interact with nuclear DNA).
Here’s how Navare minimizes the effects of genes.
The nucleus, of course, does make some hereditary contribution, and we understand it in great detail. But the nucleus is only a tiny subset of the hereditary material. If we don’t even search for hereditary information in the egg cell – if we never describe that information as hereditary – we will keep propagating the idea that biological inheritance is restricted to the nucleus alone.
Now I’m not sure what he means by “hereditary material.” Yes, the mitochondria and cytoplasm do replicate themselves by fission (and duplication of their DNAz0, but none of the other organelles are self-replicating, or “hereditary” in that sense. The organelles and cytoplasmic constituents, like vacuoles and ribosomes, are made by recipes written in the DNA (ribosomes, for example, the site of protein synthesis,m are largely made of RNA sent out from the nucleus). Without the DNA coding for proteins, we have no enzymatic pathways, no means of constructing organelles, and no way of building up the constituents of a cell.
Now this is not to say that the construction of a cell or an embryo doesn’t require anything other DNA, but it does require the products of DNA. For example, how does a fertilized egg know which end is going to be the head end and which the tail? And given that, what about the back from front? (Once these are determined, of course, left versus right has already been specified.) It is because the mother’s DNA makes RNAs that are distributed asymmetrically in the egg, and those differential distributions of RNA, via the proteins they make, are what starts the anterior-posterior and dorso-ventral axes from forming. Now these RNAs are moved through the egg cell by microtubules, part of the “cytoskeleton”, so the microtubules must also be there in the egg. But ultimately, it’s the DNA that contains the recipe for these microtubules—and of course the axis-forming RNA.
And all of this has evolved by natural selection causing the differential proliferation—of genes. In the end, everything save some parts of the mitochondria and chloroplasts, is the product of evolution, and that means of changes in DNA. In both evolution and development, it’s DNA all the way down. Even the response of an organism to its environment, like cats growing longer hair in the winter, is an evolved response based on changes in genes in the DNA. The environment is the cue, but the response lies in the genome.
One more example of gene-dissing:
We are told that the genes contain blueprints to make proteins. However, genes do not contain all the information needed to make proteins. They only specify a one-dimensional protein chain; the three-dimensional structure that the proteins take, which is vital for their function, is determined by the cellular environment as well. Further, the way proteins behave also varies with where they are in the cytoplasm. The genetic ‘information’, on its own, is nowhere near enough for the cell to function.
No the proteins largely fold on their own once they are made. But does Navare not realize that the information that makes the linear structure of a protein into a three-dimensional structure rests largely already in the linear arrangement of amino acids, which creates the linear structure of a protein? Once that’s made, the proteins largely fold spontaneously into the appropriate three-dimensional structure, which is of course crucial for enzymes to work and proteins like hemoglobin to function. But without the correct linear structure, specified by the DNA, the right spontaneous folding won’t happen. So again the DNA is largely the boss, and has evolved to produce proteins that fold up the right way. The DNA is even more bossy because sometimes proteins are helped in their folding, or retain their folding, through their interaction with enzymes. What are enzymes? Proteins made by DNA. Again, it’s DNA all the way down.
That aside, Navare manages to get in a timely word for how DEI can help our understanding as well:
Science is undoubtedly a human endeavour. The feminist philosopher Donna Haraway describes science as a conversation between partial perspectives that each individual gets from the vantage point of their position. As Just’s science shows, people with different life experiences might have different perspectives and may ask different questions. [JAC: E. E. Just, one of the only well known black scientists working in the early 20th century, made notable contributions to understanding the cell.] Admittedly, the connections between scientists’ backgrounds and their work are not always so direct. But the social position of scientists can still serve as one of the factors that influence their work. We often say science is self-correcting. We think that science changes its views when new information comes to light. But this new information doesn’t emerge from a vacuum. It doesn’t emerge only from new techniques. It is also generated when diversity and representation are important in their own right from the perspective of equity, diverse perspectives would benefit science most of all. Objectivity is not an individual burden but a collective one. While diversity and representation are important in their own right from the perspective of equity, diverse perspectives would benefit science most of all. Objectivity is not an individual burden but a collective one.
And clearly class has conditioned our view of the cell as well:
Historically, the majority of scientists have been male, upper class, and belonging to the dominant castes and races. It is possible that the social position of scientists helped them relate to the notion of a nucleus that continues discharging instructions while taking for granted the knowledge and skills required in actually doing the work. The Nobel laureate David Baltimore described genes as the ‘executive suite’ and the cytoplasm as the ‘factory floor’. The executive suite appears more valuable and deserving of more remuneration, while the toiling masses on the factory floor are thought to be merely executing the instructions, undervaluing the wealth of explicit and tacit knowledge and skill.
Poor Baltimore, bamboozled by a view of the cell. I guess it was all the dosh that comes with a Nobel Prize that has warped his viewpoint.
There’s a feminist point of view, too, one that presumably sees the cell as more cooperative than a patriarchy would make us think:
Science is often described as objective and value-free, but philosophers of science have pointed out that values can guide the questions that scientists ask, the hypotheses they make, and the way they interpret their results. The field of feminist science studies, in particular, has called into question the sole role of the nucleus where heredity is concerned.
. . . . How science conceptualises the cell also gives us insight into how we think of scientific objectivity. We often think that, when values interfere with science, the quest for truth and accuracy is put at risk. Scientists are supposed to leave their values and beliefs outside their labs. However, research in feminist science studies suggests otherwise.
There are no references for either of these statements. My own view is that we need to draw scientists from throughout society (giving everyone equal opportunities to suceed), but concentrating on merit, which also includes the ability to “think outside the box”. That said, with one exception I haven’t seen fruitful sex-, class- or race-specific ways of approaching biology. The one exception my feeling that women evolutionists helped us concentrate more on female preference as opposed to male traits in sexual selection.
Finally, Navare issues a dire warning of the dangers inherent in a metaphor that, in the end, is only a metaphor. (Bolding is mine.)
If we are unable to conceive of the cell, the basic unit of organisms like ours, without coercive hierarchies, we will never fully appreciate the complexity of nature. If we fail to imagine society without a centralised authority, we will find it difficult to understand or empower the oppressed. Unless we reflect on our assumptions, our science will be loaded with so many landmines it may never unravel all the mysteries of life.
In the end, Navare manages to connect the “factory” view of the cell with oppression in society. We can only free workers from their chains if we free our view of the cell as having a DNA Boss. This, of course, is music to the ears of “progressives”.
Sorry, I can’t agree. If you can find one example of how our understanding of life has been impeded by the “factory” metaphor—which after all isn’t something that biologists hold in their heads as a controlling mantra while they do research—do let me know.
In a scientific journal, especially one as prestigious as Cell, publication of a paper is a kind of endorsement of its content, for the paper has to be vetted for accuracy and cogency. This is why I say Cell “endorses” the view of the paper below, which maintains that sex isn’t binary, and in fact that the very concept of “sex” is incoherent, harmful, and should be jettisoned. This is clearly an invited paper, but the standards of accuracy and rigor should still apply. They don’t.
What makes me even more sure that Cell endorses this message is that the journal itself is woke and rejects the sex binary in instructing authors (see below). Plus the article is part of a series of five papers in the journal under “Focus on sex and gender” (May 14), all of which reflect gender activism. In rejecting the sex binary, both via this article and in its own behavior, Cell is rejecting science in favor of ideology. That’s very sad, but it’s what’s happening—and not just in biology. The ideological camel is sticking its nose into the tent of science—and actually, the whole head is now inside.
This article was written by Beans Velocci, assistant professor of History and Sociology of Science and Core Faculty in Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. There’s little doubt that its motivation is ideological because Beans goes by “they/them” and specializes in research that buttresses the thesis below. You can see Velocci’s c.v. here.
You may read this short (3.5-page) paper by clicking on the headline below, or reading the pdf here.
First, here’s how Velocci tells us that the journal itself doesn’t agree on a scientific definition of sex:
Some scientists are already contending with this problem. Cell itself has taken steps in that direction: the author guidelines for submission include a note addressing the multiplicity of sex. “[T]here is no single, universally agreed-upon set of guidelines for defining sex,” the guidelines point out. “‘[S]ex’ carries multiple definitions” including genetic, endocrinological, and anatomical features.
Contributors should therefore reduce ambiguity by specifying their methods for collecting and recording sex-related data to “enhance the research’s precision, rigor, and reproducibility.” The Cell guidelines are aligned with a broader conversation that names increased precision when talking about sex as a solution to these problems.
Yes, but one definition is far more universally agreed on than others, at least among biologists (last time I looked, Cell was a biology journal). But of course if researchers don’t mean natal sex when specifying “males” and “females”, then they are obliged to tell us how they recognize people. After all, if it’s solely via “self-designation”, then we have to be careful. Even so, Cell could have said this the way I just did.
Here are the main problems with Velocci’s paper:
It conflates sex differentiation, sex determination, and the definition of sex
It argues, wrongly, that no progress has been made in understanding the nature and definition of biological sex
Its argument is ideological rather than scientific, yet is given the trappings of science
It argues that the binary nature of sex, which the author rejects, somehow erases transgender and nonbinary people
And, as usual, its supposed examples that make sex nonbinary, like the long clitoris of the hyena, are wrong. But where are the clownfish? Send in the clownfish!
Since the whole paper is motivated by ideology (and by now you should know what that ideology is), here are a few quotes to demonstrate the gender-activist underpinnings. Binary sex is a tool of white supremacy, for one thing!
In the present, this means that sex—a key research variable in the life sciences, not to mention its role in structuring our everyday lives—is not a singular and stable entity. This has real, practical ramifications. On one hand, it introduces a tremendous lack of specificity and rampant imprecision to scientific research; on the other, it fuels ongoing arguments about the purportedly biological reasons that transgender (and especially nonbinary) people are not deserving of rights or do not even exist.
This of course is nonsense. The argument that sex is binary, and defined by whether you produce small mobile gametes (sperm in males) or large immobile gametes (eggs in females) has no bearing at all on whether people who are transgender or nonbinary deserve equal rights. Of course they do. (There are a very few exceptions for trangender people involving things like athletics, incarceration, or rape counseling.) Further, both transsexual and nonbinary people are, biologically, either male or female, even if they feel like they’re a mixture of both, a member of their non-natal sex, or something else.
But wait! There’s more:
Binary sex, too, continued to structure day-to-day life throughout the United States and Europe, with science serving as justification for a whole array of patriarchal and white-supremacist social arrangements. The point is this: even as scientific inquiry produced endless evidence that sex was neither straightforward to identify nor binary, sex continued to function as a foundational classification system for science and everyday life.
But the facts are the fact, even if they’re misused by bigots to denigrate people. As Steve Pinker has pointed out, we don’t say that architecture itself (or chemistry, for that matter) are bad and should be ditched because Nazis used them to construct gas chambers. But wait! There’s more:
We live in a social world that is fundamentally structured around the idea that sex is a binary, biological truth. Scientists are therefore constantly conditioned to ignore anomalies that do not fit into that scheme. Precision and rigor are incredibly important. They’re also not enough to counter hegemonic social forces.
Here Velocci argues that scientists ignore anomalies in sex (e.g., intersex or other conditions that affect secondary sexual traits) because we’re conditioned by the sex binary. But Velocci has spent the whole paper before this arguing that there is no agreement on the definition of sex, so how can Velocci claim that the world is structured around the sex binary? At any rate, I don’t understand what Velocci means by saying that the world “ignores anomalies”. They are the subject of a huge activist literature as well as an extensive medical literature.
One more:
Questioning fundamental truths is, in its most aspirational form, the point of any knowledge-producing enterprise. Imagine what we might find out if we were to let go of a category that hundreds of years of history demonstrates to be more useful for maintaining social hierarchies than for generating scientific knowledge.
This last point not only argues that we hold onto the false sex binary because it helps reinforce the social hierarchy (e.g. “transphobia”, white supremacy, and so on), but also that it impedes the acquisition of scientific knowledge. That’s a lie, of course: we wouldn’t know about sexual selection, parental care, etc. without the binary sex definition. Finally, Velocci tells us that we should just deep-six the entire category of sex.
Here’s another of Velocci’s arguments for dumping the category (but then what do we replace it with? Nothing?):
The answer to the question “What is sex?” is, in both theory and practice, just about everything, and therefore also nearly nothing. This exercise demonstrates that sex is an incoherent category, one that has perhaps outlived its use.
Another:
Paisley Currah noted in his recent book on government sex classification, “is what a particular state actor says it means.”
So, too, for scientific approaches to sex—because it is so many things at once, all we can say for sure about what sex is is what a given scientist does with it. This is not merely a historical quirk but a use of sex that persists into the present. The term “sex” has collapsed entire constellations of traits and processes into one point. As a result, it functions as a nearly universally accepted research variable with little consistency in its conceptual definition, and less in its usage.
I’m not really going into the argument for why sex is binary in all animals and plants, with exceptions being only in groups like algae and fungi. You can read or hear the arguments for it by Colin Wright, for example here and here, or read Alex Byrne’s new book Trouble With Gender. But if you’ve been reading this website, you’ll already know the arguments. In humans, only one person in 5600 (.018%) is intersex and doesn’t fit the binary. Even so, such people are not considered members of a third sex (see Alex Byrne on this issue here). All I’ll say are two things:
First, Velocci maintains that sex is a gemisch of different things: hormones, chromosomes, secondary sexual traits like genitals or breasts, physiological phenomena like menstruation, and differential behavior like parenting and psychology. To prove that, Velocci asks the students in class, “What is sex?”, and their answers, written on the board, look like this.
Figure 1. Diagram of student-provided responses to the question, “What is sex?”
But so what? Velocci hasn’t given them the reason why most biologists define sex by gamete type, which is not a simple argument that can be grasped instantly. The figure shows only that sex determination and differentiation involve a lot of stuff, both upstream (incubating temperature affects sex in some turtles, and of course there is the societal determination of sex in those fricking clownfish) and downstream (most of the other traits on the chart). Like all aspects of an organism, the genetics, morphology, and physiology of traits are complicated. The figure above, as I’ve noted, conflates the definition of sex, the determination of sex, and the differentiation of organisms based on sex.
Second, Velocci implies repeatedly that all the work of scientists over the centuries has not led to any increased understanding of sex. Apparently biologists have vacillated among chromosomes, gametes, hormones, and genitals, and other stuff but in the end. . . no new understanding. This is perhaps the most ridiculous thing that this sweating professor is trying to say. After going through how sex was regarded for the last two centuries or so, Velocci says this (note the ideological slant as well):
So, too, for scientific approaches to sex—because it is so many things at once, all we can say for sure about what sex is is what a given scientist does with it. This is not merely a historical quirk but a use of sex that persists into the present. The term “sex” has collapsed entire constellations of traits and processes into one point. As a result, it functions as a nearly universally accepted research variable with little consistency in its conceptual definition, and less in its usage. This does not make for accurate or reproducible science. As several scientists have pointed out, these contemporary uses of sex—simultaneously attached to an oversimplified binary, yet in practice depending on a vast, rarely analyzed multiplicity—actually make it harder to understand biological variation. There are also human costs: a broader cultural idea of “biological sex” as binary, imagined to be backed by science, is routinely deployed to exclude trans and intersex people and indeed anyone with bodily characteristics that do not fit neatly into male and female norms. The status quo, built on the history sketched above, therefore generates unsound research results that falsely uphold cis- and heteronormative assumptions.
But just because ideas, concepts, and knowledge change over time doesn’t mean that the object of study is elusive, ambiguous, or incohent. As Alex Byrne said in the link above (which uses the same diversion of historical change):
Naturally one must distinguish the claim that dinosaurs are changing (they used to be covered only in scales, now they have feathers) from the claim that our ideas of dinosaurs are changing (we used to think that dinosaurs only have scales, now we think they have feathers). It would be fallacious to move from the premise that dinosaurs are culturally constructed (in Clancy et al.’s sense) to the conclusion that dinosaurs themselves have changed, or that there are no “static, universal truths” about dinosaurs. It would be equally fallacious to move from the premise that sex is culturally constructed to the claim that there are no “static, universal truths” about sex. (One such truth, for example, is that there are two sexes.) Nonetheless, Clancy et al. seem to commit exactly this fallacy, in denying (as they put it) that “sex is…a static, universal truth.”
Here, for example, are some of the things that we now know from using a definitional binary for “biological sex”
The binary is useful in all animals and vascular plants. No other definition of sex holds for almost the entirety of the species we know. The binary is thus, except for a few groups. universal.
Why natural selection has resulted in a sex binary rather than a single self-reproducing sex or in three or more sexes. No matter what produces sex, be it environment, genes, or chromosomes, the end result is always two of them
The binary has utility. Without it, we cannot begin to understand how sexual selection works. And sexual selection has resulted in the following phenomena, which we pretty much understand
Sexual dimorphism in appearance (why males are most often the aggressive and ornamented sex
Sexual dimorphism in behavior (why, in humans, are males more often the risk-takers, why females are more interested in people than things, and why males compete for females (seahorses are the exception that proves the rule
Why organisms care more for their relatives than for unrelated conspecifics
Why females are more often the caregivers of their children
I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point.
In the end, as we wade through all Velocci’s unsound but familiar arguments, we have only casuistry motivated by ideology. Velocci’s intent is to show that because some humans feel as if they’re not male or female, or feel that they’re members of the sex other than their natal sex, then sex in nature must reflect these human feelings. This is what I call the “reverse naturalistic fallacy”, which can be defined as the view that “whatever we see as moral or good in humans must be seen in nature as well.”
There’s even a section of the paper called “other ways of knowing”, which argues that scientists should partner with those in the humanities, including queer studies, and this partnership is the way forward:
Many of the scientists currently pushing for critical thinking about sex are engaged with STS [science and technology studies] scholars—many of us humanists and social scientists coming from disciplines like history, anthropology, and sociology, and fields like Indigenous studies, Black studies, and queer studies. We in STS are poised to offer life scientists additional conceptual and practical ways forward. Knowing the history of science is, of course, part of this equation: it shows us that knowledge production of all kinds (including the history of science!) is an iterative process, where what we know is always changing.
Well, make of that what you will, but I’d maintain that, like the definition of “species”, the definition of ” biological sex” is the purview of biologists. Yes, philosophers can help us think more clearly, and historians can tell us about the history of studies of sex, but I don’t know how indigenous studies, Black studies, or queer studies can contribute much to a concept that, in the end, is about biology. The fact that biology is thrown into a gemisch with “studies” disciplines only serves to show how ideological Velocci’s argument is. As Alex Byrne (a philosopher who knows his biology) said of the American Scientist paper he reviewed, this Cell paper is “rubbish”, and shame on the journal for publishing it. There is no place for catering to ideological currents in a serious scientific journal, for reports about empirical discoveries should remain “institutionally” neutral.
Now, do I have to go through the other papers in Cell‘s Panoply of Horrors? If not, who will? Or should we just ignore them? That doesn’t seem wise since gender activism is infecting science in a big way, and few people criticize it. If dumb arguments keep being made over and over again, then it seems wise to refute them over and over again.
For a considerable time, blogger and biology teacher P. Z. Myers has been attacking the sex binary (e.g., here and here), arguing that because characteristics used to recognize sex—”secondary sexual traits”— aren’t binary (e.g., chromosome constitution, genital configuration, body color and so on), sex itself therefore can’t be binary. Here’s are two specimens of Myers’s arguments, which also show their ideological underpinning:
It should be obvious that you cannot define people by their gametes. If this were true, there would be no debate about trans participation in sports: the only effect of sex is to specify which of two flavors of gametes they produce, and the only sports where it would matter are those that are carried out in a petri dish between single cells. But no! Everyone is aware that sex contributes to all kinds of differences beyond their gametes. The whole problem is that we KNOW that there are far-reaching developmental changes that occur after fertilization and as a consequence of sex differences, which are both more subtle and more complex than the anti-trans contingent wants to allow.
. . . Somehow, an awful lot of biologists study sexual behavior — like lekking, or sexual displays, or fidelity, and on and on — that don’t necessarily involve sperm collection or measuring ovulation or that kind of thing. It is absurd to insist that only gametes define sex. I recognize spider sexes by the morphology of their palps, and by their differences in behavior, not gametes. I see the birds flying outside my window, and I discriminate sexes by color, primarily. To say that biologists have better things to do than study gender is ridiculous. Every biologist who looks at the plumage of birds or watches the courtship of spiders is studying a phenomenon far removed from basic gamete formation yet is an indispensable, unavoidable, intrinsic consequence of sex in that species…and the animal isn’t getting a semen count before engaging in it.
I’ve explained before the fundamental error here: the conflation between defining biological sex and recognizing biological sex (we encounter the same issue when defining versus recognizing biological species). The definition of biological sex is based on gamete size and mobility, and those are binary: you produce either eggs or sperm, and which developmental system you have for producing those gametes makes you either a male or a female. There is no third type of gamete, ergo no third sex. Secondary sexual traits, however, need not be binary.
This is not, as some activists imply, a definition that nefarious and transphobic biologists have concocted to somehow erase folks of nonbinary gender. Rather, it’s a fundamental definition that holds throughout animals and plants, and one that helps us make sense of an enormous amount of biology and evolution. Sexual selection, for example, cannot be understood without knowing about the differential investment the two sexes make in gametes of different size
But I’ll let Colin Wright, who’s just published a corrective of Myers’s errors, give a better explanation of the situation. Wright was disturbed that after he gave a really good talk on the sex binary (here), his lecture was praised by Richard Dawkins, one of many well-known evolutionists that Myers disdains. Here are Richard’s tweets (note that Scientific Americanalso buys into the idea that the sex binary is a myth):
Superbly clear & totally correct lecture by Colin Wright @SwipeWright. There are only 2 sexes & they're defined by gamete size. Convoluted attempts to deny binary sex are like Ptolemaic epicycles.https://t.co/LS3PG54JBi
This ridiculous article (shame on the once-great Scientific American) ignorantly misunderstands the nature of the sex binary: “Actual research shows that sex is anything but binary”.
Sex is not defined by chromosomes, nor by anatomy, nor by psychology or sociology, nor by…
Myers then went after both Dawkins and Wright for their supposed misunderstandings of sex and their nefarious view of sex as binary. Colin, disturbed by such apparently willful misunderstanding, just published a correction of Myers’s biology on Colin’s website Reality’s Last Stand. It’s the equivalent of a huge slap on Myers’s knuckles by the Ruler of Truth. Click on the headline below to read, and I’ll give a few excerpts (thanks to the many readers who sent me this link):
Excerpts:
. . . as gender ideology gained a foothold within the atheist movement, the brains of many prominent and once-rational figures began to melt. Philosopher Peter Boghossian has poignantly characterized this shift among Left-wing intellectuals from being quick to point out the limits of their knowledge to a tendency to pretend to not know what is undeniably known.
This trend is exemplified by Myers, as I will illustrate.
Recently, Richard Dawkins shared on 𝕏 the lecture I delivered at the Genspect conference in Denver, CO, last year, titled “The Sex Binary: What It Is and Why It Matters.” Dawkins praised my talk as “superbly clear & totally correct,” and reaffirmed the reality of the binary nature of sex. Following this, gender activists bombarded Dawkins with absurd articles challenging the binary concept of sex, including a particularly misleading piece in Scientific American titled “Stop Using Phony Science to Justify Transphobia,” which asserts that “Actual research shows that sex is anything but binary.”
In response to this onslaught of dubious science, Dawkins countered the article directly: “This ridiculous article…ignorantly misunderstands the nature of the sex binary.” He went on to underscore the important distinction between how sex is “determined” versus how it’s “defined” in biology that I outlined in my talk.
At this point you should listen to Colin’s 35-minute talk, if you haven’t already, and then proceed. He begins with how the sex binary helps us understand reverse sexual dimorphism (rare cases in which males help gestate young or in which the females rather than the usual males are the ornate and decorated species):
. . . . how do we know that male seahorses are the ones that gestate young and give birth? Or that in northern jacanas (J. spinosa), it is the females who are larger, more ornate, territorial, and exhibit less parental care than males? This knowledge stems from understanding that male and female are categories that exist independent of mere morphology and behavior.
Myers makes an uninformed argument:
Somehow, an awful lot of biologists study sexual behavior — like lekking, or sexual displays, or fidelity, and on and on — that don’t necessarily involve sperm collection or measuring ovulation or that kind of thing. It is absurd to insist that only gametes define sex. I recognize spider sexes by the morphology of their palps, and by their differences in behavior, not gametes. I see the birds flying outside my window, and I discriminate sexes by color, primarily.
Myers could not be any more confused here. How does he recognize that it is typically males who form leks, or that males often display more elaborate mating behaviors and exhibit less sexual fidelity? This knowledge comes from studying these species and correlating these behaviors with the type of gametes an individual produces. Once we discover that males of the Vogelkop superb bird-of-paradise (Lophorina niedda) possess highly decorative plumage and engage in elaborate sexual displays, we no longer need to continuously verify this. We know it’s the males because we learned that only those with decorative plumage and elaborate sexual displays in this species produce sperm.
However, Myers insists that defining an individual’s sex based solely on gametes represents an “extreme reductionist” approach, and suggests we should consider “all the other valid signals they openly display.”
Dawkins is just being an extreme reductionist to the point he’s making himself and his position look silly. Go ahead, all you reactionary biologists, rant about how there can be only two true sexes because people have some cells that are almost never seen in public, in defiance of all the other valid signals they openly display. Better biologists will go on recognizing all the factors that define sex without your self-imposed, narrow-minded blinders.
And then, very concisely, Wright summarizes the problems with Myers’s criticisms:
The core and critical flaw in Myers’ argument for using other traits to determine the sex of an individual is that these traits are only reliable indicators of sex in species where we already know which individuals are males and females, based on their gametes. In humans, we associate breasts with females and facial hair with males because adult human females typically develop breasts and adult human males tend to grow facial hair. But how would Myers propose to identify males and females in a newly discovered species without any prior knowledge of their secondary sexual characteristics?
Consider a hypothetical new mammal species with some individuals small and blue and others large and brown. Since we know mammals are anisogamous (i.e., reproduce via fusion of a sperm and an egg), we can be as certain as possible that this species also exhibits males and females. But how do we determine which is which? Should we assume the blue ones are males and the brown ones females, as is the case with blue groper fish? But in blue gropers the males are large and the females are small. Should we therefore consider the blue individuals of our new mammal species female because they are small? But in spiders the males are smaller than the females, suggesting perhaps the small individuals should be considered males?
Do you see the absurdity of the approach? We know human males tend to be hairier, male blue gropers are blue, and male spiders are usually smaller, because being male is a trait independent of hair, color, or size. What unites these males is the type of gamete they have the function to produce. That is what makes them male.
Thus, the only way we can know which individuals of our new species are the males and which are the females is to find out which individuals produce sperm and which produce eggs. The. End.
Myers has to understand this, but he is too afraid to tell the truth.
And that’s about all there is, and all ye need to know. The last line implies that Myers understands that there really are two sexes, but is afraid (presumably because he’d be a “transphobe”, which is what he calls those who accept the sex binary) to say it. I can’t judge whether this is the case, because I won’t try to psychoanalyze Myers. But I can say that he’s distorting a biological definition that’s held for well over a century, and is used because it is not only true, but also gives us a deep understanding of biology and evolution. As I’ve always said, recognizing the binary nature of sex should not for a second demean those who are of nonbinary gender, or people who become transgender. The truth is the truth, and to impose your ideological preferences on nature is to commit what I call the reverse naturalistic fallacy: the bogus claim that what be ideologically palatable must also be seen in nature.
