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People who were here at the beginning of this year might remember that around then I decided to leave this forum for a little while, for reasons which I described in this thread. There’s no need to explain all of my reasons for it in detail again, since I described them there. But the best way to summarize the problem is that the pro-evolution side at this forum, the side I was part of, was beginning to act too similar to the creationists for me to want to remain involved in it. And as I said there, there was one particular creationist (RichardT) who I was pretty sure would have accepted evolution already if it weren’t for how the supporters of evolution here were treating him.
Well, a few months ago I learned something that gave me some hope that things here might be improving: I found out that Richard finally had accepted evolution. As I quoted from him here, he thinks of my own discussions with him about this as being one of the main factors that caused the change in his viewpoint, but this forum in general seems to have also played a role. So I’m willing to give this forum another try, but first I have a test of my own to perform about whether things here are better now than the way I remember them being when I left.
There used to be certain viewpoints that the pro-evolution posters at this forum did not generally tolerate disagreement with, even though these viewpoints had nothing to do with evolution or even with science in general. One of them was the amount of respect that everyone here seems to have for P.Z. Myers, the evolutionary biologist who runs the blog Pharyngula. The expectation that everyone here should feel this way about him didn’t used to bother me, since I used to respect him a lot also—after all, my Captain Occam comics definitely got more publicity as a result of him posting about them than from any other single source. But more recently, I’ve learned that to a certain extent, my respect for him has been ill-founded.
I have been corresponding with Jason Malloy, who’s probably the only blogger who can be considered a greater authority on evolution than P.Z. Myers is. Malloy’s blog, Gene Expression, is the original evolution blog, founded around a year before Pharyngula. Within the past year, Jason Malloy has been interviewed by the New York Times, and the article for which he was interviewed eventually won a Pulitzer. At least one of his blog posts has also gone on to be published in the peer-reviewed journal Medical Hypothesis: http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retri...06987708001540
All this goes to say that if there’s anyone in the blogsphere who can provide an authoritative answer to the question of whether P.Z. Myers deserves the amount or respect he’s normally given, it’s Jason Malloy. And here is what Malloy has had to say about this topic:
Originally Posted by Jason Malloy
Some back story: GNXP was the first evolution blog starting in 2002. A science part of the blogosphere really didn't exist yet. Phyrangula started a year later in 2003, and I started reading really soon after it started. (I knew PZ from atheist boards) There was a time when I was one of only two or three people who would even leave comments in his threads! He only had a few dozen readers back then.
As much as I appreciated the early science blogging, PZ is very fundamentalist about topics like sociobiology, IQ, and behavior genetics. PZ enjoys Richard Dawkins reflected celebrity now, but in early years he would get offended if I even mentioned Dawkins because he was a "reductionist" "genetic determinist".
References and evidence will not help you: In principle, PZ rejects all evidence about differences in cognitive ability within or between groups... even at the phenotypic level: "...1000 kids of any race could be raised to be successful college kids."
I've seen quite a few people try and argue with him over related topics over the years, and he does not budge. Here is an example of one of the few threads where I tried. PZ claimed that socioeconomic differences were the cause of IQ gaps. I presented evidence this was not true. He ignored it and repeated the claim again in the same thread. (and many times since then) His explanation for this was not coherent... he just didn't give a f***. On some topics PZ is as bad as or worse than any creationist.
His behavior during the Larry Summers controversy was similar. PZ was not interested in debating facts.. he's a propogandist. Summers's words were available for anyone to read, but Myers kept repeating untruths that Summers' claim about ability distributions was really saying NO women can do math:
It's Martin Luther King day, and the story that has me angriest today is about the perpetuation of the kind of inequities he fought against . . . Apparently, congenital idiocy is not a barrier to becoming a Harvard administrator . . . While there are genetic biases that can skew an individual's preferences and behavior, none are so cleanly tied to sex or race [?] that we can use them to legitimately discriminate on the basis of those irrelevant traits . . . How can anyone be so stupid as to stand in front of a room full of accomplished women, all walking, talking refutations of his claim, and suggest such a thing?
This is his thought process. If you bring up the subject, no matter how fairly or lucidly, PZ will hear something different, and respond in a way that clearly shows he heard something very different from what you actually said. There is no way to communicate with him on this topic; his thinking is freakishly twisted, politicized, and dogmatic.
I’m not sure if anyone here remembers what the issue regarding Larry Summers was, but he was the president of Harvard who was attacked for suggesting, at a conference devoted to the topic of women in science, that their under-representation in this field might be for reasons other than social factors. It isn’t difficult to see from the original text of Summers’ speech how much P.Z. Myers is distorting it, but I’ll quote the summary of it from the Boston Globe just to make it clearer.
Originally Posted by The Boston Globe
He offered three possible explanations, in declining order of importance, for the small number of women in high-level positions in science and engineering. The first was the reluctance or inability of women who have children to work 80-hour weeks.
The second point was that fewer girls than boys have top scores on science and math tests in late high school years. ''I said no one really understands why this is, and it's an area of ferment in social science," Summers said in an interview Saturday. ''Research in behavioral genetics is showing that things people previously attributed to socialization weren't" due to socialization after all.
[…]
Summers' third point was about discrimination. Referencing a well-known concept in economics, he said that if discrimination was the main factor limiting the advancement of women in science and engineering, then a school that does not discriminate would gain an advantage by hiring away the top women who were discriminated against elsewhere.
Because that doesn't seem to be a widespread phenomenon, Summers said, ''the real issue is the overall size of the pool, and it's less clear how much the size of the pool was held down by discrimination."
Although the Globe article isn’t clear about this, from the original text of Summers’ speech it’s possible to see that what he was describing about the difference in test scores is not that men have higher average scores than women do. What he was saying is that men have greater variance in scores than women do, with more scores at both the upper and lower end of the range. The average is the same, but if skills at both the upper and lower end of the range are more common among men than among women, qualified male applicants will be more common for a job that requires skills at the upper end of it.
Now compare this to what P.Z. Myers said about Summers; that a room of accomplished women with careers in the sciences were “all walking, talking refutations of his claim”. Anybody who’s taken an introductory-level course in statistics (which is certainly a requirement to get Myers’ level of education in biology) will be aware that saying there is some statistical tendency for a group is not the same as saying this applies to every member of the group. In other words, I can see that Malloy’s point about this is right—Myers has no excuse for making the claim that he did here.
I see the same thing in the thread Malloy linked to as an example of what Myers is like in debates. Myers’ assertion was that the measured difference in average IQ between races is caused by a difference in socio-economic status; a claim which is already rejected by the American Psychological Association. Malloy replied to this with several lines of evidence showing that SES does not have enough effect on IQ to account for the difference. Rather than attempt to refute this in his reply, Myers simply quoted more of the sources Malloy was using, showing that they didn’t think genetic factors were the cause either, as though this disproved Malloy’s point. Several times, Malloy commented again to say that he wasn’t making the claim that genetics were the cause (“I did not make the claim that any intelligence difference was genetic here”) and that Myers’ point was thus irrelevant, but Myers continued to reply with two sentence-quips that did not even acknowledge what Malloy was saying about this. (“Jason--I read your references. They suggest the opposite of what you are saying.” That was the entirety of one of Myers’ replies.)
If this forum were still the way it was when I left it for a while several months ago, I expect that the way the other members would react to my pointing out these things about P.Z. Myers probably would be fairly similar to what Myers himself said about Larry Summers and to Jason Malloy: angry responses that assume me to be saying something I’m not, or one-liners that sound as though the person replying didn’t even read my post. I used to get these sorts of replies a lot. If that’s the way things go in this thread, I’ll probably disappear for another few months, until I decide it’s time to test the conditions here again.
Maybe this board has improved since then, though. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see: what do the people here have to say about this major shortcoming of a person whom most of you admire?
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I haven't been able to read all the material you linked to yet, so I really can't comment much. For me, PZ Meyers is someone who's blog I sometimes read, but not often. I don't really consider his blog to be a science blog anymore, more of an atheist blog. Which is one of the reasons I don't read it often.
As for being an authority on evolution, I think there are more bloggers of collectives of bloggers who are authorities on evolution and I don't know whether I'd rank PZ highest amongst them. I think Pim (PvM) of Panda's Thumb is someone well worth reading and very knowledgeable.
Regarding the specific discussions you listed, I'm not sure. For example, I know there is an IQ difference between blacks and caucasians that cannot be explained by SES alone, but I have a lot of problems attributing this to some other (innate?) difference. SES is in my opinion a highly suspect measure, give that it is an amalgan of measures like education status and income. Race differences in IQ might therefore be a reflection of some aspect of SES that we haven't been able to account for and in the end not be a group thing after all. IQ is equally effy as a measure.
I'll try to read the threads you linked to later this evening and comment on them.
edited to add: I've scanned the thread on IQ referenced by you, and I have to say that I wouldn't be persuaded to change my viewpoints based on the comments of Malloy either. My main problem with his posts is that he seems to confuse differences in IQ within groups on the one hand, with the aggregated measure of average IQ in populations. They are not the same and one cannot be used to make conclusions on the other. Malloy seems to be exactly that. I don't think that it is dogmatic of PZ to not be swayed by the posts of Malloy in that thread but rather that Malloy doesn't really make his point very well.
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Tom
'What luck for rulers, that men do not think.'
-Ascribed to Adolf Hitler-
`Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, `if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'
-Through the Looking Glas by Lewis Caroll-
Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.
--Aaron Levenstein
Last edited by Tomk80; 1st November 2008 at 03:22 PM.
I have no doubt, Aggie, that your goals are noble. And, if your influence with Richard was as you recount, your heart is in the right place.
Why then, if you seem so intent to have everyone approach this topic as dispassionately as possible, is your first post back from a self-imposed hiatus a thinly-veiled accusation that many evolution supporters here engage in creationist-style authority-bestowing? I see here, compared to more focused (and/or secular) CvE discussion boards, fewer references to Pharyngula and virtually none to PZ as an unquestionable authority.
Maybe I still have a bad taste from your departure, but I have a hard time seeing this challenge as anything other than baiting designed to reinforce your prejudices about us.
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"Ray, if someone asks you if you're a god you say yes!" ~ Winston Zeddemore
(I'm not entirely sure why you had to start like this, though... if you are interested in the current evolutionist standards on CF, why not read a few threads? If you intentionally provoke people they're more likely to show you their nasty face, aren't they?)
I really don't care if PZ can't let go of some of his views. I think most people have their pet theories they stick to at all costs, and given how sensitive this topic is, it's hardly surprising if such pet theories are connected to it.
I don't read Pharyngula except when someone links to it. There are something like three Pharyngula posts I can actually remember: one is an intro about Hox genes, another reports on the evolution of new features in wall lizards on an island and the third is about the transitional nature of Yanoconodon's middle ear (which is the first hit at the link, for some reason the prudery filter [wash my mouth]s out some of the actual URL of the post). Each of those are relevant to evolution, and I couldn't see any major problem with them.
__________________ "There is much we do not understand about the history of life, and the same will be true of our grandchildren. But, then, if we knew all there was to know, scientific interest would cease. Textbooks may portray science as a codification of facts, but it is really a disciplined way of asking about the unknown." - A.H. Knoll, Life on a Young Planet
"Come on, put your bloody thinking caps on!" - Dr Tony Prave, geology lecture
Since the three of you raised similar issues, I guess I’ll reply to the three of your posts collectively.
During the months since I left, I’ve been getting more and more involved in the hereditarianism vs. socialization aspect of biology. I’ve always had certain topics that I focus on; since 2004 my main other one has been the origin of birds. From what I’ve learned about this new topic, though, I’ve gradually come to the conclusion that the attitudes about it of people like P.Z. Myers are nearly as harmful as the anti-science attitudes of creationists, although in a different way.
There’s the way people like Larry Summers and James Watson have suffered for disagreeing with the most popular viewpoints about them, of course, but that’s not the main thing I’m thinking of. What I’ve discovered as I researched this is how common it is for the under-representation of women in scientific fields, or of Africans in most academic fields, to be considered in itself proof of discrimination. And when nobody can come up with any specific examples of discrimination contributing to this under-representation, the accusation is always that it’s some undetectable, unfalsifiable “subconscious” discrimination. Since this accusation of subconscious discrimination can never be disproved, and the under-representation that’s considered “evidence” for it never goes away, it leads to both groups having an enduring resentment towards the other. The group supposedly being discriminated against believes that other the members of another group are to blame for their problems, and attack them for it—while on the other hand, the people who are supposedly doing the discriminating are unaware of anything they’re doing wrong, and resent being blamed for someone else’s under-achievement.
Either this problem is becoming more common, or I’m noticing it more now that I’m aware of it, but either way this happens a lot. These accusations of bias as an explanation for someone’s failure to achieve a goal were rather evident in the presidential race, especially in Hillary Clinton’s campaign. In the speech where she announced the end of her candidacy, the main factor she mentioned for why she thought Obama had beaten her for the Democractic nomination was that she had allegedly been unable to break through the “glass ceiling”, even though there was no evidence that her gender made any difference in people’s preference for or against her.
When I was posting here before, my favorite topic of bird origins wasn’t the only topic I talked about. So if I decide to stay, I don’t intend to have any more focus on this topic in psychology than I did on that one in paleontology. But now that I’m aware of the importance of this issue, I think you can probably expect to hear about it from me from time to time as long as I’m posting here.
That said, though, I didn’t intend this thread as a debate over whether genes play a role in the IQ difference between races. Malloy was fairly clear in that thread that this was not the point he was trying to make; his point was only that the difference could not be explained by SES alone. Myers claimed that it was SES and nothing else, but the only evidence he could come up with for this was evidence that it wasn’t genetic. He was using a false dichotomy—disproving that it’s caused by genes is not the same as proving that it’s caused by SES.
There’s a reason why I don’t post at boards like IIDB; I doubt I could put up with the attitudes of most of the members there. But TeddyKGB and Naraoia, wanting to see the nasty side of this board’s members is the whole point of this thread. I’ve been reading threads here for a few weeks, and based on what I’ve seen it seems like things might have improved. But oftentimes, it requires the right circumstances for this forum’s “nasty face” to show itself.
So go ahead, show it to me. Every forum has its unpleasant side, and I’m completely prepared to see people here belligerently disagreeing with me. What I need to see is whether the discussion will be able remain on an academic level, or whether it’s going to degenerate into name-calling and personal attacks the way it did before. In my opinion, a somewhat provocative thread is the only way I’ll be able to learn the answer to that.
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You might notice a lot fewer active members here. More stringent rules, restrictions, the closing of GA, and the general direction the board has taken, has caused members to leave here en mass. Also, we lost a good contributor, ChordatesLegacy, who recently died.
what do the people here have to say about this major shortcoming of a person whom most of you admire?
One thing I noticed in your remarks was you repeated reference to individuals as "authorities". It appears to be a religious approach. Reality is, there are no "authorities" in science. I don't view any individual scientist, let alone blogger, as an authority. I don't put anyone up on a pedestal and basically worship them as some kind of flawless icon. We could go down the list of every eminent scientist in history, and find flaws and major shortcomings with all of them. And scientific consensus is not based on an individual. It is arrived at by a body of scientists testing what works, what has been confirmed and repeated in the labs, accurate predictions........the scientific process - which is blind to the individual, and doesn't defer to an individual as an "authority".
Last edited by TheBear; 1st November 2008 at 10:49 PM.
One thing I noticed in your remarks was you repeated reference to individuals as "authorities". It appears to be a religious approach. Reality is, there are no "authorities" in science. I don't view any individual scientist, let alone blogger, as an authority. I don't put anyone up on a pedestal and basically worship them as some kind of flawless icon. We could go down the list of every eminent scientist in history, and find flaws and major shortcomings with all of them. And scientific consensus is not based on an individual. It is arrived at by a body of scientists testing what works, what has been confirmed and repeated in the labs, accurate predictions........the scientific process - which is blind to the individual, and doesn't defer to an individual as an "authority".
That’s a good attitude to have. The thing that makes these flaws on Myers’ part significant is just the fact that he was being illogical; not the credentials of the person who pointed that out. The reason I brought up Jason Malloy as an authority is just because for people who trust Myers in this particular way, it’s likely to make a difference to them that an equal or greater authority considers him unreliable in this respect.
You’ve been on these boards for even longer than I have, and I’ve never seen your attitude be a problem the way I was describing from some of the other members, so I wouldn’t have expected you to feel any differently than this. I’d still like to hear what some of the other people here have to say about this, though.
I’d already heard about ChordatesLegacy; that’s unfortunate. Does anyone know what happened to him, and was there any kind of advance warning about it? I remember how this went in WinAce’s case, where people who knew him well could tell that he might not have much time left. I don’t recall seeing anything like that in ChordatesLegacy’s case, though.
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That said, though, I didn’t intend this thread as a debate over whether genes play a role in the IQ difference between races. Malloy was fairly clear in that thread that this was not the point he was trying to make; his point was only that the difference could not be explained by SES alone. Myers claimed that it was SES and nothing else, but the only evidence he could come up with for this was evidence that it wasn’t genetic. He was using a false dichotomy—disproving that it’s caused by genes is not the same as proving that it’s caused by SES.
Has anyone considered asking PZ what he thinks now? The stuff you linked to is 3 years old.
There’s a reason why I don’t post at boards like IIDB; I doubt I could put up with the attitudes of most of the members there. But TeddyKGB and Naraoia, wanting to see the nasty side of this board’s members is the whole point of this thread. I’ve been reading threads here for a few weeks, and based on what I’ve seen it seems like things might have improved. But oftentimes, it requires the right circumstances for this forum’s “nasty face” to show itself.
So go ahead, show it to me. Every forum has its unpleasant side, and I’m completely prepared to see people here belligerently disagreeing with me. What I need to see is whether the discussion will be able remain on an academic level, or whether it’s going to degenerate into name-calling and personal attacks the way it did before. In my opinion, a somewhat provocative thread is the only way I’ll be able to learn the answer to that.
It occurs to me that if you intend to irritate someone, you will eventually succeed. That is proof of little save your ability to fulfill your own prophecies. If you want to have a discussion, then ask a question or post a paper or make an empirical argument, but at least do it in good faith.
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"Ray, if someone asks you if you're a god you say yes!" ~ Winston Zeddemore
Has anyone considered asking PZ what he thinks now? The stuff you linked to is 3 years old.
Considering what he was saying about this topic around the time of the controversy over James Watson a year ago, such as posting this comic, I doubt his opinion is any different now. The comic is basically just a collection of myths about the IQ gap that have already been debunked by the APA. (That’s it’s caused by SES, that the tests aren’t accurate, and so on.) Among people who specialize in intelligence testing, the only real point of controversy about this since the 1990s has been whether this IQ difference is caused by genes, or some as-yet undiscovered environmental factor.
Originally Posted by TeddyKGB
It occurs to me that if you intend to irritate someone, you will eventually succeed. That is proof of little save your ability to fulfill your own prophecies. If you want to have a discussion, then ask a question or post a paper or make an empirical argument, but at least do it in good faith.
I’m not really trying to irritate people with this. If I were to post something like this at most of the other science-related forums where I participate, I doubt it would be much of an issue. It’s something that I think will be an issue here if and only if the attitude of the people here hasn’t changed since the time that I left.
TheBear wasn’t kidding about how dead this place seems to be nowadays, though. I wonder if I ought to be posting in the Physical & Life Sciences forum instead.
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That’s a good attitude to have. The thing that makes these flaws on Myers’ part significant is just the fact that he was being illogical; not the credentials of the person who pointed that out. The reason I brought up Jason Malloy as an authority is just because for people who trust Myers in this particular way, it’s likely to make a difference to them that an equal or greater authority considers him unreliable in this respect.
You’ve been on these boards for even longer than I have, and I’ve never seen your attitude be a problem the way I was describing from some of the other members, so I wouldn’t have expected you to feel any differently than this. I’d still like to hear what some of the other people here have to say about this, though.
I still don't get what you're trying to accomplish with this thread. Are you addressing the studies and research on IQ's, or are you addressing individuals?
If it's strictly academic, then just refer to the research and studies you draw from.....state what you agree with and why. Like I said before, the individual has nothing to do with the scientific process.
But it appears as if you're trying to get a rise out of members here, who you think look to Meyers as some kind of an 'authority' figure, and that if you show him to be wrong about something, then that should somehow crush his 'worshipers'. It's as if you're trying to push buttons to get reactions, yet you premise this whole thing with complaining about the reactions of members here which caused you to leave for a couple months.
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