Here's a new paper:
Prosocial motives underlie scientific censorship by scientists: A perspective and research agenda
Authors: Cory J. Clark, Lee Jussim, Komi Frey, Sean T. Stevens, Musa al-Gharbi, Karl Aquino, J. Michael Bailey, Nicole Barbaro, Roy F. Baumeister, April Bleske-Rechek, David Buss, Stephen Ceci, Marco Del Giudice, Peter H. Ditto, Joseph P. Forgas, David C. Geary, Glenn Geher, Sarah Haider, Nathan Honeycutt, Hrishikesh Joshi, Anna I. Krylov, Elizabeth Loftus, Glenn Loury, Louise Lu, Michael Macy, Chris C. Martin, John McWhorter, Geoffrey Miller, Pamela Paresky, Steven Pinker, Wilfred Reilly, Catherine Salmon, Steve Stewart-Williams, Philip E. Tetlock, Wendy M. Williams, Anne E. Wilson, Bo M. Winegard, George Yancey, and William von Hippel.
November 20, 2023
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
120 (48) e2301642120
I became aware of it because Megan McArdle wrote an opinion column for the Washington Post, "The world could use more jerks." December 12, 2023.
Yes, the paper seems to be saying that there are facts, and there is niceness, and niceness is often just covering up the facts, and if we were more tolerant of jerks then the jerks would show us the truth.
The paper's abstract defines "scientific censorship" as "actions aimed at obstructing particular scientific ideas from reaching an audience for reasons other than low scientific quality." Any actions? Yes. Having a personal filter is self-censorship. Being deliberately nice is self-censorship. That's the definition.
A key problem here, for me, is that "low scientific quality" isn't defined. One scientist might say that an entire research idea is untenable for ethical reasons, which also means it's untenable for scientific reasons, and the research would be of low scientific quality if it were to proceed. The other scientist might say, no, ethics has nothing to do with scientific quality, and thus they deem the first scientist to have self-censored.
The paper's conclusion isn't really a conclusion. It says that the many co-authors disagree on "whether and where scholars should “draw the line” on inquiry." Nonetheless, they claim they "all agree" that science "would be better situated to resolve these debates, if—instead of arguing in circles based on conflicting intuitions—we spent our time collecting relevant data." I don't believe they mean relevant data on the myriad unique topics of scientific interest, but rather on the meta-topic; that is, they want "better science on scientific censorship" so they can better answer their own question. Anyway, see previous paragraph for the meta-problem here.
McArdle, for her part, in the Washington Post column, wants to expand the message to all writers. She says:
"These professions [journalism and academia] used to be sheltered workshops for those kinds of 'jerks': naturally distrustful folks who like asking uncomfortable questions and experiencing an uncontrollable urge to say whatever they’ve been told not to. These character traits don’t make people popular at parties, but they might well help them ferret out untruths, deconstruct popular pieties and dismantle conventional wisdom."
As she puts it: "Unfortunately, the universe isn’t here to please us, which means niceness and truth will sometimes be at odds."
Crucially, she adds: "Jerks were never the majority, which would be chaos. But they were a teaspoon of leavening..." In other words, some people have permission to be jerks. Not all people. Who will be in the elect few who receive social permission to be rudely contrarian and are perceived as experts simply because of their attitude, and who will be in the majority of sad amateurs who are tone-policed and shut down for expressing a difference of opinion? Ay, there's the rub. Plainly, she reserves the right to be a contrarian. It's her newspaper column, after all. She's the leavening that will transform the critics on whom her voice is overlaid. The transformation will be non-chaotic, we are to feel assured of that.
She quotes Musa al-Gharbi who, readers may discover, has a forthcoming book: We Have Never Been Woke: Social Justice Discourse, Inequality and the Rise of a New Elite.
She also plugs the new book The Canceling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott.
On which note, take a look at this Amazon review for The Canceling of the American Mind. This is what McArdle is asking for, right? Truth-telling while kind of being a jerk? The world is vastly improved now?
Related, on this blog: 2020 "Open Letter on Justice and Open Debate" in Harper's
No comments:
Post a Comment