'Citing science'. I can think of a few other groups throughout history who have said awful things and backed it up with 'science'.
Re:E Pur Si Muove
by ghostcluster on Friday December 15, 2017 @02:57PM
(#15934546)
Yeah! Like Stanford Medical School in 2017. http://stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/how-mens-and-womens-b...
Thanks for the link
Sure, you can use science for evil things, like you could use a hammer to hit somebody on the head and a car to run somebody over. The problem here is not hammers and cars. If Damore were challenged on scientific grounds and refuted as such, it'd be fine (tbh, many people did exactly that and stopped there, and they were doing it right). But he was chased out as a heretic, not as someone who wrote scientific paper that was less than solid. He was chased out because him questioning this particular dogma is incompatible with being employed at this place, and because the culture we have now does not allow Google to be perceived as tolerating heretics.
Cancelling events and boycotting sponsors because their speaker line up isn't sufficiently in line with imaginary industry demographics. Or even because a blind selection process, the thing people say they want, ends up selecting a wrongthinker.
Bullying comet-chasing scientists into tearful apologies over their choice of shirt. Or a self deprecating joke. That's just in STEM, you see the same in comedy, in politics, etc.
In each instance, a pitchfork wielding mob was summoned with social media outrage by bad faith actors. And get this, they are the ones who also loudly complain about trolls.
The rule to make sense of it is quite easy: when they do it to you, it's just consequences for speech. When it happens to them, it's targeted harassment that makes people feel unsafe and someone needs to step in and ban it.