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Re:Open letter from computer scientists to ACM opposing canc... by zug_zug on Thursday December 31, 2020 @04:27PM (#25597347)
>> That means not publishing papers, articles or comments to the effect that "women can't do science" or bell curve arguments about some races being less intellectually capable than others.

Suppose you manage a school district and you find that, after controlling for socio-economic income, your students' SAT scores are drastically predicted by race. Suppose you don't publish it, because you fear it might be used as fuel for some racist. What if it turns out that a geographic area that happened to correlate with race was getting an inferior water supply with lead in it, and because nobody was willing to look any further, the problem went on for an extra decade before being fixed?

Re:Open letter from computer scientists to ACM opposing canc... by joshuamorton on Thursday December 31, 2020 @04:34PM (#25597416)
You've created a false dichotomy. Publishing a study that concludes that racial background correlates with SAT score isn't controversial. Pretty much everyone agrees that this is the case today.

Publishing a study that concludes that, because of this, black people are innately less intelligent than others (and not, for example, that environmental or social factors are to account), would be controversial.

Re:Open letter from computer scientists to ACM opposing canc... by zug_zug on Thursday December 31, 2020 @06:32PM (#25598519)
>> Publishing a study that concludes that racial background correlates with SAT score isn't controversial

That's how science should operate. The comment I was responding to seemed to indicate such statements were problematic, even without attributing the cause to innate biology.

Re:Open letter from computer scientists to ACM opposing canc... by joshuamorton on Thursday December 31, 2020 @06:40PM (#25598621)
It doesn't though. The GP comment is about (mis)attributing causation.

"Women can't do science" and "bell curve arguments about some races being less intellectually capable than others" are both causal arguments. "The SAT exhibits racial bias" is an observational statement. You took the GP's argument about causal misattribution and turned it into one about hiding observational conclusions, but that wasn't present in the original comment.

Re:Open letter from computer scientists to ACM opposing canc... by zug_zug on Friday January 01, 2021 @11:52AM (#25604544)
You very well may have a study that shows women produce a fraction of the science men do, maybe even per-capita, and that's not sexist per your own comment. You agreed it's only sexist if it attributes it to innate biology.

I'm done responding to you though because you're tone is confrontational and emotional.

Re:Open letter from computer scientists to ACM opposing canc... by joshuamorton on Friday January 01, 2021 @02:45PM (#25606152)
Yes, because "women can't do science" and "women produce less scientific output" are different. There first is casual. The second is observational. (I guess you could make a semantic argument that "can't do science" means like "are unable to due to environmental factors" and is thus also ultimately observational, but that's not particularly convincing in the context of scientific research).