May 8, 2023 04:08 PM
(This post was last modified: May 8, 2023 11:28 PM by C C.)
Grandpa McMooty: "It's not just for the social sciences, anymore... Those ideological and conspiracy fixation biases of the administrative level of science publications and institutions affecting and dictating research and dialogue." --stage skit
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https://quillette.com/2023/05/05/the-unb...-of-being/
EXCERPTS (Lawrence M. Krauss): A little over a year ago, I tweeted about what seemed to be a ludicrous article that had just been published in the prestigious physics journal [...] The article claimed, among other things, that the use of whiteboards was an example of “whiteness” in physics.
It seemed so silly that [...] I thought it was a spoof paper ... to see whether this kind of content could now make it through the refereeing process today, even in hard science publications. I wasn’t alone, and the paper generated a reasonably large negative outcry from the physics community...
[...] The American Physical Society, which publishes Physical Review, went much further. ... the editors stated, “we condemn the highly inappropriate and harassing emails and social media responses to the paper, some of which appear to have little basis in the content of the article.”
They then issued a threat: “The APS Ethics Committee regularly reviews and responds to allegations of harassment and related misconduct. In some cases, these behaviors may lead to the revocation of APS awards, prizes, leadership positions, and/or disqualify candidates from consideration....."
Shortly after that, several physicists wrote to the authors of the APSNews piece, including the then APS president, Frances Hellman, expressing concerns about its tone, which seemed to suggest that any discussion of the paper on social media would be interpreted as harassment...
In June, four physicists from Los Alamos National Laboratory and Cal Poly Pomona submitted a Comment for publication. As per normal procedure, the journal sent this Comment to the original authors to review.
[...] the editor rejected the Comment on the grounds that it was “framed from the perspective of a research paradigm that is different from the one of the research being critiqued.”
[...] In a masterstroke of suppression of speech, the American Physical Society and Physical Review have together devised a strategy to ensure negative comments about this paper cannot appear officially anywhere in print. [...] a scientific critique of the paper was not appropriate for publication because the original paper wasn’t scientific.
This is what I meant by the Physical Review version of Catch-22. If you critique the scientific basis of a paper claiming that “White Privilege” exists in physics teaching, then you are being scientific; but if you are being scientific, you cannot critique a non-scientific paper!
[...] this gives additional ammunition to those who, without an otherwise firm scientific basis, continue to try to paint Physics as systemically racist... (MORE - missing details)
- - - - - - - -
https://quillette.com/2023/05/05/the-unb...-of-being/
EXCERPTS (Lawrence M. Krauss): A little over a year ago, I tweeted about what seemed to be a ludicrous article that had just been published in the prestigious physics journal [...] The article claimed, among other things, that the use of whiteboards was an example of “whiteness” in physics.
It seemed so silly that [...] I thought it was a spoof paper ... to see whether this kind of content could now make it through the refereeing process today, even in hard science publications. I wasn’t alone, and the paper generated a reasonably large negative outcry from the physics community...
[...] The American Physical Society, which publishes Physical Review, went much further. ... the editors stated, “we condemn the highly inappropriate and harassing emails and social media responses to the paper, some of which appear to have little basis in the content of the article.”
They then issued a threat: “The APS Ethics Committee regularly reviews and responds to allegations of harassment and related misconduct. In some cases, these behaviors may lead to the revocation of APS awards, prizes, leadership positions, and/or disqualify candidates from consideration....."
Shortly after that, several physicists wrote to the authors of the APSNews piece, including the then APS president, Frances Hellman, expressing concerns about its tone, which seemed to suggest that any discussion of the paper on social media would be interpreted as harassment...
In June, four physicists from Los Alamos National Laboratory and Cal Poly Pomona submitted a Comment for publication. As per normal procedure, the journal sent this Comment to the original authors to review.
[...] the editor rejected the Comment on the grounds that it was “framed from the perspective of a research paradigm that is different from the one of the research being critiqued.”
[...] In a masterstroke of suppression of speech, the American Physical Society and Physical Review have together devised a strategy to ensure negative comments about this paper cannot appear officially anywhere in print. [...] a scientific critique of the paper was not appropriate for publication because the original paper wasn’t scientific.
This is what I meant by the Physical Review version of Catch-22. If you critique the scientific basis of a paper claiming that “White Privilege” exists in physics teaching, then you are being scientific; but if you are being scientific, you cannot critique a non-scientific paper!
[...] this gives additional ammunition to those who, without an otherwise firm scientific basis, continue to try to paint Physics as systemically racist... (MORE - missing details)
