Yi-Zen Chu
11.4K posts
‘Completely shattered.’ Changes to NSF’s graduate student fellowship spur outcry science.org/content/articl…
Pierre Thiriar—a Justice on the Court of Appeal in Antwerp—wants me in handcuffs "When he states that genetic variants influencing intelligence may be unevenly distributed across populations and that this can explain differences in cognitive performance, this constitutes not merely a neutral hypothesis, but the empirical basis for a hierarchical view of human nature....the boundaries of Article 21 have been manifestly crossed." "Belgian case law has made it clear that packaging a discourse as 'scientific', 'philosophical', or 'critical' does not prevent it from being punishable when it objectively incites discrimination or propagates ideas of racial superiority."
An African based research team tries to prove that the African low iq was a myth then proves over 50% are under 70 points!
Staff and students protest after controversial scholar Nathan Cofnas moves to Ghent following free speech row at Cambridge timeshighereducation.com/news/universit…
A few years ago I recorded an episode of my podcast Forbidden Territory for @UGent (in Dutch) about the heritability of IQ. We also touched on the third rail of racial differences. Why? Because I believe academics should be free to investigate even the most “dangerous ideas.” My guest, Han van der Maas (a renowned IQ researcher at the University of Amsterdam), explained that individual IQ differences are highly heritable, but that he does not believe in differences between racial groups. His statistical and methodological arguments (e.g. Simpson paradox) convinced me at the time. Still, he hedged his bets: it remains possible that future evidence might show racial differences. And researchers should be free to investigate that hypothesis. Forty-five colleagues from my former philosophy department apparently think otherwise. They are urging the rector to fire @nathancofnas because he claims that the IQ gap between racial groups (such as whites and blacks in the US — differences that are themselves not disputed) may have partly genetic causes, rather than purely social ones like marginalization or discrimination. They label this “pseudoscience and racism.” I understand why many people are shocked by Cofnas’s claims. But this clearly falls within the scope of academic freedom. For years, the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan was taught and researched at my department — a complete pseudoscience. Dozens of theses and PhDs were written about it, all scientifically worthless. No one batted an eye. Unlike my colleagues, I published several papers explaining why (Lacanian) psychoanalysis is pseudoscientific (drive.google.com/file/d/0B_K-qt…). Yet I never demanded that my colleagues be fired. None of the signatories have any peer-reviewed publications on IQ or genetics. I have a letter recommending Cofnas' work on IQ from the editor-in-chief of the prestigious journal Intelligence. Even if the hypothesis of racial IQ differences could be shown to belong to the realm of pseudoscience, that still would not justify dismissal. If @UGent caves in to this demand, it will be another blow to academic freedom at my alma mater — following the new rector’s illiberal statements suggesting that researchers questioning the safety of vaccines or the Gaza “genocide” are “crossing a line that must not be crossed.” Such calls for dismissal from people without any expertise are also strategically unwise, as they only fuel “red-pilling.” When academics appear determined to suppress a dangerous idea at all costs, people understandably get suspicious: "What are they trying to hide?" And so trust in academia erodes further. youtube.com/watch?v=YHhbWm…
