The latest victim of Social Justice Warriors

Here’s my WND column for this weekend, entitled “Science: The latest victim of Social Justice Warriors.”

For those unable to access the WND website, the text is below.

With the rise in awareness of “fake media” and the internet speech cartel banning conservative viewpoints, more and more people are starting to question the clamp on “truth” dominated by the left.

Science – supposedly neutral and free from partisan bias – is no exception. If something is controversial, it’s squelched. If a scientific conclusion contradicts political correctness, it is stifled and the scientist harassed and persecuted.

Consider this article by Theodore P. Hill, professor emeritus of mathematics at Georgia Institute of Technology, who had the audacity to research gender differences in intelligence, specifically the “Greater Male Variability Hypothesis” (GMVH) which asserts there are more idiots and more geniuses among men than among women. While there are many exceptions, the rule of thumb is there is generally more variability in males than in females of the same species throughout the animal kingdom.

“Multiple studies have found that boys and men are over-represented at both the high and low ends of the distributions in categories ranging from birth weight and brain structures and 60-meter dash times to reading and mathematics test scores,” writes Dr. Hill. “There are significantly more men than women, for example, among Nobel laureates, music composers, and chess champions – and also among homeless people, suicide victims, and federal prison inmates.”

Dr. Hill was curious to learn why males in many species are more variable than females. “My aim was not to prove or disprove that the hypothesis applies to human intelligence or to any other specific traits or species,” he stated, “but simply to discover a logical reason that could help explain how gender differences in variability might naturally arise in the same species.” [Italics in original.]

Like any good academic, Dr. Hill’s research was based on solid data. But he made the horrible miscalculation of addressing a subject – gender – inviolate among progressives. This proved to be an unforgivable mistake.

As Dr. Hill and his co-author Sergei Tabachnikov attempted to get the paper published in respected peer-reviewed mathematical journals, they found themselves facing increased hostility from an ever-widening pool of academic social justice warriors. How dare these men suggest there are more male geniuses? Faced with harassment, intimidation, loss of funding and other career threats, Dr. Tabachnikov asked his name to be removed from the paper.

No one could – or would – debate the soundness of the research or the mathematical accuracy of the conclusions. Instead, the opposition was based on feeeeelings. That’s it. Science took a back seat to feeeeelings.

Dr. Hill wasn’t the first to fall prey to progressive bias. Everyone remembers Harvard President Larry Summers, who was given the sack in 2005 for saying that the GMVH might possibly be a contributing factor to the scarcity of women in physics and mathematics departments at top universities. Feminists got a fit of the vapors and Summers was out.

Another high-profile victim, this one in 2017, was at Google when “engineer James Damore suggested that several innate biological factors, including gender differences in variability, might help explain gender disparities in Silicon Valley hi-tech jobs. For sending out an internal memo to that effect, he too was summarily fired.”

Recently, Brown University published a study concluding the “exceptionally rapid growth in cases of transgenderism among children and teens is very likely a result of ‘social contagion.’”

This article noted, “An in-depth report by the Federalist summarizes the study’s conclusion, saying ‘Rapid-onset gender dysphoria’ among teens and young adults may be a social contagion linked with having friends who identify as LGBT, an identity politics peer culture, and an increase in internet use.”

Translation: Transgenderism is a dangerous fad, not a biological condition. But the transgender activists went nuts and the study – regardless of the accuracy of its conclusions – was yanked. Telling the truth is a horrible thing when it contradicts the feeeelings of the left.

This leads to the esoteric question posted by Kevin Sorbo on Twitter: “If liberals don’t believe in biological gender then why did they march for women’s rights?”

In 2016, a SJW student at the University of Cape Town in South Africa put out a video that went viral, claiming all science must be torn down and abolished because it’s racist.

All science abolished. Let’s see, how did that video get made? How did it get distributed? Wasn’t it science that was involved in making and distributing the video? Doesn’t everyone benefit from this science?

But logic doesn’t apply to social justice warriors – it’s all about feeeelings. Science today does not dare challenge feminist or progressive ideology which, ironically, slows the progress of science (but who cares, right?).

“Feminist science” – a term that makes me want to puke – is becoming more and more popular (and funded by Your Tax Dollars). PJ Media notes, “They want scientists to only undertake studies and only publish conclusions that will support a radical feminist worldview.”

But that’s not science. Got that? It’s not science when “research” is cherry-picked to only support one point of view. That’s propaganda, creepily reminiscent of what went on in National Socialist (read: Nazi) Germany.

Feminist scientists and other academic twits want to argue there is no such thing as a universal truth; that everything is a matter of perception and social construction. “They’re hoping to harness the field of scientific discovery to support this idea,” states PJ Media.

But they can’t. Truth is truth, and the scientific method has worked for a long, long time to discard biased feeeelings and uphold facts. Therefore the only way the social justice warriors can bypass this stringent process (as Dr. Hill learned) is to harass, intimidate, defund and ruin the careers of real scientists who refuse to support their agenda.

Great plan, folks. Let’s bring science to a standstill.

Even the left is getting fed up with SJWs and their feeeelings. “What used to be a characteristic of the left wing fringe is now creeping into the mainstream ether, a pitchforks and torches method of forcing regular people to abide by unwritten rules of interaction,” notes James Di Fiore (who describes himself as “a moderate progressive”) on HuffPo.

These kinds of reactions don’t make feminists or SJWs look tough, strong and academically competent. No, it makes them look like fragile little cupcakes unable to stand up to the rigors of the scientific method.

America is becoming an international laughing stock for the quality of its education. Clearly its science output will soon follow.

But there are many non-PC countries which depend on science to advance their national agenda. And some of those countries are our enemies.

Just saying.