Comment by matthewdgreen
18 days ago
There’s a lot of concern on the Internet about objective scientific truths being censored. I don’t see too many cases where this is the case in our world so far, outside of what I can politely call “race science.” Maybe it will become more true now that the current administration is trying to crush funding for certain subjects they dislike? Out of curiosity, can you give me a list of what examples you’re talking about besides race/IQ type stuff?
The most impactful censure is not the government coming in and trying to burn copies of studies. It's the the subtle social and professional pressures of an academia that has very strong priors. It's a bunch of studies that were never attempted, never funded, analysis that wasn't included, conclusions that were dropped, and studies sitting in file drawers.
See Roland G. Fryer Jr's, the youngest black professor to receive tenure, experience at Harvard.
Basically when his analysis found no evidence of racial bias in officer-involved shootings he went to his colleagues and he describe the advice they gave him as "Do not publish this if you care about your career or social life". I imagine it would have been worse if he wasn't black.
See "The Impact of Early Medical Treatment in Transgender Youth" where the lead investigator was not releasing the results for a long time because she didn't like the conclusions her study found.
And for every study where there is someone as brave or naive as Roland who publishes something like this, there are 10 where the professor or doctor decided not to study something, dropped an analysis, or just never published a problematic conclusion.
I have a good few friends doing research in the social sciences in Europe and any of them that doesn’t self-censor ‘forbidden’ conclusions risks taking irreperable career damage. Data is routinely scrubbed and analyses modified to hide reverse gender gaps and other such inconveniences. Dissent isn’t tolerated.
Aside from a few friends, are there any good writeups of this? Surely someone is documenting it.
I have no clue, just relating my experience. As far as I know it’s not discussed amongst peers unless there’s a very strong bond.
It's wild how many people doesn't realize this is happening. And not in some organized conspiracy theory sort of way. It's just the extreme political correctness enforced by the left.
The right has plenty of problems too. But the left is absolutely the source on censorship these days. (in terms of western civilization)
unrelated: typing on an iPhone is hellish these days
Carole Hooven’s experience at Harvard after discussing sex differences in a public forum might be what GP is referring to.
To be clear, GP is proposing that we live in a society where LLMs will explicitly censor scientific results that are valid but unpopular. It's an incredibly strong claim. The Hooven story is a mess, but I don't see anything like that in there.
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