Developmental biologist Prof Lewis Wolpert, writing recently in the Daily Telegraph [1], describes how, from conception, genes affect our gender roles. It’s not simply nurture at work.
Wolpert’s principle examples are well worth a read. But the arguments around the issue are even more so. Today, solid, objective research is not enough to merit publication. Good research might not get published because it violates the canons of political correctness.
“The view,” Wolpert argues, “that there are inborn differences between the minds of men and women is being challenged by others who call this the pseudoscience of ‘neurosexism,’ and are raising concerns about its implications.”
Here, critics of the idea that some of the differences between the sex (the obvious physical ones aside) are innate make two utterly unscientific arguments. One, they place a moral judgement on scientific outcomes, as if statistical data was sentient (and, of course, deride its bases as being unscientific
, without proposing a counterargument based on hard science). Two, by being concerned about the implications of scientific finding, they’re attacking objective research, and seek to replace it with only research that is socio-politically useful.
And Wolpert shows how this socio-political pressure is affecting some of the field’s biggest names:
“It has been suggested by Deborah Cameron, professor of language and communication at Oxford University [2], in her book The Myth of Mars and Venus [3] ‘that some writers on this subject can be thought of as latter-day Galileos, braving the wrath of the ‘political correctness’ lobby by daring to challenge the feminist orthodoxy which denies that men and women are by nature profoundly different.’ Cameron also recounts how Simon Baron-Cohen, professor of developmental psychopathology at Cambridge University, set aside his book The Essential Difference [4] for several years because ‘the topic was just too politically sensitive’.”
Indeed, intimidation comes in many forms, and the subtle, non-violent threats upon one’s reputation and livelihood are terribly effective. Many social liberals are quick to turn on their imagined enemies of truth and science – devout Christians. However, they themselves are making the publication of methodologically sound but socio-politically incorrect research findings something career-damaging. In the postmodernist’s mind, after all, objective truth is a fallacy.
This brings me to an article by Charles C.W. Cooke in National Review a few weeks back. Titled “Smarter than Thou [5],” it looks at positioning – and having the right position on a pertinent issues of the day. Consider the following and imagine poor Prof Wolpert being attacked by a social science undergrad…
“Thus do we see unexceptional liberal-arts students lecturing people about things they don’t understand themselves and terming the dissenters ‘flat-earthers.’ Thus do we see people who have never in their lives read a single academic paper clinging to the mantle of ‘science’ as might Albert Einstein.”
The bigger picture is ominous. What use is solid research if you’re too scared of losing your career to publish it? What use is expertise – such as that of Profs. Baron Cohen and Wolpert – if you simply have the wrong position? And, what’s the use in raising your child in a way that enables them to get the best out of their genetic inheritance when doing so runs counter to societally acceptable practice?
Now who’s attacking science?
(By the way, no-one can accuse Wolpert of harbouring some kind of religious agenda. He’s an atheist).