Emil O. W. Kirkegaard blog
A common comment on bias in scientific peer review is that reviewers don’t usually say openly they are applying double standards. Instead, they just silently increase their standards. If their bias against some finding is strong, the evidential burden to meet goes to infinity, making sure that nothing is rigorous enough to pass review. A…
Continue ReadingSometimes references are made to such findings. For instance, in Is There Anything Good About Men? (Roy F. Baumeister, 2007): Recent research using DNA analysis answered this question about two years ago. Today’s human population is descended from twice as many women as men. I think this difference is the single most underappreciated fact about…
Continue ReadingThere’s a certain type of person that doesn’t produce any empirical contribution to “Reducing the heredity-environment uncertainty”. Instead, they contribute various theoretical arguments which they take to undermine the empirical data others give. Usually, these people have a background in philosophy or some other theoretical field. A recent example of this pattern is seen on…
Continue ReadingHumans love interactions, they tell interesting stories (however, no study has investigated this bias, AFAIK). However, statistics and nature hate interactions. Interactions in general have low prior, and because people fail to realize this properly, reports of interactions generally fail to replicate. This is also true for gene-environment interactions (GxE), the love-child of any would…
Continue ReadingThis term deserves more widespread use, since the fallacy is still so common, more than 50 years after it was given a name. I have traced the naming of it back to 1969, in an obscure reply from Jensen to a critic: Jensen, A. R. (1969). Counter Response. Journal of Social Issues, 25, 219-222. (you…
Continue ReadingModgil & C. Modgil (eds.). (1984). Arthur Jensen: consensus and controversy. Lewes, Sussex, Falmer Press In a book that’s not widely-read but should be, Thomas Bouchard notes in his chapter (The Hereditarian Research Program: Triumphs and Tribulations): A principal feature of the many critiques of hereditarian research is an excessive concern for purity, both in…
Continue ReadingSpier, R. (2002). Peer review and innovation. Science and Engineering Ethics, 8(1), 99-108. This little read paper from 2002 is worth quoting at length. It underlines the inability of peer review to identify important studies, and its role in guarding the status quo in the field. Based on such thinking, some people have come to…
Continue ReadingSometimes people argue that one shouldn’t even be allowed to research race and intelligence causes. I’m sometimes asked directly why I choose to study this topic. Well, I could outline a number of reasons, but this would be endlessly quote mined by SJWs as proof of my wicked spirit. Of course, as usually noted, no…
Continue ReadingReposting this censored but great video. https://news.avclub.com/gif-artists-shake-up-taylor-swift-s-shake-it-off-1798252599
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