Good morning ,
In our first lead story, evolutionary biologists Luana Maroja and Jerry
Coyne list some of the ideologically-based challenges to scientific biology:
1. Sex in humans is not a discrete and binary distribution of males and females but a spectrum.
2. All behavioral and psychological differences
between human males and females are due to socialization.
3. Evolutionary psychology, the study of the evolutionary roots of human behavior, is a bogus field based on false assumptions.
4. We should avoid studying genetic differences in behavior between
individuals.
5. “Race and ethnicity are social constructs, without scientific or biological meaning.”
6. Indigenous “ways of knowing” are
equivalent to modern science and should be respected and taught as such.
I suspect some of you will object to my including this (admittedly long) article. You will say that I should not raise "emotive and unwinnable" issues. On the contrary, I think now is the time to stand up for the value of the scientific method and
philosophical naturalism.
As Luana and Jerry say, "We aren’t under the illusion that calling attention to these points, and emphasizing the fallacy of the reverse appeal to nature, will push ideology completely out
of science. Progressive ideology is growing stronger and intruding further into all areas of science. And because it’s “progressive,” and because most scientists are liberals, few of us dare oppose these restrictions on our freedom. Unless there is a change in the Zeitgeist, and unless scientists finally find the courage to speak up against the toxic effects of ideology on their field, in a few decades science will be very different from what it is now. Indeed, it’s doubtful that we’d recognize
it as science at all."
