"The Pernicious Science of James Damores Google Memo"
Last edited Tue Aug 15, 2017, 12:32 PM - Edit history (1)
A long read but interesting.
“With hindsight you can see that those pursuits weren’t science, and you can aim those 20/20 lenses at Damore too. What he’s advocating is scientism—using undercooked research as coverage for answering oppression with a shrug….cont
In that context, social science’s incoherency problem becomes disastrous. Throw the most red-state conservative physicist you can find into a room with a pinko-commie physicist and then toss in the latest data from the Large Hadron Collider. Mostly, the physicists will agree on which subatomic particles they can or can’t find. But even if you buy the research on psychological sex differences, the work in their biological or evolutionary basis is far from finished—leaving people free to cherry-pick results ready to mix into a manifesto. Just add outrage.
Science must inform policy—social, corporate, whatever. The more solid the science, the more it can inform. (Why, hello, climate change data—you are terrifyingly real.) But when it comes to sex differences, Google—or any organization, really—will understandably want to create an environment where people feel secure, safe, and empowered to do their best work. It’s good ethics and good business. That’s what Damore seems to see as an overly politically correct culture that stifles dissent.
If he’d poked harder at his own hypothesis—as everyone should when the behavioral sciences produce findings that helpfully reify society’s blunt, dumb guide rails—he would have found questions instead of answers. Interesting questions, for sure, but about as helpful as a Magic 8-Ball if you’re looking not for excuses to keep things as they are but mechanisms to make them better.” Cont….
https://www.wired.com/story/the-pernicious-science-of-james-damores-google-memo/