Yes, academics are supposed to raise the status of their institution. This brings in money, which helps educate students, which makes the world a better place. Unsuccessful replication threatens this. Plus, replication does nothing to advance social justice.
Jason employs functional neuroimaging (fMRI) and behavioral methods to study how we infer the thoughts, feelings, and opinions of others (i.e., how we mentalize) as well as how we reason about counterfactual experiences.
That doesn’t seem to me like someone who focus on advancing social justice.
You should have looked at his vita for a more accurate description of his activities. If you had looked at his paper titles, some of them indicate he’s not a stranger to social justice like theorizing and investigation, and likewise his funding sources, on top of Harvard’s well-earned reputation: eg. “What’s in a forename?: Cue familiarity and stereotypical thinking”, “Gender differences in implicit weight identity”, “Deflecting negative self-relevant stereotype activation: The effects of individuation”, “Me and my group: Cultural status can disrupt cognitive consistency”, and the funding:
June 2007 – May 2010: National Science Foundation (BCS 0642448), “The neural basis of stereotyping”, $609,800 (co-PI: Mahzarin Banaji)...September 2010 – August 2012: Templeton Foundation for Positive Neuroscience, “Vicarious Neural Response to Others as a Basis for Altruistic Behavior”, $180,000 (co-PI: Jamil Zaki)
Sorry my mistake. As far as the paper titles goes.
As far as the funding goes the National Science Foundation isn’t an entity that I would see as spearheading the social justice movement.
The same goes for the Templeton Foundation. They have the reputation of wanting “progress in spiritual discoveries” instead of “advancing social justice”.
Both groups are quite big and may fund more than you think; not that the grantors always get what they think they’re getting or are the only people who are then allowed to draw upon the research. For example, consider “stereotype threat”, much beloved of social-justice types for explaining how bad white people keep test scores low for women and blacks; you can see the NSF certainly has been involved in that research in the past just with a cursory google: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22stereotype%20threat%22%20%22National%20Science%20Foundation%22 (I count ~4 NSF grants attested to just from the snippet-view for the first page).
Both groups are quite big and may fund more than you think; not that the grantors always get what they think they’re getting or are the only people who are then allowed to draw upon the research.
I do accept that both groups do fund a large variety of courses but I still wouldn’t conclude from the funding source that there a bias in the direction of the social justice movement.
When thinking about the title “The neural basis of stereotyping” you might be right that it smells like pseudoscience. It’s a bit like the “The neural basis of acupuncture”. Instead of searching for the neural basis it would make much more sense to focus of studying the actual effect.
I wonder if I picked up to much stereotypes about fMRI research ;)
I do accept that both groups do fund a large variety of courses but I still wouldn’t conclude from the funding source that there a bias in the direction of the social justice movement.
I never said the NSF is biased in favor of SJ. I said if you had bothered to look at the vita instead of stopping at the most convenient place, you would have found a number of paper and grant titles which indicate a more than theoretical interest in topics strongly associated with SJ on top of his affiliation with an institute with a strong background both current and historical in liberal thought & SJ-like figures such as Cornell West and to borrow from parallel ongoing conversations, crucified Sumners for his well-founded suggestion that the elite math achievement gap might be a necessary consequence of gender differences. And then you said the NSF was evidence against SJ association, which is either wrong or weak evidence since they fund related research all the time.
The might have crucified Summers but they led him rise to be president at Harvard in the first place and didn’t seem to successfully taught him not to say things like that.
Cornell West has professor for religion and then professor for African-American Studies. As far as my instincts go I wouldn’t expect the same thing from Harvard department of psychology than I would expect from the department of African-American Studies.
And then you said the NSF was evidence against SJ association, which is either wrong or weak evidence since they fund related research all the time.
I didn’t. I took your post as saying that I should update in the direction of him being part of the social justice movement based on his funding source and wanted to reject updating based on that information in that direction.
Either you don’t read your own comments, or you classify all social justice as signaling.
In the latter case, I’m sure you’ll come up with reasons why you aren’t making a fully general counterargument. I would urge you to stop for a second and ask concretely what you would have thought about, say, abolitionists.
I don’t understand what you mean. Social justice is a label for a set of beliefs. I do not think that social justice is just about signaling. If it helps to understand what I mean, I’m a politically incorrect college professor.
academics are supposed to raise the status of their institution...He teaches at an elite university so it’s highly probably he greatly values social justice.
There may indeed be a contradiction, but the real question—if we grant the first part—is what do you know and how do you know it? This seems to me like a really obvious point.
Yes, academics are supposed to raise the status of their institution. This brings in money, which helps educate students, which makes the world a better place. Unsuccessful replication threatens this. Plus, replication does nothing to advance social justice.
His website describes his research as:
That doesn’t seem to me like someone who focus on advancing social justice.
You should have looked at his vita for a more accurate description of his activities. If you had looked at his paper titles, some of them indicate he’s not a stranger to social justice like theorizing and investigation, and likewise his funding sources, on top of Harvard’s well-earned reputation: eg. “What’s in a forename?: Cue familiarity and stereotypical thinking”, “Gender differences in implicit weight identity”, “Deflecting negative self-relevant stereotype activation: The effects of individuation”, “Me and my group: Cultural status can disrupt cognitive consistency”, and the funding:
Sorry my mistake. As far as the paper titles goes.
As far as the funding goes the National Science Foundation isn’t an entity that I would see as spearheading the social justice movement.
The same goes for the Templeton Foundation. They have the reputation of wanting “progress in spiritual discoveries” instead of “advancing social justice”.
Both groups are quite big and may fund more than you think; not that the grantors always get what they think they’re getting or are the only people who are then allowed to draw upon the research. For example, consider “stereotype threat”, much beloved of social-justice types for explaining how bad white people keep test scores low for women and blacks; you can see the NSF certainly has been involved in that research in the past just with a cursory google: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22stereotype%20threat%22%20%22National%20Science%20Foundation%22 (I count ~4 NSF grants attested to just from the snippet-view for the first page).
I do accept that both groups do fund a large variety of courses but I still wouldn’t conclude from the funding source that there a bias in the direction of the social justice movement.
When thinking about the title “The neural basis of stereotyping” you might be right that it smells like pseudoscience. It’s a bit like the “The neural basis of acupuncture”. Instead of searching for the neural basis it would make much more sense to focus of studying the actual effect.
I wonder if I picked up to much stereotypes about fMRI research ;)
I never said the NSF is biased in favor of SJ. I said if you had bothered to look at the vita instead of stopping at the most convenient place, you would have found a number of paper and grant titles which indicate a more than theoretical interest in topics strongly associated with SJ on top of his affiliation with an institute with a strong background both current and historical in liberal thought & SJ-like figures such as Cornell West and to borrow from parallel ongoing conversations, crucified Sumners for his well-founded suggestion that the elite math achievement gap might be a necessary consequence of gender differences. And then you said the NSF was evidence against SJ association, which is either wrong or weak evidence since they fund related research all the time.
The might have crucified Summers but they led him rise to be president at Harvard in the first place and didn’t seem to successfully taught him not to say things like that.
Cornell West has professor for religion and then professor for African-American Studies. As far as my instincts go I wouldn’t expect the same thing from Harvard department of psychology than I would expect from the department of African-American Studies.
I didn’t. I took your post as saying that I should update in the direction of him being part of the social justice movement based on his funding source and wanted to reject updating based on that information in that direction.
He teaches at an elite university so it’s highly probably he greatly values social justice.
Either you don’t read your own comments, or you classify all social justice as signaling.
In the latter case, I’m sure you’ll come up with reasons why you aren’t making a fully general counterargument. I would urge you to stop for a second and ask concretely what you would have thought about, say, abolitionists.
I don’t understand what you mean. Social justice is a label for a set of beliefs. I do not think that social justice is just about signaling. If it helps to understand what I mean, I’m a politically incorrect college professor.
Are you implying that there is a contradiction in what you quoted? If so, I don’t see it.
There may indeed be a contradiction, but the real question—if we grant the first part—is what do you know and how do you know it? This seems to me like a really obvious point.
Reasoning for this claim? Do you also believe that original research can do nothing to advance social justice? That doesn’t seem likely.