Friday 20 March 2015

Razib Khan gets Watson’d

 

Long before I started Psychological Comments I tried to read as widely as possible about new methods in genetic research. I eventually found a blog called Gene Expression written by the extremely talented Razib Khan, and he and his commentators contributed greatly to my education.

It took a while before I felt I could ask questions, and over the years we have had the very occasional discussion about topics like genetic regression to the mean, on which his replies were always helpful. I admired Razib for the immense scope of his knowledge, and felt I had lost a friend and a meeting place when, after many years of hard work, he moved on from Gene Expression to other projects.

Now we have the news that he had been appointed as a commentator to The New York Times, and then unceremoniously dumped a day later. His crime? Racism.

Call me naive, but I find this very odd. Razib’s main area of expertise is genetics. He takes genetic papers apart, explains, comments, re-works data, brings in further material and proceeds carefully, weighing up evidence cautiously. He is not the sort of genetics researcher who imagines that one finding proves a case. He also knows a lot about the genetics of intelligence. He is not an ignorant or blinkered man, by any stretch of the feverish imagination. As part of his generally mild manner, he is even forgiving when he himself becomes the subject of unwarranted assumptions based on his own genetic background. As far as I can recall, he expressed mild irritation at the silliness of these racially based views, and continued his work without further reference to those instances of prejudgment. He is not some who, in Hazlitt’s marvellous exposition, is prejudiced.

Prejudice is prejudging any question without having sufficiently examined it, and adhering to our opinion upon it through ignorance, malice or perversity, in spite of every evidence to the contrary.

Razib examines matters carefully, adjusts to new findings, and is not guilty of ignorance, malice or perversity.

So, what has he done? Has he launched a tirade against a racial group, using foul and demeaning language? Has he, in act of self-hate, turned on descendants of Ghengis Khan, accusing them of being too bright for their own good, and apt to invade other countries?

Nope. He has written to and commented upon and linked to other sites which other people have been judged racist: Taki magazine and Vdare. And that is it. Tainted conversations with tainted persons on tainted subjects.

Some time ago I decided to keep a list of contemporary definitions of racism. I had thought, when I was teaching social psychology courses year ago, that racism was unfounded pejorative attitudes and behaviour directed at people solely because of their race. I find that the concept has been subject to mission creep, and the list of definitions has become bewilderingly long. I will try to post about that another day.

Razib does not want any of this to be any big deal. A newspaper which appoints a person one day and then demotes them the next has neither courage nor the capacity to do its basic homework. If you don’t want someone who knows about genetics on your newspaper, don’t hire him in the first place.

So, Razib does not consider himself Watson’d in the usual sense of losing a job and then being unable to work as before. On the contrary, he has probably had a lucky escape from a gutless editor. Better to find that out within a day than years later in the middle of a big story about genetics.

Still, it is a great sadness when a major newspaper, or even a formerly major newspaper, is run by gutless and gormless editors.

13 comments:

  1. after many years of hard work, he moved on from Gene Expression to other projects

    The blog moved but it still exists.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, but Razib was the guy I followed most, so a loss for me when he left.

      Delete
    2. That /is/ Khan's (new) blog. Between the gnxp web site and this new unz.com place it was hosted here:

      http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/

      His old posts are still there.

      Delete
  2. Complicated. The most important gauche caviar journal of Amurrica... What is the surprise??

    Santoculto

    ReplyDelete
  3. James, could you put in some links so we can see what type of things Razib writes that the NYT finds offensive, or the reasons NYT gave for their decision. Any information would be helpful for us to obtain a balanced and informed judgement on this issue.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Can't help, because none of what he writes is anything other than factual. If you google the NYT statements about him they may be able to explain their thought processes.

      Delete
  4. Larry, San Francisco21 March 2015 at 21:53

    Here is a good example:
    http://www.unz.com/gnxp/selection-in-europeans-but-it-still-sweeps/
    He presents very technical material in a way that a non genticist (i.e. me) can grasp most of the important details.
    The SJWs are scum.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Larry, thanks. I was reading that post earlier today, and didn't think to link to it. He will win through because he is so good at what he does, as you describe.

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  6. "As part of his generally mild manner": except when he's obnoxious, of course. Still, the NYT has behaved foolishly, in a brilliantly anti-intellectual manner. Maybe that's its role nowadays: mouthpiece for the American blethering classes. It used to be dull; now it's dull and stupid.

    ReplyDelete
  7. "I find that the concept has been subject to mission creep, and the list of definitions has become bewilderingly long." That's what I refer to when I say that everyone is racist. Whatever you say or do, it will be consistent with one or another definition of racism. 'Sunavoidable.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I will try to complete my list of definitions of racism, but it is probably an endless process.

      Delete
  8. Razib/GNXP blogs these days for the Unz Review:

    http://www.unz.com/gnxp/

    ReplyDelete
  9. Dear Steve, I should have mentioned that, but assumed my readers already knew it. You are part of a very significant gathering of talent. Hope it has further increased your visibility and impact. Any interest in LCI15 ?

    ReplyDelete