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The New Lysenkoists: Decolonising Science

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  1. #11

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    Quote Originally Posted by Skyhook:
    LOL
    Hilarious innit.







  2. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by HK_Katherine:
    As explained in the article (from memory - read it when it was first posted) the shape of a migration always looks like that. A slow rise, followed by a sharp rise, then decline. They were saying that "the typical migration shape" started well before the changes.

    Its always possible to postulate that this migration is different from previous ones, but to do so you have to find evidence of that. Not just state it.

    I agree with the OP on the subject of this thread - the current undermining of universities globally is scary. Universities are a place to expand horizons, not limit them. If the student wanted to find out how his "magic" worked he should have investigated it. How many people were hit by lightening as a proportion of those supposedly cursed? How many people are hit by lightening as a proportion of the population similar to those cursed (i.e. probably a rural one). Is the different significant statistically? Is the population size sampled big enough to make statistical determinations. If all of that indicates the magic works, then move onto an investigation of why.... and so on. Rather than just throwing out science.
    There's nothing scary there. The scary part is that the Right created a caricature of what safe spaces are without basically understanding it. Similar to Tea addict misinterpreting the research that I posted above. Not only that, this caricature has made it into the top of our political chain, such as Theresa May hitting out against safe spaces. Seriously, considering the whole Brexit debacle, you think the PM would be more concerned about Lysenkoism in her own party, than attacking 18-year olds on campus. It's this form of Lysenkoism that's destroying the country where social indicators/measures are being ignored and blame for failure is placed on false fabrications.

    Yet the biggest irony of all is the OP posting about the dangers of safe spaces on campus, yet he demands a giant safe space for Brexiters, demanding a space that includes "all" of England where the ideas of Brexiters should not being criticised as racist, uninformed, or misguided.
    HowardCoombs likes this.

  3. #13
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    What else do you want me to do? Look at the 4 minute video clip without knowing anything about the background of the discussion or the people in it, and then make up ridiculous statements about it. How is that not anti-science or a red herring in itself? The whole YouTube clip is fallacious in that it uses strawmen arguments, cherry-picks information, and even makes up new terms that have no reference to academia. My references of refugees was purely to make the point that the OP quickly rejects research coming from reputable research institute, but then portrays himself as a defender of science by posting a questionable YouTube clip. If you think the research about the refugees has questionable political conclusions, I suggest you talk to Thomas Spijkerboer, Professor of Migration Law, and I'm sure he'd be glad to help you out. If not, you're just as anti-science as the other guys.
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  4. #14

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    Quote Originally Posted by HK_Katherine:
    As explained in the article (from memory - read it when it was first posted) the shape of a migration always looks like that. A slow rise, followed by a sharp rise, then decline. They were saying that "the typical migration shape" started well before the changes.

    Its always possible to postulate that this migration is different from previous ones, but to do so you have to find evidence of that. Not just state it.
    Well I did say that it started before the changes, but they described it as a "steady rise" from summer 2014 to sep 2015 and I didn't think that the word "steady" was suitable to describe it since it rose a lot suddenly and the amount of refugees almost tippled. If you look at the whole graph, there are some rises and falls and it did look like a steady rise until May 2015, there never was such a high rise before. So not trying to say that the sudden sharp rise is due to changes, just that the sudden rise didn't look steady to me compared to the rest of the graph.

  5. #15

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tea addict:
    Well I did say that it started before the changes, but they described it as a "steady rise" from summer 2014 to sep 2015 and I didn't think that the word "steady" was suitable to describe it since it rose a lot suddenly and the amount of refugees almost tippled. If you look at the whole graph, there are some rises and falls and it did look like a steady rise until May 2015, there never was such a high rise before. So not trying to say that the sudden sharp rise is due to changes, just that the sudden rise didn't look steady to me compared to the rest of the graph.
    Migrations have a shape. The whole migration - over time - has a shape. It starts slow and then it snowballs resulting in a steep rise and then a fall. That's the shape of a migration. The article was looking at the whole shape as one thing. You are looking at each time period as being different. That's why you are not getting the point.

  6. #16

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    Haven't got time at the moment to read through all of this... BUT there is definitely a point about humanities research being far too Western-centered, and when it comes to bridging this divid between the "Us as the center, and them as the outsiders we're researching" then there is a wealth of information and understanding with regards to culture, language, and anthropology. I think, actually, in linguistics there are some fundamental misunderstandings of human language because languages across the world have been approached from a Western perspective (e.g. the notion of language/words being symbolic, when in fact in several languages around the world the use of indices important to a particular point in time/space are actually important). Same goes for music. Music research is called musicology. "Musicology" and all the well-paid academics around the world working as a "musicologist" are in fact only experts in Western (typically classical) music. Since when does the term "music" denote Western-only when its well known that all cultures across the world (past and present) have music? In fact, if you study a non-Western kind of music, you're deemed an ethnomusicologist. So there you have it: US-centered and OTHER-outer.

    (But it seems the student comments in the initial post were pretty dumb sounding and not grounded in much reasoning...)

    civil_servant likes this.

  7. #17

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    Original Post Deleted

  8. #18

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    Time for universities to start having a look at all the useless humanities degrees they are offering and weigh out whether it is worth keeping these nonsense degrees and having to put up with these morons, or whether they are better off culling them off and focusing their resources on more productive areas.

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  9. #19

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    Quote Originally Posted by methosb:
    Time for universities to start having a look at all the useless humanities degrees they are offering and weigh out whether it is worth keeping these nonsense degrees and having to put up with these morons, or whether they are better off culling them off and focusing their resources on more productive areas.
    I heard that universities make good money with those degrees.

  10. #20

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tea addict:
    I heard that universities make good money with those degrees.
    They probably do but stuff like this really does damage the reputation of these schools. I wouldn't want to send my kids to a school that entertains the SJW / safe spaces / apology demanding crowd. It reflects the poor quality of the intellectual discourse within those schools and the amount of pointless distraction away from actual education.
    HK_Katherine likes this.