The Lack of Attention to Reverse Asymmetries

In 2019, after writing 214 articles, Michael Shermer was booted out of Scientific American because the "science" magazine increasingly became scientific. One of the problems he noticed is that the editors were quick to criticize group disparities only when they ran in the woke direction.  An excerpt from "Scientific American Goes Woke: A case study in how identity politics poisons science":

[R]everse asymmetries never warrant explanations of reverse biases. To wit, this same study reported that “women earned 57%, 60% and 52% of all Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral degrees respectively in the U.S. in 2013-14,” but proposed no reverse biases against men to account for such imbalances. Neither did a 2019 Council of Graduate Schools study that found for the 11th year in a row women earned a majority of doctoral degrees awarded at US universities (41,943 vs. 37,365, or 52.9% vs. 47.1%). Our attention is drawn to the lower percentages of female doctorates in engineering (25.1%), mathematics and computer sciences (26.8%), physical and earth sciences (35.1%), and business (46.7%), followed by discussions of systemic bias, but no such structural issues are on offer for the lower percentages of male doctorates in public administration (26.4%), health and medical sciences (29%), education (31.6%), social and behavioral sciences (39%), arts and humanities (48.1%), and biological sciences (48.6%). When the data is presented in a bar graph rank ordered from highest to lowest percentages for females earning doctorates (below), the claim that the fields in which women earn lower percentages than men can only be explained by misogyny and bias is gainsaid by the top bars where the valance is reversed, unless we are to believe that only in those bottom fields are faculty and administrators still bigoted against women whereas those in the top fields are enlightened.

About four years ago, Jordan Peterson illustrated another asymmetry, one for which many people only see one side of the equation. That's the confirmation bias at work, once again.

The question addressed in this video is whether western culture is a "patriarchy." Here's the video (I cannot figure out the name of the woman not the right). I made the following transcript:

Interviewer: I mean, that's the that's my idea of the patriarchy, which is a system of male dominance of society.

Jordan Peterson: But that's not my sense of the patriarchy.

Interviewer: So what's yours?

Jordan Peterson: Well, in what sense is our society male dominated?

Interviewer: The fact that the vast majority of wealth is owned by men, the vast majority of capital and is owned by men, women do more unpaid labor

Jordan Peterson: A tiny proportion of men. And a huge proportion of people who are seriously disaffected are men. Most people in prison are men. Who most people who are on the street are men. Most victims of violent crime are men. Most people commit suicide and men. Most people who die in wars are men. People who do worse in school are men. It's like, where's the dominance here precisely, what you're doing is you're taking a tiny substrata of hyper-successful men and using that to represent the entire structure of the Western society. There's nothing about that that's vaguely appropriate.

Continue ReadingThe Lack of Attention to Reverse Asymmetries

Who Has Been Running Ukraine Since 2013? The United States.

Glenn Greenwald details how we know that the United States has been running Ukraine since 2013. The story is a long one, but Greenwald lays out the evidence and it's not difficult to connect the dots. You can watch the entire show on Rumble. You can read the transcript here. And here's a long excerpt from that transcript:

But the entire idea that we weren't involved in Ukraine intimately and directly and aggressively since the change of government in 2013 is long been so preposterous that it's amazing that anyone could say it with a straight face, in part because let's remember the scandal of Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and Burisma energy – not the part of the scandal that people like to talk about, the part of the scandal that even Biden administration supporters admit is genuine. Namely, you have this energy company, Burisma, that was facing serious legal problems with a prosecutor in Ukraine and another legal jeopardy as well and they did what American companies often do when they're facing legal jeopardy, which is they thought to themselves, let's try and get on our side, by paying them, someone with access to power so that we're protected. That's a common thing for a company to do. But no, the Burisma did not go looking for the son or a relative of a Ukrainian official, which is what you would do if Ukrainian officials were running Ukraine. They instead went and looked for the son of the United States Vice-President Joe Biden. Why would Burisma, an energy company facing legal problems in Ukraine, try and curry favor with Joe Biden to protect itself from prosecutorial pressure if Ukraine is a sovereign and democratic country in which the United States plays no role? Obviously, they did that because the real country running Ukraine for the last eight years, right on that side of the Soviet mob, the Russian border, has been the United States. And anyone who knows anything about that series of events knows that that's true. And that alone proves it, that Burisma's actions reflected their recognition of who the real power in Ukraine was. It wasn't Ukraine. It wasn't the elected leaders of Ukraine. It was the United States. [More . . . ]

Continue ReadingWho Has Been Running Ukraine Since 2013? The United States.

NPR Ignores Gender Dimorphism When Commenting on Transgender Sports

NPR Tweet today: "The international governing body for track and field will ban trans women athletes from elite women's competitions, citing a priority for fairness over inclusion despite limited scientific evidence of physical advantage."

I'm "sure" that NPR reporters fact-checked the above claim with the NPR Science Department before publishing its Tweet  . . .

More seriously, what about the images below, which clearly demonstrate dimorphism between the two sexes?

And I also notice that NPR did not interview any of the many female athletes who have been deprived of awards, scholarships and competition slots because male-bodied competitors were allowed to compete. Nor do they mention, for instance, that the U.S. Woman's National soccer team sometimes gets ready for competition by playing games against high school boys. Nor do they mention that in 1998, the 203rd ranked male tennis player, Karsten Braasch, beat Serena Williams and Venus Williams in back-to-back matches.

My intent in writing this is to belittle NPR. I am a big fan of female sports and I want to preserve them as female sports featuring the finest female athletes.

Continue ReadingNPR Ignores Gender Dimorphism When Commenting on Transgender Sports

Earth-Shaking Congressional Testimony of Former Head of the CDC Mostly Ignored by Corporate Media

Where are the bold headlines in the corporate media when the former Director of the CDC, Dr. Robert Redfield, testifies that: A) Gain of Function Research has not ever created any life-saving vaccines or therapeutics, B) Gain of Function Research probably caused the COVID pandemic, and C) there are no tangible benefits to Gain of Function Research?

As Saager Enjeti notes, it is "madness" that this testimony has failed to generate big headlines or to result in dramatic new restrictions on this type of research. In the meantime, Anthony Fauci did his damndest to hide that this research was going on and that he was responsible for funding it. Nothing about this testimony from CNN, MSNBC, NPR or WaPo. NYT does mention Redfield's testimony, but buries the lede.

Continue ReadingEarth-Shaking Congressional Testimony of Former Head of the CDC Mostly Ignored by Corporate Media

Why I Focus on Problems with Left-Leaning “News” Media

On FB, a reader criticized me for not criticizing the problems with FOX News. My response:

The faux journalism of FOX already gets lots of attention from many quarters. How many times do I need to agree with you that FOX is the PR wing for the Republican Party? That's exactly what FOX is. Anyone attempting to get real news solely from FOX is getting a ton of propaganda, along with some real news. What I do on FB is not my day job. I focus on stories that are NOT being well-covered, including the fact that people who are looking toward NYT/WP/CNN/MSNBC/NPR as their long-trusted sources of news are often getting propaganda for the DNC, assisted by the U.S. law enforcement/spy state (FBI/CIA/DHS etc).

I've never claimed to quantify how bad FOX is compared to the left-leaning news, but for several years I have covered many dozens of incidents from which I can confidently conclude that the "news" on both the left and the right is deplorable, often demonstrably false, presenting one false consensus after another and intentionally not-curious about major evidence in order to try to get certain people elected and not others. The "news" on both the right and the left often consists of brazen attempts to manipulative the public, as though we are infants who are not capable of thinking for ourselves. What I am discussing is not trivial. It is ruining our country, betraying the vision of the Founders of the United States.

Jim, when Joe Biden promises to make Nord Stream inoperable, a sophisticated operation blows it up--an act of war--then, the WH celebrates, then claims "Russia" blew up its own infrastructure, Seymour Hersh offers details on how Biden ordered the operation and a month later the left-leaning news media reports that Ukraine did it--while burying the lede about Joe Biden's solemn promise, are you confident that your favorite team of "journalists" are simply reporting the news? BTW, have you EVER criticized these left-leaning corporate media outfits? In your opinion, have they done a good job telling you what is going on regarding politically-charged stories? If you claim they have, how do you know this? Do you read independent journalists? Do you read right-leaning journalists? I do this constantly, even though I often disagree with all of the above.

Continue ReadingWhy I Focus on Problems with Left-Leaning “News” Media