The Lancet Goes Full Woke in its Claim that Asian-Americans are Unfairly Succeeding in Medical Schools and in the Health Care Field

The medical journal Lancet is an unrepentant convert to Wokeness, as recently pointed out by James Lindsay on Twitter:

In this January 2020 article, “Race as a Dynamic State: Triangulation in Health Care,” The Lancet has turned its Woke-powered spotlight toward “Asian-Americans.” According to this article, in a prestigious medical journal, all “Asians” are the same. Therefore, we can put all of them under one group heading and treat all of them inter-changeably, regardless of their country of origin, and regardless of how hard each “Asian-American” individual has studied in order to be successful in the health care field. And that is merely the first of the many shocking assertions of this article.

This Lancet article scolds “Asian-Americans” for their “privilege,” as if they unfairly achieved excellence merely by being born “Asian.” This article swipes at Asian American are racist in the most basic sense; it judges the characteristics, history and achievement of individuals by irrelevant immutable characteristics. Unfortunately, this sordid tactic passes as “social justice” in ever-increasing numbers of institutions, most notably in our sense-making institutions such as universities and in the conference rooms at publishers such as Lancet. I prefer to call this increasingly popular tactic “neo-racism” because it is the modern heavily-jargoned repackaging of good old-fashioned racism. It's the same despicable idea over which we fought a bloody Civil War. In the year 2021, then, Lancet is proudly promoting a completely discredited destructive approach for interacting with one another.

This Lancet article is preaching, not teaching. No open-minded person could have written this Lancet article. Tt presents a long string of obviously wrong-headed and highly controversial concepts as gospel, evidence-free. These issues raised by this article would have been discussed by any good-faith consideration of this topic of “racial” disparities in the healthcare field. Instead, the authors of this Lancet article intentionally avoided these many issues.

Back at Twitter, commenters had no problem spotting these many glaring problems instantly. I have selected and pasted in some of these comments below. The following comments below allow us to use the above Lancet article as a Wokeness case study:

According to this, Asians attending medical schools, are the "wrong" kind of diversity...

This is so incredibly racist. How does anyone stand for this degradation?

What happened? I thought we were NOT supposed to pick people . . . based on their color.. now that’s the top consideration!

This is their way of minimizing the data that shows Asian achievement being better than white people because they know that collapses their unifying white supremacy equation.

Essentially, they are telling them to recognize they are a “privileged” minority class because it makes other minorities (i.e. blacks) look bad... They mean because it destroys their narrative!!!

The tone and lack of self-awareness on part of writers is what shocks me, even more than the twisted content. They are simply telling people what to do. Extraordinarily patronising and controlling.

Didn't they put Asians in the "white" category recently? All to perpetuate their systematic racism myth.

“And what shall we do when we run out of enemies to destroy?” “Simple, we shall make more”

Yeah, but how did they become privileged? Was it magic?

Attacking the competent has always been a hallmark of Marxism. They won't stop until the starving are attacking the almost-starving.

I like the sentence just after your highlight. "They can consider what it feels like to be the non-model minority" So they are a minority, but a non-model one! "They can refuse to be used in statistics that flaunt “diversity” gains" Oh my... The best science for better lives. WTF!

“Model minority” Asians are a “model minority” and therefore outside of CRT models and therefore part of the problem bc they don’t fit the narrative of overcoming obstacles of oppression. Jews also defy CRT- as if their oppression doesn’t count.

Just wait until they start turning against Nigerian immigrants who are among the hardest working out there...

So “model minority” is a myth but “non-model minority” is not?

Mind you, this is entirely within the western world and not actually in Asia, for the most part. It's so unbelievably stupid.

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The Entirely Predictable Result of “Abolishing” the Police in Minneapolis

The statistics have been clear and unwavering for many years: Fewer police on the streets means more violent crime, young Black men will disproportionately be the homicide victims of this street violence and very few of these deaths will have anything to do with the police.

Minneapolis is finally figuring out the obvious, as described through a series of headlines assembled by Melissa Chen, with a cadenza by Peter Boghossian.

Continue ReadingThe Entirely Predictable Result of “Abolishing” the Police in Minneapolis

Slug Love and Snail Love – Happy Valentine’s Day

Do you like slime? On this romantic day, perhaps you might enjoy learning about the extraordinary sex lives of slugs, courtesy of Sir David Attenborough. Feel free to take notes if you'd like to add this to your own repertoire.

And also consider the sex routines of snails, as recounted at Brain Pickings (video available at the website):

This is how it happens: When a snail finds a partner, the two face each other, gently touching their tentacles together to feel if they like each other. And if they do, they glide their bodies alongside one another in a slow double embrace, until their baby-making parts fit together like puzzle pieces. Then, they gently pierce each other with tiny spears called “love darts,” which contain their genes.

Continue ReadingSlug Love and Snail Love – Happy Valentine’s Day

What is Passing for Science These Days at Scientific American . . .

If you are looking for science at Scientific American, you'll need to look a litter harder. This is from a Scientific American article titled "It's Time to Take the Penis off Its Pedestal: A culture of phallus worship has slanted the science in crucial and sometimes unexpected ways."

Yet thanks to the assumption that anything large and powerful must be male, a phallus with more imposing qualities—like the hyena’s—gets dubbed a “pseudopenis,” "masculinized" or “malelike.” Those who spend a lot of time with human genitalia see it differently. “What I’ve come to realize is that everything a man has a woman has; everything a woman has, a man has, anatomically,” says Dr. Marci Bowers, a gender affirmation surgeon in Palo Alto who has done more than 2,000 male-to-female surgeries. “The penis is just a large clitoris. In fact, I don’t know why they don’t just call it a large clitoris.” Here’s why: because human biases shape scientific knowledge, and much of what we know about our nether regions has been shaped by lazy, antiquated stereotypes about what men and women are.

On Twitter, biologist Colin Wright is barely holding it together after spotting this article. That's probably because he specializes in writing "old-fashioned" biology article suggesting antiquated things like his claim that there are two biological sexes and that men are different than women. And see here.

In the meantime, back at Twitter, "M" responded to Wright's Tweet with this:

And then "Prominent Public Figure responded with this:

And there were dozens of other responses whose witticisms rivaled in intensity their frustrations of seeing Scientific American's loss of respectability.

Finally, I wanted to know more about Rachel E. Gross, who wrote this "science" article. To my dismay, I noticed that she also wrote for Smithsonian Magazine, though (thankfully) not recently. She has even written about the challenge of getting evangelicals to understand evolution, but that was before her apparent conversation to the religion of Wokeness.

Continue ReadingWhat is Passing for Science These Days at Scientific American . . .

ADHD and its Functional Twin: VAST (Variable Attention Stimulus Trait)

For many years, I thought of “ADHD” and “ADD” as dysfunctional conditions with which other people struggled, not me. Discussion of these conditions brought back vivid grade school memories of several bright and energetic boys struggling to sit still in their desks for seven hours, while nuns scolded and belittled them. I was fully aware of the social stigma that came with a diagnosis of ADHD. At the same time, I have long been aware that many successful people have been diagnosed with ADHD. I’ve long been convinced that, to some degree, their ADHD traits fueled their success.

Before my divorce in 2014, my wife Anne (in our 18th year of marriage) accused me needing treatment “because of ADHD,” explaining that I was “ruining the marriage.” She had been reading a website called ADHD and Marriage. She insisted that I should see a doctor to get medication for my “problem.” She told me that I was a bad listener. She told me these things repeatedly. It didn’t help that these concerns were hurled at me, not gently broached, but I now understand her frustration better.

An ADHD diagnosis also seemed ridiculous because I had never before been told I exhibited ADHD symptoms. No other human being ever raised a concern about ADHD until Anne proclaimed her diagnosis in black and white. Nor did any instances of ADHD seem apparent in any of my close relatives.

I resented these sole-cause accusations because I saw our marriage to be much more complex than that and far more nuanced. Also, I liked who I was and saw myself as high functioning. I have always been upbeat. I enjoy many activities and I’m fairly good various things, including my legal career, writing and composing music. Also (as I reminded my wife), I was capable of sitting in front of a computer screen for twelve hours per day writing complex appellate briefs. I have received awards for my brief writing. Fellow lawyers (and opposing lawyers) have often expressed that they like working with me. On a regular basis, more than a few of my friends tell me that I am an extremely attentive listener.

After the divorce in 2014, I became increasingly intrigued about ADHD. I started reading various articles and books about ADHD. From this informal research, I became convinced that many of the qualities associated with the ADHD mind are things that describe me well. In December, 2020, Anne died suddenly causing me to do a lot of thinking about a lot of things, including our marriage, including the role ADHD might have played in our struggles over the last few years of our marriage.

More icing on the cake: a counselor has gotten to know me well over the past few months. He recently blurted out: “You are ADHD from top to bottom.” Hmmm. That I am indisputably high-functioning (unlike many people who receive the diagnosis) doesn’t rule out ADHD, but it explains why I pushed back when a diagnosis was hurled at me. I’ve thought further about my ability to writing for many hours at a stretch? After the divorce learned that hyper-focusing is something that some people with ADHD diagnoses do well.

The above paragraphs are a bit awkward for me to re-read because my purpose is here is not to tout my accomplishments. It is not my purpose to drag my marital struggles into the public, post-mortem. My purpose is to show the reasons for my initial confusion and to set the stage to explain something fascinating I’ve recently learned about my way of processing the world. Perhaps my journey might help others. [More . . . ]

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