- Dec 2022
-
powerofus.substack.com powerofus.substack.com
-
This new paper finds that people are less interested in reducing economic inequality through redistribution when they think about wealth disparities as hierarchies of individuals rather than of groups. This seems to be because, as the researchers put it, “people are more likely to believe that the wealth of individuals, rather than groups, at the top is well earned”.
-
- Jun 2022
-
www.scientificamerican.com www.scientificamerican.com
-
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-complicated-legacy-of-e-o-wilson/
I can see why there's so much backlash on this piece.
It could and should easily have been written without any reference at all to E. O. Wilson and been broadly interesting and true. However given the editorial headline "The Complicated Legacy of E. O. Wilson", the recency of his death, and the photo at the top, it becomes clickbait for something wholly other.
There is only passing reference to Wilson and any of his work and no citations whatsoever about who he was or why his work was supposedly controversial. Instead the author leans in on the the idea of the biology being the problem instead of the application of biology to early anthropology which dramatically mis-read the biology and misapplied it for the past century and a half to bolster racist ideas and policies.
The author indicates that we should be better with "citational practices when using or reporting on problematic work", but wholly forgets to apply it to her own writing in this very piece.
I'm aware that the magazine editors are most likely the ones that chose the headline and the accompanying photo, but there's a failure here in both editorial and writing for this piece to have appeared in Scientific American in a way as to make it more of a hit piece on Wilson just days after his death. Worse, the backlash of the broadly unsupported criticism of Wilson totally washed out the attention that should have been placed on the meat of the actual argument in the final paragraphs.
Editorial failed massively on all fronts here.
This article seems to be a clear example of the following:
Any time one uses the word "problematic" to describe cultural issues, it can't stand alone without some significant context building and clear arguments about exactly what was problematic and precisely why. Otherwise the exercise is a lot of handwaving and puffery that does neither side of an argument or its intended audiences any good.
-
- Mar 2022
-
-
The study’s authors suggest that this discrepancy may emerge fromdifferences in boys’ and girls’ experience: boys are more likely to play withspatially oriented toys and video games, they note, and may become morecomfortable making spatial gestures as a result. Another study, this oneconducted with four-year-olds, reported that children who were encouraged togesture got better at rotating mental objects, another task that draws heavily onspatial-thinking skills. Girls in this experiment were especially likely to benefitfrom being prompted to gesture.
The gender-based disparity of spatial thinking skills between boys and girls may result from the fact that at an early age boys are more likely to play with spatially oriented toys and video games. Encouraging girls to do more spatial gesturing at an earlier age can dramatically close this spatial thinking gap.
-
- Jun 2021
-
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
-
Scientists urge caution after Tony Blair backs UK ‘Covid pass’. (2021, June 7). The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jun/07/scientists-urge-caution-after-tony-blair-backs-uk-covid-pass
-
- May 2021
-
psyarxiv.com psyarxiv.com
-
Jiang, Y., Zilioli, S., Balzarini, R. N., Zoppolat, G., & Slatcher, R. B. (2021). Education, Financial Stress, and Trajectory of Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/tvry4
-
-
www.nature.com www.nature.com
-
Kreier, F. (2021). ‘Unprecedented achievement’: Who received the first billion COVID vaccinations? Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01136-2
-
- Dec 2020
-
zeynep.substack.com zeynep.substack.com
-
People who think that racial differences are all biological might say that all these non-White groups have suffered so much excess death because of that bottom circle, because of greater biological susceptibility. Recent studies have evaluated this hypothesis and found that it’s not true. Instead the answer is simpler: Black and Latino/a people in particular are dying of COVID-19 at such staggering rates because they are more likely to be exposed to the virus in infectious settings, particularly workplaces.
-
- Oct 2020
-
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
-
The title of her essay “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies” was a mouthful. McIntosh listed 46 ways white privilege is enacted.
-
-
collect.readwriterespond.com collect.readwriterespond.com
-
This a harrowing story made even sadder by the grim reality of the statistics.
I'm almost losing count of how many racial health disparity stories I've been seeing lately. It's so common I've got tags for it on my site now.
-
-
www.npr.org www.npr.org
-
Miya Yoshitani, executive director of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, which focuses on environmental justice issues affecting working-class Asian and Pacific Islander immigrant and refugee communities.
-
- Aug 2020
-
covid-19.iza.org covid-19.iza.org
-
COVID-19 and the Labor Market. (n.d.). IZA – Institute of Labor Economics. Retrieved 25 July 2020, from https://covid-19.iza.org/publications/dp13521/
-
- Oct 2016
-
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
-
because of the judiciary’s concern that such data could be used to single out judges, who were freed from restrictive sentencing guidelines in 2005
so why is everyone talking about getting rid of mandatory minimums? This makes it sounds like they've already been gotten rid of
-