Thought crime science: Case studies in becoming an enemy of liberal orthodoxy

RT

 

The Western world considers itself a bastion of free thought – a marketplace of ideas. But some scholars who questioned prevailing liberal groupthink have quickly discovered that academic inquiry has tightly-controlled limits. 

 

There are more Democrat than Republican supporters among scientists of almost every academic field in the US, voter registration studies have shown. In fields such as social studies and sociology, conservatives can be outnumbered a dozen or more to one. With such an overwhelming advantage in numbers, one might think that dissenting viewpoints in these fields would not pose a meaningful threat to prevailing orthodoxies. Unfortunately, a number of high-profile cases reveal that scholars and thinkers – some who do not even identify as conservative – risk their careers when they challenge the liberal majority.

Lisa Littman and 'rapid onset gender dysphoria'

Lisa Littman, assistant professor at the Brown University School of Public Health, found herself the target of liberal rage after her research challenged a sacred tenant of LGBTQ dogma. She published a paper which supported the thesis that some young adults who identify as transgender but previously showed no symptoms of gender dysphoria may have been influenced to "transition" by social media, friends and their environment.

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Monsanto/Bayer Moving to Genome Edit Fruits and More

F. William Engdahl 
 
Not surprising, Monsanto, today hidden behind the Bayer logo, as the world leader in patented GMO seeds and the probable carcinogenic Roundup herbicide with glyphosate, is attempting to quietly patent genetically modified or GMO varieties of fruits using controversial gene-editing. The “beauty” of this for Monsanto/Bayer is that in the USA, according to a recent ruling by the US Department of Agriculture, gene-edited agriculture needs no special independent testing. The developments are not good for human health or safety, nor will it do anything to give the world better nutrition.

The agrichemical and GMO giant Monsanto, which today tries to keep a lower profile inside the German agrichemical and GMO giant Bayer, is moving into the highly controversial domain of gene-editing of new crop varieties. In 2018 as the company was being deluged with lawsuits over its use of the probable carcinogen, Roundup, Monsanto invested $125 million in a gene-editing startup called Pairwise. The link is anything but casual.

Former Monsanto Vice President for Global Biotechnology, Tom Adams, has taken the post of CEO of Pairwise. In short, this is a Monsanto gene-editing project. In a press release, Pairwise says it is using the controversial CRISPR gene-editing technology to create genetically edited produce. Among their goals apparently is a super-sweet variety of strawberry or apples, just what our sugar-saturated population doesn’t need.

CRISPR gene-editing, a stealth attempt by the global agribusiness industry to promote artificial mutations of crops and, as the world was shocked recently to hear, even humans, as in China, is being advanced, much like GMO crops falsely were, as solution to world hunger. Pairwise founder, Keith Joung, told media that their CRISPR gene-edited fruits, “will speed innovation that is badly needed to feed a growing population amid challenging conditions created by a changing climate.” How sweeter genetically-edited strawberries will solve world hunger he leaves to the imagination. Pairwise also says that gene-edited fruits would somehow also cut down on food waste. One has to be also skeptical there as well, even if it makes nice promotion copy. In addition to super-sweet strawberries, Monsanto plans to use its work with Pairwise to develop new varieties of gene-edited corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton and canola crops. And because the USDA unfortunately has given the green light, the new genetically modified foods will undergo no independent testing for health and safety.

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White privilege versus racial paranoia

Steve Salerno
Quillette

If you are white and enjoy any level of public platform - politician, professor, policy wonk - and you use said platform to address social issues, you are certain to be accused of seeing life through the distortive prism of white privilege. Black leaders and social justice firebrands will make the allegation in the most austere terms - witness that spicy moment during a recent debate on political correctness when Michael Eric Dyson bluntly labeled his conservative adversary, Jordan Peterson, a "mean, mad white man." Even those on the Left, such as Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, have not enjoyed immunity from this charge. Privilege is framed as a condition that, once acquired, can never be cured. However, it defies credulity to propose that Dyson and other leading social justice voices are alone in seeing life for what it really is, stripped of all parochial subtexts. Common sense suggests the existence of a complementary malady afflicting the accusers: racial paranoia, one might call it.

If some are inclined to miss the unfairness around them, is it not equally possible that others see unfairness where none exists? Nowhere in the public arena do paranoia and privilege collide more explosively than on the topic of unequal treatment under the law. In making their case, black advocates uniformly cite the videotaped incidents that by now have become an eponymous part of the national conversation on race: Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Philando Castile. All gave oxygen to Black Lives Matter, and later to the NFL's take-a-knee protests. Surely videos can be dramatic exhibits in mounting a case for extrajudicial violence. What a video cannot do, of course, is show us whether excessive force is excessively applied or racially motivated. For that we must turn to facts and figures.

A study out last week suggests that the view of law enforcement as a hotbed of racism is indeed highly inflected by paranoia. "Is There Evidence of Racial Disparity in Police Use of Deadly Force?" examines available data from police shootings in 2015 and 2016. The authors observe that determinations of bias normally are made simply by "comparing the odds of being fatally shot for Blacks and Whites, with odds benchmarked against each group's population proportion." That necessarily yields an incomplete picture, the authors assert, because of the substantial per capita difference in crime among blacks: "When adjusting for crime, we find no systematic evidence of anti-Black disparities in fatal shootings, fatal shootings of unarmed citizens, or fatal shootings involving misidentification of harmless objects."

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Colorado Students Earn Credit for ‘Unmasking Whiteness’

campusreform.org

The University of Colorado-Colorado Springs is awarding three academic credits exclusively to white students who attend a conference dedicated to “white privilege.” 

The “Unmasking Whiteness” conference will convene students and educators from across the United States this July in North Hollywood, California to explore “how being white shapes our lives” and “discover our role as white people in struggle for social justice.” 

Only open to self-identifying white people, the four-day conference is co-organized by Shelly Tochluk, a professor at Mount Saint Mary’s University (MSMU) in Los Angeles, and is offered by the nonprofit AWARE-LA (Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere). 

The recently-released conference brochure explains that attendees will learn about topics including “white privilege,” “guilt and shame,” “what it means to be white in today’s society,” and the “economic benefits” of whiteness. 

“U.S. society does not usually ask white people to explore how race affects our lives,” the brochure states. “When we honestly grapple with this question we become able to recognize the various ways we receive social and economic benefits based on being seen as part of the white group.” 

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