Harper's Open Letter on Open Debate

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.
Members don't see this ad.
Outside of the thread content about cancel culture, this is also one reason why the left loses big elections. In essence, the right doesn't need to tear anyone down or attack left leaning figures, the left will engage in some much infighting and tribalism to cause so much more damage than an attack from the right ever could.
 
WisNeuro said:
Outside of the thread content about cancel culture, this is also one reason why the left loses big elections. In essence, the right doesn't need to tear anyone down or attack left leaning figures, the left will engage in some much infighting and tribalism to cause so much more damage than an attack from the right ever could.
Click to expand...

I agree they're related. I guess that's what happens when individuals in a group (Rs) are more interested in their group winning than they are in integrity or justice ('real' or perceived).
 
beginner2011 said:
I agree they're related. I guess that's what happens when individuals in a group (Rs) are more interested in their group winning than they are in integrity or justice ('real' or perceived).
Click to expand...

For the most part, I don't think it's about the "winning" as a concept per se, but more on seeing the bigger picture to get their goals achieved. When it matters, say in the case of getting at least 1, possibly multiple supreme court justices confirmed, they would elect a plate of toast if that were what gets them there. Meanwhile, the left throws protest votes to Jill Stein or stays home so they can feel self-righteous and smug. It's more about the bigger picture, and knowing that you can swallow some things if it gets you most of what you want. The cancel culture nonsense gets at this on the left where we engage in these ideological purity tests, until we've divided each other into so many small groups, that we have no real power and snipe at each other, rather than actually getting things done. If you want to get things done, look for the things that you agree about, what are our overarching goals, and what are the best ways to reach them. Otherwise, enjoy another 4 years of DJT and see how far you get with certain SJ initiatives when we have a 6-3 or 7-2 SC that skews so far to the right its absurd for the next several decades.
 
Paired Associate said:
At what point do you take these very loud features and conclude this reflects an ideological break from what you believe is the best direction for government and culture? Is it a nuisance and a strategical error or is it indicative of a poor ideological evolution of the party?
Click to expand...

Definitely another thread, this is like another thread with page long responses. Feel free to PM, and I'm more than happy to group PM if people want to discuss the purely political stuff in more depth, I just think it will quickly derail this thread and push it out of the psych forums.
 
I’m not sure why all social justice efforts are seen as so extreme in this forum. There’s a ton of criticism about CRT and nebulous ideas that aren’t clearly defined in the research but do have merit (i.e. microaggressions, etc.). As psychologists, we all should know how difficult it is to study something that has unseen effects on the human psyche and health and is often unconscious (Implicit bias, Microaggressions, privilege, etc.). For decades in psychology folks have tried to carefully study psychological phenomena (just to prove to whom?) that racism, sexism, etc. are real and cause real damage over time. And yes, it’s super easy to dismiss research that has a nebulous definition or methodological problems and confounding factors over the long term, but this is what we have right now. Science is pretty behind, in my opinion, in terms of being able to adequately capture the effects of racism, sexism, etc. because our field suffers from the same homogenous background that every field has in which there was no pressing need or even interest from most white folks to look at any of this. But we do have a body of research out there that says we aren’t doing so well as human beings in this country in treating our Black folks and folks of color, LGBT folks, folks with disabilities, etc. But in this forum, it doesn’t get talked about nearly as extensively as cancel culture and free speech infringement. Why is this not just as much of a concern as the extremism happening?

Instead of just criticizing the extremists of the social justice movement and focusing on the decline of free speech (from the far-left as has been stated in here, but I have seen the exact same thing in the far-right except it’s outright censorship), why isn’t there more of a call (and more reflection) to better understand the racial dynamics happening or systemic racism or other “isms” instead of so much pushback? I’m just baffled by this sometimes in a field in which we should be aware that not everyone has the same playing field from the start. Just telling others to do better research and not be so extreme with their language “not based in science” while the rest of us get to sit back and not participate because....we don’t feel the need. It’s not pressing and it’s not going to personally affect the rest of us either way.

That doesn’t sit right with me. I don’t know if others feel the same, but if they do, they are often silent.
 
Last edited:
foreverbull said:
I’m not sure why all social justice efforts are seen as so extreme in this forum. There’s a ton of criticism about CRT and nebulous ideas that aren’t clearly defined in the research but do have merit (i.e. microaggressions, etc.). As psychologists, we all should know how difficult it is to study something that has unseen effects on the human psyche and health and is often unconscious (Implicit bias, Microaggressions, privilege, etc.). For decades in psychology folks have tried to carefully study psychological phenomena (just to prove to whom?) that racism, sexism, etc. are real and cause real damage over time. And yes, it’s super easy to dismiss research that has a nebulous definition or methodological problems and confounding factors over the long term, but this is what we have right now. Science is pretty behind, in my opinion, in terms of being able to adequately capture the effects of racism, sexism, etc. because our field suffers from the same homogenous background that every field has in which there was no pressing need or even interest from most white folks to look at any of this. But we do have a body of research out there that says we aren’t doing so well as human beings in this country in treating our Black folks and folks of color, LGBT folks, folks with disabilities, etc. But in this forum, it doesn’t get talked about nearly as extensively as cancel culture and free speech infringement. Why is this not just as much of a concern as the extremism happening?

Instead of just criticizing the extremists of the social justice movement and focusing on the decline of free speech (from the far-left as has been stated in here, but I have seen the exact same thing in the far-right except it’s outright censorship), why isn’t there more of a call (and more reflection) to better understand the racial dynamics happening or systemic racism or other “isms” instead of so much pushback? I’m just baffled by this sometimes in a field in which we should be aware that not everyone has the same playing field from the start. Just telling others to do better research and not be so extreme with their language “not based in science” while the rest of us get to sit back and not participate because....we don’t feel the need. It’s not pressing and it’s not going to personally affect the rest of us either way.

That doesn’t sit right with me. I don’t know if others feel the same, but if they do, they are often silent.
Click to expand...

I can't overstate how much I agree with everything you've written in the above post.

I feel the same, and I haven't been particularly silent about it. The effectiveness of my efforts is more questionable 😉
 
foreverbull said:
Instead of just criticizing the extremists of the social justice movement and focusing on the decline of free speech (from the far-left as has been stated in here, but I have seen the exact same thing in the far-right except it’s outright censorship), why isn’t there more of a call (and more reflection) to better understand the racial dynamics happening or systemic racism or other “isms” instead of so much pushback? I’m just baffled by this sometimes in a field in which we should be aware that not everyone has the same playing field from the start. Just telling others to do better research and not be so extreme with their language “not based in science” while the rest of us get to sit back and not participate because....we don’t feel the need. It’s not pressing and it’s not going to personally affect the rest of us either way.

That doesn’t sit right with me. I don’t know if others feel the same, but if they do, they are often silent.
Click to expand...

The bolded is happening, with literally hundreds, if not thousands, of initiatives, studies, statements within the psychology world at the state and federal levels. The calls are happening, and a lot of work is being done on that level. In our state org, it's pretty much the only thing that is happening. It's currently about 75% of our CE offerings.

The reason for this thread is not even related to racial inequality per se, as cancel culture permeates many different sociological issues. It just happens to intersect with the current movements of our time and what the progressive left has deemed their current hit list.
 
As quick follow up to my last point, making an argument for something, does not mean that you are not sympathetic too, or supportive of something else. This is actually another issue within this ideological purity test mentality. That, unless you are all encompassing of a viewpoint, you are against it. I can argue for a specific issue that exists within a broader context, and that's ok. We cannot be 100% focused on any one issue. When we do that, we only further neglect other pressing matters. We can, in fact, hold many differing viewpoints and goals in mind at the same time.
 
www.bbc.com

Trump bans 'anti-American' diversity training

The president says any training sessions for government staff on "white privilege" are propaganda.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com

Hopefully this doesn’t skate too political, but I think its relevant to the conversation.

I haven’t seen criticisms of these types of trainings that aren’t rooted in missing the point of them, although I have no doubt they have been implemented poorly at times.

However, I think this is a dangerous precedent that is too vague. Even if there is a more specific definition of bad diversity trainings, the message to the public is pretty loud and clear if you ask me.
 
I think a part of this too is the recent/on-going racial justice issues that have been particularly in the spotlight lately. I’ve published a lot on the pandemic and how it and the context around it is differentially impacting different groups. In multiple reviews on different manuscripts, I was specifically asked to include content on racial justice and/or police violence (which I was happy to do—my work focuses a lot on intersectionality and marginalization anyway), and I now just include a section or subsection on that to begin with. I think that the topic is on the forefront of everyone’s minds so much (especially people from the most directly affected groups, very understandably) that when it’s not discussed, its absence can seem glaring. Same with the pandemic, actually—I just got an R&R back for a manuscript using data on bullying that was collected long before the pandemic and a reviewer asked me how the pandemic would affect it. ‍:shrug::shrug:
 
futureapppsy2 said:
I think a part of this too is the recent/on-going racial justice issues that have been particularly in the spotlight lately. I’ve published a lot on the pandemic and how it and the context around it is differentially impacting different groups. In multiple reviews on different manuscripts, I was specifically asked to include content on racial justice and/or police violence (which I was happy to do—my work focuses a lot on intersectionality and marginalization anyway), and I now just include a section or subsection on that to begin with. I think that the topic is on the forefront of everyone’s minds so much (especially people from the most directly affected groups, very understandably) that when it’s not discussed, its absence can seem glaring. Same with the pandemic, actually—I just got an R&R back for a manuscript using data on bullying that was collected long before the pandemic and a reviewer asked me how the pandemic would affect it. ‍:shrug::shrug:
Click to expand...

These situations seem to me to be inviting bad science, or shoehorning a discussion around a topical subject, just because. Just because we don't cover a topic, doesn't mean we are dismissing it, at least some of the time, particularly in science. If we are writing about a fairly narrow subject, we should not have to comment on how it pertains to several somewhat tangential contexts. It's not saying that they are not related, but rather that it was not the particular focus of the current study. And, that's perfectly ok. Science, and to some extent, debate, is supposed to be an incremental, iterative process. Expecting everyone to cover ever base, every time, is just plain exhausting. And, then, when someone doe snot do this, to cast them as a mortal enemy, just crosses the line into absurd and only further divides what are likely very like-minded individuals.
 
ExecutiveDysfunction said:
www.bbc.com

Trump bans 'anti-American' diversity training

The president says any training sessions for government staff on "white privilege" are propaganda.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com

Hopefully this doesn’t skate too political, but I think its relevant to the conversation.

I haven’t seen criticisms of these types of trainings that aren’t rooted in missing the point of them, although I have no doubt they have been implemented poorly at times.

However, I think this is a dangerous precedent that is too vague. Even if there is a more specific definition of bad diversity trainings, the message to the public is pretty loud and clear if you ask me.
Click to expand...

I am super curious about how this is going to play out at the VA.
 
cara susanna said:
I am super curious about how this is going to play out at the VA.
Click to expand...

Wow, good question. There's a ton of really good local and national anti-racism training that's been popping up over the last few months. It would be a real shame to see that stifled now.
 
sb247 said:
“Every institution in america is born from the blood of white supremacy and capitalism” is pretty ridiculous
Click to expand...

So that's not quite the quote:

“Every institution in America is born from the blood of white supremacist ideology and capitalism—and that’s the disease,” says Theopia Jackson, PhD, president of the Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi).
Click to expand...

The article is also reporting on the claim, not arguing for the claim.
 
beginner2011 said:
Wow, good question. There's a ton of really good local and national anti-racism training that's been popping up over the last few months. It would be a real shame to see that stifled now.
Click to expand...

Attention to diversity, however that may look, is a major part of our field. There is definitely a conflict between the new policy and what APA would tell us to do, I imagine.
 
www.cnn.com

USC professor under fire after using Chinese expression students allege sounds like English slur | CNN

A business professor at the University of Southern California became the center of an international academic controversy last weekend, after the school administration received a letter accusing him of using Chinese words that sounded like an English racial slur.
www.cnn.com www.cnn.com

This made my heart sink. Anecdotes likes these get blown up in media and used by the far right to discredit the entire social justice movement. If there’s more context to this, I’d like to see it, but if this was all there was to it, it’s disheartening to see students going behind the back of the professor with their concern instead of having a simple conversation that couldve just ended there without the prof being made an example of and put on leave.
 
foreverbull said:
www.cnn.com

USC professor under fire after using Chinese expression students allege sounds like English slur | CNN

A business professor at the University of Southern California became the center of an international academic controversy last weekend, after the school administration received a letter accusing him of using Chinese words that sounded like an English racial slur.
www.cnn.com www.cnn.com

This made my heart sink. Anecdotes likes these get blown up in media and used by the far right to discredit the entire social justice movement. If there’s more context to this, I’d like to see it, but if this was all there was to it, it’s disheartening to see students going behind the back of the professor with their concern instead of having a simple conversation that couldve just ended there without the prof being made an example of and put on leave.
Click to expand...
 
foreverbull said:
www.cnn.com

USC professor under fire after using Chinese expression students allege sounds like English slur | CNN

A business professor at the University of Southern California became the center of an international academic controversy last weekend, after the school administration received a letter accusing him of using Chinese words that sounded like an English racial slur.
www.cnn.com www.cnn.com

This made my heart sink. Anecdotes likes these get blown up in media and used by the far right to discredit the entire social justice movement. If there’s more context to this, I’d like to see it, but if this was all there was to it, it’s disheartening to see students going behind the back of the professor with their concern instead of having a simple conversation that couldve just ended there without the prof being made an example of and put on leave.
Click to expand...
I don’t know—it seems like a big and potentially career ending issue for that professor.
 
At this point I doubt it will be. There is already major pushback from the Chinese community based on the reaction of the university (and rightly so in my eyes). Seems like the professor handled it appropriately and likely stepped back willingly. I'm guessing it goes nowhere.

I mean, I get that it was a very unfortunate miscommunication but this seems like something any reasonably mature adult would just clarify and then giggle about afterwards. I'm a staunch advocate for all the protests going on right now, but I hope we haven't reached a point where we don't realize that different languages exist.

I live in a trilingual household and the number of ".....huh? Wait a minute, what?" moments we have is astronomical. The last thing anyone is thinking about when speaking one language is what word it sounds like in another.
 
Ollie123 said:
At this point I doubt it will be. There is already major pushback from the Chinese community based on the reaction of the university (and rightly so in my eyes). Seems like the professor handled it appropriately and likely stepped back willingly. I'm guessing it goes nowhere.

I mean, I get that it was a very unfortunate miscommunication but this seems like something any reasonably mature adult would just clarify and then giggle about afterwards. I'm a staunch advocate for all the protests going on right now, but I hope we haven't reached a point where we don't realize that different languages exist.

I live in a trilingual household and the number of ".....huh? Wait a minute, what?" moments we have is astronomical. The last thing anyone is thinking about when speaking one language is what word it sounds like in another.
Click to expand...
I agree. I was referring to @foreverbull’s assertion that these types of things were only problematic in that right wing extremists use them as examples. It is problematic for the professor who got—completely wrongly—suspended, and I don’t think that that should be swept to the side. The core of my work is social justice, marginalization, and oppression and their mental health effects, but I’ve also seen how vicious and abusive things can get in social justice circles (like any groups or social structures).
 
futureapppsy2 said:
I agree. I was referring to @foreverbull’s assertion that these types of things were only problematic in that right wing extremists use them as examples. It is problematic for the professor who got—completely wrongly—suspended, and I don’t think that that should be swept to the side. The core of my work is social justice, marginalization, and oppression and their mental health effects, but I’ve also seen how vicious and abusive things can get in social justice circles (like any groups or social structures).
Click to expand...

I didn’t mean to imply only problematic in that these are the kinds of situations that make people reject entire movements seeking social change; what I said after that was expressing frustration that the prof got put on leave. If we can’t say words in other languages because they sound similar to slurs in English and then seek to punish those who use those non-English words when teaching relevant material that doesn’t involve an actual slur, that’s pretty concerning to me, and it completely misses the point of any social justice movement.

My main point of this post was to say I’ve been on the opposite side of the argument in this thread but I can’t defend examples like these that seem to go way too far in the other direction. If examples like these become more widespread, then we need to find a way to get back to common ground (via actual one-one-one conversation, not seeking higher-ups first). There are folks out there openly discriminating, and the focus should be on them, not on situations such as these.

Again, I say this assuming there’s no further history or contextual details that we’re missing in the story.
 
Ollie123 said:
At this point I doubt it will be. There is already major pushback from the Chinese community based on the reaction of the university (and rightly so in my eyes). Seems like the professor handled it appropriately and likely stepped back willingly. I'm guessing it goes nowhere.

I mean, I get that it was a very unfortunate miscommunication but this seems like something any reasonably mature adult would just clarify and then giggle about afterwards. I'm a staunch advocate for all the protests going on right now, but I hope we haven't reached a point where we don't realize that different languages exist.

I live in a trilingual household and the number of ".....huh? Wait a minute, what?" moments we have is astronomical. The last thing anyone is thinking about when speaking one language is what word it sounds like in another.
Click to expand...
It isn’t appropriate for the professor to “step back” willingly. The school should have backed them and told everyone the complaint was out of line
 
I mean, I absolutely agree the school handled it poorly. That said, it sounded like it was a very short course and not a full-semester one. Even moving quickly it would be tough to resolve something in < 1 week if you take complaints seriously. I doubt its as simple as watching the video - they have to talk to the complainants and likely see if there was any background to this. Very different if this was a one-off scenario from a respected professor versus one with a history of allegations, etc. That said, I don't envy the school's position either. They don't want to be seen as under-reacting in this climate. Many schools have a long history of letting faculty get away with some pretty horrific things. The pendulum swung the other way and it went too far.

It depends on context. If the school came and said "Stop teaching immediately or we'll fire you" and he stepped back obviously that's not OK. If the dept chair came and said "Hey, look I know you and I doubt the veracity of this but we do have to investigate. The course ends in a week and a half. What should we do?" that is another matter. Who knows how motivated he was to teach online during a pandemic. It would be very tempting to say "Screw it, yeah - take a couple weeks to sort it out and I'll pick a different example next semester" and then recoup some research time. Heck, I'd probably offer to step back in that circumstance. I think that's his call to make.
 
futureapppsy2 said:
I don’t know—it seems like a big and potentially career ending issue for that professor.
Click to expand...
Which is an absolutely absurd and grotesque injustice.

As a wise man once said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
 
I was thinking about this thread--and more broadly, the universal tendency to much more harshly critique studies' methodology when we disagree with the findings than when we agree with them--in light to these two viral articles that just came out in Nature journals:

This study on female mentorship--and the authors' admittedly WTF, offensive conclusion that people just shouldn't work with female mentors, rather than that we should address systematic sexism in science/academia--is getting a ton of criticism and even calls for retraction on social media, with some people trying to point to the low response rate (8.5%) as one reason (The association between early career informal mentorship in academic collaborations and junior author performance). On the flip side, this study showing unequal gender x parenthood effects of the pandemic on academic research time is receiving no criticism from those same circles, despite having a much lower response rate (1.67%) and an admitted heavy selection effect probability (Unequal effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientists). I'm not necessarily saying the criticism or praise is wrong, but the huge double standard on the same point is really striking to me.
 
Yikes the discussion on the first study reaches a bit here and there. Anecdotal, but my faculty advisor was female. She was also a fairly prolific publisher. I would be curious if academic discipline explains some of the findings, depending on the level of male domination of their academic area.

But, to the larger point, there definitely seems to be a much different level of methodological criticism when examining areas where someone is fairly pro vs con. It'd be interesting to get some collaboration studies done between researchers on both sides of an issue. Having to agree on methodology, pre-register hypotheses, etc. Never gonna happen, but we can always dream of the academic ideals.
 
I agree that particularly on social media (from what little I do see), there tends to be a skew between the level of critical evaluation of articles that seem to agree vs. disagree with extant opinions/beliefs/etc. I inherently feel the same pull myself when I see an article that supports one of my pre-existing notions vs. refutes it, and it's something I try to remain conscious of and guard against.
 
AcronymAllergy said:
I agree that particularly on social media (from what little I do see), there tends to be a skew between the level of critical evaluation of articles that seem to agree vs. disagree with extant opinions/beliefs/etc. I inherently feel the same pull myself when I see an article that supports one of my pre-existing notions vs. refutes it, and it's something I try to remain conscious of and guard against.
Click to expand...
Yep. Like I said, it's a universal fallacy and one that we have to be consciously aware of and try to counterbalance. I think social media echo chambers (and other echo chambers) enhance it. I'm also kind of disturbed by the increasing push to retract studies because people didn't like the results rather than on the grounds of fraud or huge methodological or reporting errors.
 
WisNeuro said:
Yikes the discussion on the first study reaches a bit here and there. Anecdotal, but my faculty advisor was female. She was also a fairly prolific publisher. I would be curious if academic discipline explains some of the findings, depending on the level of male domination of their academic area.

But, to the larger point, there definitely seems to be a much different level of methodological criticism when examining areas where someone is fairly pro vs con. It'd be interesting to get some collaboration studies done between researchers on both sides of an issue. Having to agree on methodology, pre-register hypotheses, etc. Never gonna happen, but we can always dream of the academic ideals.
Click to expand...
Yeah, definitely agree that the discussion section on the mentorship study is an offensive cluster-f that I'm shocked got past the editors. The difference in "this response rate of 8.5% should be cause for retraction" versus "this response rate of 1.7% is not an issue--these results are undeniable, universal truth" is striking to me, however.
 
futureapppsy2 said:
Yeah, definitely agree that the discussion section on the mentorship study is an offensive cluster-f that I'm shocked got past the editors. The difference in "this response rate of 8.5% should be cause for retraction" versus "this response rate of 1.7% is not an issue--these results are undeniable, universal truth" is striking to me, however.
Click to expand...
I see what you mean, but I don't think that the response rate was the most striking methodological issue with that study...
 
I didn't look at the first article yesterday, so this may have already been there, but it now says:

"19 November 2020 Editor’s Note: Readers are alerted that this paper is subject to criticisms that are being considered by the editors. Those criticisms were targeted to the authors’ interpretation of their data that gender plays a role in the success of mentoring relationships between junior and senior researchers, in a way that undermines the role of female mentors and mentees. We are investigating the concerns raised and an editorial response will follow the resolution of these issues."
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

BuckeyeLove
The Open Therapy Institute - Anyone heard of this org???
Replies
38
Views
3K
WisNeuro
WisNeuro
DynamicDidactic
"Article Submission open for Original Article(s) if (1) plagiarism of the article is less than 15%"
Replies
7
Views
973
Therapist4Chnge
T
AcronymAllergy
APA Elections Now Open
Replies
0
Views
353
AcronymAllergy
AcronymAllergy
H
An open letter to those interested in the Baylor University Clinical Psychology PsyD program
Replies
9
Views
8K
cara susanna
cara susanna
N
  • Locked
APPIC letter of recommendation question
Replies
0
Views
692
NebulaFox7
N
Top