America, and the West as a whole, has been experiencing a revival of sorts — a social movement based around the ideology of social justice. The intentions of individuals commonly described as social justice warriors, or "SJWs," are perhaps noble but have expressed themselves in an authoritarian manner.
Take, for example, the repercussions of this movement to the public discourse. Speakers who come to college campuses and challenge the doctrines of social justice are quite often shut down or silenced in some way. So, too, the movement threatens people that it deems inappropriate, and those who attempt to think for themselves have been misrepresented and vilified. And, worst of all, the movement can and occasionally does escalate into real violence.
Now it appears that the movement has come for free inquiry.
Ted Hill, a professor emeritus at Georgia Tech, published an article last week detailing the suppression that one of his articles had received. Hill had written about the “Greater Male Variability Hypothesis” — the hypothesis that there are more male geniuses and idiots than female ones. Hill had built a mathematical model that fit the supporting data (which is extensive and extends across a variety of species, according to him). The article was well received by academics who evaluated the paper, and it was quickly selected to appear in a well-respected academic journal.
To be clear, Hill had merely attempted to create a framework to better understand the existing data. He had not supported the implications of such data. He had not even created the datasets themselves. Yet, as soon as the article was published, backlash poured in. Those who had a stake in the ideology of social justice pointed out that the article provided an explanation for why there might be an under-representation of women in awards and positions of prestige. Those invested in the ideology of social justice cannot abide another explanation to the underrepresentation of women in positions of prestige.
Hill’s article was removed from multiple journals and was abandoned by those who had first supported it.
The incident is notable on its own. But it becomes even more worrisome when paired with a variety of other incidents, like the firing of James Damore and the pressure put on Brown University after a member of their faculty published a study about rapid-onset gender dysphoria. All these attacks have been triggered by one thing: the perceived repercussions that these datasets might have on current beliefs about social conditions. While less skeptical people might believe the claim that there are “methodological problems” with these studies and data, a closer look at these accusations reveals that the root of the backlash is to be located in the implications of the data and not the methodology with which it was acquired.
To be clear, I have no problem with legitimate criticisms of methodological choices in these studies. It is the inherent ideological attacks that I find troubling. Rejecting potential truth in the service of an ideology is dangerous. The subjection of reality to a preordained framework can have wide-reaching ramifications for society. Collective ignorance will always be worse than controversial truth in the long run.
