Science writer on facts with no scientific significance

If you were a respectable science writer, affiliated with a respectable university and a respectable left-leaning science magazine, and you were a closet Nazi, what would you do? If you expressed any Nazi opinions, you would be fired and never get work as a science writer again.

You would denounce Nazis with silly and stupid arguments. Better yet, you would parody the arguments of your leftist overlords.

SciAm's John Horgan writes:

But Chomsky has expressed abhorrence for research into cognitive differences between different groups. In his 1987 book Language and Problems of Knowledge Chomsky wrote: “Surely people differ in their biologically determined qualities. The world would be too horrible to contemplate if they did not. But discovery of a correlation between some of these qualities is of no scientific interest and of no social significance, except to racists, sexists and the like.” ...

Damore and his supporters present themselves as heroic champions of free inquiry in an era of stultifying political correctness. But when you suggest that white males are biologically superior to other groups, you are sticking up for those who hold power and denigrating those who lack it. You are feeding our society’s corrosive sexism and racism. That makes you a bully, not a hero, especially if you are a white male yourself. You deserve to be fired.

So only certain races are able student certain aspects of biology, but it would be racist to let all races tell the truth!

Leftists hold all the academic power today, so no one in academia should express leftist views as that would be sticking up for those who hold power!

One should not be criticizing Google, because that would be picking on the powerless!

If someone publishes a theory of biological superiority, then no one should refute it, because it is better to bully the guy into silence, and then make a statement against bullying!

Makes sense to me, if Horgan is a closet Nazi. Ditto with Chomsky.

Scott Aaronson has a somewhat different approach. He keeps reminding us that he agrees 98% with the Leftists, and parrots their Trump-hating epithets, but he cannot go all the way:

And therefore I say: if James Damore deserves to be fired from Google, for treating evolutionary psychology as potentially relevant to social issues, then Steven Pinker deserves to be fired from Harvard for the same offense. ...

the argument would be this:

If the elites, the technocrats, the “Cathedral”-dwellers, were willing to lie to the masses about humans being blank slates — and they obviously were — then why shouldn’t we assume that they also lied to us about healthcare and free trade and guns and climate change and everything else?

We progressives deluded ourselves that we could permanently shame our enemies into silence, on pain of sexism, racism, xenophobia, and other blasphemies. But the “victories” won that way were hollow and illusory, and the crumbling of the illusion brings us to where we are now: with a vindictive, delusional madman in the White House who has a non-negligible chance of starting a nuclear war this week. ...

I fantasize that, within my lifetime, the Enlightenment will expand further to tolerate a diversity of cognitive styles — including people on the Asperger’s and autism spectrum, with their penchant for speaking uncomfortable truths—as well as a diversity of natural abilities and inclinations.

No, I don't think that the Ctrl-Left will tolerate real-talkers.

One comment says:

I was struck by the juxtaposition of two of the author’s remarks:

“I believe it’s a tragedy that the current holder of the US presidency is a confessed sexual predator, who’s full of contempt not merely for feminism, but for essentially every worthwhile human value. I believe those of us on the “pro-Enlightenment side” now face the historic burden of banding together to stop this thug.”

“Any comment, from any side, that attacks people rather than propositions will be deleted. I don’t care if the comment also makes useful points: if it contains a single ad hominem, it’s out.”

No attacks on people you say? I guess consistency really is the hobgoblin of little minds.

Pres. Trump is not a "confessed sexual predator". I assume that Aaronson just says this stuff so he will not get ostracized by his fellow leftists.

This is just what closet Trump supporter would say. He would just babble inconsistent anti-Trump epithets without any substantive arguments. He is like a professor in a Communist country who has to sprinkle Marxist slogans in his writings get stay in the good graces of the Communist authorities. In today's leftist groupthink academic world, Aaronson only dares to deviate from the Ctrl-Left orthodoxy in trivial ways.