CW: Sexual harassment and Jeffrey Epstein
Yesterday, we talked about how complaints of controversial speech being censored is usually either little more than a request that the oppressed be quiet about their oppression, or a way for deniers to continue arguing against regulations.
But there’s more to it than that, particularly when it comes to political correctness in science. For example, on Sunday the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Lawrence Krauss, bemoaning “the ideological corruption of science.”
Now, it does make sense that the complaint that science is getting too politically correct comes from Krauss, given that Krauss was “cancelled” after Buzzfeed revealed a litany of sexual harassment complaints. But apparently his cancellation didn’t take, as his WSJ op-ed indicates he is once again president of the Origins Project, something that still exists despite revelations that the project took money from convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Anyway, this (alleged) sexual harasser who has said he doesn’t “feel tarnished in any way by my relationship with Jeffrey,” but instead feels “raised by it," just wrote in the Journal that it’s a very bad thing that “academic science leaders have adopted wholesale the language of dominance and oppression previously restricted to 'cultural studies' journals to guide their disciplines.”
Per Krauss,“there are strong reasons to think” that the claim that there’s systemic racism in science “is spurious.” Despite the fact that basically any Black person or honest scientist would tell you otherwise, Krauss remains unmoved. He goes on to complain about complaints of sexism in science. Unsurprisingly, given his well-documented history of using his power to prey on young women, Krauss appears more worried about people like himself and fellow Jeffrey Epstein lunch companion and science conference on Epstein’s private island attendee Steven Pinker being “stripped of his position” than he does the thousands of women who have been harassed out of science by people like himself.
To conclude, Krauss demands that scientific leaders “publicly stand up not only for free speech in science, but for quality, independent of political doctrine and divorced from the demands of political factions.”
Here’s a place Krauss could start: at WUWT, where blogger Eric Worrall is very upset about some speech that he considers incorrect, politically, and has worked hard to censor. Because, apparently, a Wikipedia entry referred to climate denier Sallie Baliunas as a denier.
Worral edited the entry, because “people who dispute the connection between climate change and CO2 find the word ‘denier’ offensive,” and claimed it’s “an attempt to link the concept of disputing the consensus to ‘holocaust denial.”
The WUWT post includes some of the amusing back-and-forth, with Wiki editor “Hob Gadling” addressing the substance of the issue: “Wikipedia does not pander to fringe groups: we do not call evolution “just a theory” because creationists are offended if we don’t… If you want to be treated like real scientists, behave like real scientists…”
And that brings us to the crux of PC-complaint hypocrisy: deniers like Worrall, who otherwise decry political correctness in science, are all too eager to police the speech of others. Meanwhile, we will never know the number of women and people of color forced out of science not by PC culture run amok, but by the (alleged) abuse of people like Krauss.
If someone with a history of groping women and telling one that he’s going to buy her birth control so she doesn’t take maternity leave, and who has publicly defended and taken funding from a convicted pedophile, can still be published in one of the world's most popular newspapers, then clearly PC cancel-culture isn’t as powerful as he claims.
Particularly since his WSJ op-ed byline notes that Krauss has a forthcoming book on the physics of climate change…