Peer Review Poo

I’ve been a longstanding fan of science. I’ve never been a fan of Scientism™, which is the dogmatic belief that science is the gate to all knowledge and that the discipline is incorruptible. I’ve even complained in the past about the self-correcting aspect that has sometimes taken centuries and millennia.

In the case of the article that spawned this post, peer review has always felt a bit specious to me. Just getting picked to get into the review queue is political at the start, and few people are actually equipped to perform the review with any material degree of diligence.

Science being peer-reviewed was like a knee-jerk credibility play. Of course, this also reeked of the police department or CIA reviewing their own misdeeds. On the other hand, who else is going to review it? The problem is there is no downside for the shoddy reviewer. There might be three referees who review your work and provide commentary—and so what if they miss some things?

As shoddy as soft sciences are, even hard sciences had reproducibility challenges—and that’s if the domain is reproducible. Models about climate change are not exactly suitable for laboratory reproduction.

Science is getting less and less credible these days. Besides being coopted by moneyed interests, you’ve got the politicos subverting it for their own purposes. Of course, the mismanagement and propagandising of the Covid debacle is still a fresh wound. And as we watch many of the conspiracy claims being shown to be correct and the official message shown to be wrong and intentionally disinformative, it’s hard not to become a jaded cynic. What’s a sceptic to do?

The Problem with Sex Work is Work

I just happened across this article from almost a year ago. It fits into my worldview that the fundamental issue with prostitution and other forms of so-called ‘sex work’ is the concept of work itself. As humans in a Capitalist (or even Socialist) system, we are conscripted into employment.

Rousseau or Locke may have called this a social contract, but I never signed it, and still I am forced to accept the terms and conditions.

I’ve been quite busy working to survive, so I don’t have time to comment, save to say that I agree with the major concepts, as I have written previously here, here, here, and here.

3 Laws of Behaviour Genetics

[EDIT: Researching immediately after I wrote this article, I skimmed—I’ll have to find time to read it later—Turkheimer’s paper Still Missing (PDF, 2011), where he walks back his original assertion.]

The question, “why are children in the same family so different?” is answered, “Because measurable differences in their environment make them that way.”

I finished Pinker’s The Blank Slate the other day, but I didn’t have much time to capture my reflections. I’m already onto my next book, Mill’s Utilitarianism, so I figured I record some thoughts before they become too distant.

In chapter 19, Pinker summarises Eric Turkheimer’s paper Three Laws of Genetic Behaviour Genetics and What They Mean (PDF, 2000, dead link):

1. The First Law: All human behavioural traits are heritable.
2. The Second Law: The effect of being raised in the same family is smaller than the effect of the genes.
3. The Third Law: A substantial portion of the variation in complex human behavioural traits is not accounted for by the effects of genes or families.

Elaborating on this, he summarises Turkheimer’s assessment on the variance in personality contributable to three factors: genetics, society, and family. According to this theory, variations in personality due accounted for by environment, are composed as

50 percent accounted for by society (non-shared environment); 40 – 50 percent accounted for by genetics (biology) and 0 to 10 percent attributable to family (shared environment). In his assessment, he was able to eliminate usual-suspect factors like birth order and siblings.

“Genotype is in fact a more systematic
source of variability than environment.”

According to Pinker, the 0 to 10 percent is generous, and it could just as well be 50% society and the rest is genetics. That doesn’t leave a lot of room for psychoanalysis, a discipline who strongly pushes back on this concept—just with emotional appeal in lieu of science.

Is Taxation Theft?

Philip Goff presents a strong argument published on Aeon as to why taxation is not theft, primarily because it is based on false assumptions about the morality of property ownership.

I have written a lot of short pieces addressing this question (the answer is always no). But this piece for Aeon magazine is the most extensive thing I’ve written so far, and goes into much more detail about the nature of ownership. I’m always amazed at how much this stuff angers people. I’ve been enjoying […]

via Is Taxation Theft? (and why the answer matters..) — Conscience and Consciousness