THE RETURN OF THE MEDIEVAL.

Higher education as we understand it originated in the seminary, and many of the trappings of the academic vocation have an ecclesiastical look to it.  Now, it appears that fidelity to the One True Faith is back as well.  Statistical illiteracy, for example, is not a flaw, it is a feature, as its presence makes claims of "disparate impact" easier to make.

No rigorous and fair-minded researcher with any understanding of statistics, experimental design, or the irreproducibility crisis would take this study seriously. Indeed, the fact that it passed peer review is yet more evidence that peer review now functions to credential and accelerate groupthink rather than to deter it.

Such shoddy research is far too common in the sciences and social sciences. This is a grave enough problem in its own right, but it has more serious consequences for America as a whole. We have delegated policymaking authority to professionals who claim expertise in wide swathes of administrative policy, judicial decisionmaking, and legislation. Those experts who claim the mantle of “Science” are foremost among these would-be professional experts. Such men and women far too frequently subordinate the search for truth to the search to impose a preferred policy. Their shoddy research methods are part and parcel of their desire to forward a political agenda—although it should be emphasized that even researchers without a political agenda now use statistical and experimental methods guaranteed to produce a mass of false results.

It's supposed to be the role of the university to weigh those conflicting claims in the most objective way practicable.

Universities themselves should be viewed as places where members of an academic community gather to discuss ideas of the day. They should generally not take stands on issues. The opinion of the president of XYZ University should not be construed as representing the policy position of the institution, since universities are comprised of many individuals with diverse viewpoints, each of which should be heard. University presidents and deans should keep quiet as a rule on public policy matters.

To be sure, if Russia ordered a successful nuclear missile strike on New York City, it probably would be appropriate for university presidents to condemn the event. But it is better to err in the direction of remaining neutral than to make institutional policy pronouncements on behalf of a diverse campus community. In short, universities should be true “marketplaces of ideas,” not moral or political arbiters on issues of the day.

That might be the ideal. These days, though, skepticism about any sort of truth being knowable, combined with some faculty members holding priors so tight you'd be hard-pressed to sodomize them with a jack-hammer, and academic life is an exercise in the bullies constructing their truths out of untruths.

Typical academic disciplines work by seeking truth, and then using the facts that have been established to attempt to build true theories which explain how the world works. The result of that is each development in disciplines like physics, math, logic, engineering, technology, philosophy, and biology proceeds by studying the world and attempting to describe it accurately. Then, using the facts which can be established intellectuals seek to correct past errors and create better and better explanations of how the world works. It’s a lot like building a building, there is a foundation that is built on the enlightenment liberal tradition of rationality, and each generation adds to the work that has been done by the previous generations. Using reason, logic, and evidence careful academics go about correcting mistakes, eliminating past errors, and developing knowledge so that each generation gets a picture of the world which is more detailed and higher resolution then the previous generation. The process is not perfect, nor is it linear; there are starts and stops as old errors are discovered and need to be corrected, but that is the general shape of what is going on.

There is no end to this sort of adding on. Continental drift or not? Big bang or not? Quantity theory of money or not?  You don't get to say "Now that the results make me comfortable with my priors we stop looking."

As such these academic activist scholars are not like builder building a building, attempting to build true theories on a strong foundation of truth. They are like activists cooks in an intellectual kitchen cooking up theories that help them achieve their political aims. You can imagine a chef of wokeness saying “take a cup of Marx, add two cups Frankfurt School, A gallon of Foucault, add 10 ounces of Derrida, a pinch of Gramsci, bake in the universities for two decades and then you get a delicious stew of wokeness! Yum Yum!” This is how wokeness developed.

Now, the question remains “how do these academic activists resolve all the apparent contradictions?” This is a question that deserves it’s own essay. However, a brief answer is twofold. First, the ideas are repeatedly re-theorised in a way that allows them to be put together so they can be used to achieve their political aims. The second is that because wokeness makes heavy use of a postmodern view of the world, judge their ideas with postmodern standards. Since their main standard is “is this idea useful in our struggle to achieve our vision of social justice?” they will often judge the validity of an idea by how useful it is for them to achieve their aims, rather then by the traditional standards of reason, logic, and evidence. As such they tend not to concern themselves with meeting the standards of the enlightenment liberal tradition of rationality which they reject.

In practice this often appears to the average person as different standards in different situations and appeals to different theories depending on what is useful at the time, refusal to engage on fair terms, changing the rules of debate, and making use of language games and shifting definitions. As frustrating as this may be, it is important to remember that from within their own system this all makes perfect sense and there is a logic to what they are doing.

As a purely academic exercise, inventing theories for the sake of inventing theories might be fine. Using intellectually constructed realities as organizing principles for reality realities will not end well.

Therefore, reality checks must be ruled out of bounds.

The claim that “minoritized” students are being driven out of STEM education is bunk. But the Woke surely are working to prevent anyone who might doubt such claims from receiving the education to critique them or the credentials to serve in the policy arena. Conservatives must make the continued education of statistically literate experts an absolute priority.

We know there’s lies, darn lies, and statistics. But we need experts who know this, who can tell a p-value from a Bayesian estimation, and who can communicate with the public. We must make plans now to educate this next generation of experts.

Pushing back on the wokies is critical.

Have the conversation on the ground of objective truth rather than interests, biases, and feelings. Every time it looks like there is a contradiction, a shift in terms, or some other move, we must ask them to get clear about exactly what they mean and then measure their statements against the standard of objective truth.

If we do this well, we can push back in a way that is both persuasive and effective.

It is a rejection of Enlightenment values.

The problem, of course, is that, in contemporary America, we increasingly deviate from a perfect world. The rules that constrain violence and disruptive behavior are increasingly ignored; the Ten Commandments are routinely violated, not to mention our laws. The rule of law and tolerance for alternative perspectives are under attack, not only in our broader society, as evidenced by urban rioting every time a perceived injustice is created, but also in the academic villages that we call colleges and universities.

You'd think, dear reader, that would be self-evident.

The adoption of a position (or worldview) at an institutional level can only serve to block inquiry. The imprimatur of the university evinces an absolute assertion—that the idea cannot be questioned because everyone at the university agrees with it.

The scientific method is one of disconfirmation: hypotheses are true only until disproven. Silencing dissent stops disconfirmation from happening and thus thwarts the search for truth. It is hard to imagine anything more damaging to a university’s function.

You'd hope that the people in charge of higher education would see the danger in worshipping consensus.

The last place cancel culture should flourish is on campus. Higher education is supposed to foster fresh thinking, not enforce any ideology except the classical liberal ideals of free and open debate. Universities can’t serve society as a whole if fear of backlash keeps brilliant thinkers from sharing their thoughts.

But the people in charge have caved to the True Believers and their tight priors.  That's encouraged True Believers elsewhere.  Soon enough, dear reader, those tight priors might be hazardous to your health.

California courts "have long interpreted the types of conduct the Legislature was concerned about—such as failing to provide patients with sufficient information to make informed health choices, committing medical fraud, and providing patients with medically inappropriate treatment—as falling under" that rule, the ACLU brief notes. "Indeed, when considering AB 2098, the Legislature acknowledged that the [medical board] was 'already fully capable of bringing an accusation against a physician for this type of misconduct.'"

The new law, by contrast, makes physicians subject to discipline for sharing their honest opinions regarding COVID-19 if the medical board thinks they deviate from the "scientific consensus," a term the law does not define. That nebulous standard poses a due process problem, since the law does not give doctors fair notice of which conduct it reaches. It also poses a free speech problem, since it encourages self-censorship.

Given the evolution of "scientific consensus" in the face of a "novel coronavirus" (I would be surprised if we didn't have a lot of evolution) I don't know what "inappropriate" is.  I am heartened that California's American Criminal Civil Liberties Union made common cause with the New Civil Liberties Alliance in challenging the law, which gives the impression of being written by faddists.

While some unconventional opinions may amount to quackery, others may ultimately be vindicated. Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, the conventional wisdom on subjects such as intubation of patients, the utility of cloth face masks, isolation periods, and the effectiveness of vaccines in preventing virus transmission has shifted repeatedly in response to emerging evidence.

In addition to violating doctors' freedom of speech, A.B. 2098 undermines that discovery process. It tells skeptical physicians to keep their mouths shut, lest they endanger their licenses and livelihoods by candidly sharing their opinions.

At least there still is evidence. Let the Woke Inquisitors have free rein in medicine, and that, too, might be done for.  "Settled science" will be a testament of faith, sort of like "Everybody is racist."  We will be the worse for it.