Dear Ms. Paul
Your latest op-ed claims that "A Paper That Says Science Should Be Impartial Was Rejected by Major Journals” without mentioning that many of those who wrote this paper are associated with the “Intellectual Dark Web” and/or have written for racist far-right Thiel-funded Quillette.I am including Jerry Coyne, Peter Boghossian, Anna Krylov, John McWhorter, Glenn Loury, Lee Jussim and Jay Tanzman - and those are the names I recognize immediately.I suspect they are not the only co-authors with right-wing views. I will investigate further - something that you apparently refuse to do. Or worse, you are deliberately hiding what you know about their political views.After all, your former spouse was caught promoting race pseudoscience and his IDW friends rushed to his defense. It would not be surprising if you had your own IDW connections.I addressed Krylov’s dishonest, hysterical screed on the same topic on my blog a couple of years ago, and it's also available on Medium.You seem to be, at the very least, a deeply unethical employee of the New York Times.Nancy McClernanPinkerite
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The paper in question was published in "The Journal of Controversial Ideas" thus confirming that it is, along with Quillette, a tool of the Intellectual Dark Web which many of us always suspected it was.
The paper appears to have been organized by reactionary bullshit-swilling Anna Krylov, who I assume is by now on Peter Thiel's payroll. She was also an organizer for Peter Thiel's CPAC for racists.
And while many of the co-authors are horrible reactionaries and hawkers of racist "science," the references for the paper are even worse - no less than three links to Quillette, plus citations of race pseudoscience promoters Pinker and Andrew Sullivan and grifters Pamela Paresky, Katie Herzog, Helen Pluckrose and the thoroughly grotesque Trump-loving asshole James Lindsay.
More and more it appears to me that Pamela Paul was hired to ensure that the NYTimes has someone to represent the interests of the Intellectual Dark Web, now that Bari Weiss has gone on to more obviously rightwing plutocrat-serving gigs.
This is from TODAY. Note how Weiss describes right-wing ghouls Blake Masters and JD Vance as "anti-establishment."
I think you mean fascist, you sleazy shameless handmaiden of stochastic terrorist monsters and babbling lunatics.
Bonus link - Majority Report (again!): Bari Weiss HUMILIATED When Trans Child's Powerful Response To Her Lies Goes Viral. Pamela Paul is also infamous for beating the anti-trans hate drum.
NOTE: This must be investigated further, since ChatGPT is known to be factually unreliable.
UPDATE - someone put me on the "In Defense of Merit" mailing list and so I received an email today that links to this "In Defense of Merit" website.
Apparently the people behind this grift felt that it wasn't clear enough that this is a project of right-wingers, race pseudoscience promoters and associates of the Intellectual Dark Web, so the page includes testimonials, not only from the odious Bari Weiss and Pamela Paul, the IDW-cheerleader twins, but from:
Richard Dawkins - anti-Muslim crackpot and instigator of the infamous stochastic terrorist pioneer event known as "elevatorgate"
Jordan Peterson - reactionary crackpot beloved by Quillette
Jonathan Rauch - Thielbucks via Quillette, Kochbucks via Reason Magazine
Jesse Sabatini - right-winger opposed to COVID lockdown
David Bertoli - right-winger who likes to retweet people like Nicholas Christakis and Conor Friedersdorf. Hilariously Bertoli tweeted the Upton Sinclair quote “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” while praising people who are indisputably political operatives working for Charles Koch and Peter Thiel. The lack of self-awareness and/or hypocrisy of these IDW goons is always mind-boggling.
Judith Curry - climate change denier who "receives funding from the fossil fuel industry" - what a surprise. Maybe David Bertoli can lecture her on the topic of salary sources and not understanding things. Predictably, the Koch-funded City Journal loves her.
The College Fix - funded by Koch and other right-wing plutocrats
And best of all...
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| Noah Carl loves neo-Nazi Bo Winegard and "human biodiversity" - if I had to guess, I'd say everybody who contributed to this grift is fine with race pseudoscience ------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
Noah Carl - hardcore but sneaky racist and promoter of race pseudoscience and co-author with neo-Nazi Quillette editor Bo Winegard. According to RationalWiki, Carl
is a British sociologist who, outside of his respectable sociology work, publishes racialist pseudoscience and wrote an Islamophobic paper for OpenPsych and a paper for the white supremacist journal Mankind Quarterly.[2] For this reason, he has been described as living a "double life".[3] After the latter was exposed in December 2018, hundreds of academics signed a letter calling for Cambridge University to reconsider the award of his fellowship and to stop employing him as a postdoctoral researcher.[4][5]
Krylov and her IDW pals are not even pretending anymore - they are just blatant about being far-right and racist ghouls.
I asked ChatGPT about Krylov and it said she
...holds the Stephen and Laura Hsu endowed chair in analytical chemistry.
Which certainly sounds plausible especially if that Stephen Hsu is the supporter of race pseudoscience. That Hsu can be seen Tweeting encouragement for her earlier attempt at building a culture war moral panic grift.
Like many other hawkers of race pseudoscience, Hsu gets serious funding:
...Even though mainstream science has pretty much scrapped the notion that race has any kind of biological basis long ago, that hasn’t stopped Steven Hsu from trying to link intelligence with race and getting a billion and a half dollars for research based in China.
I don't think Krylov has ever met a race pseudoscience hawker she doesn't like. But Google couldn't find any evidence of Krylov's connection to this endowed chair and there's no mention of it on her USC page.
But WHERE IS PINKER? This IDW-heavy grift is right up his alley and he is pals with the two people I think organized the paper, Krylov and Jerry Coyne.
Pinker was hanging out with Anna Krylov at Peter Thiel's CPAC for racists and Coyne adores Pinker.
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| Pinker, left and Krylov wearing glasses behind and on the right of him at the very skewed old-white-man CPAC for racists keynoted by (and funded by, I suspect,) crackpot Republican fascist Peter Thiel ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
Did Peter Thiel tell Pinker to stand down and focus his attention on his "Academic Freedom" grift?
Never fear, loyal Pinkeriteers, more about Steven Pinker tomorrow.
