In what possible worlds is this true?

Surely not the actual world, or at least not the philosophical part of it!

Earlier this year, the journal Basic and Applied Social Psychology published a report on the effects of news about women’s progress to equality; I cannot get electronic access to it, but the Daily Beast offered the following comments last March:

[A] new report suggests that men might be less likely to hire women, mentor them, or value them as colleagues.

Male anxiety may explain the new conventional wisdom embraced by the media that women are taking over the world and headed for the best jobs, while men are flailing. After all, research tells us that men control opinion journalism; only 10 to 15 percent of talking heads on opinion news shows are female and between 80 and 90 percent of a newspaper’s opinion essays are written by men, according to the Stanford Op Ed Project. This narrative, however, is seriously flawed.

Look closely at data about women’s progress, and you’ll see a troubling fact: in many arenas, women’s gains have stalled and are in grave danger of being rolled back. Yes, more women than ever before attend college and professional schools in medicine, law, and business—but there’s a real question as to whether they’ll ever attain leadership positions in the areas for which they’ve been trained. The women’s advocacy group Catalyst reports that women’s representation in senior leadership positions is stagnating. In computer science and engineering, earlier gains appear to have stalled or even shifted into reverse.

For Salon’s take on the legend of the persecuted white guy, see Jender’s piece here.

“LSE scholar admits race analysis was ‘flawed’.”

Kanazawa’s disgraceful pseudo-scientific claims about the relative attrativeness of black women has brought LSE into disrepute, an official letter from the institution notes. LSE is restricting his teaching and publication abilities for one year. In his letter, Kanasawa says he deeply regrets the unintended consequences of his blog post.

Is this enough? Was the post merely bad science?

The BBC says:

Dr Mikhail Lyubansky, a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois, said the posting failed to consider possible “anti-black bias” in the perceptions of the respondents and interviewers.
“Without this kind of methodological analysis, Kanazawa’s entire premise – that there is such a thing as a single objective standard of attractiveness – is fatally (and tragically) flawed,” he wrote.

Not all bad science is morally corrupt, but this instance seems at least close to that.

The sunday cat notes it is such a relief when we are in charge

Thanks, pj!