Some days ago, I posted on my wall a work by Satoshi Kanazawa on the relation between physical attractiveness and intelligence. Didn’t I expect that the article would bring me a whole new experience. I just thought that the article would serve only science-for-fun purpose. Nothing more. However, some excellent readers made me aware that Satoshi Kanazawa is indeed a controversial figure. He ever published an article that suggests religiosity is in negative relation with intelligence; which implies that atheists are smarter than theists. Recently, he was fired from Psychology Today for publishing study on “Why Black Woman are Unattractive.” No surprise, the study invited anger from blacks and minorities rights groups.
What I am interested to write about in this note is not Satoshi Kanazawa himself, but about what is ethical or unethical in science. Of particular focus, this note will talk about two things. The first is my personal opinion about what can be considered ethical and what can’t. The second is my response to people who accuse Satoshi Kanazawa as not “scientific enough.” In order to make things clear first, I’m not a supporter of Satoshi.
What is ethical and what is not.
To be fair, I don’t think there exists clear boundaries on what is moral and immoral. Eventually it’s for each of us to judge. And because it’s for each of us to judge, sometimes we argue that Einstein or Madam Curie could also be considered immoral because their work on nuclear and radioactive bring harm to people. Which one were they, moral or immoral? I answer the question with another question: what were their purposes in doing the research? For the good of mankind? For the harmony of society? For improving the life of people? Or merely for popularity?
Furthermore, I’d like to borrow from psychology to judge whether a work is moral or immoral. Does a study harm the human participant? Little Albert demonstration by John Watson provided invaluable insight to the question of how trauma develops, but it is morally wrong because little Albert was traumatized during the experiment, and never healed.
So, back to Satoshi, in my opinon, Satoshi is politically wrong, but scientifically innocent. It is like a nuclear physicist found a technique for a new-super atomic bomb and decided to publish it in technical details in a journal. Scientifically wrong? No. Politically idiot? Yes. Satoshi is just the same.
If one is to derogate Satoshi, then it is not by saying that the finding is unscientific. It is by saying that Satoshi has not the wisdom to pursue questions that is worth scientific attention, is morally justified, and is socially beneficial for building a harmonic community.
I see it that science first and foremost responsibility is not to merely answer questions but to answer questions that provide benefit to the society. What is the benefit of pointing that black women aren’t unattractive? Nothing, in my view. That’s why Satoshi’s work is no beneficial to the extreme. However, just because one work offers little benefit doesn’t mean it is scientifically unjustifiable. The question of scientific justification is a whole new problem. It is related to the method, to the way the question is answered; not to the question itself.
It is about this methodological aspect that I’d like to move to.
Methods and Critiques
Some people, probably motivated by their dislikes to Satoshi’s research questions and topics, throw critiques to the work. They thought that because someone criticize Satoshi’s works, then it MUST BE the case that Satoshi’s findings are unjustified and unscientific. Is that really the case?
I’ll provide as example a critique targeting Satoshi’s work on atheism and intelligence. You can read the whole critique on http://ibcsr.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=150%3Ais-atheism-linked-to-intelligence&catid=25%3Aresearch-news&Itemid=59
Now, having read the critique, ask yourself, do you find the critique plausible and strong? Does the critique render Satoshi’s finding useless, questionable, or –more importantly– unscientific? After deciding for yourself your initial position, if you have time and are interested, please scroll to the end of this note, to find how I criticize the critique.
Now, what is your opinion? Do you experience a change in opinion? Is suddenly the critique to Satoshi no longer as strong as it was before you read my critique to the critique?
Okay, stop myself from being unclear. What’s the point then? The point is, no work is free from flaws. An article can always be criticized, and even a critique can also be criticized. That’s just the law, because nothing is perfect, isn’t it? Satoshi’s work had flaws so people wrote critique about it. But then the critique also had flaws so I can criticize it. Doesn’t stop there, my critique also has flaws so anyone interested can also criticize it.
My point is simply this: Just because someone has criticized other person’s work as “poorly” scientific, doesn’t mean the work is really poor. You have to think for yourself whether the critique itself is justified. Scientists are supposed not to be followers, we are supposed to be independent, to be able to think for ourselves and not merely following others. We are also supposed not to throw to a work the label of “unscientific” just because we find the study is morally wrong.
A morally wrong study doesn’t always equate a lesser degree of scientific precision. One can definitely find easily boxes of methodologically-poor-designed morally-inspiring studies. In my opinion the aspects of moral and scientific precision are two separate dimensions. We must judge each of them with caution, and we must judge it fairly. As a scientist, we must be critical to a critique just like we are critical to the original article; and we must decide –using our healthy logic and judgment– which one sounds more plausible.
————————————–
My critique to a critique of Satoshi. Please once again note in mind that by writing this response I’m not saying that the work of Satoshi Kanazawa is beyond criticism. What I’d like to say is that everyone must be thinking critically BOTH to Satoshi and his critics. Just because someone feels the questions Satoshi pursues are unethical, he can’t suddenly think that all of critiques to Satoshi must be right and Satoshi himself must be wrong. He must -in my opinion- be able to independently evaluate the arguments of the critics and Satoshi’s and then decide for himself which one is more plausible.
Study 1.
Critique 1: Related to PPVT. This is a weak critique, because even the critic admitted that there is a collection of research establishing a relationship between PPVT and general intelligence.
Critique 2: Related to the range of the IQ scores. This might be a weakness, but definitely not undermining the finding. My question to people who think this undermining the finding: how are you supposed to know in the first place that your participants’ IQ score will have only limited range? You cannot. And just like you, Satoshi can’t. In my opinion, it is simply Satoshi was failed to acknowledge this limitation. This critique is no where near nullify the finding.
Study 2.
Critique 1: Related to operational definition. The critic pointed that Satoshi used two different concepts of religiosity. The first concept in Study 1 was measured using self-declared religiosity while Study 2 used belief in God. Does that undermine the finding? Hell no. In psychology of religion, people use different kinds of definition about religiosity; ranged from the frequency of church attendance, frequency of prayer, belief in God, belief in after life, to whether the individual declares himself as religious. It is simply a matter of operational definition (See Glock & Stark, 1965 for many dimensions of religiosity). In fact, if one is willing to admit, the fact that Satoshi’s finding holds even after using different operational definition just makes his claim stronger.
Critique 2: the critique is based on the fact the intelligence was measured simply by simple quiz. Is that problematic? Might be. Among all of the criticisms, this might be the one that got point. But to establish if it really undermines the finding, one needs to see how Satoshi justified this quiz. Had anyone used it before? What was the reliability? The external validity? If anyone had used such quiz to measure intelligence and it turned out to have concurrent validity with other measures of intelligence, then the method is justified.
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The Question of Morality in Science (the Satoshi Kanazawa case)
Posted by Nathanael on July 7, 2011
What I am interested to write about in this note is not Satoshi Kanazawa himself, but about what is ethical or unethical in science. Of particular focus, this note will talk about two things. The first is my personal opinion about what can be considered ethical and what can’t. The second is my response to people who accuse Satoshi Kanazawa as not “scientific enough.” In order to make things clear first, I’m not a supporter of Satoshi.
What is ethical and what is not.
To be fair, I don’t think there exists clear boundaries on what is moral and immoral. Eventually it’s for each of us to judge. And because it’s for each of us to judge, sometimes we argue that Einstein or Madam Curie could also be considered immoral because their work on nuclear and radioactive bring harm to people. Which one were they, moral or immoral? I answer the question with another question: what were their purposes in doing the research? For the good of mankind? For the harmony of society? For improving the life of people? Or merely for popularity?
Furthermore, I’d like to borrow from psychology to judge whether a work is moral or immoral. Does a study harm the human participant? Little Albert demonstration by John Watson provided invaluable insight to the question of how trauma develops, but it is morally wrong because little Albert was traumatized during the experiment, and never healed.
So, back to Satoshi, in my opinon, Satoshi is politically wrong, but scientifically innocent. It is like a nuclear physicist found a technique for a new-super atomic bomb and decided to publish it in technical details in a journal. Scientifically wrong? No. Politically idiot? Yes. Satoshi is just the same.
If one is to derogate Satoshi, then it is not by saying that the finding is unscientific. It is by saying that Satoshi has not the wisdom to pursue questions that is worth scientific attention, is morally justified, and is socially beneficial for building a harmonic community.
I see it that science first and foremost responsibility is not to merely answer questions but to answer questions that provide benefit to the society. What is the benefit of pointing that black women aren’t unattractive? Nothing, in my view. That’s why Satoshi’s work is no beneficial to the extreme. However, just because one work offers little benefit doesn’t mean it is scientifically unjustifiable. The question of scientific justification is a whole new problem. It is related to the method, to the way the question is answered; not to the question itself.
It is about this methodological aspect that I’d like to move to.
Methods and Critiques
Some people, probably motivated by their dislikes to Satoshi’s research questions and topics, throw critiques to the work. They thought that because someone criticize Satoshi’s works, then it MUST BE the case that Satoshi’s findings are unjustified and unscientific. Is that really the case?
I’ll provide as example a critique targeting Satoshi’s work on atheism and intelligence. You can read the whole critique on http://ibcsr.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=150%3Ais-atheism-linked-to-intelligence&catid=25%3Aresearch-news&Itemid=59
Now, having read the critique, ask yourself, do you find the critique plausible and strong? Does the critique render Satoshi’s finding useless, questionable, or –more importantly– unscientific? After deciding for yourself your initial position, if you have time and are interested, please scroll to the end of this note, to find how I criticize the critique.
Now, what is your opinion? Do you experience a change in opinion? Is suddenly the critique to Satoshi no longer as strong as it was before you read my critique to the critique?
Okay, stop myself from being unclear. What’s the point then? The point is, no work is free from flaws. An article can always be criticized, and even a critique can also be criticized. That’s just the law, because nothing is perfect, isn’t it? Satoshi’s work had flaws so people wrote critique about it. But then the critique also had flaws so I can criticize it. Doesn’t stop there, my critique also has flaws so anyone interested can also criticize it.
My point is simply this: Just because someone has criticized other person’s work as “poorly” scientific, doesn’t mean the work is really poor. You have to think for yourself whether the critique itself is justified. Scientists are supposed not to be followers, we are supposed to be independent, to be able to think for ourselves and not merely following others. We are also supposed not to throw to a work the label of “unscientific” just because we find the study is morally wrong.
A morally wrong study doesn’t always equate a lesser degree of scientific precision. One can definitely find easily boxes of methodologically-poor-designed morally-inspiring studies. In my opinion the aspects of moral and scientific precision are two separate dimensions. We must judge each of them with caution, and we must judge it fairly. As a scientist, we must be critical to a critique just like we are critical to the original article; and we must decide –using our healthy logic and judgment– which one sounds more plausible.
————————————–
My critique to a critique of Satoshi. Please once again note in mind that by writing this response I’m not saying that the work of Satoshi Kanazawa is beyond criticism. What I’d like to say is that everyone must be thinking critically BOTH to Satoshi and his critics. Just because someone feels the questions Satoshi pursues are unethical, he can’t suddenly think that all of critiques to Satoshi must be right and Satoshi himself must be wrong. He must -in my opinion- be able to independently evaluate the arguments of the critics and Satoshi’s and then decide for himself which one is more plausible.
Study 1.
Critique 1: Related to PPVT. This is a weak critique, because even the critic admitted that there is a collection of research establishing a relationship between PPVT and general intelligence.
Critique 2: Related to the range of the IQ scores. This might be a weakness, but definitely not undermining the finding. My question to people who think this undermining the finding: how are you supposed to know in the first place that your participants’ IQ score will have only limited range? You cannot. And just like you, Satoshi can’t. In my opinion, it is simply Satoshi was failed to acknowledge this limitation. This critique is no where near nullify the finding.
Study 2.
Critique 1: Related to operational definition. The critic pointed that Satoshi used two different concepts of religiosity. The first concept in Study 1 was measured using self-declared religiosity while Study 2 used belief in God. Does that undermine the finding? Hell no. In psychology of religion, people use different kinds of definition about religiosity; ranged from the frequency of church attendance, frequency of prayer, belief in God, belief in after life, to whether the individual declares himself as religious. It is simply a matter of operational definition (See Glock & Stark, 1965 for many dimensions of religiosity). In fact, if one is willing to admit, the fact that Satoshi’s finding holds even after using different operational definition just makes his claim stronger.
Critique 2: the critique is based on the fact the intelligence was measured simply by simple quiz. Is that problematic? Might be. Among all of the criticisms, this might be the one that got point. But to establish if it really undermines the finding, one needs to see how Satoshi justified this quiz. Had anyone used it before? What was the reliability? The external validity? If anyone had used such quiz to measure intelligence and it turned out to have concurrent validity with other measures of intelligence, then the method is justified.
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