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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   16450 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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Fascinating article on the apparent controversy of naming a telescope after James Webb, former head of NASA throughout the 60s (content warning: NYT).

Broadly speaking, Webb is accused of anti-gay bigotry. There does not appear to be any dispute that the US government, as part of investigating federal employees who were suspected of being Communists during the red scare, also fired employees accused of being gay (estimated to be around 5k-10k total over 20 years). The origin of tying the accusation directly to Webb appears to have been borne out of a misreading:

But as the telescope neared completion, criticism flared. In 2015, Matthew Francis, a science journalist, wrote an article for Forbes titled “The Problem With Naming Observatories for Bigots.” He wrote that Mr. Webb led the anti-gay purge at the State Department and that he had testified of his contempt for gay people. He credited Dr. Prescod-Weinstein with tipping him off, and she in turn tweeted his article and attacked Mr. Webb as a “homophobe.” Those claims rested on misidentification and that portion of Mr. Francis’ article has been deleted without notice to the reader. Mr. Francis declined an interview. As Dr. Oluseyi discovered and NASA’s report confirmed, it was not Mr. Webb but a different State Department official who oversaw the purge and spoke disparagingly of gay Americans.

So someone made a claim and someone else looked into that claim and conclusively found the evidence lacking. Research isn't easy and it's reasonable to expect some mistakes, and I find nothing embarrassing or humiliating about just admitting error. But instead of just conceding their belief rested on a faulty premise, the Webb-is-a-bigot crew refused to let go of their favored conclusion and went searching for other reasons why they were right all along.

In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an executive order that essentially barred gay Americans from federal employment. It applied to all federal agencies and remained in effect throughout the 1960s, when Mr. Webb led NASA. In 1963, police arrested a NASA budget analyst, Clifford Norton, in an anti-gay sting in Washington. He was forced out of his job. Critics say Mr. Webb stood silent. Mr. Odom’s report for NASA, however, found no evidence Mr. Webb knew of this case in an agency of many thousands. In any event, he would have had no good option, said James Kirchick, author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. “It is unimaginable that a high-level functionary would have stepped in and blocked a broad federal law that applied to every agency,” he said.

And of course, people tried to come up with other reasons why a telescope should not be named after Webb:

Sarah Tuttle, an astrophysicist at the University of Washington, characterizes the question of whether Mr. Webb was a homophobe as unanswerable and a distraction. The point, she said, is that the bar should be set higher. Previous telescopes were named after physicists and astronomers — Edwin Hubble and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. Why not name in that tradition? “This controversy should restart the discussion about why on earth this telescope is named after him,” said Jason Wright, a Penn State astrophysicist who signed the critics’ petition.

Things got especially dark for Oluseyi, the guy who fact-checked the original claim. First they claimed his fact-check was an ill-disguised attempt to justify historical homophobia, then rumors spread around academia of some sexual harassment and mishandling federal funds. And so on.

So that story is entertaining on its own right, but it's also an interesting examination of the best ways to respond when someone points out an error of yours. Speaking for myself as someone who jumps at the opportunity to self-label as an egotistical narcissist, it seems like adopting a regular habit of admitting mistakes is plainly self-serving. It's almost a cheat code for how well it can bolster one's credibility, and I don't understand why it's not more common.

The basic contours of being motivated to save face are obvious enough, sure, but the part that continues to be absolutely bewildering to me is that dogged stubbornness only makes you look worse! I'm guessing there must be some other benefit here (assuming, of course, people who refuse to admit error are behaving remotely rationally) but I can't understand it.

In October (2022!), the Royal Astronomical Society in Britain waded in, declaring that Mr. Webb engaged in “entirely unacceptable” behavior. The society instructed that no astronomer who submits a paper to its journals should type the words “James Webb.” They must use the abbreviation JWST.

Why ever tell the truth when you can just keep lying and punish anyone who calls out the lie? The dogged stubbornness in imposing lies doesn't make them look worse, it makes them look powerful. It's just:

A black woman invented the telescope. You might disagree. You might even have some evidence to the contrary. But you have to ask yourself: is this really worth losing my job over?

A black woman invented the telescope.

They are already counter-attacking and gloating that dissenters will be punished, along with threats against anyone who might be thinking of speaking up:

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein: We are potentially going to be seeing a lot of things like this today, so let’s talk about this (reported) op-ed by Michael Powell, which is masquerading as an article. The claim that my tweets are about someone who has not been named in them without evidence? That’s literally conjecture being reported as fact. Opinion. The bad news: multiple scientists who have appeared in the press have Title IX stories following them around

There was no reason to involve Peter except to try and make me look bad. I don’t. I look principled, tenacious, and focused on upholding values that are important.

Couldn’t find a woman to agree with you, eh, Michael? That’s interesting.

It was anonymously pointed out to me that Powell has a history of writing articles that are transphobic and this piece should be seen in context of those prior pieces.

She's started calling Jim Gates a race traitor for "helping a white man attack my integrity"

She is being boosted in this by a who's who list of powerful science bureaucrats, like the UC system astronomy chief and a Science magazine editor, the chief editor, and the chief editor of Scientific American. Plus a horde of ass-licking sycophants with pronouns and shibboleths in their bios. "Thinly veiled anti-communist misogynoir by the New York Times" is a new one, I have to say. The American Astronomical Society is also tripling-down in response.

What chance does the truth have against that?

"Thinly veiled anti-communist misogynoir by the New York Times" is a new one, I have to say.

The part that's absolutely wild to me is that there would be any reason to veil anti-communist sentiments in the first place, or that someone would think calling someone an "anti-communist" is a good attack avenue. Being anti-communist should carry a strongly positive valence, only slightly brought down by the worst excesses of McCarthyism. Were I standing accused of being an anti-communist, I could think of no situation where the Yes Chad meme is more applicable.

The article he's criticizing has nothing to do with communism. But the guy's a dyed-in-the-wool communist who thinks that everything he disagrees with is inherently anti-communist, and that that's a bad thing. Since it would be bizarre for the NYT to publish an article about naming a telescope that devolves into questioning the labor theory of value, there's nothing obviously anti-communist about it. So it's veiled anti-communism. But only thinly-veiled; the rhetorical device here is to flatter the audience by pointing out something hidden but making it seem like it's not hidden very well so the audience doesn't feel stupid about it. Plus saying that something is heavily veiled implies that you need some special knowledge or ability to decipher the hidden clues and you can come off as a schizophrenic or a conspiracy theorist.

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