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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 1, 2025

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You are asking me to articulate the academic standards of psychology from first principles. I respect your demands for rigor and honestly I'd enjoy such a discussion. I simply don't have the argumentative skill, time, or knowledge in epistemology to do that. However, it seems self-evident to me that discussing matters of God is not a valid truth-claim in psychology especially as a response to another article. It's somewhat common-sense within the profession and I'm not sure I could even find an explicit statement of it in an academic text. It's hard to draw the line exactly but it's easy to know when it's been crossed - hence my reference to the reasonable person's standard. If you disagree then I would rather hear your counterargument, affirmatively stated, instead of continued needling.

It is true that institutions fail students and play "culture warrior" at times, but I suppose I would have rather Fulnecky started by going to her school instead of immediately escalating. For every controversy we hear about, there are many more cases that go successfully resolved. Especially because the instructor is an untenured grad student, it is reasonable that the school could've sided with Fulnecky. Graduate students are not gods in academia the way tenured profs are.

It's somewhat common-sense within the profession and I'm not sure I could even find an explicit statement of it in an academic text.

Then the profession's common-sense may far less imbued with beneficent academic rigor than commonly perceived, and so be less deserving of public trust and deference. The social sciences do struggle with this, and deservedly so with the replication crisis of the things that do find their ways into academic texts.

On the other hand, I could find explicit statements in academic texts of how arbitrary and even retroactive application of rules is unjust in an ethical sense and bad policy from a professional sense. I could also find academic texts of how professional gain public trust and deference from being self-regulating, and how efforts to circle the wagons around a colleague who abuses their position from within the profession loses that public trust and deference that separates a profession from a mere line of work.

If you disagree then I would rather hear your counterargument, affirmatively stated, instead of continued needling.

I already have, and you continue to evade and excuse rather than address: it is unreasonable to punish people according to a standard which is not established.

If you will not stand by or take the time to defend the opposite from first principles, or even second, why should others give you yet another argument to to pick at tertiary principles? The first were already more than enough to cause you to flee both the motte and the bailey.

It is true that institutions fail students and play "culture warrior" at times, but I suppose I would have rather Fulnecky started by going to her school instead of immediately escalating. For every controversy we hear about, there are many more cases that go successfully resolved.

That you would prefer the victim to play by the preferred rules of the abuser is clear, but not a compelling reason to defer to. Particularly when you started your OP with rather unsubtle contempt for the victim in question, and used it to make an outgroup swipe for a lack of deference you've avoided every challenge to justify deserving it.

That you are attempting to smuggle in an appeal to an unfalsifiable majority is of no consequence. I could just as easily say 'for every case that goes successfully resolved, there are even more that go unsuccessfully resolved where the abuse stands.' You might challenge it, and I might raise the decline of conservatives in academia over time and the admissions of ideological discrimination as supporting evidence, but it would remain just as fallacious an appeal.

Especially because the instructor is an untenured grad student, it is reasonable that the school could've sided with Fulnecky. Graduate students are not gods in academia the way tenured profs are.

And they are not gods because when they try to play as such by imposing their own personal politics in lieu of objective standards, they find they can be crucified in the court of public and political opinion and not be the beneficiaries of higher intervention.

It is a salutary lesson for untenured grad students everywhere, and more likely need to learn it if they are to overcome the institutional rot and collapse of professional reputation their tenured professors have cultivated for them to inherit.

I see. I get the sense that we might not see eye to eye but I'll give it one more go. Please give me some charity here with my phrasing - I'm in a rush.

You are concerned about improper application of authority and the negative consequences involved when applying rules selectively, arbitrarily, or in the case that the rules have been not stated. I agree with this, believe it or not.

My response was that the rule of "do not appeal solely to Scripture to support a truth-claim in psychology" is not explicitly stated because it is widely understood. A text may exist somewhere that states it, but that text is not commonly assigned or propagated because the rule is the sum total of hundreds of years of epistemology and philosophy. It is foundational to the methods of psychology. I'm sure it exists but I can't easily locate it because it's such a widely held but diffuse belief. While it would be nice for this rule to be explicitly stated often, it usually isn't because doing so would be seen as unnecessary. At most, the APA encourages "evidence-based" practice and responsible data standards, which are usually hammered in during a research methods course. Fulnecky likely took this course, as she is a junior. She would have known. There is room for Scripture in psychology, but it would be more palatable if it was accompanied by appropriate argumentation.

For Fulnecky to have made it to her junior year and not understand this represents a significant failure in some way. So significant, in fact, I am suspicious of her immediate choice to run to the media. I reject your framing of abuser-abised, as there is no evidence Fulnecky had a compromised relationship with the school. Again, if she tried the usual channels and was met with a corrupt response, then it would be more prudent to go to the media. I just think the school should have been given the benefit of the doubt.

I respect your passion and commitment to standards of rigor.