Augury

So a few days ago I came across an article about Ben Barres’ article in Nature. (Very meta, I know, writing an article about an article about an article.) You can find a hundred of these with no effort, simply search on Google for “Barres” and “Nature” — The specific one I read isn’t important. Just for easy reference, here is the version from the Boston Globe that I’m quoting from.

In an interview with the Globe, Barres said his understanding of what it’s like to be a woman and a man in the sciences proves that women face significant discrimination. But he did not become an active feminist until January 2005, when Harvard president Lawrence H. Summers, who stepped down two weeks ago, suggested that women lack the same “intrinsic aptitude” for science as men.

Barres’ article is part of a coordinated media campaign to control the aftermath of the Larry Summers affair. According to the papers, Barres’ personal (anecdotal) experience outweighs the reams of evidence that support the fact that Men and Women are biologically different and that these differences can explain some of the variations of distribution we see in the real world. Anyone with even a moderately scientifically informed world-view can see that Barres’ experience is just that — His own. The thesis being presented here is, “Larry Summers spoke in heavily qualified terms about well-established scientific and common sense facts. One man’s experience shows that Summers was wrong!”

The statements that Summers, Pinker, and Mansfield made about women “are all wrongful and personal attacks on my character and capabilities, as well as on my colleagues’ and students’ abilities and self-esteem,” Barres wrote in Nature. “I will certainly not sit around silently and endure them.”

The agenda here is truly preposterous, so I was glad when I saw Agnostic over at Gene Expression do a takedown of Barres’ article. Agnostic does a better job at demolishing the antiscientific attitudes behind Barres opining than I could do, so read the whole thing.

For awhile I’ve been meaning to talk a bit about the situation over at Jeff Goldstein’s Protein Wisdom. If you haven’t been made aware of this situation, a slight recap –

The immediate situation involves one commenter on Jeff’s site, namely “Southwestpaw” who made some pretty sick remarks to Jeff. To wit:

Thanx for replying, Jeff. I’d rather shoot you too - as I said elsewhere, if I woke up tomorrow and learned that someone else had shot you and your “tyke” it wouldn’t slow me down one iota. You aren’t “human” to me. I get the feeling the feeling’s mutual.

I thought it would be fun, seeing as you’ve allowed all kinds of gross conversation about me and my body parts, to talk about your “tyke” some. Is it a girl? A boy? How old? I really want to devote some verbal attention to your tyke, the way your buddies have devoted verbal attention to me. I want to know what types of orifices your “tyke” has, how big they are, etc. before I start my shpiel.

So if you could just tell me the AGE and SEX of your “tyke,” I’d be stoked!

Thanx!

Ooh. Two year old boy. Sounds hot. You live in Colorado, I see. Hope no one Jon-Benets your baby.

Are you still married to the woman you humped to produce the toddler?

Jeff: Never should have brought my kid into this, Deb. Big mistake.

Oooh. I am one scared troll, Jeffy boy. You tolerated your pissants making disgusting comments about my body but now that I’ve dragged your pathetic progeny into the picture, your panties are in a knot. Just as I suspected.

Now you are threatening my livelihood, making veiled threats about Wal-Mart.

I reiterate: If some nutcase kidnapped your child tomorrow and did to her what was done to your fellow Coloradan, Jon-Benet Ramsey, I wouldn’t give a damn.

I feel bad about all the Iraqis and American soldiers who have died for a lie. I wouldn’t cry a single tear if your offspring were offed tomorrow.

This infuriates you and makes you want to retaliate by threatening my livelihood.

I say, Jeffy boy, bring it on. Show us all what your are made of, you pathetic, failed scholar, writer, intellectual. This is your intellectual claim to fame - this fourth rate den of blathering.

Protein Wisdom=Lipid Stupidity.

Got neurons, you stupid mofo?

It’s 9:03 where I am (Eugene, OR) and I predicted you would ban me by 9:00.

My understanding is that you haven’t banned me, but you are threatening my livelihood. That is, Jeffy boy, you have threatened to “tell on me” to someone that you perceive to be “my boss.” That’s actually more sissified than banning, if you think about it.

So, Jeffy boy, could you clarify what you have done or intend to do to try to derail my livelihood and send me off to work at Wal-Mart? Could you come out of the closet and say what you have done or intend to do, you pathetic little tattle-tale, neutered, rightwing a-hole?

Give your pathetic progeny (I sure hope that mofo got good genes from his mama!) a big fat tongue-filled kiss from me! LOTS AND LOTS OF SALIVA from Auntie MOONBAT, if you don’t mind!

Somehow, Jeffy boy, I think you get off on the possibility of Frenching your pathetic progeny, even if it is a boy. You seem like a VERY, VERY sick mofo to me, bro.

There are a few unusual things going on here: The first is that the commenter in question, the aforementioned “Southwestpaw,” posted under her own identity. Her comments linked directly to her own website, www.debfrisch.com. Apparently, Deborah Frisch was a professor at the University of Arizona (she has since resigned).

Agam’s Gecko comments:

Remember, this wasn’t coming from nobody@nowhere.com. She was proudly doing this as Deborah Frisch, adjunct professor of psychology at the University of Arizona, providing a handy link to her own website containing years of her own inane writings and “poetry.” A cursory check of her history on the inter-tubes also showed that she had previously held a position at the National Science Foundation (!) as a “decision scientist” specialising in “risk management” (!!). Someone turned up a webpage detailing her invitation to FBI headquarters at Quantico, as a resource for a workshop on how such fields relate to terrorism investigations (!!!). I’m sorry, but it’s completely impossible to make this stuff up.

The behavior above is absolutely shameful, and it’s really horrendous that any adult human being would engage in it, but it’s one thing to do so as an anonymous commenter venting your frustration, but quite another to do so and willingly soil your own name. That fact alone shows there’s something more at work here — Most likely the obvious candidate that the “Southwestpaw” Deborah Frisch has definite mental issues such that she craves attention, even negative attention.

But this is only part of the story. I wrote earlier about Jeff Goldstein’s dustup with another professor, Thersites. During that dramatic episode there was a mysterious anonymous comment left on Thersites’ blog suggesting vulgar things about his [Thersites'] child. Thersites tried to parlay this into a condemnation of Jeff, but was unwilling to collaborate with Jeff when Jeff offered to help discover the identity of the anonymous commenter.

Naturally these things go back even further — Who can say when Jeff Goldstein became an object of fetishized hatred? Whatever the beginning, it continues unabated. Personally, I wonder how long Jeff can take it. Even looking into that realm where he is constantly beset by disgusting bile gives me a headache — How much worse to be the one who is actually being attacked on a daily basis?

In any case, things escalated even further: Jeff’s site was DDoSed several times (I’ve lost count). Deborah Frisch, in the meanwhile, tendered her resignation to the University of Arizona, offered an apology and then reneged upon it. She began claiming Goldstein manufactured her comments (this is after her own guilty conscience led her to resign from her position at the University).

What really concerns me is not Deborah Frisch nor her comments. What concerns me is the ongoing efforts to whitewash Frisch. InsideHigherEd wrote a piece downplaying Frisch’s improprieties without even contacting Goldstein for his take on the matter. Not really news to me, as some acquaintances of mine were similarly mistreated by InsideHigherEd’s shoddy reporting a few months ago. The Tuscon Citizen has a story up that frames the story as a case of incivility gone wrong by both parties. Jeff’s no angel, granted, and I have issues with his rhetoric, but the moral equivalency here leaves a black scar upon every hand that practices it. And these are just somewhat reputable outfits — Scratch the surface and you’ll find a hundred blogs with a thousand comments to the effect of, “Goldstein deserved it” and “Goldstein got his feelings hurt, Frisch lost her job, which is worse?”

Unbelievable.

Deborah Frisch is an insane individual, such outliers exist in every walk of life. But what does it say when substantial numbers of liberal bloggers devote more time to equivocation than condemnation? Let’s be clear here — It’s anyone’s right to ignore the issue, and I don’t expect liberal bloggers to answer for this nutcase. But when the issue is broached, how it’s broached is important. Most of what I’ve seen so far is fingers pointing back at Jeff and that’s just unacceptable. It doesn’t matter what Jeff behaves like online, it can’t justify bringing his wife and kid into that cesspool of hate. We can ignore Debbie but we can’t ignore those fingers.

In this post a few days ago about Eve Fairbanks’ story I mentioned that I thought her terminology was telling. Apparently she thinks it’s a “betrayal” or a “guilty pleasure” to have … independent ideas about politics. I think, fundamentally, this is what drives a lot of the insanity against Jeff. Jeff should have been on their side, but he’s not. He’s a betrayer, which wouldn’t be so bad except — well, he’s been showing up Thersites and other true believers on his blog for years. The boy is a regular Lucifer, so he must be cast down. You say that a third of the stars shall fall? So be it.

Related: Matoko Kusanagi on Defector Theory. The Futurist on related themes.

A classic story of He Said, She Said, with a twist. A Slashdot user, Guy Montag, was recently featured in an article about the dating site ConservativeMatch.com in The New Republic. Apparently, the young Eve Fairbanks was assigned to go on dates with men she met via ConservativeMatch and then told to write stories about them. His experiences on the date and responses to the article can be read here. The article he is responding to is reproduced in its entirety here. (Strange coincidences: The blog where the article is reproduced is made by the same designer as the one I’m using — No wonder it seemed kind of familiar.)

To be fair, I didn’t have a heck of a lot of problems with Fairbanks’ article: It seems like she did a bit of exaggeration in the name of either writing a more interesting article or appealing to political stereotypes, but on the whole she seems pleasantly surprised by her experiences. Guy seems to take issue with a lot of minor things, but at the same time I can’t really blame him — If it were my character being misrepresented by some deceitful journalist I’m sure I’d take them to task on every piddling little error as well.

The main issue is simply this:

A subversive note or two of liberalism is a feature of many profiles on ConservativeMatch–and of everyone I went on dates with. Shooter told me he drives a hybrid car. One poster does yoga..The edge of guilty-pleasure liberalism in people’s profiles creates an interesting tension on ConservativeMatch… Some of these betrayals are not so benign.

The tone she creates here, intentionally or unintentionally, is one in which her political adversaries are presented, as Guy himself insinuates in later commentary, as “Gorillas in the Mist.” Guilty-pleasure liberalism? Betrayals? This really tells us more about Eve’s own internal caricatures and cliquish perception of politics than it does anything else. Personally, I’d worry if I knew anyone who took having different political ideas as being a betrayal.