#16775: razib — 02/23  at  03:55 PM
So, again — this isn’t about truth or accurate reporting of data; it’s about slanting data to make PZ look bad so you can score points with your buddies.

well, we don't know 99% of the blogs, so we had to make judgements of the names or check their bios. the blog you mention didn't have either, so that's probably why it was placed in "neither."

for there to be a slant that would mean that made errors were made with a particular bias, i suspect the errors cancelled out.

but sure, you are always right, so what do i know.

#16777: Rana — 02/23  at  03:58 PM
I'm glad you think I'm always right. I'm well aware I'm not, but I'm glad you think so.

I suppose that this means I'm right about _you_?


(fyi: Challenging a scientist and science-knowledgeable readers with an unscientific wad of incomplete and inaccurate data points isn't terribly effective.)

#16779: razib — 02/23  at  04:03 PM
how big do you think the error bar is?

#16780: Rana — 02/23  at  04:04 PM
Oh, and about not being able to identify the author of Cav Lec's gender?

What about "email Dorothea" is so complicated?

As, I said, smarter monkeys, please!

#16781: — 02/23  at  04:10 PM
Generally, bloggers have "About" pages or colophons that say who they are. Some don't, of course, and if it's impossible to determine gender from reading a certain amount of someone's posts then one might have no option but to put them in the "indeterminate" category.

With that said, if one undertakes a research project of some kind, I don't feel it overly presumptious of me to suppose that doing so places a certain obligation upon one to make one's research as accurate as possible, within reason. Given that it took me all of two seconds (most of which was loading time) to locate the necessary information on Rana's about page (it was the "Jill-of-all-trades" bit that clued me in), it doesn't seem unreasonable to think that you should have found and included that information too.

#16782: Rana — 02/23  at  04:11 PM
Honestly, I don't care.

My main point was that your data was _irrelevant_ to the issue at hand.

That it is inaccurate as well speaks to your credentials and skills (imperfect) but meaningless data is still meaningless, no matter whether it's perfect or not. Pointing out its inaccuracies also has the delightful rhetorical effect of putting you on the defensive.

So my criticism about your data was meant to undermine your credibility (and I think it has), not support my argument that you've failed to understand PZ's larger point, that you've failed to understand why he made it, and that your failure was in part deliberate, because you weren't serious about presenting an accurate picture in the first place. You wanted to make PZ look bad, and all you've accomplished was to make yourself look foolish.

That you did this with flawed data merely makes the polemical intentions easier to see; those intentions don't disappear if you clean up the data.

#16783: Rana — 02/23  at  04:14 PM
Oh, that "I don't care" was addressed to razib.

(And this gives me the chance to correct my singular verbs for "data" to plural ones. See, I told you I'm not perfect!)

#16784: — 02/23  at  04:23 PM
As was my comment; there were no replies after #25 when I started writing…

#16787: razib — 02/23  at  04:27 PM
three final points

1) i assumed there were errors in the data, which is why i made it public.

2) the proportions are shifted in a strong enough direction that the +/- doesn't undermine the general conclusion. most of the errors were probably in the "neither" category, so unless there is a strong bias for females to obscure their gender identity, it shouldn't effect the final conclusion (n which case, if you assign *all* the neithers to females that still leaves in around 58-42 male:female).

3) PZ simply made the claim that nz bear's ecosystem has a biased algorithm. i haven't seen any evidence that he's tried to explore this hypothesis any further.

#16791: Rana — 02/23  at  04:38 PM
Apples and oranges, dear razib. If PZ had made an argument about links as evidence of feminist cred, your stats on his links would be warranted. But he didn't.

If you want to challenge his claims about the ecosystem, you need to provide appropriate countering data. Data that proves the neutrality and accuracy of the ecosystem.

At least if you're serious about this.

As I said, the data you provide is irrelevant to the issues at hand, and all the froth you toss up as to its accuracy is just that -- froth.

(Is it just me or are there not parallels with the ID folks here?)

#16794: PZ Myers — 02/23  at  04:50 PM
Rana has already stated it: you have completely missed the point, and all your effort was wasted and irrelevant. I certainly don't think that the only fair distribution is precisely 50% male and 50% female (or 33% male, 33% female, 33% neither/dunno/both/whatever), or that I met this peculiar ideal that you invented. My criticisms of Drum and others were directed these ossified blogrolls they keep and this unthinking habit of not looking beyond a narrow few top-tier bloggers, and then blinking in surprise that there are these…women… out there.

That I don't meet some arbitrary head-count isn't the issue. The question is whether one is discombobulated by the presence of good, smart, aggressive women or not, or has some preconception that they are less noticeable or less competent or less talented or just plain less. I try not to make that mistake.

Even though you do, though, I'll still stand by my kind offer. Let me know where to send it, and that autographed photo will be in the mail.

#16799: — 02/23  at  05:32 PM
PZ, you're witty as always.

Razib, I'm not completely sure of the point that you're trying to make because your citicism of PZ looks a little unfocused, but I think I get some of it. Incidently, it looks like there is something personal against PZ, (as Rana noted) that is motivating your post (not that there's anything wrong with that

Rana, you're coming off as pedantic by focusing on the minutia and losing the big picture.

I read PZ's post, I read the linked post, and I read PZ's comment over at Kevin's.

PZ I think re: comment #35 you're moving the goal posts. You said none of #35 in your comments at Kevin's blog. Now that may all be well and good and #35 is your final position, but going only on the comments you left at Kevin's you implyed that men are actively biased against women, and that if a women designed ecosystem was established then women would zoom to the top. You said that didn't you?

I think Razib has ample ground to infer that each blogger is responsible for walking the walk, shall we say. By making the charges that you did you opened yourself up to Razib's inquiry. In reading his post, the question I'm left asking is what have you done to insure that women's voices aren't suppressed? According to his research you haven't done enough and you really shouldn't be leveling charges against other bloggers. Now, in #35 you state that they don't maintain their blogrolls, and I'm sure that you have good reason to believe that, but you certainly didn't write that in your comments at Kevin's blog. You can't invalidate Razib's critique by changing the conditions though you can clarify your new position (which, incidently, makes good sense).

As for Razib's second charge about gender parity, while it may sting, I think that there is some truth to it. If it's out of bounds to look at other issues in the Harvard case and we're held back 100% by discriminiation, then all the superfluous conditions that apply to this blogroll tempest shouldn't be considered. Now of course, this misunderstanding can be remedied by applying the same standards to both cases, and it looks like your comment #35 fleshes out your position, but that's only in response to the criticism Razib has directed at you, which true to form, you've handled in a good natured, and humorous way.

Are you on safe ground to be criticizing other bloggers? Apparently, you're not.

#16807: Rana — 02/23  at  06:01 PM
Rana, you’re coming off as pedantic by focusing on the minutia and losing the big picture.

I'm glad I came off as pedantic, because that was exactly the effect I was going for.

As for "the big picture" -- this is larger than razib, PZ and Kevin Drum -- and since you yourself don't know that, I don't think you're in a good position to accuse others of focusing on minutiae.

The post Kevin wrote that set off much of this is the latest in a long line of similar posts (a couple by him last year, the rest by other self-proclaimed liberal male political bloggers). In each one, the question is posed as to why female bloggers are falling short of some sort of standard, a standard that typically has limited applicability (either because it is inaccurate, as is the case with the Ecosystem, or because it is a weird idiosyncratic standard, like defining political blogging solely in terms of Atrios-like bulletin posting on federal policy). The poster scratches his head, and decides that the reason must be that there's something wrong with women bloggers. All of this, moreover, is couched in terms of puzzled concern for the well-being of the women in question and the nobility of the poster for even bringing up the issue in the first place. Meanwhile, the poster makes no effort to remedy the "problem" he's identified, even when he acknowledges that solving it does lie at least partly in his power.

Predictably, women bloggers then point out all the holes, presumptions and flawed reasoning inherent in these posts, as well as the failure to act on the principles supposedly underlying them.

Yet the reaction of the original poster and his (almost entirely male) commenters is not a re-evaluation of the original argument, nor do any of these defenders of reason and truth think to apply those standards to the actual post they're defending. Instead, they employ a variety of tactics to dismiss and insult those who protest and challenge. The vast majority of these tactics involve deploying gender stereotypes against women -- we are shrill, bitches, need to get laid, are ugly, are man-haters, are unreasonable, are irrational, etc. -- no matter how polite or civil or reasonable we may originally have been.

This is where PZ's willingness to step in and challenge Kevin's facile assumptions throws a spanner in the works. He's male, and feminist, and known to be one of the more respected scientific bloggers out there. So he has broken ranks, and demonstrated that it's NOT a matter of "the women" being unreasonable and whiny while "the men" are serious and reasonable. It's a matter of a flawed, sexist argument being ignored and defended by people who, because so many are self-professed liberals or progressives, really should know better.

So trying to call out PZ on this for being insufficiently feminist is laughable.

And it demonstrates the exact same dynamic seen time and time in regard to the women blogger question. Instead of going to the instigator of the debate and challenging him, you place all the burden of proof on his critics, while conveniently ignoring the elephant in the room.

By doing so, you immediately call into question any claims you may be making as to your regard for things like fairness, accuracy, honesty, etc.

Thus you demonstrate that you, too, have missed the larger point.

#16808: Feòrag NicBhrìde — 02/23  at  06:04 PM
I appear to be a 'dunno', and that's with it right there in my name.

#16813: yami — 02/23  at  06:24 PM
Has anyone ever tried the old "identical resumes" trick with blogs? Write identical blogs under different names, and then flog them to, say, all the flippery fish in the ecosystem - I'm not sure how you could do so without people cottoning on and ruining the joke before it's finished but it would be an interesting experiment. This discussion is so old and so tired; it would be nice to have some evidence to disambiguate between people's tendency to directly discount women's voices (selection bias), and the effects of biased algorithms and how the blogosphere works in terms of power-law distributions and systematically maintaining the status quo A-list regardless of who's in it and these putative supply biases and so on.

#16828: — 02/23  at  07:18 PM
Rana - You forget to throw in the kitchen sink. I know the big picture, and I'm as upset by condescension as you, but that's neither here nor there.

No matter PZ's scientific reputation he wasn't relying on an scientific training when he made his statements. He was 100% political, OK, so let's stop puffing up his ego. He goofed, or to put it more diplomatically, he overstepped in his comments.

He's definitely sounding more reasonable now, but not in the comments that sparked this debate. I challenge you to show me how your portrayal of PZ in this last comment flows from his comments at Kevin's. They don't and you're bolstering PZ.

What I read from this debate is that PZ is being accused of hypocrisy, rather than being insufficiently feminist.

As for your claims about the nature of the debate, well, the debate has shifted, hasn't it? It's not about Kevin's post, it's about PZ's talking out of both sides of his mouth.

Like, I said earlier, I agree with you about the nature of the larger issue and the condescension that gets slapped at us, but this ain't that debate. PZ got cocky or angry at the comments he was reading and hit submit before he thought through what he wanted to say. Come on, female ecosystem programming, no way.

#16835: Rana — 02/23  at  07:42 PM
Ah, but you see AmyJ, this _is_ a political issue, and PZ was perfectly correct in treating it as such. If Kevin had been offering his post in the light of scientific inquiry, it would have looked much different, and should have been responded to in kind.

It wasn't. It was profoundly UNscientific, and as such, deserved being called out for pretending that something like the accuracy of the Ecosystem was the real issue, when it wasn't.

This isn't about the Ecosystem, except in that it's low-hanging fruit and I'm not surprised that PZ chose to whack at it.

Therefore, to get mad at PZ for "talking out of both sides of his mouth" is doing the kind of nitpicking you accused me of, and to shift the debate in a direction you feel more comfortable arguing from, not a direct response to my point. That's certainly a valid rhetorical strategy, but don't pretend that the shift hasn't happened. Ditto for claiming that this is about hypocrisy and not about feminism, when it is precisely about feminism (why, if not, were the folks at Gene Expression spending all that time dividing up PZ's blogroll by gender?).

When he talks about biology and evolution and feminism, he does this both in terms of science and in terms of politics. Usually you can tell the difference easily; when he's meeting a scientific argument or making a scientific argument, out come the charts and multicolored diagrams and macro photos of interesting organisms. When he's challenging the arguments of people who claim to be "scientific" when they make what are political arguments in the guise of science, he responds by dissecting their rhetoric and logical fallacies, _not_ by throwing research data at them.

You're expecting a scientific answer to a political question, and in this case it's not appropriate. Because PZ is a scientist, he is qualified to make the distinction; Kevin's post, though it plays at science with its talk about the Ecosystem's ratings, is not scientifically valid. PZ pointed this out, correctly.

Moreover, I repeat my point. If matters of hypocrisy, or accuracy, or feminism are so, so important to all y'all posting indignantly here and at Kevin's blog, why aren't you going after Kevin? If you have, then you have my apologies, but if you haven't, then I reiterate my assertion that this is about trying to delegitimize a feminist voice, not anything about science or logic or the accuracy of PZ's assertions.

#16853: — 02/23  at  08:24 PM
Geez, Louise, you're like a hummingbird, zipping all over the place. Please stop spinning in circles. You wrote that "He’s male, and feminist, and known to be one of the more respected scientific bloggers out there." Now you're writing "this _is_ a political issue, and PZ was perfectly correct in treating it as such." Why bother bringing in PZ's vaunted scientific reputation then? That's what I objected to.

You wrote "to shift the debate in a direction you feel more comfortable arguing from." I'm not shifting the debate - you are. The debate issue is whether Razib was correct to imply that PZ is talking out of both sides of his mouth. That's the issue, not women bloggers. Women bloggers is the issue at Kevin's blog. Look at PZ's post - it's about his fan club.

You wrote "Ditto for claiming that this is about hypocrisy and not about feminism, when it is precisely about feminism"

You're making it clear that you can't hold two thoughts in your mind. Hypocrisy is the issue and the vehicle which displays it is women on the bloglist. That's why Gene Expression wrote their post. Can't you distinguish between these issues?

You wrote: "so important to all y’all posting indignantly here" and I have no clue as to who y'all means. I write for myself, who do y'all write for? You're not by any chance implying that commenters must agree with PZ against Gene Expression every time, no matter if PZ puts his foot in his mouth. Are you? Must I follow in lockstep and join this feud between these two blogs?

You wrote: "the accuracy of PZ’s assertions." Have you actually read his assertions? To put it undiplomatically, they're nutso. Go read them. Not comment #35, which is reasonable, but at Kevin's.

#16854: razib — 02/23  at  08:25 PM
. Because PZ is a scientist, he is qualified to make the distinction; Kevin’s post, though it plays at science with its talk about the Ecosystem’s ratings, is not scientifically valid.

please. one of the major problems with public discourse is people assuming that being a "scientist" means that one can comment with clarity and knowledge about any "scientific" topic. for example, biochemists, like michael behe, don't really have that much more authority talking about the latest developments in evolutionary biology than a lay person. organic chemists can't always communicate with biochemists. astrophysicists might not know much about electron valence shells.

kevin drum, who has a degree in math from cal tech, seems at least as able to comment on network dynamics as PZ, a biologist.

#16858: razib — 02/23  at  08:32 PM
non-trivial correction, drum went to cal tech for two years and majored in math, but transferred to cal state long beach and graduated with journalism.

#16861: Rana — 02/23  at  08:43 PM
Nice of you to self-correct, razib. There's hope for you yet! ;)

I wasn't arguing that PZ has particular expertise in blog-counting software (though he might -- I don't know). You're the one trying to put that particular spin on that statement.

No, what I was saying is that he can tell the difference between a claim made in a scientific idiom by a scientist and a claim that is not.

Similiarly, I can tell the difference between a historical argument made by a historian and an argument that cites cherry-picked anecdotes from the past in an effort to prove something about the present. One warrants the full-bore challenge with footnotes and citations; the other does not. Sorry to disillusion you, razib, but it's pretty damn obvious to even a laywoman like myself that Kevin's post doesn't fit in the first category when it comes to scientific validity.

You're not trying to argue that are you?

#16866: Rana — 02/23  at  08:56 PM
You’re making it clear that you can’t hold two thoughts in your mind. Hypocrisy is the issue and the vehicle which displays it is women on the bloglist. That’s why Gene Expression wrote their post. Can’t you distinguish between these issues?

Yes. But it appears you can't.

I've very carefully (and patiently) explained that this blogroll percentage thing is some rubric Gene Expression came up with to measure feminist cred. It stems from Kevin's odd little dance in which he notes that women bloggers are not often linked, but refuses to do so himself. You're projecting if you think this applies to PZ, who posted no such thing.

PZ's feminist cred comes from his frequent advocacy of feminist positions, his defense of his colleagues in science who happen to be women, his rejection of those facile bigots who'd like women to be barefoot, pregnant, and, above, all, quiet. It also comes from his refusal to make blanket generalizations about women in an effort to boost his hit count and make himself look all progressive and concerned.

So to hold him to some arbitrary, flawed, outside standard while failing to do so for the person who created that standard in the first place (Kevin) is stupid, and doing so makes you look like a fool with an axe to grind. A person is not a hypocrite if they do not act in ways they never espoused. (Go look it up if you doubt me.)

Again, I ask you, who is so worried about hypocrisy, have you asked Kevin about his? Isn't it *gasp* hypocrital to blast PZ for imagined hypocrisy while failing to challenge Kevin for his real hypocrisy?

Until you do, I can't take your criticisms seriously. In the meantime, I think you should go memorize the definition of "hypocrisy" before you go tossing it around so freely.

#16871: yami — 02/23  at  09:32 PM
Wait wait wait - "undergraduate degree from Caltech" == "non-trivial license to shoot one's mouth off on all things sciencey"?

BOOYA!

#16872: — 02/23  at  09:34 PM
You win, Rana. It's simply too frustrating trying to keep you on topic. I'm going back to being a lurker for I don't have the stamina, nor interest, in zipping around with you.

Your fawning hagiography of PZ is tiresome, unless this is your preferred debate tactic. But thanks so much for giving me the lowdown on how PZ is our champion. That's terrific, because as a woman it's beyond me to fight for my own beliefs. (end sarcasm)

You wrote: "doing so makes you look like a fool with an axe to grind" and I wonder if this too is something that you throw out when cornerd. First you accuse Razib, and now me. If PZ reads this and comes forth magnanimously and says that he should have chosen his words more carefully at Kevin's blog, are you going to accuse him of also having an axe to grind?

You wrote: "Again, I ask you, who is so worried about hypocrisy, have you asked Kevin about his? Isn’t it *gasp* hypocrital to blast PZ for imagined hypocrisy while failing to challenge Kevin for his real hypocrisy?"

What is it with you and Kevin? This post is about PZ's fan club. PZ is the one who came out blasting, not Kevin. PZ is the one who claimed that the rankings are the result of the bias of the programmer behind the ecosystem. PZ is the one who said that if a woman programmed a similar ecosystem it would result in women being in the top tier of the ecosystem. PZ is the one who wrote that all the issues we face in the workplace are the result of discrimination and he's arguing bias in this blogroll issue. Kevin didn't. PZ deems Kevin's blogroll insufficiently sensitive to women yet doesn't specify what standard would satisfy him. If it's all the result of male bias, then PZ has no excuse not to have half his blogroll being women. It doesn't matter what the population of women bloggers are, nor their expertise, nor other factors - he's made that clear, it's all discrimination. He's being hypocritical by holding Kevin and other bloggers to one standard but not holding himself to the same standard.

But I know that all of this means nothing to you because your mission in life is to diefy PZ and you'll not brook any possibility that PZ overstepped. So, you win, because I'm exasperated with your tactics. Congratulations, and I go back to simply being a reader because this commenting takes way too much time. My mistake.

#16873: LochNess — 02/23  at  09:42 PM
re: the mentions of Kevin Drum, here's an interesting post I read yesterday:

http://www.chrisnolan.com/archives/000696.html