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submitted 1 year ago by girlfreddy@lemmy.ca to c/news@lemmy.world

Rufo described Jonatan Pallesen as “a Danish data scientist who has raised new questions about Claudine Gay’s use – and potential misuse – of data in her PhD thesis” in an interview published in his newsletter and on the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal website last Friday.

He did not tell readers that a paper featuring Pallesen’s own statistical work in collaboration with the eugenicist researchers has been subject to scathing expert criticism for its faulty methods, and characterized as white nationalism by another academic critic.

The revelations once again raise questions about the willingness of Rufo – a major ally of Ron DeSantis and powerful culture warrior in Republican politics – to cultivate extremists in the course of his political crusades.

The Guardian emailed Rufo to ask about his repeated platforming of extremists, and asked both Rufo and the Manhattan Institute’s communications office whether they had vetted Pallesen before publishing the interview. Neither responded.

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[-] cmbabul@lemmy.world 58 points 1 year ago

Motherfucking eugenics is making a comeback, Jesus they’ll be citing phrenologists next

[-] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 48 points 1 year ago

Dude I dunno. I'm disabled. Eugenics never left, people just got smarter talking about it.

[-] cmbabul@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago

A fair point, I’m autistic and have definitely had questions about kids, I’m not having them for different reasons but I guess I didn’t realize that IS eugenics in the moment. Nobody’s been feeling my skull though

[-] DarkGamer@kbin.social 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Voluntarily eliminating heritable genetic diseases is also eugenics, unfortunately many people inappropriately associate the term exclusively with the atrocity of forced eugenics/genocide.

[-] PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 11 points 1 year ago

Well no, eugenics is the bad stuff, when you decide whether or not to have kids based on the likelihood for them to inherit traits for you you'd rather not pass along, that's just family planning

[-] thereticent@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You are technically correct, but the practical thing to do is abandon the term when it's not forced/tragic. No reason to rehabilitate the term.

And a fun but important fact is that genetic and heritable diseases are not necessarily the same. I went too long as a clinician conflating the two: https://www.veritasint.com/blog/en/difference-between-genetic-and-hereditary-diseases/ (corporate link but correct and well written)

[-] rusticus@lemm.ee -5 points 1 year ago

Not understanding simple genetics is embarrassing. Don’t know what your training and degree are but that is unacceptable.

[-] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Who decides what a disease is and how do you ensure that they don't make a mistake and the program is 100% voluntary with zero coercion ever?

[-] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I am very sorry. If it helps any at all you should know that the majority of people are wise enough to know that an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. If we can cleanse people based on a disability we can cleanse people based on anything really. Maybe bald people are not fit to live, maybe ugly people, maybe short people, maybe brown, maybe woman with small boobs. Once humans are not the measure of all values, once science is replaced with bullshit like IQ, the values of the world are whatever the powers-that-be declare to be icky.

You have value, your value is the same as mine, your value is the same as everyone else. Fuck Nazis, fuck IQism, and fuck anyone who tries to make you or anyone else disabled feel like crap for the crime of existing.

[-] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

Sure why not? For some reason Google news wants to tell me my horoscope every day, I know ani-vaxxers, I know people who swear by chiropractors and reki healing, I know gluten avoiders. Should we even discuss what happened to all the TV networks that used to run educational programs?

Maybe fuck it, maybe we are all heading back into the dark ages.

[-] newthrowaway20@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Just wanna say some people have to really avoid gluten. It's called celiac's disease.

[-] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I am not talking about the Celiac crowd

[-] bufordt@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago

Sure, but when someone tells a server that they absolutely can't have gluten, but then says that the fries cooked in the same oil as the breaded chicken fingers will be fine, they probably don't have celiac disease.

[-] rusticus@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Broca’s area bitch!

[-] DigitalTraveler42@lemmy.world 38 points 1 year ago

I like how this is all really starting to blow up in both Harvard and the ouster faction's faces, because it really was just a bunch of rich anti-woke assholes throwing a tantrum over something stupid in order to have one less black person in a position of authority.

Also the fact that the female worst version of Joe Lieberman, Elise Stefanik, is one of the ring leaders of this should have told everyone that this is just performative political bullshit based in racism rather than the antisemitism she's claiming.

I'm all for calling out antisemitism, but this wasn't it.

[-] jonne@infosec.pub 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

How is it blowing up in their faces? They got their scalp, they've shown they can get rid of anyone they don't like for bullshit reasons, and there's going to be no consequences to either Rufo or Bill Ackman.

The fact that it's all lies doesn't matter, it didn't matter when Rufo used misleading definitions of DEI or any of the other witch hunts he started. The mainstream media will just uncritically repeat what he says and go along with everything.

[-] DigitalTraveler42@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

While all fair points, but when a guy like Bill Ackman is getting press he's losing, overall I'm just appreciative of any blowback coming their way.

[-] rusticus@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago

Fuck Bill Ackman. Love that his wife is taking it on the chin as she should.

[-] jonne@infosec.pub 5 points 1 year ago

Eh, it's maybe a little bit funny to see how thin-skinned he is, but he's not going to lose any business over this, and he got everything he wanted. He won, and he's only pissed off that people on Twitter were mean to him about it.

[-] rusticus@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

Thank you for simplifying it. This was a slam dunk move for corporatists whose primary goal is divide and conquer. Mission accomplished!

[-] son_named_bort@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

I'm shocked! SHOCKED!

Well, not that shocked.

[-] blahsay@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Wow Harvard has a lot of money and a good PR team. They're managing to somehow switch the conversation so it's somehow no longer about someone plagiarizing their entire career.

This is not a left or right issue.

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this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
286 points (96.4% liked)

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