Blocked and Reported
Blocked and Reported
Episode 100: The Wrath At Khan
0:00
-54:04

Episode 100: The Wrath At Khan

Stephen Jay Gould was such a dick

After Jesse presents Katie with two equally moral solutions to the goat roblems that have been plaguing her, the hosts discuss the recent brouhaha surrounding E.O. Wilson, Scientific American, and Razib Khan. In addition, Stephen Jay Gould was such a dick. To discuss this episode with other premium subscribers, click here. (Thank you to @metorotem for the episode title.)

Show notes/Links:

Goats:

WilsonKhanghazi:

E.O. Wilson obit: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/27/science/eo-wilson-dead.html

Two good books on this sort of thing by Alice Dreger and Stephen Pinker:

https://www.amazon.com/Galileos-Middle-Finger-Heretics-Activists/dp/0143108115

https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0142003344

E.O. Wilson letter quoted here:

https://spectatorworld.com/newsletter/misremembering-e-o-wilson/

The disastrous Scientific American article:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-complicated-legacy-of-e-o-wilson/

No need to, like, quote:

Good takedown:

https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6202

Even Turkheimer isn’t having it:

https://www.twitter.com/ent3c/status/1476626271090233346

Razib’s (and others’) rebuttal:

Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning
Setting the record straight: open letter on E.O. Wilson's legacy
A personal note When E. O. Wilson died at the age of 92 last month, I mourned because his death was the destruction of a library. Many younger biologists who focus on mastering new statistical and computational methods lack the organismic knowledge that older generations accrued. Knowledge-loss is real, no matter how fondly we cling to our modern expecta…
Read more

The Gawker article:

http://tktk.gawker.com/new-times-op-ed-writer-has-a-colorful-past-with-racist-169218784

His TakiMag stuff:

http://takimag.com/contributor/razibkhan/130

His Unz stuff:

https://www.unz.com/author/razib-khan/

Grant:

http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990pf_pdf_archive/207/207181582/207181582_200912_990PF.pdf#page=16

More accusations:

https://evolutionnews.org/2019/05/geneticist-razib-khan-a-darwinist-and-the-alt-right/

Here’s where “quadroon Jews” was:

https://www.unz.com/gnxp/how-ashkenazi-jewish-are-you/

Khan on eugenics:

https://www.razib.com/wordpress/2012/11/11/eugenics-the-100-year-cycle/

Khan in Discover forever ago:

https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/why-race-as-a-biological-construct-matters

2000 VDARE letter with race/IQ stuff:

https://vdare.com/letters/vdare-khan-letter-and-sailer-reply-america-s-imported-caste-system

People mad/repentant/etc.:

Good rundown:

Nuanced discussion of guilt-by-association and McCarthyism:

https://archive.is/R0m6D

Aaaaaand it’s gone:

REPENT, MOTHERFUCKER!:

Khan encouraged people to stay civil and keep the focus on Wilson, then went back to genetics and living his life:

He also went on the podcast Urbane Cowboys to discuss the whole affair:

Image: CAMBRIDGE, MA - APRIL 17: Biologist, naturalist and writer E.O. (Ed) Wilson in his Harvard office in the Museum of Comparative Zoology. (Photo by Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

Discussion about this podcast

Blocked and Reported
Blocked and Reported
Journalists Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal scour the internet for its craziest, silliest, most sociopathic content, part of an obsessive and ill-conceived attempt to extract kernels of meaning and humanity from a landscape of endless raging dumpster fires.