Comments Elsewhere

How would you know how much or how little of “the research” on this topic I have read? The short answer is that you have no idea, because you haven’t begun to engage with the arguments at hand. If you want to demonstrate that there are important facts of which I am not aware you will have to, you know, actually point them out, and not just wave your hands at The Science and The Research without discussing any concrete findings.

Jonathan: For example, because the study of race was used in the past for nefarious purposes, discount any current data on race, even if it means potentially more effective medications for people of certain races.

This is a strawman. Nobody suggested that you should “discount any current data” on so-called “mental illness.” I said that the history of psychiatric abuse is a good reason for caution in appeals to consensus, which is something different. Similarly, people certainly should be cautious of research on racial difference, given the history of racialist pseudoscience. The epistemic authority of a scholarly community depends (in part) on its reliability in getting to the truth, and when there’s a long history of pseudoscience being promoted in order to provide ideological cover for prejudice, there is nothing logically askew in exhibiting a healthy degree of skepticism.

This is hardly ancient history. For example, Homosexuality was a recognized “disorder” until 1974, and so-called “Gender Identity Disorder” remains in the DSM to this day. Walter Freeman was still cutting up people’s brains not 40 years ago.

Of course, if you have an actual argument or empirical data to present, rather than just an appeal to The Science, then that argument and that data can and should be evaluated on its own merits, independently of whatever historical worries one may have. But since you have produced nothing of the sort, there is nothing to be assessed on its own merits; we have only the appeal to authority.

Jonathan: I’m not making an appeal to authority or scientific consensus.

Dismissing an argument on the grounds of an assertion, without further evidence, that its conclusion is “backwards, anti-science, and ignorant” is one of two things. Either it’s (1) an appeal to authority, which can sometimes be a cogent form of argument in the right context, or (2) simple abuse in place of an argument, which never is. I took the more charitable interpretation of supposing that you intended for your remarks to be (1), and so gave an argument as to why the appeal is misplaced, in this context.

If I misunderstood you, and should have adopted the less charitable interpretation, well, I guess I apologize.