> For all of this, dismissing Khan as a crank would be a mistake. While his associations are extremist, his science is not, and very little of what he writes about human genetics falls outside the pale of ordinary scientific discourse.
> Most scientists will object to this application of their work, but the illiberal challenges to scientific scholarship, perhaps now more than ever, seem destined to come not just from creationists and neo-skinheads, but from self-styled hyper-rationalists, too — from people who adhere to what they consider a “science-first” worldview, who often ignore history and social context, and who are predisposed to drawing troubling, and sometimes patently racist conclusions based on otherwise dispassionate science.
> In other words, they’ll come from people who sound a lot like Razib Khan.
My critique is that there is only one demographic in the US that attacks with the term "MSM" and then leads right into referencing this guy. "Mainstream media" used like this is a fingers-in-your-ears right wing in-group catch phrase and has been for probably more than two decades. And when a person using that secret handshake references something like this, it leads the observant to wonder.
The question isn't whether a scientist should drop work if racists like it, but rather whether a scientist would work diligently to associate with racist publications without aligning motive.
Do you think there's science backing up that "black people are innately less intelligent than white people"?
