Cancel Culture and Canceling versus consequences for actions

Besides the evidence (based on previous discussions) not showing that, the evidence in this case is that even when accepting that the basics were ok, there are still very valid criticisms about the hypothesis and conclusions.

So for Hill’s model to work, it needs a fairly strange and unintuitive combination of hypotheses. Therefore, if he proposes it as a potential explanation for greater variability amongst males, he needs to argue that this combination of hypotheses might actually have occurred for many important features. For example, if it is to explain greater variability for males in mathematics test scores, then he appears to need to argue (i) that there was a gene that made our prehistoric male ancestors more variable with respect to some property that at one end of the scale made them more desirable to females, (ii) that this gene had no effect on average levels of desirability, (iii) that today this curious property has as a side-effect greater variability in mathematics test scores, and (iv) this tendency to increase variability is not outweighed by reduction of variability due to selection of other genes that do affect average levels. (Although he explicitly says that he is not trying to explain any particular instance of greater variability amongst males, most of the references he gives concerning such variability are to do with intellectual ability, and if he can’t give a convincing story about that, then why have all those references?)

Thus, what I object to is not the very idea of a toy model, but more that with this particular toy model I have to make a number of what seem to me to be highly implausible assumptions to get it to work. And I don’t mean the usual kind of entirely legitimate simplifying assumptions. Rather, I’m talking about artificial assumptions that seem to be there only to get the model to do what Hill wants it to do. If some of the hypotheses above that seem implausible to me have in fact been observed by biologists, it seems to me that Hill should have included references to the relevant literature in his copious bibliography.

Meaning that, just like with climate change denial papers and creationism ones, when the right wing tries to apply an iffy conclusion (or a conclusion or spin made that does not really come from what they published) to modern society, it is very irresponsible still.