"Dear obese PhD applicants:..."

[orcenio]

[QUOTE=UNM psychology professor: Geoffrey Miller]
…if you didn’t have the willpower to stop eating carbs, you won’t have the willpower to do a dissertation #truth
[/QUOTE]
Another gem of wisdom from my second most hated Evolutionary Psychologist. It seems that when he’s not popularizing his approving interpretation to “Chinese Eugenics”[

China has been running the world’s largest and most successful eugenics program for more than thirty years, driving China’s ever-faster rise as the global superpower. I worry that this poses some existential threat to Western civilization. Yet the most likely result is that America and Europe linger around a few hundred more years as also-rans on the world-historical stage, nursing our anti-hereditarian political correctness to the bitter end.

](Edge.org)…Nor when he’s predicting the future unveiling of genetically determined ethnic underclasses…[

Human geneticists have reached a private crisis of conscience, and it will become public knowledge in 2010. The crisis has depressing health implications and alarming political ones. In a nutshell: the new genetics will reveal much less than hoped about how to cure disease, and much more than feared about human evolution and inequality, including genetic differences between classes, ethnicities and races.

](The looming crisis in human genetics)…He’s “Fat shaming” PhD applicants by twitter. (Of course) The University of New Mexico is now on damage control assuring people that they don’t discriminate possible PhD candidates by size/shape. While Geoffrey “King of willpower” Miller has issued some apology tweets, privatized his account, and (bizarrely) claimed to the university that this was all some sort of planned psych experiment on “provocative tweets” not a reflection of his real views.

[Enginerd]

@orcenio

…claimed to the university that this was all some sort of planned psych experiment on “provocative tweets” not a reflection of his real views.

Unless there’s an IRB-approved experimental protocol, that’s going to bite him in the ass big-time.

[Napier]

Wow. I hope his stupidity catches up to him and he gets a Darwin award, and he becomes dimly aware he is going to get the award just before he actually dies, and somehow I am there to see the look on his face.

[EmilyG]

Dear mean psychology professor,
if you didn’t have the compassion to stop picking on people, how did you have the compassion to study psychology?
Insincerely,
me.

[SpoilerVirgin]

@orcenio

…and (bizarrely) claimed to the university that this was all some sort of planned psych experiment on “provocative tweets” not a reflection of his real views.

Well, we all know how successful that excuse has always been on this message board.

[Little_Nemo]

Don’t blame Miller. He lacks the willpower to stop saying dumb things in public.

[thelurkinghorror]

@orcenio

my second most hated Evolutionary Psychologist

C’mon! Don’t leave us hanging.

Clearly, being a dick on the internet can be explained by genes from our nocturnal ancestors, who had success using “dickistry” under the cover of night. This let to increased propagation of their dickish genes and let to present behavior among skilled trolls.

[orcenio]

@thelurkinghorror

C’mon! Don’t leave us hanging.

Alright, I suppose to do otherwise would be cruel.

#1 on the list is “The great idiot of social science” they both score high on unfounded claims/predictions, but Kanazawa edges Miller by simply never responding to any repeated criticisms of his methodology/statements. Kanazawa’s method is merely to cloak himself in a sheen of scientific inquiry; self-label as a persecuted, unwittingly edgy, empirical scholar.

One of his blogs was named “The scientific fundamentalist” his next one equated himself with Galileo “e pur si muove” (blog deleted by BigThink).

[DrumBum]

Yikes ! I assume this guy has tenure or pictures of the USM president cavorting with farm animals.

[orcenio]

@Enginerd

Unless there’s an IRB-approved experimental protocol, that’s going to bite him in the ass big-time.

You called it. Apparently Miller is currently a visiting professor at NYU and that school originally dismissed the issue once Miller gave them an apology. However they reopened investigations when they heard the different explanation he had given to UNM.[

NYU initially said it considered the matter closed after Miller, a visiting professor at the private university, apologized for what Miller himself described as an “idiotic, impulsive, and badly judged tweet.” But the institution changed course after UNM, Miller’s primary employer, said it would investigate the matter because Miller told the latter that his tweet was part of a research project.

“That prompted us to look into it,” NYU spokesman Philip Lentz told the Chronicle. “And that’s what we’re doing.” (snip)

If Miller’s tweeting habits were part of a research project, the Chronicle explains, he likely would’ve needed approval from institutional review boards at one of the universities because it’d be a project involving human subjects. Those review boards at UNM and NYU are now investigating Miller and hope to reach a joint conclusion, Lentz told the Chronicle but did not provide a definite timetable for that decision.

](Geoffrey F. Miller Investigated By NYU, UNM For Fat-Shaming Tweet | HuffPost College)

[phouka]

So, this guy is several different kinds of stupid.

And he’s bagging on fat people? Welcome to your dose of kharma, amigo.

[Miller]

@Little_Nemo

Don’t blame Miller. He lacks the willpower to stop saying dumb things in public.

[QuarkChild]

I’m on the IRB [review board] at my college, and this “research” would definitely need IRB approval. I don’t know that we would necessarily grant it–the researcher has to show that the value of the research outweighs any risk to the human subjects (including psychological risk, not just physical risk). The research value of this tweet business would seem to be very minimal, so it would be hard for him to argue that the value outweighs the risk.

Not that it’s likely to have really been an attempt at research, but I’m just saying.

[orcenio]

NYU’s Stern business school has determined that this is a dead issue and will let Miller run out his stay (Miller probably screwed himself out of a job there). [

NYU spokesman Philip Lentz said in an e-mail that the review board met last week and agreed with Miller, finding that his “tweets were not research with human subjects as defined by the federal government” and that Miller “did not need IRB review for his work.”

Miller, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, will remain at Stern until Aug. 31, when his appointment ends, Lentz said.

](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-26/fat-shaming-prof-gets-to-keep-his-nyu-job)The University of New Mexico (where Miller holds tenure as a professor) also found that his tweets “did not rise to the level of research”. However (unlike with NYU) this is going to be very problematic for Miller, as his defense of the tweets was that his twitter account was “non-human subject research” and now everything he wrote cannot be brushed aside as simple academic study (not requiring IRB approval).[

The board concluded that Miller’s tweets were self-promotional in nature and did not follow research criteria which require specific research questions or hypotheses, systematic methods for collection quantitative and/or qualitative data and criteria for selecting respondents

](News | UNM UCAM Newsroom)Insidehighered.com raises the issue of possible legal problems Miller has exposed UNM to, in addition to “reputation damage” which IMO is the area where the fool has done far greater damage (and not just by this incident of fat shaming). What discipline (if any) UNM will give to Miller is currently up in the air.

[orcenio]

UNM has officially censured Professor Geoffrey Miller[

A formal censure by a university is a severe penalty as it places restrictions on the regular activities of the faculty member. It specifies limitations and requires specific actions to be taken. As part of the censure, Miller will be required to:

[ul]
[li]Not serve on any committee involving the admission of graduate students to the Psychology Department for the duration of his time as a faculty member at UNM.[/li][li]Work with the faculty co-advisors of the Psychology Department’s Diversity Organization to develop a plan for sensitivity training as it pertains to obesity. The plan must be approved by a co-advisor or by the chair of the department.[/li][li]Be assigned a faculty mentor for three years with whom he will meet on a regular basis to discuss potential problems.[/li][li]Have his work monitored by the chair of the Psychology Department.[/li][li]Apologize to the department and his colleagues for his behavior.[/li][/ul]

](News | UNM UCAM Newsroom)What is interesting is the stated reason for the censure: “for misrepresenting to his department chair and colleagues the motivation for a tweet he published this past June.” That is, the punishment is not for being an ass, but for invoking research (as an excuse for being an ass). Miller will also be returning to UNM in the fall (it seems that he burned his bridges with NYU due to this stunt).

[ultrafilter]

@orcenio

What is interesting is the stated reason for the censure: “for misrepresenting to his department chair and colleagues the motivation for a tweet he published this past June.” That is, the punishment is not for being an ass, but for invoking research (as an excuse for being an ass). Miller will also be returning to UNM in the fall (it seems that he burned his bridges with NYU due to this stunt).

Not really surprising. There are only a few rules that faculty need to follow, but those rules are taken very seriously.