Tuesday, I exposed ideological excesses at Concordia.
I could have taken almost any university, here or elsewhere, although Concordia is at the forefront of the slippage.
A reader asks me to better explain why so much supposedly serious academic work is, in my opinion, fraudulent ideological mush. My pleasure.
Humbug
I am particularly targeting work carried out in the name of anti-racism, gender theory, which wants to deconstruct the notions of man and woman, and “decolonialism”, which wants to show how the often disadvantaged social statuses of visible minorities, public policies, works of art, our mentalities, etc. are the results of ancient colonization.
By “scientific fraud,” I mean deliberately wanting to deceive in order to advance a political-ideological agenda.
For lack of space, let’s focus on the work carried out in the name of “decolonization”.
The poorly informed reader or the falsely innocent manipulator will often ask: what is the harm in recognizing the reality of colonization and its negative effects?
The problem is not in the observation. It is statistically documented, for example, that Indigenous people generally have more difficult lives than non-Indigenous people.
- Listen to Joseph Facal’s column via QUB :
The problem with a lot of this work is in the method, in the approach, which is not scientific for five reasons.
First, a scientific approach is guided by hypotheses, therefore suppositions, but the conclusion is not written in advance.
You start with questions, not answers.
Among the “decolonials”, the point of arrival is always known in advance: it will be the fault of the “white” West.
Second, a solid scientific theory must be able to explain a wide range of similar situations. The law of gravitation explains the degree of attraction between two objects based on their mass and distance.
But “decolonial theories” are only interested in Western colonization, never in Arab, Ottoman or other colonization.
Third, a scientific theory must demonstrate its superiority over competing theories on a logical, not moral, level.
“Decolonial theory” does not do this. She asserts her superior virtue, then calls those who question her racist.
Fourth, a genuinely scientific theory does not hide the facts that contradict it.
“Decolonial theories” gloss over the fact that the worst slave trade, in terms of duration and volume, was Arab-Muslim, that Asian minorities perform admirably, that organized crime ravages certain indigenous communities, that the majority of Muslims in Europe say they are not discriminated against, etc.
Charge
Fifth, these pseudotheories treat any statistical difference as “evidence” of racism.
What if the over-representation of whites in university teaching staff, for example, could also be explained because long studies with uncertain outcomes are not encouraged in certain communities?
These works do not seek objective truth. They want to draw up an indictment.
This is why they constitute scientific fraud.