Scientist cited in push to oust Harvard's Claudine Gay has links to eugenicists

[Nevilledog]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/14/christopher-rufo-jonatan-pallesen-eugenics-racism-claudine-gay-harvard?CMP=share_btn_tw

No paywall link
https://archive.li/VbAwe

A data scientist promoted by the rightwing activist Christopher Rufo, the Manhattan Institute thinktank, and other conservatives as an expert critic of the former Harvard president Claudine Gay has co-authored several papers in collaboration with a network of scholars who have been broadly criticized as eugenicists, or scientific racists.

Rufo described Jonatan Pallesen as “a Danish data scientist who has raised new questions about Claudine Gay’s use – and potential misuse – of data in her PhD thesis” in an interview published in his newsletter and on the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal website last Friday.

He did not tell readers that a paper featuring Pallesen’s own statistical work in collaboration with the eugenicist researchers has been subject to scathing expert criticism for its faulty methods, and characterized as white nationalism by another academic critic.

The revelations once again raise questions about the willingness of Rufo – a major ally of Ron DeSantis and powerful culture warrior in Republican politics – to cultivate extremists in the course of his political crusades.

*snip*

[brush]

1. Eugenisists/white racists never stop, even though they are guilty of faulty methods themselves.

The best comeback to their racism is to read about Katherine Johnson and her Black women colleagues, or watch the movie "Hidden Figures" of the brilliant mathematicians and computer experts at the NASA space center during the early days of the space race in the late '50s and '60s.

Astronaut John Glenn trusted Katherine Johnson's calculations over the NASA computer's. And she was correct in calculating his space craft's trajectory to get him home safely.

[Initech]

2. I'm shocked, SHOCKED! Well not that shocked.

Fuck white supremacists.

[Timeflyer]

3. Anyone or anything promoted by Rufo is suspect.