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Reason Excoriates Paper On "Glaciers, Gender, and Science" (reason.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Reason.com's Robby Soave criticizes an article published in the journal Progress in Human Geography, for being "utterly incomprehensible," and "the least essential paper ever written." Entitled Glaciers, Gender, and Science--A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental climate change, the article is authored by researchers at the University of Oregon and funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation. Despite being filled with "buzzwords -- colonialism, marginalization, masculinist discourses, etc. -- with such frequency that the entire thing comes off like a joke," the article is accompanied by an enthusiastic press release from the University of Oregon, stating that "glacier research has been intertwined with gender relations, masculine cultures of exploration, geopolitics, and individual and institutional power. That, in turn, led to glacier-related academic and governmental jobs being predominantly filled by men. ... Melting glaciers are today considered a national security risk for numerous countries,' [one of the researchers] said. 'Power and colonialism have shaped the science.' That message is detailed extensively in the paper."
Your tax dollars at work.
Because glacier's and climate change care about your gender. -Bender.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
Can't believe the final sentence of the abstract is not a giveaway: "thereby leading to more just and equitable ... human-ice interactions." Wha??
SJW agitprop masquerading as science.
They don't call it cultural marxism for nothing!
What makes you think it's not news? And why does it matter that the story comes from Reason?
Human geography is economic geography (contrast with economics which excludes spatial interactions) and population dynamics.
The part about melting glaciers and the impacts on the security of countries is legitimate. Even in highly developed countries, water is a highly sought resource. It's essential for power generation, agriculture, sanitation, and human consumption. This has resulted in legal squabbles in the United States, especially in which individuals, businesses, and states have agreements to be allocated a certain amount of water while others have a demonstrable need for the same water. In some states, this has led to laws making it illegal to even do things like collecting rain that falls on your own property. Places like California and the northern Great Plains depend on melting glaciers and snow pack for a significant amount of their water. That's also true elsewhere in the world, such as Tibet and Nepal, where water from melting glaciers in the Himalayas is a hugely important source of water to the region. While there have been significant steps toward gender equality in highly developed parts of the world, there are more traditional gender roles in many less developed parts of the world. This is especially true in places where it's frequent for men to leave their families and take jobs in other cities and countries as migrant workers to provide for their families while women remain in their homes. It's very possible in those regions that the impacts of water shortages will be different for women than for men. The research isn't entirely inexplicable, unlike what the summary author would want you to believe.
The "geologist" who wrote that could one day be a diversity hire on a project that might actually be important.
And she probably really believes that she's doing real science.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Actually Human Geography is how humans create and maintain spacial interactions and how those interactions may form space. It is just a way of dividing geography into different branches (human geography and physical geography). And since I both studied and lectured geography (specializing in human geography and regional econometrics) - I haven't dug through the whole article, but it seems rather legit albeit more about how glaciological knowledge is created and how this knowledge is influenced by gender and how some of the presentation of that knowledge to the public has a strong gender bias.
As opposed to say the New York Times, CNN, or MSNBC. ?
Or is Reason bad because they laugh at you ?
Jane you ignorant slut
It is utter rubbish. Please do read the conclusion: "a broader consideration of ‘cryoscapes’, the human, and the insights and potentials of alternative ice narratives and folk glaciologies.". "Global environmental change research must pluralize its ontologies, epistemologies, and sensibilities". Seriously, this is what passes for science these days?
This thing truly reads like a poor April fools article, and I am sad to say that this is the case for a lot of other papers coming out of gender study departments. "Many humanities and social science disciplines and sub-disciplines have given significant attention to these issues, but there remain boundaries between these analyses and those considered central to the environmental change question." That part is true, and for good reasons. For examples of these reaons, read the conclusion of this ridiculous paper. If you want to be included in any serious discussion about these matters, you'll have be able to bring something worthwhile to the table. This ain't it.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
>> Just wow.. Other words escape me..
Unfortunately for us, they landed here.
bridging sociology and climatology
I'm willing - hesitant but willing - to concede that while this might be a well-intended attempt to bridge sociology and climatology, the colossal insecurity and complete inability to think critically revealed by this insanity guarantees that an attempt is all it's going to be.
The criticism is groundless. Okay, maybe the paper is crap. You know what? It doesn't take that much time (tax dollars) to write the paper. They got it published in a journal with a good impact factor. Beyond that, who cares?
Now, if you bothered to read the paper, you'd find cool stuff like, "Paterson’s artwork builds on an earlier project where she submerged a phone line connected to Vatnajökull, Iceland and Europe’s largest glacier. People could call the glacier (+44(0)7757001122) and listen to the distinctive pops, trills, and gurgles of the ice. More than ten thousand people called during the installation"
I've been studying human female geography for years. Fascinating terrain and beautiful features are there for all to admire. I can look at a platinum blonde and tell whether it's virgin metal or a common ore.
I've also met my fair share of females who have too much in common with glaciers. Got too close to one of them and nearly got frostbite on my naughty bits.
I was wondering the same thing. How sudden *is* a glacier melt, actually? Are we talking a decade? A century? Or more? Seems like even pregnant women could find the time to crawl to a safe place, even at a... glacial speed.
Somehow, this whole thing reminds me of Fire and Ice.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
Happy International Women's Day, everyone?
I watch and listen to politicians and commercials which discount this being a hoax. Several times a day I hear the ads about how men need to teach their kids not to beat up women (the assumption of course is that they all do). Several times a day I hear about the gender gap and how men just abuse women and keep them out of the technical jobs. Several times a day I hear about the wage gap and 70c on the dollar myth. Several times a day I hear about how men rape women without ever getting near them. (Today's was some reality TV woman claiming that some Uber driver raped her. But not really, he looked at her lustily and she 'thought' it could escalate into rape because he looked at her. *sigh* I really wish that I was joking.)
We in the intellectual crowd know that this is the upper crust trying to divide us to keep us busy. We have seen proof repeatedly that these are simply myths. The majority of the populous is not intellectual though. They fall for this just like they fall for celebrity gossip and reality TV.
While I certainly hope that this is a hoax, I am quite skeptical.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Would you prefer he said:
Human Geography is the study of political borders
?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
The Cosmetology of Physics, hairstyles that can be achieved with a Van de Graaff generator.
The introduction of the paper brings up the idea that "ice is just ice" and then dismisses it. If I am understanding the paper correctly (and how can I be certain of that!) the idea is that people care about glaciers, therefore there is a sociological component to them:
(italics in original)
The paper goes on to say that most research on glaciers was produced by males, which of course is a problem.
No, I didn't punch that up to make it funny, the original really says "men, with manly characteristics".
Again, this is the original text. "penetrate" and "exploitation" are both from the paper.
So the paper argues that all existing knowledge of glaciers is tainted by the maleness of the research, and also by the "colonialism" of the research. In short, not even the study of glaciers can be a pure study of the natural world; glacier scientists must be feminist postcolonial social-justice warriors.
The conclusion of the paper states:
I'm not convinced. The paper is very long on speculation and very short on evidence. If the maleness and colonialism of glacier studies have given us a blind spot in our understanding of what glaciers are, then give at least one example.
Even in the paper, female mountaineers and female scientists are mentioned. If the study of glaciers somehow rejected these women and their contributions, the paper doesn't give any examples.
Also I reject the paper's idea that the word "glaciology" should be expanded to include sociological and feminist context. It seems like a transparent attempt to latch fuzzy SJW ideas onto a natural science. Ice really is just ice; people can study ice without studying how society reacts to ice.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
The NSF is usually very careful about who it gives money to; only something like 10% of funding request are granted. For those who are curious, the basic grant information on this grant is available from the NSF:
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch...
The grant was done through the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (specifically the division of Social and Economic Sciences) -- as opposed to the Geosciences Directorate, which I believe normally handles the climate change work. (The NSF is divided into different parts for funding different areas.)
FWIW, the house science committee has long been working to cut the budget for the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences. I'm sure that good work gets funded by that directorate, but it sure does make me pissed that a BS grant like this gets funded, while more useful grants in applied physics (my area) don't get funded.
I wouldn't pin this bad grant on the NSF as a whole. Hopefully it's the exception for that directorate rather than the rule.
If our choice is between feminism and libertarianism, as the end of the article proposes, I think that I will take living in the woods growing my video games in the garden and sucking my internet from bark.
Being serious for the moment, I think this is an example of the sort of academic isolation which eventually got Turing arrested. If you work at the history department of a university where all you ever hear about is culture, gender and activism, it is unsurprising that you might forget that we live in a world of physics bouncing around and doing things, not really interested in how we percieve it. What's really annoying is that there is a grain of truth in the idea that we need to consider the cultural impact of geological events. We are people and so are primarily interested in how the world affects people. It is sensible for us to consider the social ramifications of our phsyical discoveries. This guy is not doing that or actually encouraging others to do that, at least not in an intellectually honest way.
One final note: Whenever a feminist says something along the lines of "science and engineering have been done in a masculine way, squeezing out female viewpoints" I want to shake them. We do STEM the way we do it because it is the way that works. New viewpoints are welcome, but our standard for success is interaction with the physical world. If a feminist viewpoint doesn't meet that standard then it is just as wrong as one which proposes that 1 + 1 = 1. My girlfriend is a doctor, her sister a bio-chem researcher. Neither of them has even a moment for feminism.
Yeah, it's a common narrative: scientist excluding alternative viewpoints and/or sources of knowledge. It is a valid concern. But here the authors make a lot of assumptions for which there is little actual proof: the nature of the bias (here we read the usual accusation of scientists being white male imperialist), and the value or even existence of alternative "narratvies", and the extent of the bias caused by exclusion of those narratives in the results drawn by the scientists. The language in this paper is rather accusatory, and makes me suspect that the authors suffer from more than a little bit of confirmation bias themselves.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Reason is a partisan think-tank without much thinking
So just a tank, then?
My only disappointment with the paper was that it read more as a survey than something offering new conclusions or new methodologies.
The claim that 'ice is just ice' is both tautological and missing the point. Glaciers obviously play a role in societies that cannot be captured purely by a description of their iciness. It shouldn't be surprising that analyses of the impact of (for example) climate change on glacier retreat that take into account only a certain subset of their role in a social, human context will give a distorted picture. Such selective views can indeed lead to policies that exacerbate existing power differentials.
Words such as discourse, colonialism and marginalization, the use of which is mocked without further argument by Soave, do have specialised meanings in critical studies and sociology. One might mount arguments about the relevance or quality of scholarship, but to criticise without any appreciation of the academic context is lazy and contributes nothing but noise to the discussion.
If I want to understand how ice melts, I will use the language and methods of physics. If I want to understand what it means to a community when the ice melts, then I will want to use a different set of tools.
This is what happens when you start off with one faulty deduction.
"Jaclyn found a report that noted how women are more vulnerable to glacier changes and hazards than are men," said Carey, associate dean of the Clark Honors College and a professor of history and environmental studies. "I had never researched these gendered vulnerabilities."
That report linked flooding from a glacial lake with an increase of sexually transmitted infections in women. "I was fascinated by how two seemingly disparate issues could be so intimately linked through glacial ice," Rushing said. "I wanted to know more about the relationship between women and ice, so we pursued the topic from climate-change vulnerability to knowledge."
Unless you're having sex with the wildlife, you get sexually transmitted diseases from, you know, sex with other humans. It's more likely to be a correlation between not being able to adequately dry off inner garbs while moving from flood areas, or staying in those areas, leading to more yeast infections which increases susceptibility to STDs.
People commonly believe that having sex will cause women to develop a yeast infection, but this is not the case. Women that are not having sex can still develop a yeast infection. In most cases a yeast infection occurs when the immune system is weak. Those that are overworked or tired can have a higher risk for developing a yeast infection. If you have just recovered from being ill or using antibiotics may also be susceptible to developing a yeast infection. Those that do not eat a proper diet, suffer from diabetes or are pregnant can also have an increased risk
A yeast infection is not a sexually transmitted disease in spite of the symptoms being relatively similar. However, if you have been scratching the vagina due to the itchiness associated with yeast infections you may have left small cuts on the skin that increase your risk of developing an STD.
Also, one report about flooding and stds around one lake does not good science make.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Yes.
Why? Because it's direct, to the point, and accurate.
Anyone in Academia that breaks Orwell's Five Rules should be tossed from a very high altitude airplane
1) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2) Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Iceland is not part of Europe. I know they want to be part of Europe but there is no geographic or political definition that can put Iceland within Europe. They aren't part of the Asian Continent, they aren't relatively close to the Continent. They aren't geologically part of the same continental plate and they aren't part of the EU.
Iceland is not part of Europe.
See, there's this telephone, and it connects one place (Iceland) with another place (a glacier in Europe). That way, people in Iceland can hear the glacier in Europe! And they don't even have to be in the same place!
Technology. It does WONDERS.
Of course NSF might be very careful about their grants and such normally, but they will now be mercilessly mocked because they made a single mistake. I am normally pretty supportive of feminist agendas as treating everyone equally is a strangely compelling idea, but I feel that this is such an easy target that I cannot ignore it:
"tldr: Its men's fault that ice melts when heated because the penis is the root of all evil."
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
"Or is Reason bad because they laugh at you ?"
You got it. Reason Foundation is a libertarian, but not Randian, think tank with some refreshingly iconoclastic views about the major political factions.
Most people believe that men and women should be treated equally, and have equal opportunities. Feminism goes wrong when it turns in to myopic whining about unequal outcomes. Unfortunately this is what much modern feminism has turned in to. It is not about equality at all.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
The whole premise is that people find some science more credible than other science based on sexist judgments.
Agree, your defense of this paper is pretty conclusive evidence that some people can't tell the difference between a political argument and a scientific one.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Because even climate scientists can use a sandwich.
If you aren't part of the solution, then there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
The paper is newsworthy in the same way as creationism in science class is newsworthy.
The only significant (and cruel) state sponsored gender discrimination remaining in the western world is against fathers in family courts where the default custody arrangements are dad gets the kids 4days/mth, mum gets the kids the other 26 and dad is forced to foot the bill for her privileged position in the eyes of the law. When will modern feminists stop openly supporting sexual discrimination against dads in divorce court, if gender equality is actually anything more than a slogan why are they actively lobbying AGAINST equal custody rights for both sexes?
If I'm wrong then it should be easy to point to a feminist organisation that has come out in support of 50/50 shared parenting, and yes every feminist organisation in the US has been politely invited to show their support by various fathers rights groups. To date not one of those organisations have accepted that invitation and many have actually responded by voicing their support for the status quo.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
You know what? It doesn't take that much time (tax dollars) to write the paper.
The grant was for a little less than half a million dollars.Not sure where you are coming from but for me that is quite a lot to spend on a paper especially one with no original studies. There was quite a lot of references to other publications but no surveys, no sampling, nothing pointing to some hard data the team gathered on their own.
Now, if you bothered to read the paper, you'd find cool stuff like, "Patersonâ(TM)s artwork builds on an earlier project where she submerged a phone line connected to VatnajÃkull, Iceland and Europeâ(TM)s largest glacier. People could call the glacier (+44(0)7757001122) and listen to the distinctive pops, trills, and gurgles of the ice. More than ten thousand people called during the installation"
I'm sorry, were they supposed to be writing a research paper or a Buzzfeed article about the top 20 weirdest things people have done with ice? And people wonder why the social sciences get reputations as not being real science.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
Yep, feminists ignore the fact that there are real differences in psychology and biology that WILL cause unequal outcomes. Not everything has to be a perfect 50/50 split.
"I am normally pretty supportive of feminist agendas as treating everyone equally is a strangely compelling idea, but I feel that this is such an easy target that I cannot ignore it."
The inability to see the internal contradiction within that sentence is a very common trait among those who are "pretty supportive of feminist agendas."
Because Reason.com has a pathological need to a) make up new controversy about climate change, and b) denounce anything vaguely social sciencey based almost entirely on their inability to understand the terms social scientists use. Seriously, I have never met a Reason.,com user who actually knows what "Privilege" is, and yet they automatically assume they can all parse a sentence about "white male privilege" because they're all the same wrong. When you point out to them that they are, in fact, mostly wrong instead of trying to figure out what the sentence would mean given the new definition, they will claim that the fact they're all the same wrong means that they are actually right, and the person who knows what actual Social Scientists mean when they use the term is an idiot.
This entire article is actually an extended tour of "I don't know what that word means, but people I don't like use it, therefore I am going to rip it shreds without bothering to understand it." Seriously, just read the damn thing. If I denounced a Physics paper on the basis that "Quantum" was inherently ridiculous I'd be an idiot, and the Reason.com guy is similarly an idiot for denouncing a paper based entirely on his inability to understand simple social science terms.
In this case the point of the paper is that historically guys have dominated glacier research, which is fine if you're just talking about how glaciers behave. But if you're talking about what the people around them should do in response to climate change it is potentially problematic because half the people around the glacier are not guys, and much of what those not-guy people do does not get much shrift in a guy-dominated research environment.
For example, there's no utility company in the mountains of Nepal, what're they doing for heat? Probably burning shit. Possibly literally shit (the Sioux used Buffalo droppings), possibly plant life. Either could be affected by climate change, but how? I can imagine a zoologist getting a paper on how the changed environment would hurt the local livestock breeding practices, but who would even do the shit-burning paper?
I read the actual journal article. What the authors seem to be talking about is the low credence that scientists in the past have given to indigenous knowledge about glaciers, which is a valid complaint and one that has been leveled at various branches of natural resources sciences of late. Why recognizing that knowledge counts as 'feminist' I cannot say. There are also observations that women have been excluded from glaciology in the past, and that had women been more involved, we may have done more and different research on, for example, the relationships between indigenous people and glaciers. I think those points are okay, as far as they go.
It's not a 'science' article in the quantitative sense. It's a survey of the state of the domain. It is clearly identified as such in the text. And it was published in a journal where such an article is appropriate.
People are making much of the $400,000 price tag. That money is distributed over the course of 5 years. I don't know what UO's institutional overhead rate is, but it is a reasonable guess that the Carey (the lead author) gets access to around $50,000 per year of this money. He has some budget worked out for that money that likely includes funding some number of hours of his own time, some hours for a graduate student, and then things like computer equipment and travel and so on. This particular paper is not the sole product of that money. In fact, it's not even listed as one of the intended outputs of the project. It is likely something that struck his interest as he was researching, and he chose to write it and see if anyone would publish it.
I do think the writing is florid. Sadly, that is the academic style right now. I believe that he could have made his point with half the word count. I also think that focusing on feminism rather than broader ideas of inclusiveness is likely to cause complaint, and, indeed, that is what we see here on Slashdot and in the reason.com write-up.
I don't think it's a bad article for what it says. I think how it says it could be improved. And I think the press coverage does a disservice with straw-man arguments. They're click-baiting people into raging about positions that the paper doesn't take.
1. Glaciers, Gender, and Science--A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental climate change is published, after a review process that is itself currently under review.
2. The paper generates a backlash among those who are fed up with social issues (such as feminism) intruding into the sciences; also those who strive for pure social discourse on gender issues unsoiled by what they see as a gateway to a name-calling tabloid fixation on some group. It generates a frontlash among those who think it sounds cool, and 'like' it on Facebook. No one else bats an eyelash.
3. It is suggested that it is in fact complete gibberish. Everyone is embarrassed as they gaze back in horror at the tomes of intricately crafted backlash they have written about it. They respond with indignation towards the process that permitted it to be published.
4. It is suggested that the paper seems like gibberish to the un-initiate but is actually a philosophical 'Chautauqua' of stream-of-consciousness ideas, a process that was described in Robert M. Pirsig's 1974 work Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Those who accepted that it was gibberish are embarrassed anew (after looking up Pirsig) but now, in horror, they realize their vengeance on the publisher merely exposed their ignorance of an accepted art form.
5. It is suggested that the paper is merely before its time. Someone suggests that it is a seminal work Everyone who is ready to let the whole affair go away, and others who (merely) cannot find anything else like it, just agree.
6. A new wave of readers encounters the paper after seeing this broadly stated but vague praise, and when they research back to the initial reactions they become suspicious, as it looks like an attempt to deliberately suppress the paper. The claim this, and in order to refute any such allegations, the publisher cleverly avoids controversy by simply 'calling for additional papers' on the topic. They expect that this will reveal them as unbiased and it pays off... and everyone thinks this is finally the end.
7. Unexpectedly --- other papers are submitted. Some that are obviously mere re-arrangements of words in the first paper, some are on completely different topics but written in the same dreamy style. The publisher has indemnified itself from a position of judgement so they all make it. Oddly enough a group has formed that studies and discusses each in turn, a liberal arts college offers a 'workshop' on the collective works.
8. But now everyone who ever held a firm opinion of the original paper, in light of all this, is starting to doubt their own mind.
9. It is suggested that certain kinds of scented candles assist in the appreciation and understanding of these works. A stream-of-consciousness rationale for this is given, and since the style of the suggestion is so similar to that of the original paper, it is taken as a natural extension of the process. Soon chants and other (comfortably traditional therefore non-threatening) rituals are meshed as well. Rolling Stone presents it as a 'movement'.
AVG Antivirus identifies the original paper as an Ancient Sumerian Nam-Shub Virus . But it is too late.
Millions of people are now gathering around the world in groups to sit nude in large circles, chanting each syllable of the works and improvising new ones while making elaborate hand gestures.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
What is sad is how this community has reacted to the paper in question. That reaction boils down to a sad chain of thinking and actions that is quite harmful
1) Confronted with something out of one's realm of expertise. Panic
2) Read the opinion of the person who provided the unknown. Sigh with relief that
a) Don't have to think very hard any more and
b) That person's ideas fit with the sexism/xenophobia/fear that's deeply harboured but expressed only as anger in online RPGs, IRC chat, or being right on the internet
3) Do a smattering of research to find information that aligns with view either from the source article or other person's comments about it
4) Absolutely do not take any stance that makes it sound like one's voice dissents from the masses yet still pretend independent thought.
5) You're free now! Make sexist comments! Escalate! Defund the NSF! Troll feminists! Troll anyone who disagrees with your thoughts and ideas
6) Avoid any sensible discussion about the topic at all costs. Become entrenched and righteous.
I actually come from a geography program (physical geography) and also used to laugh at articles like this for the simple reason that they used language that I didn't understand and couldn't wrap my physical science brain around. Someone in my family was a women's studies major and the jargon used in her papers and her readings would blow my mind and make me cringe at every sentence. It was grating because it was foreign to me and the unfortunate reptilian reaction for many people, myself included, when confronted with languages, concepts and ideas I don't understand is to laugh them off, to make fun and try to discredit. Because if I can discredit it then I'm the smart one again and that's much safer being humble or wrong.
I'm also a glaciologist and a major reason that I began to study glaciology was because I read all kinds of scientific and adventure lit. accounts of polar crossings, mountaineering winters spent on ships locked in ice etc. etc. All written by men and all with the outlook of conquering the natural environment. Like many boys, this appealed to me. I wanted to suffer in frigid temperatures and discover things and cross vast empty landscapes. As I advanced through the ranks as a glaciologist I had the pleasure of working with a lot of female grad students and undergrads and the neutral approach to understanding a natural system was the discourse du jour. Plain scientific objectivity (from my male point of view). I'm actually thankful that slashdot inadvertently lead me to this paper because it made me aware of the idea that the viewpoint I had taken about my science may have been coloured somewhat by who I am and the dominant percentage of male colleagues. Sure, the paper holds true to human geography's tendency to over-jargon-ize things. But when parsing human interaction and sociology and history and meta-science I can see how nuanced language becomes important. And, like any science, jargon is specific to a given field. Slashdot's audience will, almost by definition, occupy whatever polar opposite of technical jargon exists relative to the jargon in a human geography paper and that jargon is no more likely to be understood by a lay population than a human geographer's. And if you think your "ideas" mocking or belittling a paper like this one have any kind of intellectual merit you are wrong. One of the principal authors in multiple citations in the paper is a distinguished anthropology professor at the University of British Columbia who was awarded the Order of Canada several years ago. Furthermore, her husband is one of the most brilliant, well published, and distinguished glaciologists the field has known. These are two brilliant, high minded people that have managed to bridge the gaps that this crowd is stumbling and making fools of themselves over.
Why? Because it's direct, to the point, and accurate.
Except it's not. It's direct, to the point and excessively simplistic. There's more to spatial human interactions than borders. Borders are one emergant property of that. There are many others.
Anyone who breaks Einstein's rule should be tossed from a high altitude plane too:
Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Just an aside: If I hit a paywall, I usually made a sport of finding an unencumbered copy of a paper at an author's university home page.
In this case, it's not necessary. The full paper is available from the /. post's link. Once onto the Sage page, you'll find the links "Full Text" and "Full Text (PDF)" under the heading "This Article".
Luke, help me take this mask off
As such it's bound to be a paper about the impacts of glaciers on the human condition.
/.
This "article" reads like Brietbart trash.
Reading the sample paragraph, I found it wordy but it made sense. We have many studies of how glaciers affect populations as a whole. How about we focus on how they affect certain subsets of that population? Makes sense right?
As much as you nerds may not like to admit it, history has not been kind to women and the study of women involves legitimate words that describe real things that happened. They are not buzzwords when they are used properly, for their intended purpose. They carry meaning.
TL:DR; remove head from anus