Little-known Georgian College in Barrie, Ontario has achieved a certain notoriety, but not in a good way. Having created a (provincially funded) three-year program in Homeopathy, to launch next fall, Georgian has attracted the ire of outraged critics demanding funding be cut for the program.
Homeopathy is a practice based in the theory – not the science, note – that “like cures like”: that is, if a substance can make a healthy person sick, the same substance, massively diluted, can make a sick person well.
Scientific studies have shown that homeopathy, if it works at all, functions on the placebo principle of “magical thinking.”
Yet three years ago, Ontario regulated the practice many observers call “quackery.”
In a letter to Ontario’s minister of advanced education and skills development, Deb Mathews, Barrie physician Chris Giorshev, who chairs the Ontario Medical Association’s section on chronic pain, wrote, “Homeopathy is a pseudo-science and this alone should be sufficient to reject the inclusion of such a program at a publicly funded institution.”
Other scientists have added their voices in condemnation of the program.
It’s rather interesting that critics of homeopathy feel no need to restrain their irritation or mince their words. “Pseudo-science,” “magical thinking” and “quackery” leave no doubt as to the contempt in which homeopathy is held by real scientists. You would think, though, from the indignation they express, that the phenomenon of a pseudo-science infiltrating an educational institution were something new or startling or unique.
In fact, our institutions of higher learning are riddled with (funded) pseudo-scientific “disciplines”. Trouble is, most of them have to do with identity politics, and the very same people who feel no social constraint in sneering aloud at homeopathy, are eerily silent on other pseudo-scientific, but politically correct, belief systems.
A real science is one that has a basis in observation. A pseudo-science is one that rests on an unproven assumption. So, for example, astronomy is a science; astrology is a pseudo-science. Real science arises from intellectual curiosity and results in findings that arise out of disinterested exploration of reality.
Conclusions follow upon observation, data collection and proven methodological principles. Pseudo-science arises from ideology or a belief system, which rest on theories rather than proven conclusions, and then goes on to build castles in the air with narratives, sub-theories and unscientific “studies” that support the foreordained conclusion.
A (funded) program called SOGI 123, which stands for Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, is now operative throughout B.C. schools, K-12. In this program, gender fluidity – the idea that biological sex and gender are unlinked – is taught as though it were settled science. But there’s nothing settled about it. It’s a theory. Real science tells us that patterns in the human brain mosaic distinguish males from females.
In the SOGI 123 program, children are encouraged to think it is normal to consider yourself neither a girl nor a boy, but something in between.
In the opinion of many parents and of responsible researchers in this field, such encouragement creates anxiety about observable reality – children’s own bodies – where none existed before.
Some go so far as to call it child abuse.
Certainly there has been a dramatic increase in gender identity issues in the past few years, which would support the idea that children are being influenced by transactivism in the education system.
Homeopathy is at least taught to adults. In SOGI 123 and similar programs that have been, or will be adopted by other provincial educational departments, we are seeing vulnerable young minds exposed to theories that are every bit as untethered from science as homeopathy, and potentially far more damaging.
True gender dysphoria is real, but it is rare, and should be treated by medical specialists, leading to transition if necessary, but only if necessary. The SOGI 123 program, conceived and implemented by activists, and government-funded, is, like homeopathy, a form of “magical thinking,” “quackery” and “pseudo-science.”
But where is the outrage from real scientists?
This is yet another reason why I’ve been lobbying for so many years to have Critical Thinking introduced into the High School curriculum. It has been an uphill battle all the way. The basis of fundamental thinking skills has been scaffolded into modules and can be find in my latest book: http://www.sixstepstobetterthinking.com
If students were taught Critical Thinking skills at a young age, they would know why pseudoscientific clap trap doesn’t work and why SOGI 123 is based more on political ideology than science.
Fortunately there is SCIENTIFIC knowledge available, albeit suppressed by pharma, medical establishment and a certain “religious” organization, which confirms, that sexual exposure in real biological form is extremely harmful to immature human beings i.e. children of young ages. The result is, that more and more people become sexually confused and exhibit homosexual tendencies. A few decades ago there was an experiment carried out in which one pair of mice were kept in a terrarium with all necessary life sustaining resources, except space. They procreated happily to the extend, that space limited their efforts. When the space was too little for the number of mice, they grouped themselves in opposite corners and showed homosexual behaviors. This was Mother Natures way of curtailing proliferation and the last mouse died after three and a half years. A doctor has proven through brain CTs, that one of the causes of homosexual feelings is the practice in small, very young children to play “doctor” in group gatherings and this leaves the mark in the brain of some of them, causing said feelings.
Some very good points – particularly like “pseudo-science infiltrating an educational institution”. Rather like the egregious case of Lysenkoism, although that early “postmodernist rot” extended to the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences rather than just “an educational institution”.
But in addition to that, while the author, Barbara Kay, seems quite correct that “gender fluidity – the idea that biological sex and gender are unlinked” is anything but “settled science” – more like a dog’s breakfast than not, one might suggest that the concept of gender “fluidity” is not totally untenable. Although that seems to depend crucially on precisely what is meant by the term “gender” in the first place, by “sex” in the second, and, to some extent, their conflation in the third.
And the definition of “sex”, and of the classes “male” and “female”, seems straight forward enough:
“Organisms of many species are specialized into male and female varieties, each known as a sex. Sexual reproduction involves the combining and mixing of genetic traits: specialized cells known as gametes combine to form offspring that inherit traits from each parent.”
Although many are rather cluelessly muddying the waters by arguing that individual cells have a sex – cells reproduce by division (mitosis), organisms by sex (generally).
But while “gender” is kind of vague, Wikipedia seems to provide a reasonable starting point, even if “gender identity” is a somewhat “thorny” aspect:
“Gender is the range [AKA, spectrum] of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity. Depending on the context, these characteristics may include biological sex (i.e., the state of being male, female, or an intersex variation), sex-based social structures (i.e., gender roles), or gender identity.”
By which token, the “patterns in the human brain mosaic” that Kay referred to would certainly seem to qualify as part of gender – even if the proxy used (gray & white matter) may not be particularly relevant, as would the many “… functional differences [between “male-brains” and “female-brains] in various activity centers in the brain while performing physical or cognitive tasks or undergoing emotional experiences” referred to in a letter disputing some of the original paper.
But that “range of characteristics” would then seem to encompass many more overt physiological differences – body mass, heights, secondary sexual characteristics, etc – apart from the more or less psychological ones discussed in the referenced PNAS study & letters. In addition, it might be emphasized that sex, or its absence, should then be construed as a principal component of gender, and, most definitely, not a gender in itself – as I’ve argued in some detail elsewhere on Post Millennial.
And from all of which one might argue that, for example, Bruce Jenner having taking some hormones and having developed a more or less nice set of tits has, in fact, changed some more or less minor aspects of his gender. And if he should have, or has had, some “gender reassignment surgery” – more or less making him into a eunuch – then that would constitute a major change in his “gender”. Which then justifies the argument that gender is, at least to some degree, mutable or variable – i.e., somewhat “fluid”, even if the changes might be more suggestive of molasses than of water.
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