In other words, she advocates for more science in the fields of science.<\/p>\n
One does not have to be overly steeped in the ways of cancel culture to realize what happened next.<\/p>\n
Attendees who viewed the speech immediately accused Weiss of racism, posting comments like, \u201cf—ing yikes!,\u201d \u201cthis is some bulls–t,\u201d \u201cewww,\u201d fight memes, and vomit emojis. The SAA pulled the talk from its archived videos and offered an apology to those \u201cwho were harmed by the inclusion of the presentation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, had Weiss argued that Christian-based creationism shouldn\u2019t replace hard science in anthropology, her speech would have been hailed by the very mob that is denouncing her.<\/p>\n
Over the past year, Americans have been inundated with pleas to \u201ctrust the science\u201d on everything from social distancing, to mask wearing, to vaccines. Progressives boast of their blanket obeisance to all flavors of \u201cscience,\u201d which has become the \u201call lives matter\u201d of the left.<\/p>\n
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AstraZeneca vaccine for COVID-19. (Photo: Oli Scarff \/ AFP via Getty Images)<\/span><\/p>\n Yet, too many times, those on the left are more than willing to cast aside their unquenchable thirst for scientific knowledge when it doesn\u2019t neatly fit their political narrative.<\/p>\n For instance, last year, as protesters marched through American cities by the hundreds of thousands to decry police brutality,\u00a0scientists suddenly went silent about the dangers of cramming people into tight spaces.\u00a0While schools trying to keep their doors open and businesses attempting to keep customers spending money were vilified as cashing in on death, demonstrators chanting loudly inches from one another were lionized.<\/p>\n Further, just last\u00a0week, comedian Jon Stewart was pummeled by fellow progressives for conceding COVID-19 may have, in fact, originated in a lab in Wuhan, China\u2013\u2013\u00a0a very real scientific\u00a0possibility raised by conservatives for over a year, but largely laughed off by Democrats.<\/p>\n In other words, science is now entirely negotiable.<\/p>\n Take what\u2019s happened at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, which has vowed to return a collection of 1,000 human skulls to their communities of origin. The skulls, largely belonging to people of African ancestry, were amassed between 1830 and 1840 by Dr. Samuel George Morton, a white supremacist.<\/p>\n But in the wake of last summer\u2019s George Floyd protests, the school has decided to give the skulls away, despite their scientific research value.\u00a0<\/p>\n Of course, individuals of African descent \u2013 for very good reason \u2013 have always been skeptical of donating their remains to science, given the history of Black people being used for unethical research. That makes the Penn collection tremendously valuable, in that it allows a window into the lives of an under-researched population.\u00a0<\/p>\n Corona\u00a0Confusion: <\/strong>Bribing Americans to get the COVID vaccine doesn\u2019t solve our real problem<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThrough the use of skeletal remains, anthropologists and archaeologists can reconstruct people\u2019s past lives \u2013 diet, disease, activities,\u201d Weiss told me. \u201cIn order to improve our identification methods, diverse skeletal samples are crucial,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n In fact, Penn told me the collection has actually been valuable in debunking many of the racist scientific theories espoused by Morton himself. The museum received a National Science Foundation grant to share scans of the skulls with interdisciplinary scholars around the world for research on the variation in the functional morphology (shape) of the cranium, patterns of growth and development, traumatic injury analysis, dentition and palate shape changes, as well as health and disease patterns in human populations of the past.<\/p>\n \u201cThis research has advanced studies around childhood disease, sleep apnea, and forensic anthropology, among others,\u201d a museum spokesperson told me, noting around 17,500 scans have been distributed to outside researchers. And that doesn’t consider future research that isn’t possible today.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, Penn is turning over the collection, even if it may be impossible to determine where the skulls originated. The school has called the repatriation \u201ca step toward atonement and repair for the racist and colonial practices that were integral to the formation of these collections.\u201d<\/p>\n But the end result is that we will know less about both the lives and deaths of those individuals.\u00a0<\/p>\n Progressives are fond of excoriating those on the right for undermining science. But in making the veracity of research dependent on fleeting political movements, it may be those on the left killing science\u2019s reputation.<\/p>\n And we won\u2019t need archaeologists in the distant future to exhume science\u2019s body to figure out what happened.<\/p>\nDemocrats politicized science<\/h2>\n