The mind virus killing academia

We lost a giant last month with E.O. Wilson’s passing. A man who stood on Darwin’s shoulders, Wilson had that rare distinction of inspiring a whole discipline in the form of evolutionary psychology.

The great sense of loss did not seem to be shared by Scientific American, however, which soon afterwards put out a piece reflecting on the ‘complicated legacies of scientists whose works are built on racist ideas’. Among the ‘problematic’ aspects of Wilson’s work, the author argued, was the ‘descriptions and importance of ant societies existing as colonies’. This was ‘a component of Wilson’s work that should have been critiqued’ because ‘context matters’.

Scientific American is not Teen Vogue; it’s a journal dating back to the early Victorian period and as august as they come; former contributors include none other than Albert Einstein, with his hugely influential articles on relativity, the geometry of spacetime and ‘10 Badass Girl Bosses Sciencing the Shit out of 1920’.