I don't know anything about this situation, so this is hypothetical. Suppose that the editors who refused publication are personally convinced beyond a reasonable doubt of his guilt, perhaps because they know one or more of the victims personally. In that case, I think they have the moral right to refuse to have anything to do with him, like publishing work that he's a co-author of.
There is a (very small) number of people I refuse to have anything to do with, despite them not being convicted of anything. I mean, I'd still hit the brakes if they stepped in front of my car. But I wouldn't invest in a startup they were a co-founder of, which seems analogous to publishing a paper they're a co-author of.
Scientists sometimes talk as if certain journals have such a monopoly on a field that being banned from them is fatal to their career (and even to The Science.) But IDK, I've never felt like I can't read a paper if it wasn't published in a prestigious journal. The author should upload the paper to their website and email the link to colleagues, who can decide whether to read it or not.
Let's say they are convinced beyond reasonable doubt. Does this constitute a reason to refuse their science altogether? And if so, then for how long (a question indirectly raised in the article)?
I don't know what you mean by "refuse their science". Some editors refusing to publish a paper in their journals doesn't change anything about what's true or not true in nature. It doesn't prevent the authors from disseminating the information other ways, including the way most papers are found anyway: author websites, email, and Twitter. So it's a small perturbation in the flow of information. Science is quite resilient to such things.
I agree that the facts don't change. However the editorial process becomes biased ad hominem and shifts away from scientific facts. Science and the people who benefit from science become the victims.
The purpose of scientific journals is to provide an editorial process and peer review, not only to disseminate findings. In this regard, I don't believe author websites and Twitter compares.
This conflict appears to be grounded in two incommensurable philosophies.
Say you are editor of a CS journal and receive a valid proof that P=NP. You also get demands that you shouldn't publish it because the author is the worst person imaginable. What is best for society?
I believe intellectual creations should be evaluated independently of their origins, and I don't see a way to find common ground with those who don't.
Seems perfectly reasonable people in academia would no longer wish to associate with his work. The author of this article is saying this should not be the case because it was never criminally investigated, but I'm very certain you can find plenty of real world examples of people's careers being ruined without incidents being criminally investigated, or even the incidents being criminal themselves - that seems like a complete strawman on her part.
> Seems perfectly reasonable people in academia would no longer wish to associate with his work. The author of this article is saying this should not be the case
No, the author isn't saying everybody must work with this person, they are saying someone who is working with the person should not be harassed for that.
> I'm very certain you can find plenty of real world examples of people's careers being ruined without incidents being criminally investigated
So what? As if that makes it okay, this medieval going after the totality of one's person and livelihood. Any and all people involved in such mobs are guilty of worse than whatever they use as excuse for their stonings.
In the context of international relations both Barack H. Obama and Donald J. Trump were treated equally regardless of their personal reputations in their official capacity as heads of state.
That’s not true lol. They obviously still had to deal with the leader of the most powerful economy and military in the world, yes, but if you don’t think Trump’s reputation as an untrustworthy lying clown didn’t color those interactions (both official and personal) then I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
He was openly laughed at (not with) during addresses to the UN, for example.
More officially, the EU has been in crisis about building its own security since it became clear Trump seemed to hold a different meaning for “ally” than every president before him.
Those responses were in reaction to his relevant prior and concomitant actions as a head of state — not in reaction to his personal reputation as an individual.
A serial workplace or school sexual harasser affects many people's livelihoods, their own livelihood is very far down my list of concerns. Beware isolated demands for compassion.
There seems to be a reading comprehension challenge here. Commenters are struggling to understand the distinctions between being a sexual harasser, being accused of being a sexual harasser, being harassed for being an accused sexual harasser, and being harassed for working with an accused sexual harasser, while not being a sexual harasser yourself.
I understand the distinctions quite well, thank you. I spent around half an hour reading about the context of what he has been accused of doing before commenting.
Why does a university have the power to find somebody guilty of sexual assault, and not the actual courts?
EDIT, I am rate limited so I can't reply:
The specific phrase was "found guilty" and the specific wrong being alleged is sexual assault, which is a criminal offense for which people can go to prison. University HR can fire him if they like, but they cannot find him guilty of a sexual assault any more than they can find him guilty of fraud or manslaughter.
People are innocent of all crimes until they are proved guilty in a fair trial, in a real court with a real judge and a real jury.
> Did the university send him to prison, or are you collapsing multiple different connotations of "guilty" into one?
Excuse me, am I collapsing multiple definitions here? It seems to me the parent commenter is pivoting on two different connotations of "sexual assault" and "guilty", so as to have it both ways: ostracize this person as one would an actual sex offender, without needing to go through the awkward formality convicting him of a sexual offense.
Are you asking why people and organizations have the power to decide whether to associate with or employ someone, while the government has the power of criminal justice? Are you mixing up those two things?
Are you asking why "found guilty" means found guilty in a court of law and not some other private person or org asserting a perogative of association? Are you mixing up those two things?
Do you think HR isn’t real or something? If you grab your coworker’s ass, do you think they’re not legally able to conclude this happened and then fire you?
The OP says “It is … a basic human right to be rehabilitated into society even if one has ever been found guilty of a crime.”
One may reasonably debate whether someone who did something bad in the past should be ostracized, but I think you are rather mischaracterizing the author’s argument.
On the contrary, having never been found guilty of anything, the bar for forgiveness / rehabilitation should be even lower. If it is a basic human right to be rehabilitated back into society even if they have been criminally convicted, it should certainly be a human right if they were merely "convicted" by an academic kangaroo court.
> people are just rightfully exercising their right not to be associated with him.
No, they are harassing a person who is exercising their right to associate with whomever they want.
To associate with, that is the part that matters. Not "to be associated with", which is what people in a mob think is what matters, even though it does not, certainly not enough to give them license.
> No, they are harassing a person who is exercising their right to associate with whomever they want.
Harassing is carrying a _ton_ of load, way above its capacity, in the essay. I'm very curious for your perspective on what incidents were harrassment.
There's a certain motte-and-bailey aspect in my read, the narrow claims are
their talk on Geoff's work was not accepted at an academic conference and someone removed Geoff's name from their paper.
The broader claims range as petty as the conference added a non-standard tricky clause to harrass them and engineer the denial of their proposal, before their proposal was made (?, also, it's a bog-standard morals clause in my read) and as vast as you must allow anyone to associate with you & it's immoral to decide who you associate with unless they've been convicted of a crime by a jury in the United States.
In my opinion saying "women support rape culture" in reference to the author approaches that high load. If I had said it, I would be worried about a slander suit: calling a person a supporter of rape culture seems like slander per se, unless the author has done something worse than work with an academic pariah.
One of those talk pages that makes you appreciate the thicket of bureaucratic brambles standing between the angry and the consensus version of Wikipedia pages on controversial topics. It's not perfect, but it's clearly better than nothing.
> It is also a basic human right not to be condemned without legal due process
No it's not.
It's a basic human right not to be formally condemned by a government or government-like body without legal due process.
It's not a basic human right to be free from all judgement by your peers without due process. If I think my neighbor's a dick, I don't need to hold a trial by jury to decide if I'm allowed to disinvite him from my BBQ.
In this case, it seems like a number of people in this community think Geoff is a first-rate asshole for publicly-known reasons. I have no knowledge of whether that's true or not - I've not reviewed the evidence. But a lot of people believe it, and those people don't want papers authored, co-authored, or believed to be authored, by Geoff in their conference. That seems reasonable, at least for people who believe the original allegations against Geoff.
(Disclaimer: there's some other bad stuff mentioned, like harassment of the author and some shitty assumptions that her own work was secretly Geoffs, and that's to be condemned, but that's separate from the main thrust of this post.)
It seems clear that Marcy has been "condemned by a government-like body" (with or without due process -- I don't know). At any rate, this isn't simple freedom of association.
And according to the article, the blacklist doesn't only affect Marcy, it affects people who continue to work with him. I would say that's going too far.
Finally, I'm not sure what we gain by systematically excluding Marcy from astronomy research. Maybe a 5 year ban would be enough or perhaps we could go with a restorative justice approach here.
A paper does not exist in a vacuum. If a field is filled with papers authored and co-authored by known sexual harassers, do you think many women will want to enter that field?
Letting shitty people gain prevalence in your field will have a negative effect on the future of your field, just like hiring shitty managers will have a detrimental effect on your company's turnover rate. It makes sense to want to limit the influence of shitty people.
Your proposed norm is ripe for abuse by brilliant jerks. Just keep producing meritorious work and all incidents of you abusing people in your personal life will be excused.
(Your proposed norm is how things used to be, and still are to a large extent. This is bad and a failure of society, not a success.)
> If I think my neighbor's a dick, I don't need to hold a trial by jury to decide if I'm allowed to disinvite him
In this case you are exempt from that principle because following it will cost you disproportionally more than the possible damage done if you're wrong. Not because universal justice principles somehow become inapplicable outside of courtroom.
> (Disclaimer: there's some other bad stuff mentioned, like harassment of the author and some shitty assumptions that her own work was secretly Geoffs, and that's to be condemned, but that's separate from the main thrust of this post.)
Do these guilt-by-association injustices against the author of the article give you any pause when it comes to the same people passing judgement against this Geoff? I, like you, have no real knowledge of this case. It maybe be the case that Geoff is guilty of all of it, or was bullied into a false confession; I don't know. My gut says that he's a slimeball but I see injustice against the author of the article and I don't think the two are as independent as you suggest. If the mob is using guilt by association in one case,that gives me some doubt as to the mob's ability to fairly pass judgement in the related case.
It sounds like you're advocating that the results of the scientific process should have no effect on policy-making, because otherwise then "social condemnation" of the kind that you're describing becomes part of the government policy-making process.
I don't like that idea. I like having climate-change science feed into policymaking.
Lets be realistic about this, if Marcy tried to bring a suit over this, he would not prevail. A lot of people have a very reasonable belief that he's a sex-criminal of some description, including his former employers and a number of former co-workers.
>If I think my neighbor's a dick, I don't need to hold a trial by jury to decide if I'm allowed to disinvite him from my BBQ.
A moral defense of social practices shouldn't rely on a dubious analogy between a major scientific conference and someone's backyard soirée. Human affairs do not separate cleanly into "governance" and "private".
>there's some other bad stuff mentioned, like harassment of the author and some shitty assumptions that her own work was secretly Geoffs, and that's to be condemned, but that's separate from the main thrust of this post.
I don't think it's at all fair to the author to reduce harassment directed at her to a parenthetical in a post discussing her experience in research. It is very important and speaks to the prevailing cultural norms.
To some extent, this just sounds like willfully digging your own grave and then complaining that you're being buried. Sure, a shitty person can still do good research. But people are people, not computers. If you want to sacrifice your own social status by collaborating with a persona non grata then that's your choice, just don't be surprised when you lose friends and professional opportunities because of it.
For a rather long take from someone within the astronomy research community, I can recommend Dr. Angela Collier's video on the topic of sexual harassment and assault in Astronomy and Physics [1].
"Here's 26 people who decided it was fine to author a paper with this serial sexual harasser ... How can I see a future in a field where people are just fine working with sexual harassers. They don't care about the women, the victims, they just care about how this person can help their career."
"How can you write a mentoring statement when 66% of your students have left Astronomy directly because of you?"
***
For a much more extreme historical example, see the tragic life of Nobel laureate Fritz Haber. A man who arguably saved billions of lives with the invention of the Haber process, but who was ostracized by many fellow scientists for his work on chemical weapons during WWI.
For the past several thousand years, people have generally been able to get away with being an asshole (both criminal and less than criminal) as long as they are very productive in some other way. Very recently, some people have stopped getting away with this. It's very very good to hold people accountable.
I also think that it is bad that there is no path to rehabilitation. Well, there is no single path to rehabilitation, because the world contains many people with a variety of points of view.
But remember that it is bad to harass and assault people. That should not be ignored. The linked post does not seem to cover that very much, or to show any action that the person has taken that would make them more welcome in a professional setting.
> History has many examples of the negative impacts of excommunicating individuals according to questionable standards that are analogous to what happened to Geoff Marcy. Over the past century we have seen numerous such examples across the political spectrum, in the name of moral virtue.
I must disagree in the strongest terms to this section. This does not acknowledge any harms or any balance of responsibility on the part of Marcy.
-----
Also, the title is just plain wrong. It is not guilt by association, it is disgust at including a person who has caused harm. Every objection listed from the scientific community was because Marcy was directly attached, either to a paper, a group, or a meeting.
Please don't take HN threads into generic ideological flamewar. It's repetitive and tedious, and therefore against the site guidelines: "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."
I realize the OP contains provocations in that direction, but you don't have to take the bait. That's why the guidelines also say: "Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."
Usually the "something interesting" has to do with the specific details of the article, not some ideological abstraction skimmed off the top.
Does she really need to explain the obvious? Are you malisciously avoiding to mention the obvious thing here? This person, the sexual harasser, is an accomplished astrophysicist. He doesn't magically forget everything he knee about physics the moment he became a harasser.
I'm a woman. An awful lot of people who have expressed interest in "my work"/"working with me" were men looking for an excuse to chat me up.
There have been damn few people genuinely interested in my actual work, which is part of why I remain independent and poor.
My firsthand experiences of how hard it is to genuinely open doors career-wise is part of what informs my view here. I am well aware I am not supposed to say something like this. I mostly bit my tongue about Elizabeth Holmes because I am quite aware this is not socially acceptable to say.
I spent years and years wanting a better explanation for what went wrong with Theranos and why and it's mostly Verboten still to talk about that, even though the company went bankrupt and she is now serving time (or supposed to be -- maybe she continues to put that off, I haven't looked recently at an update).
My interest in such topics is because I want an actual career and I continue to fail to have one. And this remains true in part because we can't talk about the social dynamics of trying to work with members of the opposite sex unless someone has already been convicted of a crime and then we pretend it's some kind of statistical anomaly, some bizarre outlier, and not something that's potentially tough to navigate every single day if you are a woman wanting to be taken seriously for your work and not sleep your way into power...until that backfires like it ultimately did for Holmes.
> In my country, Sweden, such actions at a state-funded institute fall under the umbrella of “kränkande särbehandling” (victimization) and are unlawful.
Does this mean that Sweden is a good place for people who are, like the author, critical of the wokeness and "cancel culture"? I used to think they're the ones setting the trend there. I don't understand anything now.
There is a (very small) number of people I refuse to have anything to do with, despite them not being convicted of anything. I mean, I'd still hit the brakes if they stepped in front of my car. But I wouldn't invest in a startup they were a co-founder of, which seems analogous to publishing a paper they're a co-author of.
Scientists sometimes talk as if certain journals have such a monopoly on a field that being banned from them is fatal to their career (and even to The Science.) But IDK, I've never felt like I can't read a paper if it wasn't published in a prestigious journal. The author should upload the paper to their website and email the link to colleagues, who can decide whether to read it or not.