Originally a comment by Dave Ricks on A Harvard professor.

The Harvard prof Sarah Richardson concluded her book review:

Reprising the anti-biological determinist tradition, Fuentes respectfully explains science in plain language to a wider public, presents biological knowledge as one among many sources of sense-making about the world, and recognises biomedical scientists’ responsibility to respond to harmful deployments of inaccurate, overly simplistic, and reductionist science by those attempting to naturalise and depoliticise their hateful views.

This interdisciplinary, scientist-humanist voice is vital in our time. As the Lancet Commission makes clarion, gender is an essential concept for improving health and wellbeing for everyone. Defending research and clinical practice in gender-related areas must be a priority in the face of perilous new attacks on science and academic freedom.

I bolded the word harmful because Carole Hooven highlighted that one word in yellow in her post of the image file here. That one word highlighted yellow stands out and makes me think. Richardson sees herself as an arbiter of which views are harmful. But would she ever judge her own views are harmful? And how did she become an arbiter? Evidently, Harvard has been cultivating this culture over many years. I will quote Hooven saying this, so it’s not just me:

The Lancet review goes well beyond disagreement about the facts, and exemplifies one of the main reasons Harvard is being targeted by the government.

By the way, considered harmful is a fun trope, known especially in computer science from the short paper Goto Statement Considered Harmful (Edsger Dijkstra, 1968). Of course, that led to a reply ‘GOTO Considered Harmful’ Considered Harmful (Frank Rubin, 1987), and so on.