An irreconcilable conflict sets itself up in the minds of academic Experts who deny that race exists while tracking every imaginable metric by race, which they say doesn’t exist, and then announcing “disparities” in these measures by race, which they say doesn’t exist. The “disparities” are almost always said to be caused by “racism”, which is the differential treatment of different (favored) races.
If it is true that race does not exist, then it it not possible—it is impossible—to track metrics by race, or to discover “disparities” by race in these metrics. It is also not possible—it is impossible—to be a “racist”, for there are no peoples of different races to treat differently.
Yet there is a positive cataract of academic papers from authors who hold simultaneously the notions that race does not exist and that there is nothing more worth measuring than differences between races.
It is as if there were several hundred learned academic journals devoted to research on the differences in measures and their causes between Leprechauns and unicorns.
The latest example is the peer-reviewed paper “Discrimination exposure impacts unhealthy processing of food cues: crosstalk between the brain and gut” by Xiaobei Zhang and a host of others in Nature Mental Health.
The article opens, “Racial disparities in obesity persist in America, with minority subgroups experiencing disproportionally higher rates of obesity and obesity-related morbidities.”
There being no such thing as race, the only possible explanation for “disproportionally higher rates of obesity” must be “discrimination”, and not different metabolisms and behaviors of the different races, which don’t exist.
They asked 107 people, 87 of which were females, a bunch of questions. Amusingly, and even cancelable if it appeared in isolation, the “enrolled women were scanned during the follicular phase of the menstrual cycle”. That time of the month when Aunt Flo visited was considered important to participants’ mental state, which everywhere else is denied. Our authors are also fatphobic: “Participants whose weight exceeded 181 kg (400 pounds) were excluded due to weight constraints of the MRI scanner.”
Anyway, then came the attempts to quantify the unquantifiable, a common scientific pursuit. They had the women fill out the “Everyday Discrimination Scale”, which is “validated and widely used” and which “captures chronic experiences of unfair treatment in various domains of life”.
One question is “People act as if they think you are not smart.” The question authors appear to be suggesting that being non-smart is not a possibility. Another: “People act as if they’re better than you are.” What happens when people are better than you because you’re a bad person?
Never mind. Numerical scores were given to these questions. The end is some kind of “measure” of “discrimination.” This makes it science. Yet were the women really discriminated against, or were they only saying so? Keep this in mind.
They next hooked participants up to a magnetic phrenology device. Because I love you, my dear readers, I warn you now to put down all sharp objects, and to not attempt to drink while reading further.
While hooked to the device, they showed the women pictures of chocolate cake and salads. And then watched their brains light up.
The “discovery”:
When using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to compare responses to unhealthy sweet foods and nonfoods, the group of individuals exposed to discrimination (high discrimination group) had greater food-cue reactivity towards unhealthy sweet foods than the low discrimination group in the insula, inferior frontal gyrus, lateral orbitofrontal cortex and frontal operculum cortex.
The good-old frontal operculum cortex, eh. Backed up by wee p-values. Of course.
If you have a black sense of humor, as Yours Truly does, you have to find the whole thing hilarious. All these fancy tools and sophisticated algorithms and not one of these researchers hit upon the idea that women who reported “discrimination” were more likely to be fat-asses not because of “discrimination” but because of their own miserable selves.
And how is it our academics did not know that miserable people often eat more crap than happy people?
They did know. But it was never documented by algorithmic machines before. That which is not documented by science, even though it was known since forever by all people, is not science.
Oh, before we wrap this up, I forgot to tell you, and I promise this is true, they also collected the ladies’ poop and pored over it.
Their conclusion is that they, the academics and their fancy machines, are needed:
…brain-targeted treatments (for example, brain stimulation) that could dampen an overactive food-reward system or enhance frontal control could potentially be used as a neuromodulatory tool to normalize altered brain circuits associated with discrimination exposure.
A neuromodulatory tool, eh.
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Study lost me at graphic cake = unhealthy food.
Also, when I opened the study, it asked me to accept all cookies.
I've always hated the language of neurologists. They will make the most contorted sentences to avoid mentioning the obvious: undeveloped virtue.
Where is virtue to be found in the brain? Is it in the DNA, somewhere? No! Our problems have to chemical, something mechanistic. Virtue implies that there is such things as consciousness, morality, reality, limitations and even internally-caused change of behavior patterns, independent of the fateful genetic programming that overrides everything.
None of that is allowable, we want simple things.
In their pursue of avoiding all doctrines, scientists often become the worst ideologues.