A few years back, David Burge wrote how the left tends to co-opt an institution and destroy it from within:
1. Identify a respected institution.
2. kill it.
3. gut it.
4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.#lefties— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) November 10, 2015
We have seen that play out in the last few years with Scientific American, abandoning science for woke ideology, so we admit we felt a fair bit of schadenfreude to see this exchange.
It started with Laura Helmuth, the Editor-in-Chief of Scientific American, tweeting out this:
White-throated sparrows have four chromosomally distinct sexes that pair up in fascinating ways
P.S. Nature is amazing
P.P.S. Sex is not binary https://t.co/NJhQI6uC0q via @audubonsociety— Laura Helmuth (@laurahelmuth) May 17, 2023
Obviously, she was trying to make a point supporting transgender ideology. Using birds.
In stepped Colin Wright. Mr. Wright describes himself as follows: ‘Evolutionary Biology PhD | Founding Editor @RealLastStand | Fellow @ManhattanInst | Advisor @segm_ebm & @AtheistsLiberty.’ The pages of the Manhattan Institute and the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine back his claims up. He decided to dispute her claims:
No, these birds have 2 sexes. I debunked this nonsense two months ago. https://t.co/L9SjbYYHHM https://t.co/hXCriSGe4E pic.twitter.com/qRApaJuSLW
— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) May 17, 2023
If you don’t feel like enlarging the picture, it says:
The example they give of a species ‘with more than two sexes’ is the white-throated sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis). This species has two color morphs, males and females with either white or tan stripes. The more aggressive white stripe morph has a large inversion on chromosome 2, and the species mates disassortatively by color morph, meaning that white stripe morphs tend to mate with tan striped morphs. This chromosome inversion coupled with the disassortative mating by morph has led to a situation where chromosome 2 ‘behaves like’ another sex chromosome.
But having more than two sex chromosomes is not the same as having more than two sexes. While this species may be an interesting case study for how sex chromosomes have evolved, it certainly isn’t an example of a species with ‘four sexes,’ which would require four distinct gamete types.
He also shows her that she is wrong by the terms of the article she linked to:
From the article:
"It's almost as if the White-throated Sparrow has four sexes."
"Almost as if" means that it's not even "as if," meaning that they in fact do not have four sexes, but rather just two. pic.twitter.com/lG9qEoAR1M
— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) May 17, 2023
Again, if you don’t want to enlarge the image he provides, here’s the quote:
So the morphs differ in traits that parallel the usual differences between the sexes in birds. Looking at White-throats in the breeding season, we see four distinct types. To oversimplify, we could call them super-aggressive males, more nurturing males, somewhat aggressive females, and super-nurturing females. It’s almost as if the White-throated Sparrow has four sexes. That may sound like a joke, but it’s actually a good description of what’s going on.
(Emphasis added.) So, this is exciting! Maybe Ms. Helmuth will come back with an argument for why her interpretation is right! Maybe she will bring up a different and exotic species! Or maybe she will humbling admit she was wrong! Who knows?! But this is how science works! Each side offers reasoned, evidence-based debate and over time, truth wins out.
So, let’s see how she responds:
lol, truth hurts! 🤣 pic.twitter.com/da5eqvQLLO
— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) May 17, 2023
Oh.
Never mind.
In fact, when Mr. Wright made fun of her on Twitter for blocking him …
A story in 4 images. This is the Editor-in-Chief for @sciam. Truth hurts! pic.twitter.com/a9AHTlRhVg
— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) May 17, 2023
… Seth Dillon of the Babylon Bee tried to help the signal get around the block …
Try as she might, she can’t block the truth. cc: @laurahelmuth
— Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) May 17, 2023
… and this happened instead:
lol pic.twitter.com/Ro6ch0v1GW
— Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) May 17, 2023
Think about that for a minute. She is not only unwilling to debate with Mr. Wright, but by blocking him rather than muting him, she doesn’t even want him to see what she says on any other subject. Could there be a less scientific approach? And all of this from the editor-in-chief of a once-respected scientific magazine?
Wonder if Laura is similar to finance editors that know absolutely nothing about finance?
— Andrew (@FinanceTX) May 18, 2023
That’s one theory, the other is that she is doing exactly what the job entails:
She edits SciAm. Screwing up science is her job.
— 1967mustangman (@1967mustangman) May 17, 2023
@laurahelmuth you blocked @SwipeWright ??? That's the most pathetic thing I've seen on twitter, and that's saying something.
— Tom Foydel (@FoydelTom) May 18, 2023
To be fair, we’ve seen worse.
Also, does it really surprise anyone that Matt Walsh got involved? He responded to Mr. Wright:
Also, even if these birds did have four sexes, how would that legitimize the claims made by trans-identified people who are not in fact birds?
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) May 17, 2023
Which is a good point. Let’s say these birds are quad-gender creatures. Mr. Wright disputes this, but let’s play pretend. Then in that case it took abnormalities in their chromosomes to create those extra genders. So unless a man purporting to be a woman (or purporting to be something other than a man) has a similar genetic abnormality, the argument actually cuts against Ms. Helmuth’s argument.
‘Will. Power’ stepped in to agree with Mr. Walsh:
Exactly!!!
When people start identifying as birds, then we can have that conversation— Will. Power – Dragon🔥🔥 Truth Bringer (@KIR_bigg50) May 18, 2023
But apparently, he never met this … um … being before:
I identify as a bird. How we identify is part of reality. Therfore, I'm actually a bird.
— Dan the Bird (@s_hillenburg) May 14, 2023
So there!
(Jokes aside, ‘Dan the Bird’ seems to be running a brilliant troll on gender ideology—which is itself pretty funny.)
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