I HADN'T BEEN reading or paying that much attention to the interviews with Virginia Roberts Giuffre's ghost-writer Amy Wallace until I happened to hear some of the interview she did with Katie Couric.* Among the horrific recounting of what Epstein and Ghizz Maxwell did to her and the other girls they trafficked this passage jumped out at me.
But because of his bizarre pseudo-scientific justifications for his behavior that he could explain, you know, he had to have sex three times a day, it was a biological necessity. And he was he validated the reasons that he had sex with young girls that as as long as they had started menstruating, they were capable of having a baby, so they were a woman even if they were 12 years old. He had all these bizarre sort of justifications . . .
So I listened to the full interview when I got back to my computer.
I would agree that the theories referred to are pseudo-science except for three facts about what science is. The idealistic definition of science as what can withstand the rigors of testing by scientific methods of careful observation, reporting measuring, analysis, peer-review and replication of either an experiment or observation, that's not what science really is, What science is in the real world is what gets accepted to be called science by those in the profession, in the publishing in recognized journal deputed to be scientific journals, those who pass it in peer review (an uneven if not extremely dodgy thing in itself) and gets the approval of science departments in industry, universities, colleges, etc. In the case of the kind of junk science that Jeffrey Epstein clearly relied on to approve of his sexual degeneracy, sadism, rape and abuse of young girls - though perhaps not his taking advantage of it in his trafficking, no doubt, blackmailing and courting power through peddling or giving his blackmail on the rich, probably largely white, straight and powerful to governments and, I'll bet you anything billionaires and their financial interests. He was just using "science" exploiting the "natural" inclinations of the straight male gender as science led him to believe was "natural" and so, OK.
So,
1. Scientific method is not what science is in the real world because
2. Science at any given time is whatever those in the scientific establishment call "science" and
3. A lot of that is based entirely on what universities, colleges, the publishing industry and "journalism" allows them to get away with calling "science."
Based on that, I think it's inaccurate to call those self-serving declarations of science that Epstein felt entitled to practice is "pseudo-science." I agree with what Marilynne Robinson said, if religion is answerable for bad religion then science has to be answerable for bad science - especially as so much of it exists quite contentedly within what is called science.
There was nothing in that list from Amy Wallace that I didn't hear university faculty, peer-reviewed, published scientists, whether biologists or those in the pseudo-social sciences say in some fashion. Presenting what they said as falling within the expansively enfolding blanket of what science is at any given time. I remember lots of stuff like that being said in the 1960s, 70s and 80s and have read it going back and onward from there. Even after I very early concluded that psychology, sociology and anthropology** were pseudo-science in the later 1960s, I paid attention to what the hucksters and snake-oil peddlers of those university and publishing ordained sciences said because their suckers were everywhere in the university and college credentialed influencers (we called them "journalists" back then, I was skeptical of that profession, as well, by then) and politicians and especially lawyers, judges and "justices" were suckers for it, especially when, just as with Epstein, their bullshit science supported what they liked and wanted the law to mean.
Amy Wallace talked about how even when the victims of Epstein and Maxwell went to the FBI the largely male, straight, white, affluent cops ignored what they were told. Maybe that's because such science had seeped into the professional and institutional culture of policing too deeply for them to take such crimes seriously. Maybe as, I have little doubt Epstein would claim, that his victims had participated in what they were doing on the basis of scientifically identified predilections on their parts - that is if anyone had ever bothered to grill the bastard on what he was doing. I recall that kind of talk as a way to dismiss the idea that women or girls can be raped. I remember hearing that from college credentialed males who had certainly taken the soc-sci requisites (they've got to keep their faculty doing something so they have to force students to take those bullshit courses). I've heard of from lefty bloggers especially in the form of arguing for the reduction of the age of consent which would have, by the way, made much of the rape of Epstein and Maxwell the responsibility o the young girls they raped.
We've paid an enormous price for the choice in the late 19th century of universities, their faculties and others in the academic racket allowing psych, soc, anthropology and, God help us, even econ into the category of science. I have no doubt that Epstein and Maxwell would have been as prone to rape and abuse and traffic young girls without the blessings of science but, even as they financed science, scientists, and such cultural entities as the "Scienceblogs" they used science to justify it to themselves, the naive girls they preyed on and, no doubt, others as having that blessing.
* I'm impressed with how many who made a lot of money in the TV "news" business are doing better work on their own online.
** I don't know how they're getting on in the profession, but I do know there are some in anthropology who started admitting what they do in no way fulfills the requirements of scientific method, though I think they're probably a small minority of those in the profession. I strongly doubt that honest admission is going to survive because there's such a vested interest in keeping up that pretense.
Post Script: Re-reading this you may think that my indictment of the social sciences in permission of men to rape children is inaccurate. A figure I've mentioned any number of times, one of the main academic figures in and supporters of Paidka, a sort of journal of those who were trying to get governments to lower or abolish ages of consent, the better to enable such men was the American sexologist, Vern Bullough. The Wikipedia page on him, no doubt written and maintained by those who want him to be remembered well, starts:
Vern Leroy Bullough (July 24, 1928 – June 21, 2006) was an American historian and sexologist.[1][2]
He was a distinguished professor emeritus at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo, Faculty President at California State University, Northridge,[3] a past president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, past Dean of natural and social sciences at the Buffalo State College in Buffalo, New York, one of the founders of the American Association for the History of Nursing, and a member of the editorial board of Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia.[4]
And he was hardly the only figure in the social science establishment involved with that effort. I've never made a list of those I've read about who promote that kind of science while working as acknowledged scientists but it's wouldn't be a short one if I did.
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