Joe Brinkley is a racist scumbag

[madd0ct0r]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/colu ... 782.column

Animal trafficking explains the dearth of tigers, elephants and other big beasts. But what about birds and rats? Yes, people eat those, too, like almost every animal that lives there. In Da Nang in January, I saw a street-side merchant with bowls full of dead rats for sale -- their fur removed but otherwise intact -- ready to cook.

Last spring, Conservation International reported that several varieties of Vietnamese gibbon, part of the ape family, "are perilously close to extinction" -- all but a few of them already eaten.

All of this raises an interesting question. Vietnamese have been meat eaters through the ages, while their Southeast Asian neighbors to the west -- Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar -- have largely left their wildlife alone.

In each of these other countries you see flocks of birds that are absent in Vietnam along with numerous pet dogs and cats. There, people eat rice, primarily, and for many people in most of those states their diet includes little more than that.

Vietnam has always been an aggressive country. It has fought 17 wars with China since winning independence more than 1,000 years ago and has invaded Cambodia numerous times, most recently in 1979. Meantime, the nations to its west have largely been passive in recent centuries.

Many anthropologists and historians attribute the difference to the state's origins. Vietnam was born of China, while India heavily influenced the other countries -- two nations with drastically different personalities, even today.

Well, certainly that played a part. But I would argue that because Vietnamese have regularly eaten meat through the ages, adding significant protein to their diet, that also helps explain the state's aggressive tendencies -- and the sharp contrast with its neighbors.

more over the link if you can stomach it.

[Carinthium]

BTW, can this actually be refuted evidence-wise? Racist theories, like any other theories, should be considered scientifically on the evidence.

[Straha]

That one liner needs a whole lot more elaboration, especially in a world where all the evidence taken for the article is being gathered through an orientalist lens.

[Carinthium]

That one liner needs a whole lot more elaboration, especially in a world where all the evidence taken for the article is being gathered through an orientalist lens.

My knowledge of biology is very poor, so I was actually asking the question. His argument wasn't very detailed and was for a popular audience so I presumed it wasn't very good, but personally I don't actually know that.

What studies have actually been done on the link between meat-eating and a person's psycological state, for example?

[Straha]

A lot, actually. More even with exposure to non-human murder leading to an acceptance of human-on-human violence. That said, while I love to take any chance to bash meat-eating, this article is atrocious.

It removes culture, geo-politics, and any sense of agency or freewill from the Vietnamese society and blames their situation on the fact that they eat a 'weird' diet. Brinkley's text almost feels like it could be straight lifted from a 1920s travel guide (his discussion of the lunar influence on eating dog meat, " tradition is clashing with modernity", and most notably his last line about Western visitors 'despairing' to see this first hand) and is about as well-warranted. It drips with condescension, loathing, and a complete lack of cultural or historical self-awareness. It is a fucking atrocious article and should be treated as such.

Your one liner is more alarming in that it assumes that science can remove cultural biases when it comes to questions of race and that it somehow assumes that science can act as either objective or value-neutral in these regards and that any asswipe article, like the OP, deserves the benefit of the doubt when it engages in centuries old rhetoric used to denigrate those deemed racially and culturally inferior.

[Carinthium]

Maybe so, but judging from what you've said and what little I know (as I've said, I admit my knowledge of biology is utter crap), doesn't that suggest Vietnamese meat eating was a factor in their aggression, even if it wasn't the only one?

Science may not be able to totally remove cultural biases, but there is plenty of evidence to support the idea that science is the most reliable means of discovering objective truth avaliable to mankind. In addition, without actually looking at the evidence we can't be sure if any theory is true or false. Biases should be taken into account, but theories should be asssed anyway.

To simply dismiss any theory whatsoever without either a logical contradiction in it or some way it doesn't fit the evidence is ludicrous- no matter what that theory is.

[Straha]

Maybe so, but judging from what you've said and what little I know (as I've said, I admit my knowledge of biology is utter crap), doesn't that suggest Vietnamese meat eating was a factor in their aggression, even if it wasn't the only one?

So your argument is that you're not an expert, but having seen someone make the case that meat eating might make Vietnam aggressive (despite the fact that the article: A. has no statistics about meat eating in Vietnam, and B. has nothing but faint assertions about Vietnam's comparative history with the rest of South East Asia) there must be some sort of truth to this claim? Gut-check: If that's true then every anti-vaccination activist, and every bible-thumping creation-theorist probably should also be listened to at length.

Pro-tip: If you need to say you don't know anything about a subject before you start talking about it, it's probably wise not to say anything at all.

Science may not be able to totally remove cultural biases, but there is plenty of evidence to support the idea that science is the most reliable means of discovering objective truth avaliable to mankind. In addition, without actually looking at the evidence we can't be sure if any theory is true or false. Biases should be taken into account, but theories should be asssed anyway.

To simply dismiss any theory whatsoever without either a logical contradiction in it or some way it doesn't fit the evidence is ludicrous- no matter what that theory is.

No.
A. You make the assumption that there are large-scale objective truthes to be had. While I am not so post-modern as to reject the idea of all empiricism, beyond the atomic scale I doubt there are any truths which are not partially or totally culturally and subjectively formed. Especially when it comes to the shifting tides of biology I would argue that that there can absolutely be no formal objectivity of any kind.

B. You assume that Scientific Method can operate in partial seclusion from cultural norms ('biases should be taken into account'). Think back to High School, the first two steps of the Scientific Method are 'question' and 'hypothesize'. That is; pick an area of investigation and then offer a truth-claim thereon for testing. This means that before any science can occur there is a linguistic and cultural phase that places pre-existing blinders on any sort of inquiry. This is why scientific inquiry into the equality of human 'races' in the 1830s, or trans-gender identity in the 1890s, was impossible: because language and cultural norms lacked the possibility of formulating these questions, or understanding any answer to them, in the first place. To see this first hand you can look at anthropological study of polyandry. When Anthropological research first took place polyandry was dismissed as a rogue aberrant found only in one or two random cultures, as time has gone by new analysis of the same research has revealed that polyandry was in fact quite wide-spread but that the original researchers either failed to recognize it or could not comprehend its existence in the first place because they lacked the ability to imagine a society organized along such lines. Similar stories occur all over the place and one need only look at the burgeoning fields of non-human tool-making and linguistics to see that at even a daily level. This means that science will always come second to other human activities and presumptions, and that questions like the OP Article will never be able to free themselves from cultural, national, and racial ideology.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

But it makes perfect sense, people! The Vietnamese are obviously descended from the scummy and shifty Chinese communists, while the others around hail straight from the progressive, democratic, freedom-luvin' Indians! It's obviously a clash of cultures, between a culture of warmongering tyranny and one of peacful democracy! And if you doubt my words, if you think that these are recent developments, read this: how could the Chinaman and the Indiaman act the way they do, if their genetics didn't allow their culture to become what it is?

Ahem... did I grasp the article's tone? Tell me baby, how good was I?

[madd0ct0r]

you missed getting enough 'chinese savages dripping in blood' in, other wise close. (In fact the indian/chinese split is a new way of looking at it for me.)

If you'd got the 'civilizing effect of the west' in there too you'd have got a home run. The guy's not even a troll doing it for ad revenue, I don't get it.

[Elfdart]

I'm William Calley, and I approve of Brinkley's column.

This is like Hippler's The Eternal Jew, where the cameraman leered at just how gruesome kosher butchering of a cow can be. Amazing how the Chicago Tribune allows itself to be used a puke funnel for this kind of racist agitprop.

[bilateralrope]

BTW, can this actually be refuted evidence-wise? Racist theories, like any other theories, should be considered scientifically on the evidence.

What credible evidence does this article present ?

Lets take the opening two paragraphs of the article.

You don't have to spend much time in Vietnam before you notice something unusual. You hear no birds singing, see no squirrels scrambling up trees or rats scurrying among the garbage. No dogs out for a walk.


In fact, you see almost no wild or domesticated animals at all. Where'd they all go? You might be surprised to know: Most have been eaten.

Then scroll down to the comments and see lots of people telling him how he is wrong on that point and that there are plenty of wild and domesticated animals in Vietnam. It really sounds like he made up the lack of animals.

The first paragraph or two of an article are often used to grab the attention of the reader so they read the rest of the article. If they are made up, like they are in this 'article', then the authors word is suspect. But his word is the only basis to trust any evidence presented in this article as he doesn't reference any outside sources. So any evidence he presents is suspect, as are any conclusions drawn from suspect evidence.

Remove anything that relies on believing the author from the article and you are left with this:

Editor’s note: Tribune Media Services, which distributed this article, issued a follow-up statement on Friday, February 1:

Tribune Media Services (TMS) recently moved an opinion column by Joel Brinkley about his observations from a trip to Vietnam that did not meet our journalistic standards. The column has provoked a highly critical response from readers since its release.

TMS has a rigorous editing process for its content, and in the case of Brinkley’s column that moved Jan. 29, all the required steps did not occur. We regret that this happened, and we will be vigilant in ensuring that our editing process works in the future.

[Stark]

The claim 'no rats in Vietnam' is pretty fucking exceptional. Maybe his suggestion is that eating meat made them so aggressive they invaded Cambodia.

[Dominarch's Hope]

BTW, can this actually be refuted evidence-wise? Racist theories, like any other theories, should be considered scientifically on the evidence.

He is saying that a nation's general diet can affect its general tendencies. That isnt without merit.

The problem is literally every other assumption in that article.

And to your actual post itself. What webiste do you think this is?

[Carinthium]

So your argument is that you're not an expert, but having seen someone make the case that meat eating might make Vietnam aggressive (despite the fact that the article: A. has no statistics about meat eating in Vietnam, and B. has nothing but faint assertions about Vietnam's comparative history with the rest of South East Asia) there must be some sort of truth to this claim? Gut-check: If that's true then every anti-vaccination activist, and every bible-thumping creation-theorist probably should also be listened to at length.

Pro-tip: If you need to say you don't know anything about a subject before you start talking about it, it's probably wise not to say anything at all.

From the little evidence I know, it has been pointed out to me that Vietnam had more meat-eating and more aggresion. In the absence of other evidence, that is enough to create a correlation. It is also enough to make it worth asking about refutations.

In this case I'm merely asking about the matter at hand, not claiming to be an authority.

A. You make the assumption that there are large-scale objective truthes to be had. While I am not so post-modern as to reject the idea of all empiricism, beyond the atomic scale I doubt there are any truths which are not partially or totally culturally and subjectively formed. Especially when it comes to the shifting tides of biology I would argue that that there can absolutely be no formal objectivity of any kind.

I'm going to assume that by 'culturally and subjectively formed' you mean that humans have to make concepts of them to understand them- otherwise we're getting into absolute ludicrousness (the idea that a serious SD.net poster would actually be a subjectivist and not get constantly bombarded for it is simply too ridiciolous to believe).

If so, my counter-argument would be that concepts can describe real things even as they define them. Unless you're going to take the assumption that we can't trust our own senses, a very basic version of the scientific method (in the sense of "We have a hypothesis, which predicts X. Let's test to see if X happens) should not be doubtable by any reasonable individual.

B. You assume that Scientific Method can operate in partial seclusion from cultural norms ('biases should be taken into account'). Think back to High School, the first two steps of the Scientific Method are 'question' and 'hypothesize'. That is; pick an area of investigation and then offer a truth-claim thereon for testing. This means that before any science can occur there is a linguistic and cultural phase that places pre-existing blinders on any sort of inquiry. This is why scientific inquiry into the equality of human 'races' in the 1830s, or trans-gender identity in the 1890s, was impossible: because language and cultural norms lacked the possibility of formulating these questions, or understanding any answer to them, in the first place. To see this first hand you can look at anthropological study of polyandry. When Anthropological research first took place polyandry was dismissed as a rogue aberrant found only in one or two random cultures, as time has gone by new analysis of the same research has revealed that polyandry was in fact quite wide-spread but that the original researchers either failed to recognize it or could not comprehend its existence in the first place because they lacked the ability to imagine a society organized along such lines. Similar stories occur all over the place and one need only look at the burgeoning fields of non-human tool-making and linguistics to see that at even a daily level. This means that science will always come second to other human activities and presumptions, and that questions like the OP Article will never be able to free themselves from cultural, national, and racial ideology.

1- Linguistic biases exist, but are not as extreme as you claim. When scientific research made by countries speaking different languages come up with the same results, there clearly isn't a linguistic bias. (Although that doesn't rule out a cultural one)
2- It would easily be possible to formulate questions of trans-gender identity in the language of the 1890s- "Despite having male body parts, on a subconscious level he sees himself as a female. Consequently, he has urges to attack his male body parts and to live as a woman" (I don't know much about transgender people, but that wasn't the point I was demonstrating), "All races are equal in intellectual ability" etc. The idea "All men are equal" already existed, for example. If you were to state such 'modern' ideas to somebody of the time, it would not be that difficult to explain it to them. Concieving of it is another matter, though.

3- Since given the advance of technology I doubt even you would dispute the claim that, say, engineering has discovered real truths about the world (and if you do you're an idiot) I'm going to focus on 'soft' sciences'. Culture is admittedly far more difficult to get around than language, but my points are:

-Western culture is getting comparatively more open-minded over time. Statistical odds indicate that it is likely

-Culture is admittedly a much more difficult limitation to get around, but there are ways to do so. Firstly, Western culture is getting comparatively more open-minded over time. Second, whenever Science has it wrong in many fields there is generally some oddity which shows up in testing (which is eventually explained by the next theory)- the scientific theory may merely be closer to the truth that anything else (as opposed to Absolute Truth), but it is aware where it's limitations lie. Third, as the absolute number of scientists in a field expands the probability of 'abberants' (in the sense of those that have managed to cast off a major cultural prejudice) expands. Even if only a small minority, when correct their hypotheses are likely to fit the evidence better and thus likely (eventually) win over their competition.

Then scroll down to the comments and see lots of people telling him how he is wrong on that point and that there are plenty of wild and domesticated animals in Vietnam. It really sounds like he made up the lack of animals.

The first paragraph or two of an article are often used to grab the attention of the reader so they read the rest of the article. If they are made up, like they are in this 'article', then the authors word is suspect. But his word is the only basis to trust any evidence presented in this article as he doesn't reference any outside sources. So any evidence he presents is suspect, as are any conclusions drawn from suspect evidence.

Remove anything that relies on believing the author from the article and you are left with this:

Editor’s note: Tribune Media Services, which distributed this article, issued a follow-up statement on Friday, February 1:

Tribune Media Services (TMS) recently moved an opinion column by Joel Brinkley about his observations from a trip to Vietnam that did not meet our journalistic standards. The column has provoked a highly critical response from readers since its release.

I didn't read the comments in this case because the comments in most articles aren't that intelligent. This appears to be the counter-argument I was looking for.

He is saying that a nation's general diet can affect its general tendencies. That isnt without merit.

The problem is literally every other assumption in that article.

And to your actual post itself. What webiste do you think this is?

I don't know much about U.S popular culture- not even enough to know about the reputations of various major newspapers.

[madd0ct0r]

hmm. the vietnamese do eat more meat - you can check it out on www.fao.org

the agression argument is kinda pointless though - you know, what with cambodia's pol pot regime, the cambodia-thai border conflicts, burma's famed junta ect.

[Stark]

I totally bet eating more meat is why there's no rats. 100%.

[madd0ct0r]

baked fieldmice IS a delicacy though, a bit like frog.

[Straha]

From the little evidence I know, it has been pointed out to me that Vietnam had more meat-eating and more aggresion. In the absence of other evidence, that is enough to create a correlation. It is also enough to make it worth asking about refutations.

What evidence did you have? Moreover, what argument did you have to convince you otherwise?

Remedial debate 101, a basic argument is made up of three parts:
1. A claim, which is the point the argument is setting out to make.
2. A warrant, which is evidence to prove the claim true.
3. An impact, which is contextualization of why this claim matters.

The entirety of that article was nothing but claims and impacts with no warrants to be found anywhere. Absent proof to back it up there was no reason to give any credence to the article or the claims it made.

A. You make the assumption that there are large-scale objective truthes to be had. While I am not so post-modern as to reject the idea of all empiricism, beyond the atomic scale I doubt there are any truths which are not partially or totally culturally and subjectively formed. Especially when it comes to the shifting tides of biology I would argue that that there can absolutely be no formal objectivity of any kind.

I'm going to assume that by 'culturally and subjectively formed' you mean that humans have to make concepts of them to understand them- otherwise we're getting into absolute ludicrousness (the idea that a serious SD.net poster would actually be a subjectivist and not get constantly bombarded for it is simply too ridiciolous to believe).

Well, yes. Humans do make concepts to understand them. That's all humans can do. Pray tell what you think being a 'subjectivist' is, and why you think this is so ludicrous.

To address what you seem to be driving, pray tell how humans can know or experience anything beyond their senses. If you're going to claim that there is an objective world which humans have access to understanding objectively then you also need to win that human understanding can transcend biological, linguistic, and cultural restraints placed upon them. I find that to be an incredibly difficult argument to make unless you appeal to some sort of transcendent power/endowment.

If so, my counter-argument would be that concepts can describe real things even as they define them. Unless you're going to take the assumption that we can't trust our own senses, a very basic version of the scientific method (in the sense of "We have a hypothesis, which predicts X. Let's test to see if X happens) should not be doubtable by any reasonable individual.

Can you prove that you have access to an understanding of the real world that exists outside the control and understanding of your consciousness and senses?

1- Linguistic biases exist, but are not as extreme as you claim. When scientific research made by countries speaking different languages come up with the same results, there clearly isn't a linguistic bias. (Although that doesn't rule out a cultural one)

You're strawmanning. My claim isn't that there are linguistic barriers between speakers of different languages (while that claim is completely True). It's that we can only formulate scientific theories and hypotheses using language we have available to us. Put bluntly this means that our understanding of the world comes second to the language we use to understand it. Which means scientific inquiry and methodology will always come second to the linguistic constraints placed on our minds and cultures.

2- It would easily be possible to formulate questions of trans-gender identity in the language of the 1890s- "Despite having male body parts, on a subconscious level he sees himself as a female. Consequently, he has urges to attack his male body parts and to live as a woman" (I don't know much about transgender people, but that wasn't the point I was demonstrating), "All races are equal in intellectual ability" etc. The idea "All men are equal" already existed, for example. If you were to state such 'modern' ideas to somebody of the time, it would not be that difficult to explain it to them. Concieving of it is another matter, though.

You inadvertently nail it on the head with the line 'all men are equal'. Multiple philosophers and political thinkers in the 17th and 18th century had come up with the phrase 'all men are equal', but when they used it they used 'men' to mean 'white, male, upper-middle class, educated' peoples. The language to have a discussion about egalitarianism did not exist and had to be created in order to make those discourses possible.

More importantly the signifiers you put together in your other sentences would make no sense together to someone of the time period and would be interpreted as gibberish, just like how the term egalitarian now does not include blackberry bushes or groupers despite the term meaning utter and complete equality when used in political discourse.

This is why fields can drop in and out of the realm of legitimate scientific inquiry (see, in the most extreme case, eugenics), it's not because the scientific method has changed significantly, or at all, but because the cultural determination of what constitutes science has changed over time. In your answer to this both here and below you only touch on the surface level question and never answer the second level analysis that needs to be done to prove that science can be 'objective' (hint, it can't except in the most barebones terms of analyses.)

3- Since given the advance of technology I doubt even you would dispute the claim that, say, engineering has discovered real truths about the world (and if you do you're an idiot)

Sure.

-Western culture is getting comparatively more open-minded over time. Statistical odds indicate that it is likely

And? So what?
The fact that it is comparatively more open-minded A. proves that cultural considerations have dominated the historical discourses of science and still place constraints on how we can imagine scientific inquiry now, and B. proves that we still have dominant cultural constraints now which we are culturally trying to overcome.

-Culture is admittedly a much more difficult limitation to get around, but there are ways to do so. Firstly, Western culture is getting comparatively more open-minded over time. Second, whenever Science has it wrong in many fields there is generally some oddity which shows up in testing (which is eventually explained by the next theory)- the scientific theory may merely be closer to the truth that anything else (as opposed to Absolute Truth), but it is aware where it's limitations lie. Third, as the absolute number of scientists in a field expands the probability of 'abberants' (in the sense of those that have managed to cast off a major cultural prejudice) expands. Even if only a small minority, when correct their hypotheses are likely to fit the evidence better and thus likely (eventually) win over their competition.

My argument is thus:
Scientific analysis and inquiry is controlled and dictated by pre-existing social and linguistic barriers that make the idea of any sort of objectivity impossible in any real sense of the term. Nothing you have said responds to this argument.

Try again.

[Dominarch's Hope]

baked fieldmice IS a delicacy though, a bit like frog.

Didnt Korea literally eat snakes or some form of pest right out of existence? Or was that urban legend?

[Metahive]

baked fieldmice IS a delicacy though, a bit like frog.

Didnt Korea literally eat snakes or some form of pest right out of existence? Or was that urban legend?

Ireland is the nation famous for its snakeless-ness (and no, not because they ate them all up), not Korea. Does doing even the least bit of research trigger lethal anaphylactic shocks in you, or what?

[Dominarch's Hope]

Ireland? Whats the myth of St.Patrick have to do with anything in this thread?

[Mr. Coffee]

He was answering your question about South Koreans and pointing out that you could have found the answer on your own with a google search instead of making yourself look like an even bigger clueless newbie retard.

[Dominarch's Hope]

Yes. And? I did google. It failed me.

[Carinthium]

What evidence did you have? Moreover, what argument did you have to convince you otherwise?

Remedial debate 101, a basic argument is made up of three parts:
1. A claim, which is the point the argument is setting out to make.
2. A warrant, which is evidence to prove the claim true.
3. An impact, which is contextualization of why this claim matters.

The entirety of that article was nothing but claims and impacts with no warrants to be found anywhere. Absent proof to back it up there was no reason to give any credence to the article or the claims it made.

Most journalists do a little research on their topic- that isn't strong evidence admittedly, but given that probability I assumed that he had done some degree of research (or at least that the probability was high enough to shift evidence very slightly).

Well, yes. Humans do make concepts to understand them. That's all humans can do. Pray tell what you think being a 'subjectivist' is, and why you think this is so ludicrous.

To address what you seem to be driving, pray tell how humans can know or experience anything beyond their senses. If you're going to claim that there is an objective world which humans have access to understanding objectively then you also need to win that human understanding can transcend biological, linguistic, and cultural restraints placed upon them. I find that to be an incredibly difficult argument to make unless you appeal to some sort of transcendent power/endowment.

'All humans can do' is a broad term- unless you discount such things as walking, perhaps you could clarify it?

The ludicrous version of subjectivism is the sort which considers there to be no objective reality beyond the perceptions of human beings, even in matters of logic and mathematics.

I'll start with linguistic, as that is the easiest form of restraint to transcend- any restraint that is truely linguistic can be gotten around by learning another language. Since we're not seeing people who learn more than one language talk of having their eyes opened to wonderous truths formely beyond their comphrehension, I assume there aren't that many problems there.

Second of course, there are the rules of logic and mathematics. Concepts have to be defined- but you can objectively know that if they are defined certain ways, certain rules follow. I don't have to go into these rules, I presume- plenty are well-known.

Third, science effectively is a gradual extenstion bit by bit of interferences from the senses so strictly speaking the claims 'humans cannot know anything beyond their senses' and 'science works' are not mutually incompatible.

Fourth, if you accept the theory of evolution it follows that, with the world being fairly dangerous (in the sense that it's no playground) humans would have to be at least somewhat objective or it would be impossible for us to survive at all.

Can you prove that you have access to an understanding of the real world that exists outside the control and understanding of your consciousness and senses?

Clearly a person's understanding must be filtered through their brain and their senses- any understanding would have to come through something. The admitted weak point of my posistion is the fact we can't get around the possibility we're living in an illusion world.

But if you don't believe in the senses, then why are you having this argument? If you do believe in the senses(plus memory) to the usual degree, then the rest of science and empiricism follows rationally from it.

You're strawmanning. My claim isn't that there are linguistic barriers between speakers of different languages (while that claim is completely True). It's that we can only formulate scientific theories and hypotheses using language we have available to us. Put bluntly this means that our understanding of the world comes second to the language we use to understand it. Which means scientific inquiry and methodology will always come second to the linguistic constraints placed on our minds and cultures.

What evidence do you have that strictly linguistic constraints cause problems, as opposed to language actually being a reliable tool for understanding the world?

You inadvertently nail it on the head with the line 'all men are equal'. Multiple philosophers and political thinkers in the 17th and 18th century had come up with the phrase 'all men are equal', but when they used it they used 'men' to mean 'white, male, upper-middle class, educated' peoples. The language to have a discussion about egalitarianism did not exist and had to be created in order to make those discourses possible.

More importantly the signifiers you put together in your other sentences would make no sense together to someone of the time period and would be interpreted as gibberish, just like how the term egalitarian now does not include blackberry bushes or groupers despite the term meaning utter and complete equality when used in political discourse.

Not true- Rosseau ridiculed the French Republic for their narrow franchise and advocated one for all men (I'm not sure if he actually carried it out, but that implies he could concieve of the idea). Women of the time wrote pointing out the inconsistencies of not applying the policies to women.

Although defeated in the end, many radicals pointed out that the Declaration of the Rights of Man implied the abolition of slavery (for a time it was actually abolished!), and slaves were inspired by it's words to discontent.

In addition- we can CONCIEVE of the concept of equality including bushes, staplers etc even if we don't agree with it. It just takes a bit of explanation. I would argue the same to be true of racial equality before the idea became accepted.

Even if you were right about all of this- that would be a cultural blinder, not a linguistic one.

This is why fields can drop in and out of the realm of legitimate scientific inquiry (see, in the most extreme case, eugenics), it's not because the scientific method has changed significantly, or at all, but because the cultural determination of what constitutes science has changed over time. In your answer to this both here and below you only touch on the surface level question and never answer the second level analysis that needs to be done to prove that science can be 'objective' (hint, it can't except in the most barebones terms of analyses.)

Science isn't absolutely 100% perfect, nor 100% immune to culture. However, significant minorities saw the problems around the eugenics issue even the majority couldn't.

I don't know what you mean by second level analysis in this case, but I suspect it's bunkum.

Sure.

One part of the scientific method used in ideas created by physicists and ultimately made into reality by engineers is the idea of testing a hypothesis. As we would agree on, the concepts the physicists use must be correct or at the very least close to the truth on the relevant scale- otherwise, they wouldn't work.

Some parts of biology, psycology, etc are vague and less scientific. But to take a hypothetical example- a scientist formulates a hypothesis and predicts result X if it is true. He then does a double-blind study (since it involves humans) which finds that X occurs. This study is then replicated by other scientists in other parts of the world.

How can you doubt that X is the truth after that, or at the very least has made a significant insight that has brought science closer to objective truth?

And? So what?
The fact that it is comparatively more open-minded A. proves that cultural considerations have dominated the historical discourses of science and still place constraints on how we can imagine scientific inquiry now, and B. proves that we still have dominant cultural constraints now which we are culturally trying to overcome.

I disagree on the degree of historical constraints, but that's a minor matter. What's important is that:
1- Many institutions (particularly the double-blind study) are managing to eliminate human bias further and further from the process by reducing human agency. Humans may not be objective, but it is very rare for them to deny the results before their very eyes (particularly as they'll eventually find only one hypothesis explains the masses of evidence).
2- Just because we haven't yet cast off the problem of cultural blinders to the point where we can acknowledge a result (even if with difficulty) when the tests prove it to exist doesn't mean we won't. The trend in that direction suggests we will.

My argument is thus:
Scientific analysis and inquiry is controlled and dictated by pre-existing social and linguistic barriers that make the idea of any sort of objectivity impossible in any real sense of the term. Nothing you have said responds to this argument.

Yes it does. What you're effectively saying is that, even if scientists show tests which blatantly point to the truth, they will ignore it if it doesn't fit within their pre-existing conceptions. This has been proved wrong before (e.g. Free Will, which is no longer supported by mainstream science), and even in those rare cases where it does happen it's only a matter of time before somebody analyses the false findings and overturns them.

[Metahive]

Yes. And? I did google. It failed me.

You know what also failed you? Your brain. O wait, I forgot you auctioned it off on eBay for a nickel. I mean, you didn't have any use for it anyway.