down with Galton (and Pearson and Fisher…)

In the last issue of Significance, which I read in Warwick prior to the conference, there is a most interesting article on Galton’s eugenics, his heritage at University College London (UCL), and the overall trouble with honouring prominent figures of the past with memorials like named building or lectures… The starting point of this debate is a protest from some UCL students and faculty about UCL having a lecture room named after the late Francis Galton who was a professor there. Who further donated at his death most of his fortune to the university towards creating a professorship in eugenics. The protests are about Galton’s involvement in the eugenics movement of the late 18th and early 19th century. As well as professing racist opinions.

My first reaction after reading about these protests was why not?! Named places or lectures, as well as statues and other memorials, have a limited utility, especially when the named person is long dead and they certainly do not contribute in making a scientific theory [associated with the said individual] more appealing or more valid. And since “humans are [only] humans”, to quote Stephen Stigler speaking in this article, it is unrealistic to expect great scientists to be perfect, the more if one multiplies the codes for ethical or acceptable behaviours across ages and cultures. It is also more rational to use amphitheater MS.02 and lecture room AC.18 rather than associate them with one name chosen out of many alumni’s or former professors’.

Predictably, another reaction of mine was why bother?!, as removing Galton’s name from the items it is attached to is highly unlikely to change current views on eugenism or racism. On the opposite, it seems to detract from opposing the present versions of these ideologies. As some recent proposals linking genes and some form of academic success. Another of my (multiple) reactions was that as stated in the article these views of Galton’s reflected upon the views and prejudices of the time, when the notions of races and inequalities between races (as well as genders and social classes) were almost universally accepted, including in scientific publications like the proceedings of the Royal Society and Nature. When Karl Pearson launched the Annals of Eugenics in 1925 (after he started Biometrika) with the very purpose of establishing a scientific basis for eugenics. (An editorship that Ronald Fisher would later take over, along with his views on the differences between races, believing that “human groups differ profoundly in their innate capacity for intellectual and emotional development”.) Starting from these prejudiced views, Galton set up a scientific and statistical approach to support them, by accumulating data and possibly modifying some of these views. But without much empathy for the consequences, as shown in this terrible quote I found when looking for more material:

“I should feel but little compassion if I saw all the Damaras in the hand of a slave-owner, for they could hardly become more wretched than they are now…”

As it happens, my first exposure to Galton was in my first probability course at ENSAE when a terrific professor was peppering his lectures with historical anecdotes and used to mention Galton’s data-gathering trip to Namibia, literally measure local inhabitants towards his physiognomical views , also reflected in the above attempt of his to superpose photographs to achieve the “ideal” thief…

we need to talk about statistics

put it to the people [last chance?!]

Lies sleeping [book review]

This is the seventh book in the Rivers of London series, by Ben Aaronovitch, which I have been expecting a long time. Avoiding the teasers like The Furthest Station, which appears primarily as a way to capitalise on readers’ impatience. And maybe due to this long wait or simply fatigue of the writer (or reader?!), I found this volume quite weak, from the plot which major danger remains hidden to the duh? title, to the cavalcade of past characters (most of whom I could not place), to the somewhat repetitive interaction of Peter Grant with his colleagues and the boring description of car rides from one place of London to another, to an absence of hidden treasures from the true London, to the lack of new magical features in this universe, to a completely blah ending… Without getting into spoilers, this chase of the Faceless Man should have been the apex of the series, which mostly revolved around this top Evil, should have seen a smooth merging of the rivers when they join and die in the Channel, but the ending of this book is terribly disappointing. Sounds like the rivers are really drying out and should wait for the next monsoon to swell again to engaging pace and fascinating undercurrents! Although it seems the next book is on its way (and should land in Germany).

Meltdown expected, engines stop running…

crowdsourcing, data science & machine learning to measure violence & abuse against women on twitter

Amnesty International just released on December 18 a study on abuse and harassment on twitter account of female politicians and journalists in the US and the UK. Realised through the collaboration of thousands of crowdsourced volunteers labeling  tweets from the database and the machine-learning expertise of the London branch of ElementAI, branch driven by my friend Julien Cornebise with the main purpose of producing AI for good (as he explained at the recent Bayes for good workshop). Including the development of an ML tool to detect abusive tweets, called Troll Patrol [which pun side is clear in French!]. The amount of abuse exposed by this study and the possibility to train AIs to spot [some of the] abuse on line are both arguments that support Amnesty International call for the accountability of social media companies like twitter on abuse and violence propagated through their platform. (Methodology is also made available there.)

Imperial postdoc in Bayesian nonparametrics

Here is another announcement for a post-doctoral position in London (UK) to work with Sarah Filippi. In the Department of Mathematics at Imperial College London. (More details on the site or in this document. Hopefully, the salary is sufficient for staying in London, if not in South Kensington!)

The post holder will work on developing a novel Bayesian Non-Parametric Test for Conditional Independence. This is at the core of modern causal discovery, itself of paramount importance throughout the sciences and in Machine Learning. As part of this project, the post holder will derive a Bayesian non-parametric testing procedure for conditional independence, scalable to high-dimensional conditioning variable. To ensure maximum impact and allow experimenters in different fields to easily apply this new methodology, the post holder will then create an open-source software package available on the R statistical programming platform. Doing so, the post holder will investigate applying this approach to real-world data from our established partners who have a track record of informing national and international bodies such as Public Health England and the World Health Organisation.