Retracted, with a note that says "we believe that all the key findings of the paper with regards to co-authorship between junior and senior researchers are still valid". Isn't it important to discuss the many points on which the paper is incorrect?

1. The gender analysis was "only meant to be exploratory” and used techniques that “cannot be claimed to establish causality” but causal inferences were made anyway.
Causal claims were justified by pointing out that other people do it too. "While this technique does not establish the existence of a causal effect, it is commonly used to infer causality from observational data."

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I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x


The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x

Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x

The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x

It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x