[FabHK]

1. Whether or not the Big Five are appropriate for the analysis or not, or whether they're ultimate truth or not, doesn't really matter for the point I and GP were making: Damon's terminology is jargon from differential psychology and easily misunderstood. ("Women score higher on neuroticism on average" does not mean "Women are too neurotic to work as engineers in big companies", or whatever.)

2. I think it takes more than one article (which has been cited once, by the author themselves) to unseat the Big Five.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3903487/citedby...

3. As an aside, note that the article finds significant sex differences (p=0.00) in 10 out of 12 items on its proposed scale, STQ-150, if I'm understanding it correctly.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3903487/table/p...

[bduerst]

1. And my point is that even with it's correctly understood, it is still incorrect. I agree that the entire document was overly vague and open to interpreters inserting their own ideas, usually tied to their own political identity.

2. Appealing to number of citations is an appeal to popularity (fallacy) because it avoids criticizing the content. It's also not "unseating" the big five, just demonstrating how the big five is incorrectly used as biological factor analysis. There are other applications is psychoanalysis the big five can be use for.

3. If you read the paper, you'd see that Table 3 is used in conjunction with other data to prove their hypothesis on projection-through-capacity bias.

[akvadrako]

So your point is that, even though the reporters neglected to explain (or understand) the term neurotic, they were justified because the ultimately correct explanation is that it's meaningless in context?

In that case, the only proper response is to report that the word neurotic is not scientific.

[stcredzero]

In that case, the only proper response is to report that the word neurotic is not scientific.

I think that's a discussion worth having. That would've been a lot better than just firing the guy!

[bduerst]

No, my point is that worrying about the semantics of the word neurotic is a pointless exercise because even when correctly understood in the case of the big five, it's still incorrectly used scientifically by Damore.

[scruple]

But it's disingenuous to the point of the memo, to the point that it's _deliberately_ misleading to the general public... Leading to the moral outrage.

[bduerst]

How was it deliberately misused for moral outrage? I thought the context here is that people flat out misunderstood it, not deliberately misused it. In either case, whether by Damore or the public, deliberate or not, it was definitely being misused. Splitting hairs by whom is the pointless exercise.