A Fine Example of an Obnoxious Genre

Gregory Berns has published an 'opinion' piece in today's New York Times in which he opines that "Dogs Are People Too." Articles like this are a constant, unchanging fixture of science journalism, which always presents the evidence for animal emotional intelligence as something new and controversial. This journalism tells us something that was already perfectly obvious to paleolithic humans (even without the help of MRI's!), but that has been denied for the past few centuries, as if it were an exciting new debate still to be had. In fact this is a way of deferring change in the way people relate to animals, not of initiating it. 

Comments

[elisa]

Thanks for the interesting and thought-provoking post.
We have some real problems, such as the discrimination of women at work-places, the gender disparity in philosophy and the like.
How to deal with them? Real solutions (such as a cultural campaign in favour of fathers taking time off for their children, or child-cares in each institute) are expensive and difficult. Fortunatately enough, there are cheap solutions which look even better, such as abolishing gender-related names (at the university of Leipzig, everyone is called "Professorin", literally the feminine form of the German term for "professor") or introducing reserved places for women (so that one will always think that if there is a woman around, it must be only because she got an easier path and not because she is just a bright human being).