Over at e pur si muove. Philip Yeo deigns to join in the discussion with Elia Diodati and a bunch of cowardly anonymous commenters. Amongst other revealing things:

1. The myth that UIUC forced Acidflask to close down his blog, a myth spread by PY and his minions, is blasted to smithereens.

2. Philip Yeo attempts to deny the existence of an A*Star scholar who had a mental breakdown because of A*Star’s warnings to him about not meeting the GPA requirement. First, he says “Chap was never an A*STAR scholar that I am aware of.” Elia and the non-anonymous See Wee provide more evidence for the [ex-]scholar’s existence. The response to this is “If after one LOW, chap cracks up then he will not survive in the real world“, which I read as an implicit admission that the scholar exists. I don’t think the fate of this one scholar necessarily implies anything negative about the GPA requirement, but I do find it distasteful that PY’s first response, instead of an honest admission, is to pretend that the unfortunate person never existed.

3. Unsurprisingly, Yeo continues to avoid the question of whether the GPA standard is a good filter of talent. He repeats the stock line that most scholars meet the GPA requirement, missing the point that the question is precisely whether those scholars who meet the requirement are the ones who will make better scientists. He brings up the point that all the scholars who meet this requirement get into top graduate schools, but takchek and muthu testify that scholars who apply saying they have A*Star’s funding for graduate school can get into top graduate schools much more easily than applicants without external funding, so the fact that A*Star scholars get into top graduate schools is not a reliable indicator of their scientific promise.

4. Having failed to address the actual arguments presented to him, PY resorts to attacking Elia and his commenters for not having the credentials to criticise his policies.