Second, do not publicly apologise for making reasonable scientific assertions or expressing one's personal opinions in good faith. Indeed, this piece of advice is supported by two recent studies (Hanania, 2015; Sunstein, 2019). In the 2015 study by Hanania, subjects read a brief passage of text describing Larry Summers's controversial comments about the under-representation of women in STEM, and were then assigned to read either one of two further passages: one in which Summers was described as having stood firm, and one in which he was described as having apologised. Hanania found that subjects in the ‘apology’ condition were about 8 percentage points more likely to say that Summers should have faced negative consequences than those in the ‘no apology’ condition.
Or less pithy, unless you're really playing up being Canadian, apologizing implies guilt. You apologize for wrongdoing, not rightdoing, so clearly, if you apologized, that means what you did was wrong.
You'd think this would be obvious through even mere thought experiment, but people still think apologizing when they've done no wrong will help somehow.
When you bend a knee you expose your neck.
Or less pithy, unless you're really playing up being Canadian, apologizing implies guilt. You apologize for wrongdoing, not rightdoing, so clearly, if you apologized, that means what you did was wrong.
You'd think this would be obvious through even mere thought experiment, but people still think apologizing when they've done no wrong will help somehow.