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What a bizarre line of thinking. A 50/50 split in reasoning isn't "diversity", it's "uncertainty". It is the absence of knowledge. If a researchers "ideology" r

What a bizarre line of thinking. A 50/50 split in reasoning isn't "diversity", it's "uncertainty". It is the absence of knowledge. If a researchers "ideology" related to their field wasn't moving in line with results, we would rightly call them biased.

ch4s3 11y ago
That isn't what the article is saying. It argues that the lack of ideological diversity in social sciences leads to less scrutiny of conventional wisdom. Which it claims is partially responsible for the field's trouble reproducing the results of published research. [edit] I'm just paraphrasing the argument of the article, which I don't necessarily agree with.
- _delirium 11y ago
  > As such, the field seems to have trouble reproducing the results of published research. I'm skeptical that ideological diversity or lack thereof is at the root of this, since you see it in a lot of "soft science" disciplines of varying political inclinations. Political science, psychology, and economics have fairly different distributions of political viewpoints, and yet none of those fields has a strong track record of reproducibility.
  - ch4s3 11y ago
    I'm not sure I agree either, I was just summarizing what I thought was the thesis of the article.
  - oldmanjay 11y ago
    If the views are diverse when viewed across all disciplines but a monoculture inside, then you've made an argument in favor of the position you're against.
    - _delirium 11y ago
      They aren't really a monoculture inside, though. Economics, for example, is pretty politically diverse, with economists ranging from socialist to libertarian in their political preferences, and yet still can't reproduce much.
- revelation 11y ago
  Then make the argument that these findings are wrong. Don't make the argument that you are surprised the majority of climate scientists "believe" in global warming when that is what results in the field are showing.
whatshisface 11y ago
You could generate 100% "certainty" about the results of a coin toss if you threw everyone who didn't think it would come up heads out of the room. If you can't convince someone who doesn't already agree, you shouldn't be allowed to claim knowledge, only opinion. (Note: This doesn't mean you aren't right, just that our social mechanism of truth-finding shouldn't trust you implicitly.)
- haberman 11y ago
  > If you can't convince someone who doesn't already agree, you shouldn't be allowed to claim knowledge, only opinion. What about global warming denial, anti-vax, young-earth creationism, etc? I'm not being snarky, it legitimately troubles me that "can you convince people?" is the best measure of truth we seem to have, because it seems so noisy and unreliable.
  - nonbel 11y ago
    >"What really count are dramatic, unexpected, stunning predictions: a few of them are enough to tilt the balance; where theory lags behind the facts, we are dealing with miserable degenerating research programmes." Imre Lakatos. Science and Pseudoscience. From Imre Lakatos, Philosophical Papers, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 1-7. Written in early 1973 http://crl.ucsd.edu/~ahorowit/lakatos.pdf http://crl.ucsd.edu/~ahorowit/lakatos.pdf

ch4s3 11y ago

That isn't what the article is saying. It argues that the lack of ideological diversity in social sciences leads to less scrutiny of conventional wisdom. Which it claims is partially responsible for the field's trouble reproducing the results of published research. [edit] I'm just paraphrasing the argument of the article, which I don't necessarily agree with.

_delirium 11y ago
> As such, the field seems to have trouble reproducing the results of published research. I'm skeptical that ideological diversity or lack thereof is at the root of this, since you see it in a lot of "soft science" disciplines of varying political inclinations. Political science, psychology, and economics have fairly different distributions of political viewpoints, and yet none of those fields has a strong track record of reproducibility.
- ch4s3 11y ago
  I'm not sure I agree either, I was just summarizing what I thought was the thesis of the article.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  If the views are diverse when viewed across all disciplines but a monoculture inside, then you've made an argument in favor of the position you're against.
  - _delirium 11y ago
    They aren't really a monoculture inside, though. Economics, for example, is pretty politically diverse, with economists ranging from socialist to libertarian in their political preferences, and yet still can't reproduce much.
revelation 11y ago
Then make the argument that these findings are wrong. Don't make the argument that you are surprised the majority of climate scientists "believe" in global warming when that is what results in the field are showing.

whatshisface 11y ago

You could generate 100% "certainty" about the results of a coin toss if you threw everyone who didn't think it would come up heads out of the room. If you can't convince someone who doesn't already agree, you shouldn't be allowed to claim knowledge, only opinion. (Note: This doesn't mean you aren't right, just that our social mechanism of truth-finding shouldn't trust you implicitly.)

haberman 11y ago
> If you can't convince someone who doesn't already agree, you shouldn't be allowed to claim knowledge, only opinion. What about global warming denial, anti-vax, young-earth creationism, etc? I'm not being snarky, it legitimately troubles me that "can you convince people?" is the best measure of truth we seem to have, because it seems so noisy and unreliable.
- nonbel 11y ago
  >"What really count are dramatic, unexpected, stunning predictions: a few of them are enough to tilt the balance; where theory lags behind the facts, we are dealing with miserable degenerating research programmes." Imre Lakatos. Science and Pseudoscience. From Imre Lakatos, Philosophical Papers, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 1-7. Written in early 1973 http://crl.ucsd.edu/~ahorowit/lakatos.pdf http://crl.ucsd.edu/~ahorowit/lakatos.pdf