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Well covered relative to what? The problem is you don't know how much research into taboo topics would exist in an academic environment where freedom of speech

Well covered relative to what? The problem is you don't know how much research into taboo topics would exist in an academic environment where freedom of speech was actually respected. It could be double, triple or 10x what we see today. Or it could be equal. However, it would be strange to assume it's equal given the very public mob mentality and academic "executions" for conservative thought, the many testimonies from academics saying they're afraid to even voice conservative ideas in academia let alone apply for grant funding for them, and the work of people like Jonathan Haight who showed fields like psychology are dominated by one political ideology. To me it's obvious there are areas that are under-researched by academia. To name just two: 1. Climate change skepticism. All the research I've seen here is done by academic outsiders. They find real problems, publish papers and get real retractions or changes made in the field, but none of it is done by academia itself. When you read the various emails showing how academics try to block people who disagree with them from getting published, it's obvious what's going on. 2. Men's rights. Academia churns out vast amounts of "research" into various feminist and intersectionalist topics. I've seen very few papers on anything approximating the male opposite. The small amount that does exist tends to come out of psychological research into education in the context of why boys are falling behind at school (they find some worrying things about teacher bias). But it's an occasional dot compared to the torrent of government-funded feminist thought. The problem with areas of inquiry like these is that leftists attack them as not only illegitimate to study at all, but to even talk about. This is despite the fact that they're both completely mainstream sets of views.

speedplane 7y ago
> To me it's obvious there are areas that are under-researched by academia. ... Climate change skepticism. Why would anyone research "climate change skepticism" and not just "climate"? The very idea of a discipline with "skepticism" in it's name suggests that there is an existing answer that someone is looking for, whereas the whole point of science is to keep an open mind. Nobody researches "physics skepticism", they research physics. If you presuppose an outcome, you're not really doing science.
- whatthesmack 7y ago
  You’re presenting as argument a non-issue and distracting from the real issue. They are researching climate. What GP seems to be referencing is that they’re coming to a different conclusion and are being assaulted for it.
- makomk 7y ago
  That's sort of the trouble - mainstream climate change research seems to be lacking skepticism when it comes to claims that we're all doomed. For example, there was a paper in Nature which claimed the oceans were soaking up 60% more heat than previously thought, which implied CO2 caused much more warming than previously estimated. This made it onto most of the world's news and HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18352506 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18352506 It should've caused skepticism, since it used a weird indirect method to estimate something that was measured directly and contradicted both the direct measurements and the models. It didn't. It took some of those academic outsiders to spot that they'd screwed up the error bounds and, in fact, this weird method wasn't able to measure ocean heating accurately enough to contradict the existing measurements. The researchers did at least admit some of their errors, which is not something that can be relied on in any field. The HN comments are quite amazing in retrospect too. Lots of comments proclaiming our doom, with tthe topmost one starting "yet more bad news on the climate change front", one not-particularly-insightful downvoted comment at the bottom suggesting that a 60% change in an important measurement shouldn't inspire confidence in climate science's accuracy.
  - speedplane 7y ago
    > mainstream climate change research seems to be lacking skepticism when it comes to claims that we're all doomed. That isn't enough. Mainstream physics research lacks skepticism about the laws of thermodynamics. Mainstream biology lacks skepticism about cell division. When evidence for a proposition is strong, skepticism is weak. If you want to argue for climate change skepticism, you have to provide evidence for to raise that skepticism. Yet every time someone does so, it gets shot down.
- thu2111 7y ago
speedplane 7y ago
> leftists attack them as not only illegitimate to study at all, but to even talk about. Conservatives love raising freedom of speech issues, if it aligns with their viewpoint. Where were the conservatives when extreme leftists were getting jailed for burning the american flag? Where were they when in the middle of the century when a bunch of music was considered being banned? Conservatives don't care about free speech, they care about their own speech.
- whatthesmack 7y ago
  s/conservatives/leftists/ and you get the same thing. It’s another non-argument. The point GP seems to be making is that it is only conservative thought that is assailed as illegitimate to study or even discuss. As a conservative-turned-libertarian, I was frightened to even speak my conservative thoughts in college 15 years ago lest my grade be impacted. I can’t imagine what modern conservatives must endure in college. Many reasonable people don’t want any particular side to have the upper hand. That applies to all of my conservative and libertarian friends. My leftist friends seem to have a self-righteousness about them that I can only conclude they gain from their empowerment on a campus lacking intellectual diversity.
  - speedplane 7y ago
    > My leftist friends seem to have a self-righteousness about them that I can only conclude they gain from their empowerment on a campus lacking intellectual diversity. Conservatives are plenty self-righteous, you only hear ad-hominems like "anti-American", "hates freedom", and "naive" from the right.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> Academia churns out vast amounts of "research" into various feminist and intersectionalist topics. I've seen very few papers on anything approximating the male opposite. Have you looked? Because there's at least two competing fields devoted directly to the topic (“men’s studies” and “male studies”.)

speedplane 7y ago

> To me it's obvious there are areas that are under-researched by academia. ... Climate change skepticism. Why would anyone research "climate change skepticism" and not just "climate"? The very idea of a discipline with "skepticism" in it's name suggests that there is an existing answer that someone is looking for, whereas the whole point of science is to keep an open mind. Nobody researches "physics skepticism", they research physics. If you presuppose an outcome, you're not really doing science.

whatthesmack 7y ago
You’re presenting as argument a non-issue and distracting from the real issue. They are researching climate. What GP seems to be referencing is that they’re coming to a different conclusion and are being assaulted for it.
makomk 7y ago
That's sort of the trouble - mainstream climate change research seems to be lacking skepticism when it comes to claims that we're all doomed. For example, there was a paper in Nature which claimed the oceans were soaking up 60% more heat than previously thought, which implied CO2 caused much more warming than previously estimated. This made it onto most of the world's news and HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18352506 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18352506 It should've caused skepticism, since it used a weird indirect method to estimate something that was measured directly and contradicted both the direct measurements and the models. It didn't. It took some of those academic outsiders to spot that they'd screwed up the error bounds and, in fact, this weird method wasn't able to measure ocean heating accurately enough to contradict the existing measurements. The researchers did at least admit some of their errors, which is not something that can be relied on in any field. The HN comments are quite amazing in retrospect too. Lots of comments proclaiming our doom, with tthe topmost one starting "yet more bad news on the climate change front", one not-particularly-insightful downvoted comment at the bottom suggesting that a 60% change in an important measurement shouldn't inspire confidence in climate science's accuracy.
- speedplane 7y ago
  > mainstream climate change research seems to be lacking skepticism when it comes to claims that we're all doomed. That isn't enough. Mainstream physics research lacks skepticism about the laws of thermodynamics. Mainstream biology lacks skepticism about cell division. When evidence for a proposition is strong, skepticism is weak. If you want to argue for climate change skepticism, you have to provide evidence for to raise that skepticism. Yet every time someone does so, it gets shot down.
thu2111 7y ago

speedplane 7y ago

> leftists attack them as not only illegitimate to study at all, but to even talk about. Conservatives love raising freedom of speech issues, if it aligns with their viewpoint. Where were the conservatives when extreme leftists were getting jailed for burning the american flag? Where were they when in the middle of the century when a bunch of music was considered being banned? Conservatives don't care about free speech, they care about their own speech.

whatthesmack 7y ago
s/conservatives/leftists/ and you get the same thing. It’s another non-argument. The point GP seems to be making is that it is only conservative thought that is assailed as illegitimate to study or even discuss. As a conservative-turned-libertarian, I was frightened to even speak my conservative thoughts in college 15 years ago lest my grade be impacted. I can’t imagine what modern conservatives must endure in college. Many reasonable people don’t want any particular side to have the upper hand. That applies to all of my conservative and libertarian friends. My leftist friends seem to have a self-righteousness about them that I can only conclude they gain from their empowerment on a campus lacking intellectual diversity.
- speedplane 7y ago
  > My leftist friends seem to have a self-righteousness about them that I can only conclude they gain from their empowerment on a campus lacking intellectual diversity. Conservatives are plenty self-righteous, you only hear ad-hominems like "anti-American", "hates freedom", and "naive" from the right.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> Academia churns out vast amounts of "research" into various feminist and intersectionalist topics. I've seen very few papers on anything approximating the male opposite. Have you looked? Because there's at least two competing fields devoted directly to the topic (“men’s studies” and “male studies”.)