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Well, the summary is of course extremely condensed, and it helps a lot to read the paper. Some very quick observations: - These are data from social science st

Well, the summary is of course extremely condensed, and it helps a lot to read the paper. Some very quick observations: - These are data from social science students in Frankfurt, Germany. The city and university is traditionally left-leaning, so not at all representative for anything (not for students, not for Germany, not internationally) - The total population is ~6600, and the sample is N=501, which is further reduced by some missing values. Note that very few people actually identify as political leanings, espeically hardly anyone on the conservative spectrum. So I would argue that this study has not enough power to draw any serious conclusion (power in the statistical sense as sensitivity to reject a H0 given it is false) - The measured variables were many more than merely banning books. Some restrictive attitudes were not supported. Finally, it is immensenly important to remember that countries must pick one of roughly three approaches to dealing with harmful political attitudes (see Ziblatt's "How Democracies Die" for a longer review of this): - Have all attitudes compete equally (this is the US model of free speech) - Contain bad attitudes by shunning them and rendering them a taboo - Exclude bad attitudes by prohibiting them legally (this is the German model, which criminalizes expression of some opinions such as denial of the Holocaust).

FabHK 5y ago
Agreed that this does not represent the world, or Germany, or students in general. But it is one datapoint about social science students in Frankfurt, which was deliberately chosen as a "likely worst case" to detect the problem. In fact, the authors are very explicit about that point: "We are certainly not under the impression that our sample is representative of university students in general (or the wider public, for that matter). On the contrary, we purposefully consider the social science studentship at Frankfurt as a most likely case." Next, as outlined above, n=500 seems enough to reject the hypothesis that the percentage that wants to ban the books is near 0. In other words, I dispute your notion that the study has not enough power. Strong sampling bias might be a problem, but nobody has made a case for that yet.

FabHK 5y ago

Agreed that this does not represent the world, or Germany, or students in general. But it is one datapoint about social science students in Frankfurt, which was deliberately chosen as a "likely worst case" to detect the problem. In fact, the authors are very explicit about that point: "We are certainly not under the impression that our sample is representative of university students in general (or the wider public, for that matter). On the contrary, we purposefully consider the social science studentship at Frankfurt as a most likely case." Next, as outlined above, n=500 seems enough to reject the hypothesis that the percentage that wants to ban the books is near 0. In other words, I dispute your notion that the study has not enough power. Strong sampling bias might be a problem, but nobody has made a case for that yet.