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How academia's liberal bias is killing social science
- zzzeek 12y ago> For example, a study that sought to show that conservatives reach their beliefs only through denying reality achieved that result by describing ideological liberal beliefs as "reality," surveying people on whether they agreed with them, and then concluding that those who disagree with them are in denial of reality — and lo, people in that group are much more likely to be conservative! Do we refer to such ideological liberal beliefs as, "Was the President born in the United States or Kenya?" "Is global warming real?" "What is the age of the earth?"? I'd like to know what "ideological liberal beliefs" are being referred to here. Because a Kenyan imposter president, global warming the "greatest hoax" ever perpetrated (http://www.abebooks.com/Greatest-Hoax-Global-Warming-Conspiracy-Threatens/13919853332/bd?cm_mmc=gmc-_-gmc-_-PLA-_-v01 http://www.abebooks.com/Greatest-Hoax-Global-Warming-Conspir... written by current US Senator James Inhofe), and a 6000-year-old earth are currently mainstream conservative beliefs.
- Featurecreep 12y agoThis doesn't refer to conspiracy theories or extremist views. If any group is made up of people who think the same way, look at the world the same way or experience the world in similar ways, they tend as a group to ignore other points of view which may be valid. It's why we need diversity in all its forms.
- santacluster 12y agoClimate change denial is a mainstream conservative belief. And no, we don't need diversity in all its forms. We can do without the moronic, hateful and extremist.
- Vivtek 12y agoEven to the extent of affirmative action for the intentionally anti-diverse, apparently.
- timtas 12y agoIn less time than it took to write this comment you could have clicked the link and found your answer. But that would have denied you the chance to create and kill a nice straw man. It turns out, what the subjects were supposedly "denying" were not even statements of fact. They were slogans that convey attitude. As such, what the study tested for is properly called political correctness.
- wmf 12y agoIf anyone wants to skip straight to the good parts, this section of the paper starts on page 9.
- vixen99 12y agoBias in the social sciences? 'In one survey they conducted of academic social psychologists, "82 percent admitted that they would be at least a little bit prejudiced against a conservative [job] candidate.". Plenty more examples in the paper. I guess some conservatives might suggest that the 'social sciences' form a kind of club for leftwing liberals, funded by the taxpayer.
- lotsofmangos 12y agoThe social sciences have always been politicised for all sides. The trouble with the area isn't that it is liberal or conservative particularly, is that it is just generally full of woolly bias in all directions.
- alextgordon 12y agoFrom a British point of view this reads as "How academia's bias against the far-right is killing social science". A thoroughly ridiculous premise. "Liberal" and "conservative" are not natural categories. Anybody can be right or left from anybody else's perspective. The US democratic party does seem to be more conservative than the UK conservative party, so from that we could say that 98% of Americans are conservative. It is unsurprising to me that the involvement of the far-right would lead to starkly different conclusions in any science.
- oldmanjay 12y agoThere's certainly no bias inherent in your categorization of "most Americans" because clearly you aren't just pulling numbers that fit your worldview out of your ass, right? Or maybe I misread and you're going for a super gooey layer of irony.
- santacluster 12y agoMost Americans support either Republicans or Democrats. There are no significant political parties to the left, and those Democrats with somewhat left of center views are considered to be on the far left of the party. You don't really need statistics or bias to conclude that most Americans conservative. What part of that upsets you so much?
- oldmanjay 12y agoNo part upsets me. Why read emotional content into this?
- OvidNaso 12y ago"Most Americans support either Republicans or Democrats." Here are disapproval ratings[1]: Republicans: 62%. Democrats: 50% 1. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/americans-views-of-obama-congress-gloomy/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/americans-views-of-obama-congres...
- alextgordon 12y ago
- blueflow 12y agoScience and Conservatism are partially exclusive. Science includes questioning knowledge, while conservatism means to keep (conserve) the current. I still don't like how the article values that in a negative way.
- wyager 12y ago>Science and Conservatism are partially exclusive. Science includes questioning knowledge, What we call "liberalism" is not substantially more willing to question its beliefs than what we call "conservatism". People who fall under the American political label "liberal" are almost as ideologically entrenched as those who fall under the label "conservative"; they just happen to stick to a slightly more modern set of arbitrary beliefs. The people who really question the current political environment are almost always labeled as ideological extremists, which American liberals certainly are not. Now, as for science, it seems to me that liberals are just as liable to believe in the stereotypical anti-GMO anti-gluten pseudoscientific rhetoric as conservatives are to believe in the stereotypical anti-evolution anti-climate-change pseudoscientific rhetoric.
- vixen99 12y ago'Science and Conservatism are partially exclusive'. Your view is naive because it's uninformed as in 'conservatism means to keep (conserve) the current.'. Oh please, start with Burke and do some reading. Tons to do, evidently.
- dmritard96 12y agoWould love to see the stats on underrepresentation and which group they are sampling to ascertain the truthful population representation. I wouldn't be surprised if the number of 'conservatives' - whatever/whoever that is, is actually smaller than one might perceive via US politics. Its funny how narrow minded this perspective feels in general. One it assumes that people belong to one of two camps, and two, it assumes that there are two relevant camps.
- forkandwait 12y agoForgive me, but I firmly believe that the social sciences are very little more than ideology and power struggle dressed up in the scant bit of data and successful experimental prediction available, leavened with lots of faulty a priori reasoning. This goes for both economics, which toes a rightist capitalist line consistently, and for the leftist weanie disciplines of sociology and anthropology. Everybody is tied up in maintaining business power or getting funding for questionable social programs, respectively. Yuck.
- santacluster 12y agoYes, why on earth would there be a bias in academia against a political movement who's representatives loudly and repeatedly makes anti-science, anti-academia, anti-intellectual and simply downright moronic statements? Gimme a break.
- zo1 12y agoI'd say the truth is quite a bit further than that. They only appear adversarial, I think, in an effort to make the general public think that they're keeping each other on their respective toes.
- saosebastiao 12y agoConservatism isn't a political movement or political party, it is a philosophical categorization. Its relationship with any political party is correlation at best. I'm a conservative, but Boener doesn't speak for me any more than Obama or Pelosi speak for you.
- WhitneyLand 12y agoWeak sauce. The paper seems to be looking for non-objective liberally biased judgements. The problem with that is that discriminating between objective measures and value judgements can be done without descending into conspiracy theories. It's appropriate to question objectivity, please continue to do so. But start by first building a strong evidence base and methods to identify problems independent of politics.
- wyager 12y agoA common theme of this thread seems to be "But liberals believe in science and conservatives don't!". This is, of course, picking out the stereotypical far-right bible-thumpin' boot-wearin' evolution-denyin' strawman, much as American conservatives like to pick out the weed-smoking dreadlocked hippie strawman. Most political conservatives (by American political terminology) are not, in fact, anti-science in any meaningful capacity. I would also like to point out that, while HN is a very liberal crowd, it is not representative of the general liberal (again, American political terminology) population. For every conservative who doesn't believe in global warming, there's a liberal who believes that GMOs and gluten cause cancer. No political group has the claim to a monopoly on science. Finally, if you don't think the social sciences aren't substantially liberally biased (in the political sense, not the fictional science-appreciating sense), you haven't spent enough time (or maybe I've spent too much time) on college campuses in the last few years.
- WhitneyLand 12y agoI don't think that is the theme here or that it is justification for down voting multiple comments. Your last sentence talks about substantial liberal bias. Do you mean to say substantially liberal population, or proven to lack capacity for objectivity? The makeup of a group is quite different than unfair practices.
- wyager 12y ago>The makeup of a group is quite different than unfair practices. That's definitely a valid point. I'm operating under the assumption that these social scientists are not perfect, and their conclusions and work are swayed by their (strong) personal beliefs.
- trynumber9 12y agoSo far in the comments, the Republicans have been called far-right, anti-science, anti-academia, anti-intellectual, and some other things. No wonder they rarely self-identify. Individual members of the Republican party are probably any one of those or more. But nice to see such a nuanced discussion. Let's put to rest the idea they're far right. Far right generally have strong elements of authoritarianism, anti-democracy, and anti-integration. Republicans are probably the loudest integration proponents and seem to demand an unreasonably fast integration of (Spanish-speaking) immigrants. Their voter registration efforts are not anti-democratic, many other countries have strict voter registration requirements and are still considered fully functioning democracies (for example, the UK which has fines for not registering and requires a fixed address unless you want to fill out a declaration-of-connection form). Republicans have been firmly against authoritarianism (at least while they don't hold the executive office). The tell tale signs of far-right are not present in the Republican party. They've been proponents of DARPA, the national labs, and NASA. Even if some members spew anti-science agenda, they're actions speak differently. Right now they're crying loudly about a plan to rate universities on a set of federally defined criteria, which would in practice limit the freedom of university's to teach as they please. That is, in essence, a defense of academic freedom. (They might actually be anti-intellectual, but that's not uncommon for any populist party). They're populist reactionaries at times, but in the end they're not the Tea Party even if some Tea Party members are Republicans.
- cbd1984 12y ago> Their voter registration efforts are not anti-democratic They are to the extent they hit some groups harder than others, and especially to the extent they disenfranchise those who tend to not vote Republican. > Republicans are probably the loudest integration proponents and seem to demand an unreasonably fast integration of (Spanish-speaking) immigrants. Setting an unreasonably high bar for doing something is a great way to prohibit it. > Even if some members spew anti-science agenda No. An anti-science agenda is policy. You can't be accepted as a Republican unless you go against science on at least climate change, for example.
- trynumber9 12y ago
- laitanner 12y agohttp://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001588 http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001588
- timtas 12y agoIt's worth noting that the author of this humorous post does not really assert anything. He implies that Republican views are objectively wrong without giving any support to that assertion or even naming any specific views. The only effect is to manifest his own political affinity.
- CompanyLaser 12y agoPerhaps it has to do with the fact that conservatives have very little original thought to contribute to the field these days beyond what's already been long established by old school thinkers. The progress I see happening today is in the way far left: actor network theory (Latour), speculative realism (Harman), McKenzie Wark, and so on
- skmurphy 12y agoOpening paragraph clearly frames the challenge: I have had the following experience more than once: I am speaking with a professional academic who is a liberal. The subject of the underrepresentation of conservatives in academia comes up. My interlocutor admits that this is indeed a reality, but says the reason why conservatives are underrepresented in academia is because they don't want to be there, or they're just not smart enough to cut it. I say: "That's interesting. For which other underrepresented groups do you think that's true?" An uncomfortable silence follows.