How academia's liberal bias is killing social science

http://theweek.com/article/index/273736/how-academias-liberal-bias-is-killing-social-science

by Varcht • 12 years ago

52 40 12 years ago

zzzeek• 12 years 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-Conspir... written by current US Senator James Inhofe), and a 6000-year-old earth are currently mainstream conservative beliefs.

Featurecreep• 12 years ago

This 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.

santacluster2• 12 years ago

Climate 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• 12 years ago

Even to the extent of affirmative action for the intentionally anti-diverse, apparently.

timtas2• 12 years ago

In 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• 12 years ago

If anyone wants to skip straight to the good parts, this section of the paper starts on page 9.

vixen992• 12 years ago

Bias 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• 12 years ago

The 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.

alextgordon3• 12 years ago

From 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.

oldmanjay3• 12 years ago

There'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.

santacluster2• 12 years ago

Most 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?

alextgordon3• 12 years ago

The 98% number is the number of voters that voted for either Democrat or Republican presidents in 2012.

I admit because of turnout we can't claim to know about the opinions of non-voters. But it's safe to assume that most Americans are either Democrat, Republican or somewhere in between.

plg• 12 years ago

yes

here in Canada our "right wing" government would be on most issues to the left of US democrats --- certainly Obama

in any case these left-right classifications are unhelpful at best

sesutton• 12 years ago

I don't see how you got to that conclusion from reading the article other than perhaps assuming that in the American context conservative equals far-right. Perhaps its a matter of perspective but while there are plenty of far-right people in the US I don't think it's fair to assume that conservative is synonymous with far-right in the US.

alextgordon3• 12 years ago

Many things that the Republican party says and does strike me as far-right.

I'm not sure if I can bring up specific issues without this thread turning into a political mud fight, but the UK Conservative party is mostly OK about climate change being a real thing, abortion and gay marriage. Even their worst-case dismemberment of the NHS would be far more socialist than "Obamacare".

On the economic side of things, it seems that America tends towards classical liberalism (i.e. conservatism), for it lacks any kind of social democratic or socialist thought. When is the last time you heard a major American party call for something to be brought into public ownership?

But this is exactly my point. While it seems to me that there are very few on the left in the US, I am but one data point. Right and left, liberal and conservative are completely meaningless as descriptions of anything.

onetimeusename• 12 years ago

I actually think moderate Republicans in the US are more similar to the UK's Conservative party. They have very similar campaign promises and very similar actual legislative agendas. A good example of a moderate republican in the US would be Mitt Romney as governor or Scott Brown, both republicans who served on the East Coast. To me it is a myth that the US is very conservative, they elected Barack Obama twice. I would most certainly say that Barack Obama is more liberal than any members of the UK Conservative party. From an ideology perspective, Tony Blair is very similar. If the US pres was in the UK, I am nearly positive he would be in the Labour party.

walshemj• 12 years ago

true but that was true back in the 50's one nation Tory's and Eisenhower republicans. Its just that the GOP appears to have been take over by entryists from the hard right.

A bit like how the trots tried to take over the labour party from the hard left

blueflow3• 12 years ago

Science 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.

wyager3• 12 years 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.

blueflow3• 12 years ago

And i wasn't talking about liberalism, because it just kinda translates to 'movement for freedom', which could be a lot. I doubt its even mutually exclusive with conservatism.

vixen992• 12 years 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.

MisterBastahrd• 12 years ago

Because modern "conservatism" has anything to do with Burke's version. You have a future in comedy.

blueflow3• 12 years ago

conservatism means to keep (conserve) the current

literally. What about a Latin dictionary instead of Burke?

dmritard96• 12 years ago

Would 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• 12 years ago

Forgive 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.

WhitneyLand2• 12 years ago

Weak 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.

wyager3• 12 years ago

A 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.

WhitneyLand2• 12 years ago

I 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.

wyager3• 12 years 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.

trynumber92• 12 years ago

So 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• 12 years 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.

trynumber92• 12 years ago

Fair enough with the first two.

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.

There are many examples of sitting republicans such as Mark Kirk, Bob Corker, Michael Grimm, Susan Collins, Lamar Alexander, Chris Smith, John Thune, Rodney Frelinghuysen and likely more who are are card-carrying Republicans, elected as Republican and acknowledge 'at least climate change'. It's not mandatory.

laitanner• 12 years ago

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001588

timtas2• 12 years ago

It'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• 12 years ago

Perhaps 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• 12 years ago

Opening 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.

How academia's liberal bias is killing social science

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