Social Scientists - A Tribal-Moral Community

What do you think, will they hit Dr. Haidt's suggested quota of 10% conservative representation?

Can social scientists open up to outsiders’ ideas? Dr. Haidt was optimistic enough to title his speech “The Bright Future of Post-Partisan Social Psychology,” urging his colleagues to focus on shared science rather than shared moral values. To overcome taboos, he advised them to subscribe to National Review and to read Thomas Sowell’s “A Conflict of Visions.”

For a tribal-moral community, the social psychologists in Dr. Haidt’s audience seemed refreshingly receptive to his argument. Some said he overstated how liberal the field is, but many agreed it should welcome more ideological diversity. A few even endorsed his call for a new affirmative-action goal: a membership that’s 10 percent conservative by 2020. The society’s executive committee didn’t endorse Dr. Haidt’s numerical goal, but it did vote to put a statement on the group’s home page welcoming psychologists with “diverse perspectives.”

No advocate of quotas am I, but that seems to be the Triabal-Moral Community's solution to all problems perceived to be discrimination.

Your silly notion that conservatives don't want to enter the world of Academia because they can't make enough is not only silly, it's laughable.

I can just imagine how you would howl if someone posted that blacks self-select against careers in science because it requires too much work.

It's reassuring to see that you will attempt to defend even the most obvious of left-wing errors. Constants make us feel secure, and you're nothing if you're not constant.

But given the facts, I think this is a very difficult argument to make indeed.

But beyond the goal of reducing personal embarrassment, the more that the independent authority of scholars and scientists can be diminished, the easier it becomes for ever more risible statements to take on the status of holy writ. After all, we all know that progressive taxes infallibly drive away the rich...Right?

That said (and there’s more to be done with a detailed fisking of both Tiernery and McCardle, which I may yet attempt) here I just want to point out that Tierney undercuts the entire farrago with one injudicious anecdote.

His source, Jonathan Haidt, a U. VA social psychologist, made the central claim that Tierney takes up and McArdle then amplifies. Haidt claims that the political orientation of the members of his field is so overwhelmingly liberal that only discrimination can account for that distribution. His proof? A show of hands at a conference.** Other than that, the only other Haidt evidence Tierney references comes from an email from an allegedly victimized student:

Quote:

“I consider myself very middle-of-the-road politically: a social liberal but fiscal conservative. Nonetheless, I avoid the topic of politics around work,” one student wrote. “Given what I’ve read of the literature, I am certain any research I conducted in political psychology would provide contrary findings and, therefore, go unpublished. Although I think I could make a substantial contribution to the knowledge base, and would be excited to do so, I will not.”

O. K. class. What does this complainant get wrong?

I’ll give you a hint. Look again at this sentence:

Quote:

Given what I’ve read of the literature, I am certain any research I conducted in political psychology would provide contrary findings and, therefore, go unpublished.

That is: this student says that he or she is “certain” that her/his results would break consensus, and hence, inevitably, would languish in conspiratorially enforced obscurity.

Uh, kid. Listen up: When you already know what your research will reveal, what does that tell you?

It ain’t research.

You have no knowledge to “contribute to the knowledge base” if the conclusions you propose to add to our collective store of human wisdom is what you already know by some process other than the “research” you propose.

Note that Haidt’s anonymous disappointed ideologue tells us of his/her intention to respond to her/his field’s stunning lack of awe at this proposal by picking up his/her marbles and going home.