Politically Liberal Over-Representation in the Social Sciences Is So Extreme that One Wonders How Many of the Field’s Findings Are Accurate

© 2011 Peter Free

 

12 February 2011

 

 

This is not a “conservative versus liberal” academia-bashing essay

 

Exposure of bias on one side of the political spectrum does not elevate the other side’s equivalent distortions of reality to the status of truth.

 

 

In the social sciences, political bias probably distorts experimental design and interpretation

 

John Tierney, writing in the New York Times, reported on the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s January conference.

 

Jonathan Haidt (pronounced “height”) gave an attention-getting talk about bias:

 

Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia who studies the intuitive foundations of morality and ideology.

 

He polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center, starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom.

 

When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked for conservatives, he counted a grand total of three.

 

“This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Dr. Haidt concluded, noting polls showing that 40 percent of Americans are conservative and 20 percent are liberal.

 

In his speech and in an interview, Dr. Haidt argued that social psychologists are a “tribal-moral community” united by “sacred values” that hinder research and damage their credibility — and blind them to the hostile climate they’ve created for non-liberals.

 

© 2011 John Tierney, Social Scientist Sees Bias Within, New York Times (07 February 2011) (paragraph split)

 

 

“Liberal” professorial political orientation in the United States is well-known

 

Tierney noted that the ratio of faculty Democrats to Republicans at “elite” universities is 6:1.  The disproportion is higher in Humanities and Social Sciences.  Among all universities, Democratic psychology professors are almost twelve-fold more numerous than Republicans.

 

 

Closed-mindedness shuts off the investigation of taboo hypotheses

 

Theoretically, population-unrepresentative political orientations do not mean that science cannot be properly done.  Someone aware of his or her biases could work around them, carefully designing hypotheses and experimental testing to protect against error.

 

But — in a field that often investigates propositions generated by biased assumptions — such personal awareness is arguably rare.

 

Dr. Haidt used Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s experience as an example of how social bias can pollute social research.

 

Moynihan ran afoul of the liberal academic community in 1965, when, as reporter Tierney writes, “he warned about the rise of unmarried parenthood and welfare dependency among blacks — violating the taboo against criticizing victims of racism.”

 

Dr. Haidt told the conference that research into the African-American family problems stopped for decades.  Only today is Moynihan credited with having been correct in his concerns.

 

In parallel fashion, former Harvard president Larry Summers eventually had to resign, after he wondered aloud whether the predominance of male professors in elite math and science departments might be partially caused by a wider range (stupid to smart) of intelligence quotients in men, as opposed to women.

 

Summers’ hypothesis was rejected out of hand.  It appeared to protect socially powerful men at the expense of female victims of academic discrimination.

 

Over time, however, studies rejected the anti-women discrimination prong of the liberal hypothesis:

 

After reviewing two decades of research, they [Stephen Ceci and Wendy Williams] report that a woman in academic science typically fares as well as, if not better than, a comparable man when it comes to being interviewed, hired, promoted, financed and published.

 

“Thus,” they conclude, “the ongoing focus on sex discrimination in reviewing, interviewing and hiring represents costly, misplaced effort.

 

Instead of presuming discrimination in science or expecting the sexes to show equal interest in every discipline, the Cornell researchers say, universities should make it easier for women in any field to combine scholarship with family responsibilities.

 

© 2011 John Tierney, Social Scientist Sees Bias Within, New York Times (07 February 2011)

 

 

People, generally, are too easily swayed by their presumptions to be trusted to do good science in an opposition-less environment

 

Argument, followed by scientifically-sound attempts to prove one’s hypotheses, are good.

 

 

Before conservatives revel in exposing the Liberal Left’s biases, take note of two factors

 

First, conservatism, by definition, embraces resistance to change.  Resistance to change implies detectable rigidity in thinking.

 

Rigidity in thinking — which is the antithesis of inquiry — may partially account for the under-representation of conservatives among university professors.

 

Second, the under-representation of Republicans in academia almost certainly stems, in part, from that Party’s business and entrepreneurial focus.

 

Academia is not a good place for building concrete things, directly influencing outcomes, or doing any moving and shaking in an immediately gratifying sense.  Republicans may be under-represented in academia because academia doesn’t move quickly enough for them.