Morning Ed: Science {2018.07.17.T}
[Sc1] A look at the lie that was the Stanford Prison Experiment.
[Sc2] For The New Atlantis, Robert Zubrin writes about anti-humanism and the merchants of dispair.
[Sc3] If scientists can get beyond 1000 followers, they can start really reaching people.
[Sc4] Nadia Eghbal writes on the self-financing of science.
[Sc5] This sounds important.
[Sc6] The science of the emoji.
[Sc7] Six (non-conservative) psychologists and sociologists in three studies suggest there is a substantial ideological bias in social science research. Piercarlo Valdesolo argues that neutrality of perspective, and not equality of perspective, should win out.
[Sc8] There may be a correlation between migraines and cold-climate adaptivity.
[Sc9] You know who’s not having a replication crisis? Philosophy!
Sc7: Here is the key bit:
Who is going to do the work to push this forward? Part of introducing the opposite bias is that it can encourage the meaningful work to move forward. Groupthink is powerful, and it supports inertia.Report
[Sc7] If your goal is to recruit more conservatives to social psychology (and I think that’s a worthy goal), the first obstacle if dealing with the selection bias, because that almost certainly exists.
At the same time, there is a substantial cadre of conservatives who are pragmatic practitioners of social psychology. The are the professional persuaders, advertisers, PR, political “hacks”, and so on. What they do isn’t scientific, but is deeply entwined in social psychology results. So I think we can dispose of any argument to the effect of “conservatives aren’t interested in this subject”.
I think trying to bring more diversity to the field, while maintaining a high standard of empiricism will be good for the field. It’s not that they shouldn’t also try to reduce their own confirmation bias, it’s that bringing in people with different viewpoints is a critical step in doing that.Report
Regarding selection bias, you’re absolutely right. There are basically three layers of questions:
1) Is it happening?
2) Is it bad? Why?
3) What are the causes?
I think #1 is a given. I think #2 is true as well. For #3, I think a majority of the blame falls on conservatives themselves. A lot of people think that negates #2 but it doesn’t because of the “Why?” It’s not bad because it’s unfair to conservatives… it’s bad because it yields inferior results. An otherwise unimpressive conservative mind will come up with things that the most brilliant liberal mind won’t, just by virtue of coming at it with a different perspective.Report
Sc1 – I always find myself wondering at the people who like to push the idea we’re all secretly monsters.
No…99% of us pretty much have to be taught to be monsters, at least to people we can actually see the responses of. Taught either by someone else, or by ourselves. We have to, in some manner, have a way to dehumanize the victims. (Or, in the modern world, we can be monsters remotely or on a delay or whatever and never see the responses.)Report