questionnaire answering such queries as “Agree or disagree: I think I have a great deal of power.” Then the subjects were divided into pairs and told to sit facing each other, two feet apart. They were wired to an electrocardiogram and filmed by video cameras. The subjects were told to tell their partners about some traumatic incident in their lives. The electrocardiogram registered reactions. Once the data had been teased sufficiently the scientists reported, “that social power attenuates emotional reactions to those who suffer.” As a simulation of human behavior, the experiment was absurd. But its conclusions were entered into the canon of truth according to social science. As a simulation of human behavior, the experiment was absurd. But its conclusions were entered into the canon of truth according to social science. In subsequent experiments and later press accounts, “powerful people” were explicitly identified as “conservative” or “Republican” – a nice, but not necessarily very accurate, compliment to those of us who are conservative or Republican. Equally artificial follow-up studies “confirmed” Republican character defects like discomfort with ambiguity, a preference for stereotypes, and a hair-trigger fear of threatening situations, among others. And you’ll be relieved that science has discovered liberals are much better. They’re
“open to experience,” “tolerant of difference,” and “comfortable with ambiguity.” In the “academic critique of the right,” you find a catalogue of scientific derelictions. Small sample sizes and limited sample types are only the beginning. There’s shoddy data collection, undefined terminology, statistical malfeasance, a lack of control groups, and a willingness to change hypotheses mid- experiment to conform to the data. In the physical sciences, any one of these would be enough to disqualify the work. So, how do they get away with it? How does an endeavor so transparently implausible get accepted as science? Social-science research, aside from glimmers of hope like the Reproducibility Project, has been a closed circle. Bad practice reinforces itself, with little room for the self-correction that is essential to scientific progress. The situation is made worse by the field’s ideological monochrome. Among academic disciplines, social science is the least politically diverse. In a survey of the membership of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, 85% of respondents called themselves liberal, 6% identified as conservative, and 9% identified as moderate. And only 2% of graduate students and postdocs called themselves conservative. “The field is shifting leftward,” wrote one team of social psychologists (identifying NOBODY HERE BUT US ‘SCIENTISTS’
76 May 2018
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