Bottom line, I think most people are terrified to go against their own side for fear of being "cancelled." There's a lot of nutty stuff from the Left over the last few years (much of which you've written about) that I want to publicly denounce, but doing so would earn the wrath of so many of my fellow left-wing peers.
Conversely, my best friend is a lifelong Republican, but he can't stand Trump. He recently told me he's afraid to criticize Trump publicly because his conservative friends and family members will jump down his throat.
So it's all tribalism. Man do we have a tribalism problem in this country.
I'm centering my comment here around the following statement from your piece: "the more you realize just how much distance there is between some people’s idealized notion of the *** The Scientific Method *** and how things play out in real life."
The scientific method has been a cornerstone of scientific inquiry since at least the 16th century. It's core principle is empiricism, or sense-experience. As the scientific method has been used for centuries now, this has become largely quantitative, based on being able to make quantitative measures to answer questions. Put in easily understood terms the scientific method is: 1) asking a question about something you observe, 2) doing background research to learn what is already known about the topic, 3) constructing a hypothesis, 4) experimenting to test the hypothesis, 5) analyzing the data from the experiment and drawing conclusions, and 6) communicate the results and conclusions.
When you say "some people's idealized notion", I would argue that as far as disciplines like natural sciences (life sciences in all it's flavors) and physical sciences (chemistry, physics, etc.) the practitioners (scientists) themselves are adhering to the scientific method and taking it seriously. I say this as having been trained academically is Zoology and Neurobiology over 40 years ago and involved in helping create tools for conducting biological research for over 35 years.
The non-scientific general public, due to pretty crappy scientific education in K-12 doesn't quite understand (or remember) the above, which is a problem because they aren't going to be able to evaluate "the science" when they hear about it in the media.
Social sciences and psychological sciences want to in principle adhere to the scientific method, but I think adherence to the scientific method gets a little murky.
My observation about these 2 areas of inquiry are as follows:
- I see the following issue in social science and to some extent psychology, and that is theories vs hypothesis. In natural sciences and physical sciences theories are developed based on an explanation that can be repeatedly tested and confirmed. In science, hypothesis are generated to ask a questions that will further our understanding of a general area that is currently understood in the context of a theory, which will further confirm a current theory, or possibly bring into question the theory. So hypothesis can generate negative results, ie they don't show a difference, theories could be found to be incorrect, but they are both intended to be falsifiable. I see this all the time in social science, and I suspect this is problematic in psychology to some extent, where theories are promulgated which are not based on a coherent set of observations, and are not intended to be falsifiable and serve as a foundation for repeated testing. They are at best a hypothesis, but even if that are not treated by such as proponents.
- Even when trying to really try to adhere to the scientific method, the social sciences and psychology face a challenge: Developing an instrument to use to measure the variables they wish to measure to test their hypothesis. Life science has advanced in great leaps through development of physical instruments of ever increasing sensitivity and resolution designed to make measurements of interest. Virtually all social science and a fair amount to psychology relies on development of some verbal instrument, usually some sort of survey, or a defined method of scoring subject narrative. Psychologists will also rely upon scoring of subject response to various stimuli, and may also incorporate measures of brain activity.
When natural and physical scientists try to develop a physical instrument, if it doesn't accurately and reliably measure the variable of interest, they either improve it or throw it out. Same seems to be true of psychologists that are conducting research that could have clinical implications.
Jesse points out the IAT as an example of such an instrument. Effort is made to validate these measures, but while a great deal of effort is made to make sure the instrument is useful and legitimate across population groups, little effort is made to question the perspective of the ones that made up the instrument. Thus the instrument had a fundamental flaw, and while some result might be generated, its conclusions should be suspect.
So after that long winded spiel, I fully agree with Jesse's conclusion that ideological diversity is crucial in order to get good research done. Lack of ideological diversity has been a problem in social research and to some extent psychology for years, and is getting worse. I'm philosophically liberal myself, but I'm also interested in truth, and truth in furthering knowledge is not going to be obtained when a single viewpoint is represented in the creation of that knowledge. While most notable to date in social research, as a biologist I am quite concerned with some aspects of biological research these days. I've known people over the last 40 years in biology research across the ideological spectrum and it hasn't been an issue. I see signs of ideological creep in some areas, where ideological perspective is becoming an issue. While the ideological creep is coming from one direction, the response from the other is not particularly useful.
The results in the Peters et al. paper look very noisy to me, but I don't read many research papers like this, and I'm hoping someone can explain why (for example) more than 15% of right leaning philosophers said they would be willing to discriminate against right leaning symposia? This strikes me as really bizarre. In fact, there is no situation in which 0% of any of the three groups would be willing to discriminate - is this just the result of a certain number of surveyees answering "yes" to absolutely anything? Or is it the result of messiness in a clean left-right categorisation? For example, a Randian libertarian might well be able to imagine themselves failing to help promote a symposium whose keynote speech was a defense of arguments for limiting the civic participation of gay men? Or a Trotsyike their unwillingness to hire an anarcho-syndicalist?
I'll also mention, I think the most interesting thing about this paper is that 67% of philosophers surveyed are based in Europe, 22% in North America. That surprises me, I thought this problem was confined to the U.S.A.
Overall I strongly agree that viewpoint diversity has to be more important in the academy. But I think you've muddled diversity and social justice. Put another way, you've confused 'diversity' in theory vs. how it's often practiced.
"When we think ‘diversity,’ in the traditional sense, we think about groups that have been oppressed over the years, which can at least partially account for why they are under-represented in certain settings."
At least in academic settings, you've misstated how pro-diversity folks themselves justify diversity. According to their own words, it's important because diverse personalities, thinking styles, backgrounds, etc. lead to better group performance.
As probably one of your few conservative subscribers, I have two main complaints:
--By their own definition, viewpoint diversity (which in practice means include more conservatives) should be an uncontroversial component of any diversity program.
--Viewpoint diversity is often excluded because in practice diversity programs are effectively social justice programs.
Now there's nothing intrinsically wrong with SJ (really, I think that!). But then we should just openly acknowledge that we don't care about diversity per se. We want more URMs and LGBT represented.
I would then also say that if we're going to focus on SJ over diversity, African-Americans and Native-Americans should then get 98% of the attention.
The bias is so great that I am more likely to believe a Vox article than social science research
Or to put it another way, not at all.
I would love to have an opportunity to vote for candidates who promises to slash funding on the basis of Separation of Church and State. Let private institutions do this "research" with privately dollars.
Bottom line, I think most people are terrified to go against their own side for fear of being "cancelled." There's a lot of nutty stuff from the Left over the last few years (much of which you've written about) that I want to publicly denounce, but doing so would earn the wrath of so many of my fellow left-wing peers.
Conversely, my best friend is a lifelong Republican, but he can't stand Trump. He recently told me he's afraid to criticize Trump publicly because his conservative friends and family members will jump down his throat.
So it's all tribalism. Man do we have a tribalism problem in this country.
I agree that lack of ideological diversity must be skewing and limiting academic research and discussions.
Will your chat with the philosopher be available soon? I'm interested.
Interesting article Jesse.
I'm centering my comment here around the following statement from your piece: "the more you realize just how much distance there is between some people’s idealized notion of the *** The Scientific Method *** and how things play out in real life."
The scientific method has been a cornerstone of scientific inquiry since at least the 16th century. It's core principle is empiricism, or sense-experience. As the scientific method has been used for centuries now, this has become largely quantitative, based on being able to make quantitative measures to answer questions. Put in easily understood terms the scientific method is: 1) asking a question about something you observe, 2) doing background research to learn what is already known about the topic, 3) constructing a hypothesis, 4) experimenting to test the hypothesis, 5) analyzing the data from the experiment and drawing conclusions, and 6) communicate the results and conclusions.
When you say "some people's idealized notion", I would argue that as far as disciplines like natural sciences (life sciences in all it's flavors) and physical sciences (chemistry, physics, etc.) the practitioners (scientists) themselves are adhering to the scientific method and taking it seriously. I say this as having been trained academically is Zoology and Neurobiology over 40 years ago and involved in helping create tools for conducting biological research for over 35 years.
The non-scientific general public, due to pretty crappy scientific education in K-12 doesn't quite understand (or remember) the above, which is a problem because they aren't going to be able to evaluate "the science" when they hear about it in the media.
Social sciences and psychological sciences want to in principle adhere to the scientific method, but I think adherence to the scientific method gets a little murky.
My observation about these 2 areas of inquiry are as follows:
- I see the following issue in social science and to some extent psychology, and that is theories vs hypothesis. In natural sciences and physical sciences theories are developed based on an explanation that can be repeatedly tested and confirmed. In science, hypothesis are generated to ask a questions that will further our understanding of a general area that is currently understood in the context of a theory, which will further confirm a current theory, or possibly bring into question the theory. So hypothesis can generate negative results, ie they don't show a difference, theories could be found to be incorrect, but they are both intended to be falsifiable. I see this all the time in social science, and I suspect this is problematic in psychology to some extent, where theories are promulgated which are not based on a coherent set of observations, and are not intended to be falsifiable and serve as a foundation for repeated testing. They are at best a hypothesis, but even if that are not treated by such as proponents.
- Even when trying to really try to adhere to the scientific method, the social sciences and psychology face a challenge: Developing an instrument to use to measure the variables they wish to measure to test their hypothesis. Life science has advanced in great leaps through development of physical instruments of ever increasing sensitivity and resolution designed to make measurements of interest. Virtually all social science and a fair amount to psychology relies on development of some verbal instrument, usually some sort of survey, or a defined method of scoring subject narrative. Psychologists will also rely upon scoring of subject response to various stimuli, and may also incorporate measures of brain activity.
When natural and physical scientists try to develop a physical instrument, if it doesn't accurately and reliably measure the variable of interest, they either improve it or throw it out. Same seems to be true of psychologists that are conducting research that could have clinical implications.
Jesse points out the IAT as an example of such an instrument. Effort is made to validate these measures, but while a great deal of effort is made to make sure the instrument is useful and legitimate across population groups, little effort is made to question the perspective of the ones that made up the instrument. Thus the instrument had a fundamental flaw, and while some result might be generated, its conclusions should be suspect.
So after that long winded spiel, I fully agree with Jesse's conclusion that ideological diversity is crucial in order to get good research done. Lack of ideological diversity has been a problem in social research and to some extent psychology for years, and is getting worse. I'm philosophically liberal myself, but I'm also interested in truth, and truth in furthering knowledge is not going to be obtained when a single viewpoint is represented in the creation of that knowledge. While most notable to date in social research, as a biologist I am quite concerned with some aspects of biological research these days. I've known people over the last 40 years in biology research across the ideological spectrum and it hasn't been an issue. I see signs of ideological creep in some areas, where ideological perspective is becoming an issue. While the ideological creep is coming from one direction, the response from the other is not particularly useful.
The results in the Peters et al. paper look very noisy to me, but I don't read many research papers like this, and I'm hoping someone can explain why (for example) more than 15% of right leaning philosophers said they would be willing to discriminate against right leaning symposia? This strikes me as really bizarre. In fact, there is no situation in which 0% of any of the three groups would be willing to discriminate - is this just the result of a certain number of surveyees answering "yes" to absolutely anything? Or is it the result of messiness in a clean left-right categorisation? For example, a Randian libertarian might well be able to imagine themselves failing to help promote a symposium whose keynote speech was a defense of arguments for limiting the civic participation of gay men? Or a Trotsyike their unwillingness to hire an anarcho-syndicalist?
I'll also mention, I think the most interesting thing about this paper is that 67% of philosophers surveyed are based in Europe, 22% in North America. That surprises me, I thought this problem was confined to the U.S.A.
Overall I strongly agree that viewpoint diversity has to be more important in the academy. But I think you've muddled diversity and social justice. Put another way, you've confused 'diversity' in theory vs. how it's often practiced.
"When we think ‘diversity,’ in the traditional sense, we think about groups that have been oppressed over the years, which can at least partially account for why they are under-represented in certain settings."
I don't know who 'we' is. But many diversity proponents themselves don't define diversity in terms of oppression or "historical patterns of power" (see a couple quotes on my blog here: http://prajwalkulkarni.com/2015/09/30/why-not-go-straight-to-personality-and-thinking-styles/).
At least in academic settings, you've misstated how pro-diversity folks themselves justify diversity. According to their own words, it's important because diverse personalities, thinking styles, backgrounds, etc. lead to better group performance.
As probably one of your few conservative subscribers, I have two main complaints:
--By their own definition, viewpoint diversity (which in practice means include more conservatives) should be an uncontroversial component of any diversity program.
--Viewpoint diversity is often excluded because in practice diversity programs are effectively social justice programs.
Now there's nothing intrinsically wrong with SJ (really, I think that!). But then we should just openly acknowledge that we don't care about diversity per se. We want more URMs and LGBT represented.
I would then also say that if we're going to focus on SJ over diversity, African-Americans and Native-Americans should then get 98% of the attention.
The bias is so great that I am more likely to believe a Vox article than social science research
Or to put it another way, not at all.
I would love to have an opportunity to vote for candidates who promises to slash funding on the basis of Separation of Church and State. Let private institutions do this "research" with privately dollars.