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Those Liberal Social "Scientists"

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  • Those Liberal Social "Scientists"

    I can say "it's better for a baby to grow up in a home where a mother and father love each other and care for the baby accordingly", and somebody will say (and has said) "replace 'a mother and father' with 'parents' and I agree". When challenged, they'll produce "studies".

    My problem is that the vast majority of these "studies", in my opinion, come from biased liberal social 'scientists'.

    Interestingly, the Science section of the NYTimes supports this suspicion....

    Source: NYTimes

    Social Scientist Sees Bias Within

    SAN ANTONIO — Some of the world’s pre-eminent experts on bias discovered an unexpected form of it at their annual meeting.

    Discrimination is always high on the agenda at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s conference, where psychologists discuss their research on racial prejudice, homophobia, sexism, stereotype threat and unconscious bias against minorities. But the most talked-about speech at this year’s meeting, which ended Jan. 30, involved a new “outgroup.”

    It was identified by 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.

    © Copyright Original Source

    The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

  • #2
    Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
    ... come from biased liberal social 'scientists'.
    I note a complete lack of bias in your OP.... oh, wait a minute...

    “To live virtuously as individuals and societies, we must understand how our minds are built. We must find ways to overcome our natural self-righteousness. We must respect and even learn from those whose morality differs from our own.” - Jonathan Haidt
    Last edited by firstfloor; 01-05-2016, 07:39 AM.
    “I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.” ― Oscar Wilde
    “And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence” ― Bertrand Russell
    “not all there” - you know who you are

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by firstfloor View Post
      I note a complete lack of bias in your OP.... oh, wait a minute...
      Well, here's the deal, my good atheist friend... I'm not pretending to be unbiased, and I'm not publishing "studies" that purport to be so.

      “To live virtuously as individuals and societies, we must understand how our minds are built. We must find ways to overcome our natural self-righteousness. We must respect and even learn from those whose morality differs from our own.” - Jonathan Haidt
      "yabadabadoo" - Fred Flintstone



      ETA: Added bolding for emphasis
      Last edited by Cow Poke; 01-05-2016, 09:11 AM.
      The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
        "yabadabadoo" - Fred Flintstone
        Undoubtedly, the social sciences are less precise than physical sciences so we should expect some bias, fashions and less agreement among the practitioners.
        “I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.” ― Oscar Wilde
        “And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence” ― Bertrand Russell
        “not all there” - you know who you are

        Comment


        • #5
          So your problem with the conclusions scientists reach is that those scientists don't think like you? Your argument seems an awful lot like an excuse you can bring out anytime you see a result you dislike. Shouldn't the only point of contention be whether or not the evidence is sound?

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by firstfloor View Post
            Undoubtedly, the social sciences are less precise than physical sciences so we should expect some bias, fashions and less agreement among the practitioners.
            "some bias" would be understandable.

            "“This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Dr. Haidt concluded...."
            The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by Psychic Missile View Post
              So your problem with the conclusions scientists reach is that those scientists don't think like you?
              Did you even READ the article?

              Your argument seems an awful lot like an excuse you can bring out anytime you see a result you dislike. Shouldn't the only point of contention be whether or not the evidence is sound?
              What "evidence"? You mean the numerous "studies" from incredibly biased persons who are peer reviewed by incredibly biased peers?
              The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
                What "evidence"? You mean the numerous "studies" from incredibly biased persons who are peer reviewed by incredibly biased peers?
                ...and are notoriously difficult to replicate?
                Enter the Church and wash away your sins. For here there is a hospital and not a court of law. Do not be ashamed to enter the Church; be ashamed when you sin, but not when you repent. – St. John Chrysostom

                Veritas vos Liberabit<>< Learn Greek <>< Look here for an Orthodox Church in America<><Ancient Faith Radio
                sigpic
                I recommend you do not try too hard and ...research as little as possible. Such weighty things give me a headache. - Shunyadragon, Baha'i apologist

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
                  I can say "it's better for a baby to grow up in a home where a mother and father love each other and care for the baby accordingly", and somebody will say (and has said) "replace 'a mother and father' with 'parents' and I agree". When challenged, they'll produce "studies".

                  My problem is that the vast majority of these "studies", in my opinion, come from biased liberal social 'scientists'.
                  And who says the New York Times doesn't have a comics section?
                  When I Survey....

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    I posted this in the other thread but moved it here thinking it would be more relevant:

                    Given a large enough body of subjects and funds for research, I'm sure a convincing study could be made to support a healthy three parent household, a polygamist household, or Hillary's "village" model taken to the extreme.

                    Conventional wisdom would suggest that the healthiest environment for a child to be in is one in which their biological mother and father raised them, or were at least recognized as their primary caregivers. I have a wealth of friends who tell of their adopted child's identity issues where none exists with their biological children.

                    When studies don't support conventional wisdom they are always suspect of "agenda" bias, especially when older studies (back when homosexuality was still a mental disorder), concluded the opposite. You would think that research findings would be consistent on these matters, but perhaps the questions in surveys are worded differently or numbers that were considered irrelevant in the past are now crucial to the present objective.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
                      I can say "it's better for a baby to grow up in a home where a mother and father love each other and care for the baby accordingly", and somebody will say (and has said) "replace 'a mother and father' with 'parents' and I agree". When challenged, they'll produce "studies".

                      My problem is that the vast majority of these "studies", in my opinion, come from biased liberal social 'scientists'.

                      Interestingly, the Science section of the NYTimes supports this suspicion....

                      Source: NYTimes

                      Social Scientist Sees Bias Within

                      SAN ANTONIO — Some of the world’s pre-eminent experts on bias discovered an unexpected form of it at their annual meeting.

                      Discrimination is always high on the agenda at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s conference, where psychologists discuss their research on racial prejudice, homophobia, sexism, stereotype threat and unconscious bias against minorities. But the most talked-about speech at this year’s meeting, which ended Jan. 30, involved a new “outgroup.”

                      It was identified by 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.

                      © Copyright Original Source

                      Oh, well isn't this just precious.

                      Well, by that logic, scientists must be a "tribal-moral community united by sacred values that hinder research and damage their credibility", since the majority of scientists don't believe that God exists. You know, all those thousands of biologists, physicists, climate scientists, etc. who lack credibility.

                      We've heard these sorts of nonsense attacks from conservatives before. For instance, many socially conservative Christians whining about how scientists and doctors are a bunch of pointy-headed liberal intellectuals foisting evolution and contraception on people. Or how many fiscally conservative whine about how climate scientists, doctors, etc. are a bunch of pointy headed liberal intellectuals foisting AGW, the notion that"smoking causes cancer", etc. on people. This is just as silly. The truth is that certain scientific facts are inconvenient for certain conservative ideologies. So people who hold those conservative ideologies tends to be denialists about those scientific facts, and often leave scientific disciplines that require them to honestly deal with those scientific facts. Hence young Earth creationists being an abject minority in biology; it's sort of hard to be taken seriously as a contemporary biologist when you place your religious ideology before scientific facts. Same for fiscal conservatives being over-represented among AGW denialists in comparison to their representation amongst climatologists; that's what happen when you place your economic ideology before scientific facts. And hence abstince-only conservative Christians being the minority amongst doctors; it's sort of hard to be taken serious in the medical community, when you argue against teaching people about using something that's been shown to save lives.

                      Same pattern here. There are some brute facts in social psychology, which political conservatives find inconvenient. So sad for those conservatives. That doesn't change what the facts are. And it's not the scientific community's fault that many conservatives leave science because they can't deal with those facts, anymore than it's the scientific community's fault that various socially conservative Christians leave the scientific community because they can't deal with facts like condoms work, humans share a common ancestor with chimps, religious conservatives score low on measures on scientific literacy than do the rest of the public, etc.

                      Facts are facts, regardless of what one's ideology says. Whining about scientist's ideology doesn't change what facts are nor what the evidence shows; to say otherwise is to commit the genetic fallacy. Haidt should know this, since he's a scientist. So it seems that despite Haidt's fairly good work in evidence-based moral psychology, he's gone AWOL on this and resorted to evidence-free claims about the social science community. Fortuntately, other scientists like Joshua Greene should be around to correct Haidt's mistakes and point out to Haidt some of the relevant scientific evidence on this topic.


                      Anyway, Cow Poke, it's no surprise to see you going to the press to justify your usual denialist when it comes to science. It's a fairly common denialist tactic: attack the scientists producing the peer-reviewed evidence, so that you can dodge accepting any evidence you find inconvenient. Have fun explaining how thousands and thousands of social scientists producing replicated research, are all wrong because of liberal bias. Meanwhile, I'll laugh at how you sound like a Young Earth creationist or an AGW denialist making up conspiracies about the scientific community.
                      "Instead, we argue, it is necessary to shift the debate from the subject under consideration, instead exposing to public scrutiny the tactics they [denialists] employ and identifying them publicly for what they are."

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Jichard View Post
                        Oh, well isn't this just precious.
                        Please leave the thread.

                        Thanks
                        The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by One Bad Pig View Post
                          ...and are notoriously difficult to replicate?
                          You were corrected on this the last time you posted it, when you were given examples of social scientific studies that had been replicated numerous times using multiple methods. Yet you used the above press piece as your excuse for ignoring that replication.
                          Originally posted by Jichard View Post
                          Which is irrelevant since the research in question was replicated multiple times using multiple techniques, as you would know if you read the paper.
                          Originally posted by Jichard View Post
                          "The Relation Between Intelligence and Religiosity: A Meta-Analysis and Some Proposed Explanations"
                          http://diyhpl.us/~nmz787/pdf/The_Rel...planations.pdf
                          "A meta-analysis of 63 studies showed a significant negative association between intelligence and religiosity. The association was stronger for college students and the general population than for participants younger than college age; it was also stronger for religious beliefs than religious behavior. For college students and the general population, means of weighted and unweighted correlations between intelligence and the strength of religious beliefs ranged from −.20 to −.25 (mean r = −.24). Three possible interpretations were discussed. First, intelligent people are less likely to conform and, thus, are more likely to resist religious dogma. Second, intelligent people tend to adopt an analytic (as opposed to intuitive) thinking style, which has been shown to undermine religious beliefs. Third, several functions of religiosity, including compensatory control, self-regulation, self-enhancement, and secure attachment, are also conferred by intelligence. Intelligent people may therefore have less need for religious beliefs and practices."

                          This is why I find it extremely difficult to take conservative slike you seriously, One Bad. So many of you simply repeat false claims after you've been corrected on them, as if you're just hoping new people haven't seen the correction and will thus be duped by what you said. It's like you have your PRATTs, and you're repeat them no matter how many times they're rebutted That's intellectually dishonest.
                          "Instead, we argue, it is necessary to shift the debate from the subject under consideration, instead exposing to public scrutiny the tactics they [denialists] employ and identifying them publicly for what they are."

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by nico View Post
                            When studies don't support conventional wisdom they are always suspect of "agenda" bias, especially when older studies (back when homosexuality was still a mental disorder), concluded the opposite.
                            The fact is that homosexuality is still a disorder. Regardless of what a radically liberal psychology claims.
                            Micah 6:8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
                              My problem is that the vast majority of these "studies", in my opinion, come from biased liberal social 'scientists'.
                              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.
                              All this nonsense comes from idiocy I myself published about in 1970. I wrote on page 158 of "Philosophy as Science":
                              "At the moment, however, they are really "social anti-science" because they make generalizations based on assumptions which science can disprove."
                              http://www.unz.org/Pub/MankindQuarterly-1970jan-00155
                              Nothing has changed to make "social science" other than a laughable misnomer.
                              Last edited by Adam; 01-05-2016, 10:21 PM.
                              Near the Peoples' Republic of Davis, south of the State of Jefferson (Suspended between Left and Right)

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