Real Science

Sure, it is The Washington Times.  Did you expect The Washington Post to have something like this?  Or The Boston Globe?  The story is that a study found a political bias amongst university faculty in the field of social psychology.  This is to be reported in the September issue of the journal Perspective on Psychological Science.  The researchers are psychologists Yoel Inbar and Joris Lammers, based at Tilburg University in the Netherlands.  They report:

In decisions ranging from paper reviews to hiring, many social and personality psychologists admit that they would discriminate against openly conservative colleagues.

Here was some additional reporting

In 2011, Mr. Haidt addressed this very issue at a meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology — the same group that Mr. Inbar and Mr. Lammer surveyed.  Mr. Haidt’s talk, “The Bright Future of Post-Partisan Social Psychology,” caused a stir.  The professor, whose new book “The Righteous Mind” examines the moral roots of our political positions, asked the nearly 1,000 academics and students in the room to raise their hands if they were liberals.  Nearly 80 percent of the hands went up.  When he asked whether there were any conservatives in the house, just three hands — 0.3 percent — went up.

This is “a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Mr. Haidt said.

Gee, I would have thought three was enouogh.

But, there is the added factor that if it is real science, there should not be any differences in understanding of how the world works based upon race, color, creed, religion or politicl affiliation.  The flip side, of course is that if such factors impact the research, then it likely isn't real science.

Regards  —  Cliff