Ad hominem is appropriate in cases of appeal to authority.
That’s all very nice, but then why is the Summers case a red herring? It would seem to contradict your claims throughout this thread about the scientific process being so pristine, free of bias, and data-driven.
No. That’s tu quoque. In any case it’s not “appeal to authority” to reject an “ad hominem” argument. If you were to present a specific criticism of actual research then I would be put in a position to possibly appeal to authority.
It’s a red herring because it shows nothing about the state of actual psychological research. The psychological community does not have a monopoly on politically correctness. Not in this particular case nor in any other. The issue was non-PC, but the pressure wasn’t coming from psychology specifically. If anything, this shows that some research is being done in psychology despite being non-PC in some wide academic circles.
“Black people don’t want to be managers; they’re less capable, and happier without the responsibility”
No, you’ve misunderstood me. Ad hominem is appropriate in cases of appeal to authority. Tu quoque is (sometimes) appropriate in cases of ad hominem.
IOW, if a position is resting on logic and evidence, then it’s inapropriate to respond by claiming that the proponent is biased. (So ,for example, it would be inapropropriate for someone to argue in this thread that I’m biased in this matter, since I’m not asking any one to accept anything based on my judgment. :)). But in cases where the argument ultimately rests on the claim that its proponents are better qualified to make that judgment, then it’s relevant as to whether the judgment of these proponents might be impaired due to bias.
This is a valid use of an ad hominem argument.
I originally cited it as an example of situation in which the issue is not some scientific paper that might be accused of having PC bias (at which the thrust of your comments was directed), but of the way in which PC bias can influence what gets considered, discussed, published etc.
Are you claiming that a psychologist who values his reputation in the field is as likely to publish a paper espousing the Summers POV as one which adopts the opposite position? Or that if he tries to publish it, that it will be as likely to be accepted?
But you don’t have evidence of impairment due to bias. You have evidence of bias (possibly), but not of impairment. Your accusation of bias (in politics, not in research) may be valid, but your accusation of its effect (bias in research) is not.
It depends how the paper was couched. No one would submit a paper titled “males are smarter than females”, of course. But a tremendous amount of research has been done, and is being done, on the difference between males and females in psychology. Is it possible you are simply unaware of how active the field is in the area you think is inhibited by bias? The problem is that some of this research is very, very tricky, and scientists are very, very careful not to extrapolate their data beyond its applicability. If they find, as is the case in the Summers affair, that the distribution of male IQs is wider than that of female IQs, such research is, and has frequently, been published easily. No problemo. The problem comes in its interpretation. Currently no one has come up with a quantitative way to really attack that part of the problem. This has nothing to do with bias. It’s simply a difficult problem.
Comparing conservatives to women and minorities is fucking retarded.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. I thought liberals were supposed to be all PC. Surely you meant to say “…mentally deficient”.
Fully agree with the OP. I went to a shrink, once, and:
1-Got teh gay.
2-Changed my views on abortion.
3-Became a pacifist.
4-Forgot my religion*.
5-Realized UHC was the way to go.
*Bit of a quandary here, as I now have anger issues w/Og but can’t go back for treatment as I refuse to pay for it out of pocket.
Without checking for cites right now, I’m fairly certain this isn’t true. I’m fairly certain I’ve heard a number of accounts of conservatives viewpoints being unwelcome in academia.
Of course there are alternate explanations, and reasonably convincing ones to boot. But I took the thrust of the comment I quoted to be about confirmation bias, since there are also alternate explanations for womens’ poorer showing, such as time off of a career for childbearing. But the comment pointed out that when there’s a small discrepancy in womens’ numbers, the immediate assumption is discrimination; when there’s a large discrepancy in the presence of conservatives, the immediate reaction is, “Let’s find an alternate explanation.”
A clever and incisive analytical effort, to be sure.
But again, I think the quote is intended to illustrate confirmation bias. In that context, the comparison is appropriate.
It’s not a big leap from one to the other. This is commonly understood and accepted in other areas of life.
This is completely untrue. You say above that you’re a scientist, but are you a social scientist?
The fact this that in this field, scientists are not in the slightest bit “careful not to extrapolate their data beyond its applicability”. The field of psychology has not historically been based on data altogether, but rather based on theories pontificated by gurus, with anecdotal evidence at most. There has recently been a move within the field to rely more on evidence, but even this has been met with resistance from those who don’t believe the field lends itself to data-based conclusions.
No doubt there are some who are more careful, but even these don’t refrain from saying anything at all beyond what the data shows, as you suggest, but rather just qualify their hypotheses, as in “it may be due to X and it may be due to Y and further study is needed”.
And here the question is whether this applies to PC issues. To take the Summers case, do scientists studying male vs female brains say “it may be that the upper end of achievers is disproportionately male because of differences in distributions, or it may be something else”, such that the first would be recognized as a possibility when considering whether massive efforts and distortions should be implemented to rectify the “discrimination”, or is the former possibility taboo?
I would suggest that for a hot button conclusion like this, to the extent that overwhelming evidence forces the issue it might be that such a view could eventually gain acceptance, but 1) the evidence would have to be a lot more overwhelming than would the evidence for a more PC theory, and 2) there isn’t likely to be any evidence because no one is looking to study that aspect to begin with, for fear of being subject to attacks by people who find the conclusion unpalatable. (Again, to be clear, they would study male and female brains, but to the extent that extrapolating from this data might lead to uncomfortable conclusions, they would be disinclined to study anything that might lead them down that path.)
This leaves open several possibilities, none of which is mutually exclusive:
Women and minorities have deep and troubled history of being discriminated against, to the point that we have constitutional amendments to counter that tendency. If it’s white conservatives that are underrepresented, then it’s just a point of curiosity why they chose not to wield their inherent social privilege in that particular area.
There are rare exceptions to the above item. Most liberals won’t admit the exceptions, but their refusal doesn’t invalidate the rule.
In the area of psychology in general, conservatives tend not to brook much introspection or navel gazing. Conservative psychology is simple. If you aren’t happy, then it’s because you aren’t obeying your parents, God, your employer, or perhaps it’s because the liberal government is taxing you too much, or who really gives a fig, just pull yourself up by your bootstraps. I mean it’s really not like you were beaten and crucified for the sins of the world like Jesus, you big ungrateful whiner.
There are rare exceptions to the above item. Most liberals won’t admit the exceptions, but their refusal doesn’t invalidate the rule.
The quote illustrates a perception bias in social psychology, not confirmation bias. Dr. Hait’s thesis goes beyond the quoted statement of course, but the bare assertion doesn’t speak to any tendencies toward affirmation of the consequents or denial of the antecedents of any given social condition.
In other words, the assertion is that those in the field are more likely to suspect discrimination as the cause for underrepresentation of historically marginalized groups, and less likely to suspect it in cases involving underrepresentation of more empowered groups. This is not exactly shocking, and is the exact same type of bias practiced by professionals in all areas of expertise.
[IMO] it’s actually neither significant nor important whether social psychologists initially look for discrimination as a cause for ‘overwhelming’ liberalism in their field. I’d like to know whether and why they feel this political underrepresentation needs to be corrected (not a given), and whether social psychology as it’s practiced under their liberal regime requires any study of this ‘problem’ to account for investigative bias and to test for all likely causes (which must include discrimination).
Then it is valid for me to reject your viewpoint because you yourself are biased, as indicated in the hyperbolic language you use below.
Nope. Physicist. My contact with psychologists in academia, and my reading of the literature, however, gives me a very different impression from your own.
And where does this cynical viewpoint come from? Examples?
It’s a young field, and it is moving rapidly. From your other statements it seems that you might be picking on only a small subset of psychology. For instance: psychiatry. Certainly you’re not picking on, say, neuropsychology? Where are you coming from? Where are you getting your strident opinion? Examples!
Saying such a thing would be completely vacuous, as there is literally zero evidence to support such an inference, and would be open to be taken out of context and distorted by media. But in the field itself, such statements are unnecessary, as the readers of such a paper are just as aware of the possible implications as are the researchers. Sure, without the PC pressure, a sloppy writer might be more apt to drift into pointless and potentially inflammatory excursions. And sure, such sloppiness is gotten away with more in cases where the PC pressure is absent. But such openly published guesses don’t drive science. They are there for the media, not for other scientists in the field. Such ornaments have very little effect on future research.
The difference between male and female brains has been established. The problem is that there is no solid evidence for the CAUSE of the male/female discrepancy in science. Correlation without cause. The problem is that it is extremely difficult in practice to subtract away all of the other important factors that might cause females to lose interest in a career in science. Since you are not biased, perhaps you can think of a way?
Did you intend this list to be exhaustive?
Because I have some additional possibilities, someone which begin by denying the assumptions which underlie your suggested possibilities.
I can’t help but believe there is some significance to the initial look. The history of science is replete with examples of experimenters being more reluctant to challenge established truths than to confirm and expand upon them. In one of his lectures on physics, Feynman described scientists working in the physical sciences doing the same thing.
But I absolutely agree that the question that’s far more important is what you ask in your final sentence.
You’re thinking of Sarah Palin. She’s the one who gets all butthurt about that word and assumes that everytime somebody says “retard,” they’re talking about her. I guess those high school nicknames really stick with some people.
It would not exactly come as a surprise to find an academic discipline, the subject of which is inherently difficult to analyze objectively, is subject to capture by some socio-political faction or other.
In the humanities, the ability to find employment and advancement is a function of peer acceptance. In some branches of the humanities, there is very little “objective” measure available to test the validity of a peer judgment - it is difficult for outsiders to the discipline to tell the difference between a merely good psychologist and a great one.
While that is of course a problem with any discipline, on the continuum disciplines such as psychology are going to suffer more from it than the harder sciences like physics.
A situation in which peer acceptance is key and there is very little in the way of outside, “objective” check on it, is one more likely to exclude those holding views that do not meet with approval from the majority.
From who? Ben Stein? The problem is that a conservative viewpoint is often going to be unwelcome in academia because it is antithetical to science. When you presuppose that something happens because God said so, naturally people are going to heap scorn on you.
In fields where you can’t blame things on God, like economics, this seems to be less of a problem.
Obviously, liberals are often religious too. The difference is that liberals, almost by definition, separate their faith and their political views, while conservatives almost by definition do not.
So you twisted what I said into “naive faith”. I guess you ignored all the verification and careful interpretation of data in my 1st post. You also ignored what I was comparing that process to. To remind you, it was your rubric that I was arguing against and using scientific methodology is superior to your politicization of scientific data.
In post 20 here you come up with what you mean by bias. Your first paragraph makes it clear that intellectually lazy cowards should use your rubric. I wish I could phrase that to be more polite, but there really is no other way to say it. If you want to argue against the data and interpretations in science then you have to jump in and do it. Your rubric sidesteps the methodology to make it a political issue.
Your 2nd paragraph is what really is at issue in the article and in general. There is not a field of science that is not affected by biases which limit what “gets considered, studied, and published to begin with”. A few anecdotes:
So we do not need a science of behavior because peoples’ biased interpretation of their experiences is enough. You are actually proposing to solve the problem of bias in behavioral sciences with more bias.
As somebody who has been involved in the behavioral sciences for the past 13 years I can say one thing about experimental psychologists. There is no group of people that I would trust more to design a good study. The reason being is that they have to control for factors that cannot be directly accessed and manipulated. They have to find sub-experiments within their experiments to verify they are actually assessing the psychological concept of interest in their study. It is very challenging and for anyone to critique them simply with “liberal bias” and without any evidence of “liberal bias” disgusts me a bit.
Are you really bringing anything to this argument other than the time-worn observation that all sciences are limited by the interests of their times? Did you know that there is probably not a single psychology research textbook out there that does not point this out? Did you know that all psychology programs require students take classes on research?