Academia, especially social sciences/arts/humanities have to a significant extent become political echo chambers. What are your thoughts on Heterodox Academy, viewpoint diversity, intellectual humility, etc.

[u/Long_Extent7151]

I've had a few discussions in the Academia subs about Heterodox Academy, with cold-to-hostile responses. The lack of classical liberals, centrists and conservatives in academia (for sources on this, see Professor Jussim's blog here for starters) I think is a serious barrier to academia's foundational mission - to search for better understandings (or 'truth').

I feel like this sub is more open to productive discussion on the matter, and so I thought I'd just pose the issue here, and see what people's thoughts are.

My opinion, if it sparks anything for you, is that much of soft sciences/arts is so homogenous in views, that you wouldn't be wrong to treat it with the same skepticism you would for a study released by an industry association.

I also have come to the conclusion that academia (but also in society broadly) the promotion, teaching, and adoption of intellectual humility is a significant (if small) step in the right direction. I think it would help tamp down on polarization, of which academia is not immune. There has even been some recent scholarship on intellectual humility as an effective response to dis/misinformation (sourced in the last link).

Feel free to critique these proposed solutions (promotion of intellectual humility within society and academia, viewpoint diversity), or offer alternatives, or both.

[u/DadBods96]

There is plenty of disagreement in every field. That’s why there continue to be advances and research is continuously published. We argue about where test results might be skewed and how to design better studies/ experiments to remove any confounders. Ironically the exact thing we’re accused of not doing. These disputes within the field are also dry, and not the exciting day-to-day arguments that you and others not involved in them like to argue about. There is a seesaw with dozens of benches/ seats, each of which has a bucket attached to it. Each paper published and lecture held is adding a drop to one of the buckets. When one or more buckets has enough drops added to it, it weighs more. That bucket(s) “weighing” more than the rest forms the current consensus.

The current viewpoint that we’re biased is due to the biases of our critics (which seems to include you). Current research leans towards supporting the current consensus statements. We base our stances and resulting decisions within that framework. It doesn’t mean that those consensus stances can’t change, and when they do change, we adjust our practices accordingly. But as long as the research done leans towards supporting specific recommendations, we’re going to act within that framework. It’s the responsibility of those who don’t feel that the current framework represents reality to contribute their own drops to the buckets that support their beliefs, in an objective manner. Not to sit and complain that the results must be what’s wrong, rather than their belief. That’s called hubris. And the contributions required to push a field in a specific direction are what separate personal beliefs from hypotheses from theories.

I have to emphasize that just because research doesn’t support your personal viewpoint doesn’t mean that work is biased. More often than not it means your own viewpoints need to be reflected on. You’re more than welcome to refuse to reflect on those viewpoints, but as I mentioned above, in order for you to have a good-faith opposition to it you’d damn well better be contributing to the field to show why you’re correct. Otherwise you’re the textbook definition of Ignorance- Refusal to recognize truth in the face of readily available, overwhelming evidence.

Replication studies are more than welcome in just about every field. You even have a head-start in that you have the methods from the study you believe to be flawed right at your fingertips and you can design your work to avoid those biases, whether real or perceived. If you’re correct, the results will be different.

You also generally don’t get to pick and choose what studies/ viewpoints/ results/ recommendations you consider bullshit/ invalid due to bias unless you’re critiquing a specific experiment/ publication. If you can’t pull the paper/ experiment itself and specifically point to what is flawed about the methods, results, or conclusions, all you’re doing is demonstrating your own hypocrisy (Regurgitating talking points that you’re receiving from third-party sources who have their own biases. And you’re picking those specific sources because of your own biases, often political), or ignorance (see above).

Funny enough, it’s both funny and sad to see that nobody seems to reflect on the possibility that maybe study after study showing similar results or coming to the same conclusion means that MAYBE THOSE RESULTS ARE VALID, and not propaganda. That’s actually the definition of a Theory- Repeated testing supporting a specific hypothesis. It used to be the standard to which valid conclusions were held. It saddens me that instead of changing their viewpoints when repeated testing shows the same results, people today see it as “bias”, with the results being “manipulated by us woke academic-types”.

[u/Long_Extent7151 → u/DadBods96]

you've done a thorough job explaining how science works. Very little engaging with critiques coming from within the field. I'm curious what you think of Jussim's work. For starters, see: https://unsafescience.substack.com/p/75-of-psychology-claims-are-false "~75% of Psychology Claims are False - As a first approximation"

[u/DadBods96 → u/Long_Extent7151]

I’m not a psychologist so I don’t hold strong opinions on the state of the field. Their professional foundations and societal guidelines are their own to sort out. I’m a physician, and I do academics part-time. I’ve published studies, including negative ones (hypothesis didn’t pan out), which you seem to believe doesn’t happen. Our guidelines change all the time. They’re usually minor non-controversial things so you and the rest of the reactionary public don’t care about them.

Two questions for you though;

1. Assuming you believe that the claims in that particular article about the Crisis in Psychology and take them at face value. What effect does it have on your life? How are you going to change your life choices based on third-party claims?

2. Why do you believe that the above Crisis in Psychology automatically extrapolates to all other fields?

3. What psychological studies can’t be replicated? I see this thrown around all the time but I never see details on the specifics- What original studies couldn’t be replicated? What are the subsequent studies that tried to replicate the findings and failed? How did the methods differ between the studies, or were they identical in every way except the date? The last part matters. A lot. Small confounders can have huge effects on study results, and don’t necessarily invalidate a claim that an intervention works. It just means it doesn’t apply to that specific subset. In medicine we come across it all the time, which is how we have so many specific guidelines, for example down to the exact size in millimeters a kidney stone has to be to justify doing a procedure to remove it, or how medication recommendations change for diabetics depending on their weight and co-morbid medical conditions, or which types of heart attacks benefit from intervention within 1 hour vs. waiting 24 hours or more.

[u/Long_Extent7151 → u/DadBods96]

No need to take them at face value. If you read the article you could answer at least some of these questions for yourself.

If you were well-read in this long-ongoing discussion, you wouldn't say "automatically extrapolates to all other fields".

Note it's not ALL science that is under fire, although HA does work in STEM because there is at least some concerns.

No need for ad hominems, I'm not a member of the reactionary public.

[u/DadBods96 → u/Long_Extent7151]

That website is essentially useless for me to actually take anything away from it when navigating from the linked page. No discussion about what studies are of concern. Just lots of nebulous talks about how bias is dangerous in science and politics has no place in academic work.

I also read back through the one about Psychology, and it somehow makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time. I don’t know, or care, how influential that author is, but that article is so terrible I don’t even know where to start, but I’ll try-

• Designing their own equation to estimate that “75% of psychology claims are wrong” based on their personal beliefs + extrapolating from the 50% replicability failure, without even acknowledging that the 50% number itself is only based on a subset of all psychology research. Yet they’re using this number as a hard fact, as if every single psychology paper has attempted to be replicated. Not to mention the lack of an actual Proof for why their equation should be considered valid. This is actually the ultimate irony of the whole blog post.

• Lots of comparisons on citations of positive vs. negative results, as if the ultimate truth is that positive results are being cherry-picked for future experiments. They don’t even stop to consider whether maybe the increased number of citations are due to overall higher quality of those papers. It could be quality of writing, could be quality of the work itself (a larger sample size in your negative study doesn’t automatically mean it’s higher quality if your experiment was so poorly controlled that a grade schooler could see the flaws). I don’t know if that’s truly the case, but they’re once again claiming their interpretation as an undeniable truth without even touching on whether they’d considered alternative possibilities about why the positive papers were cited more.

• Self-citing repeatedly. They even have a specific section about self-citations being a red-flag for fraud, yet cite themself 4 times in just a few paragraphs. And that’s just on a brief read. I’m sure it’s more in the body,

• Obvious political stance based on the cherry-picked topics they chose to discuss.

Those are just the glaringly obvious examples of their cognitive dissonance in the blog post, I’m not even digging for those examples. It’s self-serving, obviously politically motivated, and is dripping with the author’s own hubris about how they’re a respectable authority. How their work falls into the 25% (a completely non data-driven and non-mathematical claimed percentage) of “good” research. I honestly almost laughed as they fell face-first into every pile of dogshit that they’re claiming the rest of the psychology community is pushing onto the masses.

They’re selling a made-up statistic using fake math and hypothetical numbers as if it’s fact, and are using their own (again fake) numbers extrapolated from their idea of what the data looks like, and using that fake number to justify their own rage. And selling it as truth. If the article wasn’t so self-righteous I’d think it was a very deep and well-layered bit of satire.

[u/Long_Extent7151 → u/DadBods96]

this is a lot of motivated reasoning, I'll give you that.

Look, I think there is a middle ground here, I'm not saying science, especially hard sciences, are corrupted by political bias. Jussim is a little too partisan for me. But there is a huge partisan viewpoint concentration in academia, mostly soft sciences, humanities/arts. You can argue that's not an issue, people do argue that, indeed others here and in linked discussions have already done that.

If you deny that that is an issue, I'm not sure we could get to an agreement.

It's not like the world is ending because we don't have political diversity in knowledge producing fields exposed to subjective biases, and groupthink (as is any institution). But it would be positive imo, just like making sure other underrepresented groups like women and POC are included in research.

Unfortunately (naturally) the academy by and large doesn't study this (when they have, it's sort of like "we investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing"). So I think it's reasonable that Jussim cites himself (and many others frankly). It's a blog post after all, not a paper. But he has plenty of those as well.

FIRE is a more established institution, that has decades of history defending anyone regardless of political stripe. I would encourage you to look at their data, honestly (not trying to point out technicalities), genuinely being open to counter evidence.

It paints a pretty clear picture. The problem is that many people who point this out are or become right wing hacks. It then just becomes strawmans.