Luke_A_Somers comments on [Link] Admitting to Bias - Less Wrong

19 Post author: GLaDOS 10 August 2012 08:13AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (129)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 10 August 2012 02:32:36PM 10 points [-]

I wonder what would happen if they unpacked 'liberal' and 'conservative' into their component parts and repolled.

I hope (but not necessarily expect) that a lot of the discrimination would come out as social scientists being 'biased' against specific positions whose advocates claim to be conservative, that make no sense from a social science perspective - and not against other conservative positions with no such implication. These could be swept up by bandwagon formation.

It might possible to find certain other disciplines where the participants would have a similar bias against liberals due to some particularly popular boneheaded positions claimed by their advocates to be liberal, and again bandwagon formation.

Or it could just be a liberal dominance of social science, complete with discrimination. A more detailed poll might help to elucidate this.

Comment author: maia 10 August 2012 08:44:31PM 4 points [-]

It might possible to find certain other disciplines where the participants would have a similar bias against liberals due to some particularly popular boneheaded positions claimed by their advocates to be liberal, and again bandwagon formation.

Cynical response: I wouldn't necessarily expect this. American academia has a well-known left-wing bent. (Come to think of it, though, I might expect more scattered results in economics in particular.)